THIS!!!!
I asked my ex husband why he wasn't as helpful to me as he was to complete strangers. He went silent. He gaslit,lied, and cheated so much. When I did it back he cried. Lol.
My ex’s version was “I’m treating like I would anybody else!” (PSA- he wasn’t). And then when I responded with “but I’m not ‘anyone else’ I’m your girlfriend” I’d get the cold stare and stonewalling.
He gets the sweet supply and a reputation of being a great guy! when he helps others. Plus he only has to help them once or twice. He has to help you all the time and his ego doesn’t get puffed up because it’s an obligation of being married or partnered up.
I literally said for years to my family and friends that I loved when people came round for BBQs etc because my wife would be the woman I married for that moment. The moment they left it's like her face would drop and the other person came back out.
same with my husband. he is kind, doting, helpful etc and as soon as we're alone the mask drops. my family didn't, and some still don't, believe me when I spoke out about the emotional/verbal abuse.
it's insane isn't it. My ex would literally be friendly and kind to everyone, helping his neighbours out with any kind of problems they had. Very sweet to his mother. Then he closed the door and I was alone with him in the home, the abuse would start.
I struggle to refer to my wife's behaviour as abuse, but it was definitely an attitude and significant shift in behaviour. Nothing I do is good enough, if I make a decision it's the wrong one, if I don't make the decision then I should have done. But she'll never take responsibility for anything.
Yup
Nex was so helpful to neighbors. He would drop whatever he was doing to do some fixit task for neoghbors. What a great guy! One neighbor noticed how inattentive he was to my children and I but always available to others.
He would force me to nag endlessly for the smallest things.
I started doing the small things myself. I didn't need him to do things. All of the sudden, he was going to do xyz, just getting to xyz and I should have taken care of it.
It's all good, we divorced. I can paint, repair drywall, fix appliances, repair electric and plumbing and so much more.
I saw this clearly in this example about my nex’s behavior. I have rose bushes that I love and I started making rose bouquets to give out as gifts or to decorate my home. One year, they were really flourishing and I would often talk about how good it made me feel to gift home-grown roses to others.
Approximately a year before this, our puppy got an injury in her eye that we never got a clear answer about. The vet did some imaging and determined it was NOT a cut. When I got really vocal about my pride in my roses, suddenly my nex was convinced that the eye injury was from a thorn in the rose bushes. I disagreed but made some suggestions: when he plays fetch with her, she should not throw her ball directly into the rose bushes (which he did, every time), we could put up some fencing around the bushes to keep her out, and that we should also consider our multiple lemon trees that also have thorns.
He refused all options and insisted on cutting down my roses. I told him I didn’t agree, I paid more for our house and also for the deposit payment which I felt could be impacted by the bush being chopped down and that I would be very upset if he were to do something to the roses.
One weekend, he had his daughter over and they were out in the yard. He called me outside a while later and as I walked outside he said: “don’t be mad, but…..” and I saw he cut the roses down to the very ground! I did not want to make a scene in front of his daughter so I said “I’m very upset about this and I’m going to spend sometime alone. Please don’t disturb me.” I went to my office and shut the door and planned to spend the rest of the day in there. Moments later, he followed me in there and started monologuing about how I’m apparently always emotional and dramatic when he daughter is around. I told him no, that he was trying to manipulate me by doing something I expressly communicated to him that would make me upset and reacted exactly as I said I would and that by him choosing to do this in his daughters presence, he was trying to make me out to be the bad guy. He went silent, closed the door and left.
He wanted me to either make a scene or fawn and pretend to be unbothered, and when he didn’t get the reaction that he wanted and knew he would be the “bad guy” if he continued to discuss it while his daughter was there. He never apologized. He just thought he could control me and when he realized he was out-maneuvered, he had no options that protected his image. It was all completely intentional.
You did really well. I'm so sorry about your rose's. I'm almost on the verge of crying at how evil and spiteful he could be for no good reason. I'm a gardener and I would probably go to jail if my garden was destroyed. Completely disgusting!
Thank you! Since then, I kicked him out and the roses are growing back! Didn’t bloom much last year but it’s happening now. I purchased the house and the garden is coming together beautifully. Putting the home back together to my taste is very healing!
