It’s completely understandable that you don’t want to be treated unfairly or unkindly. If you have somebody in your life who you love and care about, the chances are you’ll do anything for a peaceful life with them.
If they wrong you, rather than create a scene, you may default to telling the narcissist that you forgive them. You just want everything normal, and that means overlooking conflict or confrontation in favor of quietness.
Forgiving a narcissist doesn’t mean they won’t do it again and again, though, which is why today is all about the 7 cruel things narcissists do immediately after you forgive them.
#1 Forget their promise to you to never do it again
I don’t recall asking for your forgiveness.
When did I say I’d never go out again?
I don’t remember promising to never work late.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Where do these comments leave you? Narcissists know what they’re doing when they erase various conversations you’ve had with them in the past, especially if those conversations involved them making some kind of promise to you.
The cruelty of this is that at the time, you probably felt happy to know that the narcissist was thinking of you enough to make those promises.
You’d have felt special, knowing they care about you, and want to ensure mistakes don’t happen again.
And then they turn around and forget. Conveniently.
#2 Break their promise
Without even caring, explaining, or remembering a promise, a narcissist can cruelly walk out the door and do it all over again.
Cheating is a great example here, where the narcissist knows what they are doing, but their entitlement takes over any moral compass that they ought to be following.
Cheating is too tempting for the narcissist. The idea of having you sitting and waiting for them at home while they go out and catch their next supply like they’re fishing will mean they act on that impulse.
Remember who we’re dealing with here; the kinds of people who never know when enough is enough.
One person is not an audience. One person is not fans. They want to be adored by as many as possible, and if there’s ever an opportunity for them to cheat, they will.
Breaking their promise to you means nothing to them, and that’s what makes it so cruel.
#3 Minimize your pain
Could there be anything worse than watching somebody you love be in pain, and minimize it with comments that seek only to cause more of it?
Oh come on, you’re making a deal out of nothing.
Why do you have to be so over the top?
Don’t you see that you’re being a little silly?
Oh, here come the tears again.
It’s tiring hearing the same thing from you over and over.
Then maybe start to listen, so you don’t have to hear them over and over.
Minimizing pain doesn’t take the pain away, but it does deflect any responsibility from the person who may be causing it. The less of a big deal the narcissist makes of how you feel, the less attention they can give your emotions.
Over time, who gets to learn that they don’t matter? That’s right. You.
#4 Tell you that you’re too sensitive
If you weren’t so sensitive, there wouldn’t be anything to forgive.
Words can cut like a knife, so when you hear the narcissist tell you that you’re too sensitive when you’re feeling so much pain from their wrongdoing, it won’t make you feel better.
Whatever it was that you are forgiving them for, was down to their own selfish, entitled actions.
You may not have treated them that way if the shoe were on the other foot, but that doesn’t make you sensitive — it means you have morals that you should be proud to live by.
Forgiveness means to give somebody another chance, and the narcissist is lucky that you’re doing that for them.
Sadly, telling you that you’re too sensitive means they are only downplaying what they did, and making you the problem despite the realistic version being completely different.
If you notice the narcissist you know saying this, then accept it for what it is: gaslighting.
You are allowed to feel what you feel, without somebody telling you that you’re making a big deal out of nothing.
#5 Remind you of the one time you made a mistake
“It’s not like you’re innocent!”
“You remember your own mistakes, right?”
Of course you do. How can you be allowed to forget when you’re constantly reminded of the one time you forgot to do something, or genuinely slipped up?
You’ve been remorseful ever since, and the narcissist has openly had a tough time forgiving you, using it as a weapon to fight you with whenever they screw up.
But the difference? It was once. And you heavily apologized, taking accountability for it right away. You promised you’d work harder next time, but all you hear are constant reminders of it, even years after it happened.
Narcissists do this to show their victims that they aren’t perfect, as if it almost justifies what they did, even though they make those mistakes far more frequently, and with far less conscience.
#6 Tell you how high maintenance you are
My God, I don’t even know why I have to apologize.
What are you, the moral police?
Why do I have to answer to you like you’re my mother or something?
You know, I never usually have this problem with my partners, yet here we are.
You really get hung up on the little things, huh?
Actually, yes you do get hung up, but they aren’t little things. If you are offering your forgiveness, then something must have happened to call for it.
It isn’t high maintenance to ask the person who wronged you to see the wrong, and to promise — and follow through on that promise — to not do it again.
#7 Reassert their dominance
Narcissists use any opportunity to reassert their dominance, so as soon as you forgive them for whatever it was they did wrong, for them, it will be business as usual.
There should ideally be that period of time after you’ve forgiven them where they make it up to you and look to heal the damage they created, but narcissists don’t enter that.
What usually happens, is the more realistic version where you are having to tolerate their mood swings and cutting critical comments before you’ve even had a chance to take a breath.
This is them all over, though. I hate to say it, but it’s never going to change.
This is a classic example of how their moods can switch from asking you to forgive them and making the promise to be better, to acting like they’re the ones in charge all over again and commanding that authority within your relationship.
Your forgiveness means nothing to them.
