Loving comes easy when it’s the right people we love, doesn’t it?
The kind eyes of a grandparent, your favorite teacher’s compassionate heart, or your child’s innocent mind.
Love is there to give and value.
So what is it about the narcissist that you love, and why can you not stop loving them?
I’ve got 8 reasons right here, and I think every single one of them is going to send you crashing back down to reality.
Learning About Love
Love is a tough concept to crack when you aren’t a professional.
Who is to start with? We all have to fall in love for the first time, and there’s no real guide in what that will feel like for us until we are deep in it.
For the lucky ones, love is taught as a foundation. To be human is to love, and to love is to be human.
Some fall into the right environments that are warm, respectful and create a stable consistency that feeds a healthy self.
And others simply don’t.
For them, love is a distortion. Love is something they feel they have to earn in order to be accepted.
If I do really well at school, you will tell me that you love me.
If I pass this test, you will show me affection.
If I keep my room tidy, you will like me.
Love isn’t that.
But as those people get older, they take what they’ve learned and know in their childhoods into whatever relationship they fall into.
8 Reasons Why Your Love For The Narcissist Isn’t Fading
I know it’s a difficult subject to navigate, but you’ve got this.
#1 You Think They Love You
No matter how badly they treat you, you think the narcissist loves you.
It’s the story for all victims who are in denial that what they’re experiencing is actually abuse.
The push and pull of the relationship with the narcissist has been carved out as love, but it’s not normal, is it?
It’s not normal to feel as though you’re walking on eggshells.
It’s not normal to be held one day, and metaphorically (or literally) pushed aside the next.
It’s not normal to be gaslighted, or isolated.
But when you think that’s love, and when those standards are set for you, it’s impossible to think any other way.
#2 You’re Addicted To Them
Narcissistic abuse, like any abuse, is addictive for both the abuser and the victim.
I know there’s a part of you that’s thinking, “Hang on. This is hell. How can it possibly be addictive?”
You’re right. It is hell. But in between the hell are tiny, almost minute fragments of pure bliss. Those are the moments the victims cling to.
Maybe they’re changing.
They do love me, after all.
I am finally worthy to them.
But before you know it, the whole dynamic flips.
The abuse begins again, and you’re once more left to feel like you mean nothing to them.
It’s not right, and it’s not fair, but it is a cycle you’re in.
Just because it’s familiar to you, doesn’t make it safe or healthy.
Abuse is not love.
#3 You Hope It’ll Change
One day this will all blow over, and you can finally be happy together.
One day their job won’t be so stressful, and they will come home in a better mood.
One day you’ll cook that dinner just right and they won’t criticize it.
You wait and wait, and you work and work to get it all just perfect, yet the narcissist doesn’t change.
That’s because they were never designed to.
#4 You Believe Them
Telling you that it was your fault and that you need to do better only inspires the victim to endeavour to iron out those relationship imperfections.
You believe them when they tell you whatever they tell you. Whether they’re yelling at you at how useless you are, or telling you they love you in those rare moments.
What the narcissist says, goes.
And you just can’t stop loving them for that.
#5 You Don’t Value Yourself
Anybody who can’t value themselves has somehow had the ability to do so be taken away from them.
Let that sink in for a moment.
To devalue yourself is to strip yourself of the necessary love you need to have for yourself in order to keep only healthy people around you.
If you have bad habits and negative thoughts, those are the kinds of people and situations you will attract to yourself.
But you won’t always see them as negative. It will just be what you feel you deserve.
That bar should never be set by incorrect assumptions you place on yourself.
#6 Attachment
Trauma bonding happens when the narcissist manipulates the narcissist into an overwhelming state of emotion.
This results in the victim:
- Feeling like their abuser is the only one for them.
- That they can’t live without them.
- That the push and pull of the relationships is so powerful, it’s actually intoxicating.
- That the connection they feel they have to their abuser overrides any form of abuse placed upon them.
That last point? That’s why victims stay.
It seems that no matter how the narcissist treats their victim, the trauma bond is how they remain locked into the relationship.
#7 You Were Taught To Earn Love
From a young age, love was probably a concept you learned only when trying to earn affection, love or time from a parent or caregiver.
You felt good when you did something they liked or thanked you for, and the rest of the time you spent figuring out how to get that all over again.
Love never needs to be earned. It just is. There’s no conditional way to treat it or feel it.
But for you, if you’re the type of person who sees love like it’s a paycheck, you’re going to always see that work like it’s love.
#8 Love is a Distortion
You think it is what it isn’t, and what it actually is will never come from a person so toxic.
Slipping into these kinds of relationships will destroy you. In a world where you’re meant to grow and learn about love and how people are meant to treat each other, you become used to the alternative.
The alternative is to be treated in all the ways you’ve ever known to be true and real. In this case, that treatment isn’t good. In fact, it’s terrible.
But you recognize it, and accept it. It’s all you know, and so you continue with it.
Even if it is chipping away at you, bit by bit.