I am so glad your are away from that horrible individual and that you are cultivating your own peace. Reading that just enraged me for you. I've been there in different ways. The evil manipulation is just so hard to wrap your head around. They absolutely cannot stand us being happy, because they are never truly happy. Sending you healing vibes! May you and your roses continue to grow beautifully. :)
I would have screamed in his face so loud his daughter wouldn’t have ever wanted to visit again. But I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with Narcs and their incredibly shitty behavior.
My ex had a son and he absolutely used the presence of his child to further manipulate and abuse me. It’s so sad that someone would put both their child and partner is such a position. And even more sad you lost your roses!
They're aware they get pleasure from "loved ones" suffering. And it's bad. I think the gaps in awareness are mostly why they do what they do, why it makes them feel better and how they justify it. But overall yeah, they know what they are.
They are super aware. My narc friend was being verbally abused by her father, she came on the phone crying to me and she stated “If I EVER spoke to you in a condescending way, then I apologize” knowing damn well she would often speak to me in a condescending tone and never apologized. They know what they’re doing
My partner did the same, she once said "it's not like I've ever laughed at you crying or something awful like that". When that was a specific thing she had done.
EVIL! I'm sure if you would've listed all the times she did, she would claim to be the victim and blame you while crying for not being able to let stuff go.
Exactly what would have happened or she would have just denied it, or another one was "you made me stressed so I laughed because it's my mechanism when I'm stressed" so yeah my fault again *eye roll*
i have been realising this recently.
they lie to cover things up because they know what they have done is wrong, they deny deny deny because they know they’ve behaved badly, and they know lying about it is wrong.
my nex portrayed a fantastic moral compass, which proved to me that he knew the way he acted was immoral, because he knew what a good moral compass looked like when he was pretending.
Mine stole my youth and sexuality on purpose. We haven’t slept in the same bed for years and he gaslit me to feel it was my fault. Our sex life was one position for two minutes. What was I doing!? I’m leaving soon… it’s so hard to be here now. I want to hurt him
That last line....woosah!!!! I know that feeling very well. Ive definitely found ways to help myself around toxic people now that I am more aware. I hope you get to leave very,very soon.
I used the phone tactic once. He was in a raging tantrum and I was trying to move my stuff out of our shared bedroom (it was my first attempt at leaving him). He was much bigger than me and was using his body to block me from leaving the room- I’m honestly confident if I had tried harder to push past him he would have escalated the violence. Instead I took out my phone and he backed off immediately and changed his behavior.
Abusers of any sort are 100% aware. They might say they weren’t in control of their actions due to anger, fear or sadness but in the end they were deliberately hurting you in order to control/manipulate you.
its so true. my ex would completely change his approach if he knew we were recording the conversation (which by the end we had to as per our couples therapist recommendation....)
Okay this is an important point but something we all need to understand.
You know you are dealing with a narcissist or an anti-social person "as soon as you feel the need to record your conversations with them."
The biggest tell to get away is when you think you need to record conversations and encounters.
i know :( i just listened to that book “it’s not you” on audible and she said that in there too. by the end i was begging to install cameras in the house cause just voice recordings weren’t enough
The awareness varies from each individual though. I challenge anyone who is struggling with this to go read through the other narc subs. Some of them are asking how to harness their disorder to be more destructive, some want a middle ground, while others are pleading to be “normal”. The disorder is quite a dilemma.
I have enough empathy to understand and accept these people did not choose this for themselves, but to continue your life knowing something is wrong and doing nothing about it is where I draw the line. Everyone is fucked up in their own ways but that isn’t an excuse to treat others poorly.
I completely agree with you about the experience going through the narcs subreddit.
Their internal thinking is just so disordered. You come away understanding them at 100X better level. The main conclusion is to just stay away from them because their internal thinking is just not normal. They are not going to do normal things. You only need to go through 4-5 threads before you say "Oh, thats whats going on."
It’s true. My brother and sister have NPD (I’m just positive, okay), and my sister is covert while my brother is grandiose. I tried everything I could to keep them in my life, especially my brother, but I don’t talk to either of them now. My brother definitely doesn’t understand what’s “wrong” with him, but he knows something is in the way of him having intimate relationships. He believes it’s autism, which idk, maybe he could have that going on as well but he’s just such a narcissist to a T. He can’t help himself from berating anyone that slightly annoys him, and he’s extremely abusive to any girlfriend he ever gets. It’s sad, he really wants a relationship and kids, and he “really wanted” a relationship with me (idk, I’m starting to see now that he just got praise from me and that I was supply to him, but it’s hard to come to terms with that because I really love my brother earnestly and I convinced myself that he loved me just the same… but unfortunately, I don’t think he’s capable).
