You’ve gone and done. You’ve fallen in love with the narcissist, and for you, life feels great.
Why?
Because you’ve yet to discover they’re even a narcissist. Keeping it hidden from you until you are hook, line and sinker, the narcissist will finally start acting up.
These 10 strange things they do when you know you are in love with them are not for the faint-hearted.
I hope it’s not too late to back out and run for the hills…
#1 Love-bomb you
Being love-bombed can sound nice to people who are blissfully unaware of both the motives and consequences behind it.
Any type of phrase with the word bomb in it should highlight a slightly concerning aspect, and love-bombing is no different.
When they know you are well and truly in love with them, expect a narcissist to want to seal that with a ‘forever stamp.’
To ensure said stamp works and keeps you bonded to them, they will continue their love-bombing for long enough to know that you’re going nowhere.
Expect fireworks, passion, attention, affection, promises of marriage and forever, expensive gifts or dinners out, vacations away, and so much more.
The narcissist will show up at your work, and send flowers there to show everybody else how much they love you, too.
This first point comes with a warning:
It won’t last.
#2 Make all those wonderful promises
Those promises I touched on are not to be forgotten or dismissed easily.
I can’t see myself with anybody else ever again.
You are my soul mate.
I will never leave you.
I will never hurt you.
I’m going to marry you someday.
I want kids.
I want to grow old with you.
It all sounds so wonderful, doesn’t it? What the narcissist is doing is planting all these seeds in your mind to affirm their loyalty to you, and the fact that they want you and only you. This will be music to your ears, after all, all you’ve ever wanted was to be loved and now it’s finally happening.
Don’t be fooled. It’s a ploy to keep you under their control.
#3 Ditch emotions
They’ve had to put on such an act with you from the moment they met you, and they’re probably quite tired of it after a short while.
Once the magic has happened, and they know they’ve got you for life, the emotions they pretended to have will fade
The first thing you will do is wonder what went wrong, or if there’s something you’ve done wrong.
This will be new to you, and it will unsettle what you once thought was a beautiful relationship you had.
The fact is, once they’ve caught you, they know you won’t go anywhere, so they will start to shut down and not see a need to keep baiting you.
#4 Let the mask slip
The mask will slip, the compliments will stop, the affection will dry up, the moods will rise, the rage will awaken, the silence will ensue.
You will start to hear the narcissist complain, and nothing you do will be right.
They will talk down about the people you love in the hope that you too, will find ways to pull away from them.
Once the mask slips, you will only ever see that charming side of them every now and then when they want you to see it, or when they want something.
#5 Start convincing you that your reality is fake
As soon as you start to make it obvious that you are in love with the narcissist, they will use your emotions to try to sway you from your reality.
For them, it’s easier to do that with people who love them because they are going to be influenced in ways the narcissist will have full control over.
Gaslighting is a way of convincing you that what you experienced, thought, felt or feel is not real, and they will do that by getting into your head and making you question yourself.
Over time, you’ll feel like you’re going crazy, but the narcissist will smile at you and tell you they love you, so you suspect them of gaslighting you the least.
#6 Begin to persuade you to dump your friends
You will never hear this outright as a demand, as it is often far more covert than that.
Think about it like these phrases:
You’re too good for them.
You do everything for them and get nothing back.
They never contact you, it’s always you making the effort.
You’re not yourself around them, like you aren’t confident.
They’re always using you.
They talk over you all the time.
Getting it into your head that your friends are bad news is easily done by narcissists, who want to pretend to have your best interests at heart.
These aren’t your best interests at all. These are isolation tactics.
#7 Start talking down about your family
Once the narcissist has your love, they will try to change how you feel about your own family.
I see it so frequently, and it’s all to do with manipulating you to think that they’re your enemy.
They aren’t, but if the narcissist can have you all to themselves and be the sole influencer on your daily life, they will have won the game hands down.
#8 Reveal tactics that knock your confidence
The kinds of tactics that knock your confidence are:
- You are on a diet, and the narcissist keeps buying treats for the home. Any excuse, like it’s Friday, or pay day, or a miserable day. Anything to stop you reaching your goals, then commenting on the fact that you aren’t losing weight.
- They compare you with their exes.
- They comment on your choice of job, telling you that it’s a little above your station.
Of course, you love them, so you trust their opinion, and that’s where things can get dangerous for you.
#9 Show you what the silent treatment really means
If you love them, you’ll forgive any kind of bad treatment, right? Well, that’s at least how the narcissist thinks, anyway.
They will give you the silent treatment just because they can, and because you love them, you will fall right into it.
What did I do?
Was it something I said?
How can I make it better?
Before you know it, you’re begging to make a situation better that has nothing to do with you doing anything wrong.
That’s some warped control.
#10 Refuse to allow you time to do your own thing
If you think you will be allowed hobbies while with a narcissist, you can think again.
They will stop you from growing and personally developing as much as they can, and if you love them, you will just do as they wish.
You’ll want an easy life, because you finally feel you’ve met a person who gets you.
That means giving anything up to please them will happen without any shadow of a doubt, and is always why victims feel so hollow.
You cannot be independent, you have to rely on the narcissist. That’s how they want it.
