Number three, they are able to move on impossibly quickly after something terrible they have done to hurt someone they love—which may mean you. I want you to think about the things this person has done to hurt you, and as a thought experiment, imagine that you had done any of those things to them. Imagine you had caused that kind of hurt to someone you love. How long would it take you to move on from that? How hard would it be? How much work would it take for you to forgive yourself, to let go of any shame that you felt, any guilt that you felt at having done that, any anxiety that you felt at having been what you might think of as a bad person? How long would it take you? How hard would it be for you to move on from that? Then consider how easy it was for them to move on from that. Many narcissists will never apologize and expect you to move on. Even the ones that can apologize will often expect that once the apology has been issued, the situation is over. If you continue to have any feelings about the betrayal you’ve been through, the pain they’ve put you through, the hurt they’ve caused, they will start to become incredibly impatient or even angry at the fact that you are still making a big deal out of it. “Why are we still talking about this? I thought it was over.” Their response is devoid of compassion. And by the way, that doesn’t mean they won’t grovel in the beginning or perform grandiose gestures in order to win back your good graces or prevent losing you. They’re only doing that to get back to the status quo so they can get back to getting their needs met, to getting their supply again. They’re not doing it because they fundamentally feel bad or because what they have done has gone against some fundamental moral compass that they now find challenging to reconcile or forgive themselves for. What they want is for you to move on as quickly as possible because they moved on the moment they did it. In fact, for them, there was nothing to move on from. By the way, never let someone else’s ease of moving on gaslight you into believing that what they did wasn’t so bad after all. In a situation like this, their ease of moving on has nothing to do with the scale of what they did; it has everything to do with the absence of empathy and compassion that they feel when they do bad things.
What Happens When They’re Caught Red-Handed
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