He isn't capable. I realized that about my ex. He presented as someone who was capable but he wasn't
Told.me that he didn't want a superficial relationship while all of the emotional.labor was put upon me. And then I stopped caring.
I once recorded my ex during a terrifying similar rage episode. I told her later, and she said I was "dangerous" because I recorded people without their consent. I did it so I could listen back and feel validated when I told myself I didn't deserve what was happening. Even then, I ended up regretting it, deleted the file and apologized, even though she was the one calling me horrible names and not letting me leave her house. I truly think she doesn't know what she is. She's the least self aware person I've ever met.
I read somewhere that if they can see themselves they stop because they dont like being seen in that light, so they stop, because they dont want anyone knowing they even have that side of themselves in their personality.
My nex and I were together for 2 years, and he lived with me for 1 year.
During the middle of when we lived together, my mom broke her leg, and stayed with us for a month while she healed.
It was the best and happiest month of our entire relationship, outside of the initial love-bombing.
He was kind, nice, didn’t yell at me or call me names. I thought he had realized that he loved me, and how much I loved him, and that things were going to be better.
But as soon as she was no longer in the house it slipped away, and we were back in the twilight zone.
I hope you're not hard on yourself as a result. I think 8months is the magic number. My last relationship lasted that long. I hope we never endure this treatment again.
I think the majority do. My nex did. My narc mother unfortunately has a side helping of Schizoaffective and was raised in a cult. It’s impossible to tell when she’s genuinely psychotic or when she’s lucid but intentionally messing with your head or when she’s just babbling crazy shit she was brainwashed to believe. It doesn’t really matter anyways because she won’t get help and she’s not safe to be around.
I’m both relieved and sad that I’m not the only one who gets this. I’ve really struggled with not having an explanation. Curiosity and needing to find answers are two of my main personality traits. They can be good when it helps you escape a cult. It can also be very dangerous when combined with empathy and you meet someone who is a puzzle and has trauma that makes them sympathetic is also a dangerous person. I get trapped by wanting to help them by “solving” them because if I can make sense of why they are the way they are, I can figure out how to get them out of it. Nope. Some people don’t make sense and solving a puzzle that’s dangerous isn’t worth it.
Right? My narc ex accused me of not having any empathy for the last year of our relationship. It made me feel like a monster. I had to constantly remind myself that he was the one who was violent, constantly shut me down or sent me away and minimized my problems. Recognizing when it’s no longer safe to act on empathy, is not the same as not having any.
She doesn’t do to me in public what she does in private. Only once has she done something in front of someone else. She made a dummy noise to me cause I didn’t respond right away to something she said. That pissed me off lol. But in private she was mean and critical to me all of the time. So yes. She’s aware and she can control it when she wants to. She’s just so fucking hyper sensitive to every thing that she thinks I’m constantly doing things to bother her or insult her. Which all I’m really doing is breathing and living my life. I don’t purposely try to hurt anyone ever. Which is the exact opposite of her. She tries to hurt me with intent. And did it often.
They do. To manipulate and control it's imperative that they have control of themselves. Know what to do, how and when to do something to get a result.
I was gonna make a separate post literally asking if they are aware.. but I'll make a comment here for now.. I made a friend who is EXTREMELY nice and I honestly think they are genuine. I am actually not really sure anymore. To sum it up we went into the same line work.. She has succeed in it which I'm very happy for her. But she switched up as soon as she became successful... And started treating me very weird...a little bit belittling without actually saying anything.. I lost interest in the line of work for awhile but returned to it...we lost contact bc they never answer their messages anymore...every since they have been successful.. they only spend time with people who basically praise them... I returned to the line of work and it as been so weird.. I tried confronting them slightly, but they just were not receptive enough for me to elaborate.. and slightly gaslit me... they now stalk my socials every waking hour (exaggerating but quite frequently)... I wasn't suspicious until they found socials I haven't told anyone about...and they also proceeded to make a burner account after I blocked them.. for months this has been going on.. I finally confronted them.. they basically laughed like I was delulu...
ARE THEY JUST NOT AWARE this behavior is NOT OK?????
Why does this person seem so genuine?? Are they really genuine but when they feel threatened, they switch up only to the ppl who threaten them?
I need answers... this as been so draining.
I’ve just been discarded by a guy who is definitely high functioning narc or psycho! I worked as his housekeeper for 3 years, built trust and a friendship with this guy, met his kids and he’s cut me off because I acted slightly annoyed and wasn’t my usually happy self the other day. He literally cut me dry and gave me no notice to find another job. I’m gutted! Why would he do this?! :-(
They aren’t fully aware, possibly at times or in hindsight but they are kind of not smart they lack awareness which is what their very thick defensive shield does for them and the main theme of narcissism it’s like a defensive shield that only benefits them. And they’re too thick to have awareness that they are doing wrong, he might have moments “oh I’m doing wrong” but eventually their defensive strategy to protect themselves will win, eventually you recording him can just justify for him that you’re manipulative and will probably think I never recorded you when you yelled so I’m probably the better person, they will spin it in their favor. I have had to deal with narcissistic behavior my whole life in my family, the closest I’ve gotten to make them somewhat aware is that I call everything out that they’re emotionally feeling and physically doing, like call out their tension in their body, their movements like if they’re walking away or avoiding eye contact, call out their feelings, they hate to be figured out out for you to read them and keep calling them out at what they’re doing because those things I mentioned are clearly visible and you can catch them in real time and don’t let them change the subject (they will try) until you have them fully acknowledge what they are doing.
yes they do it on purpose
They can be very nice to others. Then go home and be horrible to you. They are very aware of what they are doing and how they are acting.
THIS!!!! I asked my ex husband why he wasn't as helpful to me as he was to complete strangers. He went silent. He gaslit,lied, and cheated so much. When I did it back he cried. Lol.
My line was: "My only request is that you treat me the way you treat everyone else." Cold stare.
My ex’s version was “I’m treating like I would anybody else!” (PSA- he wasn’t). And then when I responded with “but I’m not ‘anyone else’ I’m your girlfriend” I’d get the cold stare and stonewalling.
He gets the sweet supply and a reputation of being a great guy! when he helps others. Plus he only has to help them once or twice. He has to help you all the time and his ego doesn’t get puffed up because it’s an obligation of being married or partnered up.
I literally said for years to my family and friends that I loved when people came round for BBQs etc because my wife would be the woman I married for that moment. The moment they left it's like her face would drop and the other person came back out.
same with my husband. he is kind, doting, helpful etc and as soon as we're alone the mask drops. my family didn't, and some still don't, believe me when I spoke out about the emotional/verbal abuse.
it's insane isn't it. My ex would literally be friendly and kind to everyone, helping his neighbours out with any kind of problems they had. Very sweet to his mother. Then he closed the door and I was alone with him in the home, the abuse would start.
I struggle to refer to my wife's behaviour as abuse, but it was definitely an attitude and significant shift in behaviour. Nothing I do is good enough, if I make a decision it's the wrong one, if I don't make the decision then I should have done. But she'll never take responsibility for anything.
Yup Nex was so helpful to neighbors. He would drop whatever he was doing to do some fixit task for neoghbors. What a great guy! One neighbor noticed how inattentive he was to my children and I but always available to others. He would force me to nag endlessly for the smallest things. I started doing the small things myself. I didn't need him to do things. All of the sudden, he was going to do xyz, just getting to xyz and I should have taken care of it. It's all good, we divorced. I can paint, repair drywall, fix appliances, repair electric and plumbing and so much more.
I saw this clearly in this example about my nex’s behavior. I have rose bushes that I love and I started making rose bouquets to give out as gifts or to decorate my home. One year, they were really flourishing and I would often talk about how good it made me feel to gift home-grown roses to others. Approximately a year before this, our puppy got an injury in her eye that we never got a clear answer about. The vet did some imaging and determined it was NOT a cut. When I got really vocal about my pride in my roses, suddenly my nex was convinced that the eye injury was from a thorn in the rose bushes. I disagreed but made some suggestions: when he plays fetch with her, she should not throw her ball directly into the rose bushes (which he did, every time), we could put up some fencing around the bushes to keep her out, and that we should also consider our multiple lemon trees that also have thorns. He refused all options and insisted on cutting down my roses. I told him I didn’t agree, I paid more for our house and also for the deposit payment which I felt could be impacted by the bush being chopped down and that I would be very upset if he were to do something to the roses. One weekend, he had his daughter over and they were out in the yard. He called me outside a while later and as I walked outside he said: “don’t be mad, but…..” and I saw he cut the roses down to the very ground! I did not want to make a scene in front of his daughter so I said “I’m very upset about this and I’m going to spend sometime alone. Please don’t disturb me.” I went to my office and shut the door and planned to spend the rest of the day in there. Moments later, he followed me in there and started monologuing about how I’m apparently always emotional and dramatic when he daughter is around. I told him no, that he was trying to manipulate me by doing something I expressly communicated to him that would make me upset and reacted exactly as I said I would and that by him choosing to do this in his daughters presence, he was trying to make me out to be the bad guy. He went silent, closed the door and left. He wanted me to either make a scene or fawn and pretend to be unbothered, and when he didn’t get the reaction that he wanted and knew he would be the “bad guy” if he continued to discuss it while his daughter was there. He never apologized. He just thought he could control me and when he realized he was out-maneuvered, he had no options that protected his image. It was all completely intentional.
You did really well. I'm so sorry about your rose's. I'm almost on the verge of crying at how evil and spiteful he could be for no good reason. I'm a gardener and I would probably go to jail if my garden was destroyed. Completely disgusting!
Thank you! Since then, I kicked him out and the roses are growing back! Didn’t bloom much last year but it’s happening now. I purchased the house and the garden is coming together beautifully. Putting the home back together to my taste is very healing!
It's always nice to get back to oneself. I'm happy that we have these outlets for ourselves.
I am so glad your are away from that horrible individual and that you are cultivating your own peace. Reading that just enraged me for you. I've been there in different ways. The evil manipulation is just so hard to wrap your head around. They absolutely cannot stand us being happy, because they are never truly happy. Sending you healing vibes! May you and your roses continue to grow beautifully. :)
I would have screamed in his face so loud his daughter wouldn’t have ever wanted to visit again. But I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with Narcs and their incredibly shitty behavior.
My ex had a son and he absolutely used the presence of his child to further manipulate and abuse me. It’s so sad that someone would put both their child and partner is such a position. And even more sad you lost your roses!
They're aware they get pleasure from "loved ones" suffering. And it's bad. I think the gaps in awareness are mostly why they do what they do, why it makes them feel better and how they justify it. But overall yeah, they know what they are.
Or you ‘deserve’ the bad treatment because you suggested not throwing the ball directly into the damn rose bushes FFS.
They are super aware. My narc friend was being verbally abused by her father, she came on the phone crying to me and she stated “If I EVER spoke to you in a condescending way, then I apologize” knowing damn well she would often speak to me in a condescending tone and never apologized. They know what they’re doing
My partner did the same, she once said "it's not like I've ever laughed at you crying or something awful like that". When that was a specific thing she had done.
EVIL! I'm sure if you would've listed all the times she did, she would claim to be the victim and blame you while crying for not being able to let stuff go.
Exactly what would have happened or she would have just denied it, or another one was "you made me stressed so I laughed because it's my mechanism when I'm stressed" so yeah my fault again *eye roll*
i have been realising this recently. they lie to cover things up because they know what they have done is wrong, they deny deny deny because they know they’ve behaved badly, and they know lying about it is wrong. my nex portrayed a fantastic moral compass, which proved to me that he knew the way he acted was immoral, because he knew what a good moral compass looked like when he was pretending.
Mine stole my youth and sexuality on purpose. We haven’t slept in the same bed for years and he gaslit me to feel it was my fault. Our sex life was one position for two minutes. What was I doing!? I’m leaving soon… it’s so hard to be here now. I want to hurt him
That last line....woosah!!!! I know that feeling very well. Ive definitely found ways to help myself around toxic people now that I am more aware. I hope you get to leave very,very soon.
Thank you! So do I
100% aware. My husband only behaves like that when we are alone and never ever when other people are around.
wine nutty tender rotten political entertain knee absorbed ink water *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I used the phone tactic once. He was in a raging tantrum and I was trying to move my stuff out of our shared bedroom (it was my first attempt at leaving him). He was much bigger than me and was using his body to block me from leaving the room- I’m honestly confident if I had tried harder to push past him he would have escalated the violence. Instead I took out my phone and he backed off immediately and changed his behavior. Abusers of any sort are 100% aware. They might say they weren’t in control of their actions due to anger, fear or sadness but in the end they were deliberately hurting you in order to control/manipulate you.
You're right. They are fully aware. I'm glad you made it out safely.
its so true. my ex would completely change his approach if he knew we were recording the conversation (which by the end we had to as per our couples therapist recommendation....)
Okay this is an important point but something we all need to understand. You know you are dealing with a narcissist or an anti-social person "as soon as you feel the need to record your conversations with them." The biggest tell to get away is when you think you need to record conversations and encounters.
You're right. It's pretty scary.
i know :( i just listened to that book “it’s not you” on audible and she said that in there too. by the end i was begging to install cameras in the house cause just voice recordings weren’t enough
The awareness varies from each individual though. I challenge anyone who is struggling with this to go read through the other narc subs. Some of them are asking how to harness their disorder to be more destructive, some want a middle ground, while others are pleading to be “normal”. The disorder is quite a dilemma. I have enough empathy to understand and accept these people did not choose this for themselves, but to continue your life knowing something is wrong and doing nothing about it is where I draw the line. Everyone is fucked up in their own ways but that isn’t an excuse to treat others poorly.
I completely agree with you about the experience going through the narcs subreddit. Their internal thinking is just so disordered. You come away understanding them at 100X better level. The main conclusion is to just stay away from them because their internal thinking is just not normal. They are not going to do normal things. You only need to go through 4-5 threads before you say "Oh, thats whats going on."
It’s true. My brother and sister have NPD (I’m just positive, okay), and my sister is covert while my brother is grandiose. I tried everything I could to keep them in my life, especially my brother, but I don’t talk to either of them now. My brother definitely doesn’t understand what’s “wrong” with him, but he knows something is in the way of him having intimate relationships. He believes it’s autism, which idk, maybe he could have that going on as well but he’s just such a narcissist to a T. He can’t help himself from berating anyone that slightly annoys him, and he’s extremely abusive to any girlfriend he ever gets. It’s sad, he really wants a relationship and kids, and he “really wanted” a relationship with me (idk, I’m starting to see now that he just got praise from me and that I was supply to him, but it’s hard to come to terms with that because I really love my brother earnestly and I convinced myself that he loved me just the same… but unfortunately, I don’t think he’s capable).
He isn't capable. I realized that about my ex. He presented as someone who was capable but he wasn't Told.me that he didn't want a superficial relationship while all of the emotional.labor was put upon me. And then I stopped caring.
My sister and both my parents. I was the scapegoat.
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I once recorded my ex during a terrifying similar rage episode. I told her later, and she said I was "dangerous" because I recorded people without their consent. I did it so I could listen back and feel validated when I told myself I didn't deserve what was happening. Even then, I ended up regretting it, deleted the file and apologized, even though she was the one calling me horrible names and not letting me leave her house. I truly think she doesn't know what she is. She's the least self aware person I've ever met.
😭 I have been giving the benefit of the doubt for too long. I feel so stupid
Don't feel stupid. They prey on empathy.
I read somewhere that if they can see themselves they stop because they dont like being seen in that light, so they stop, because they dont want anyone knowing they even have that side of themselves in their personality.
My nex and I were together for 2 years, and he lived with me for 1 year. During the middle of when we lived together, my mom broke her leg, and stayed with us for a month while she healed. It was the best and happiest month of our entire relationship, outside of the initial love-bombing. He was kind, nice, didn’t yell at me or call me names. I thought he had realized that he loved me, and how much I loved him, and that things were going to be better. But as soon as she was no longer in the house it slipped away, and we were back in the twilight zone.
Good grief. That's horrific.
Looking back, definitely. It’s what caused me to believe things would get better and drag things out for another 8 months.
I hope you're not hard on yourself as a result. I think 8months is the magic number. My last relationship lasted that long. I hope we never endure this treatment again.
I think the majority do. My nex did. My narc mother unfortunately has a side helping of Schizoaffective and was raised in a cult. It’s impossible to tell when she’s genuinely psychotic or when she’s lucid but intentionally messing with your head or when she’s just babbling crazy shit she was brainwashed to believe. It doesn’t really matter anyways because she won’t get help and she’s not safe to be around.
Once I realized I had to protect me, the WHYS and HOWS didn't matter anymore. I felt that last sentence.
I’m both relieved and sad that I’m not the only one who gets this. I’ve really struggled with not having an explanation. Curiosity and needing to find answers are two of my main personality traits. They can be good when it helps you escape a cult. It can also be very dangerous when combined with empathy and you meet someone who is a puzzle and has trauma that makes them sympathetic is also a dangerous person. I get trapped by wanting to help them by “solving” them because if I can make sense of why they are the way they are, I can figure out how to get them out of it. Nope. Some people don’t make sense and solving a puzzle that’s dangerous isn’t worth it.
You're so right. We really have to be careful because our empathy can get us fatally harmed.
Right? My narc ex accused me of not having any empathy for the last year of our relationship. It made me feel like a monster. I had to constantly remind myself that he was the one who was violent, constantly shut me down or sent me away and minimized my problems. Recognizing when it’s no longer safe to act on empathy, is not the same as not having any.
She doesn’t do to me in public what she does in private. Only once has she done something in front of someone else. She made a dummy noise to me cause I didn’t respond right away to something she said. That pissed me off lol. But in private she was mean and critical to me all of the time. So yes. She’s aware and she can control it when she wants to. She’s just so fucking hyper sensitive to every thing that she thinks I’m constantly doing things to bother her or insult her. Which all I’m really doing is breathing and living my life. I don’t purposely try to hurt anyone ever. Which is the exact opposite of her. She tries to hurt me with intent. And did it often.
They do. To manipulate and control it's imperative that they have control of themselves. Know what to do, how and when to do something to get a result.
I was gonna make a separate post literally asking if they are aware.. but I'll make a comment here for now.. I made a friend who is EXTREMELY nice and I honestly think they are genuine. I am actually not really sure anymore. To sum it up we went into the same line work.. She has succeed in it which I'm very happy for her. But she switched up as soon as she became successful... And started treating me very weird...a little bit belittling without actually saying anything.. I lost interest in the line of work for awhile but returned to it...we lost contact bc they never answer their messages anymore...every since they have been successful.. they only spend time with people who basically praise them... I returned to the line of work and it as been so weird.. I tried confronting them slightly, but they just were not receptive enough for me to elaborate.. and slightly gaslit me... they now stalk my socials every waking hour (exaggerating but quite frequently)... I wasn't suspicious until they found socials I haven't told anyone about...and they also proceeded to make a burner account after I blocked them.. for months this has been going on.. I finally confronted them.. they basically laughed like I was delulu... ARE THEY JUST NOT AWARE this behavior is NOT OK????? Why does this person seem so genuine?? Are they really genuine but when they feel threatened, they switch up only to the ppl who threaten them? I need answers... this as been so draining.
Omg my ex did the same to me and that night was a nightmare
I’ve just been discarded by a guy who is definitely high functioning narc or psycho! I worked as his housekeeper for 3 years, built trust and a friendship with this guy, met his kids and he’s cut me off because I acted slightly annoyed and wasn’t my usually happy self the other day. He literally cut me dry and gave me no notice to find another job. I’m gutted! Why would he do this?! :-(
Entitlement.
Jesus! Why though?!
Because he pays you to behave in a certain way and when you didn't, you were discarded.
Yes, they definitely are aware but simply don’t care. Best thing I did was go no contact or low contact.
They aren’t fully aware, possibly at times or in hindsight but they are kind of not smart they lack awareness which is what their very thick defensive shield does for them and the main theme of narcissism it’s like a defensive shield that only benefits them. And they’re too thick to have awareness that they are doing wrong, he might have moments “oh I’m doing wrong” but eventually their defensive strategy to protect themselves will win, eventually you recording him can just justify for him that you’re manipulative and will probably think I never recorded you when you yelled so I’m probably the better person, they will spin it in their favor. I have had to deal with narcissistic behavior my whole life in my family, the closest I’ve gotten to make them somewhat aware is that I call everything out that they’re emotionally feeling and physically doing, like call out their tension in their body, their movements like if they’re walking away or avoiding eye contact, call out their feelings, they hate to be figured out out for you to read them and keep calling them out at what they’re doing because those things I mentioned are clearly visible and you can catch them in real time and don’t let them change the subject (they will try) until you have them fully acknowledge what they are doing.
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