Upon first meeting, loving the narcissist seems like the most intensely passionate thing to do.
You respond to their charm with a connection wish for the both of you, but that never lasts.
Soon enough, loving a narcissist comes at a cost that nobody can afford. The more you give, the more it hurts. The less you see yourself, the more the narcissist is winning.
Loving the narcissist eventually costs you, and here is exactly what that will amount to.
#1 Your love, or your trauma?
The big question that I firmly believe doesn’t get asked enough.
Does the narcissist want your love, or your trauma?
When you first meet them, it would seem they want your love. The way they lean in and get to know every part of you.
The warm vibes they give you, and how interested they are in everything you say and do. They want to know your past, as well as what you want your future to look like.
You think it’s all down to love. You get carried away by the tide of charm, and you end up in the middle of their toxic ocean without a life jacket.
It was your trauma all along. They want to know it, reproduce it, and break you into tiny pieces.
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If victims knew that to begin with, it would save a lot of hassle and heartache.
#2 Learning the hard way
The more time you spend with the narcissist, the more inclined you will be to experience that pain.
Unfortunately, it all boils down to learning the hard way. When they aren’t who they appear to be, you have to come to terms with the fact that everything was a lie.
From that lie comes a thousand ways the narcissist has changed you, and those changes come with a cost we are about to explore.
#3 You think it’s great at first: that’s the catch
Is there such a thing as too good to be true?
In short, yes.
No relationship should feel like a constant fairytale of passion and the feeling that you are the only two people in the world.
Couples disagree. They face challenges, bills, pressures, but despite all of that, the love remains.
They work together to build a life that is strong and capable of encouragement and compromise.
The catch with a narcissistic relationship is that it feels faultless. The narcissist will try every attempt to agree with everything you say, mirroring both your thoughts and experiences so you feel you’ve met your twin flame; your soulmate.
You don’t think the relationship is going to cost you further down the line, but it does.
And the changes that get you to that point are subtle, but they affect every part of you, from your mind to your body.
Nobody ever realizes what the catch is until they’re left to deal with it.
Once the glamour and charm has died back like summer flowers in September, what’s left is a colorless life.
It’s not what you wanted, but it’s what you got, and all because you met somebody you trusted, and they broke that promise.
#4 The changes in your body
The changes that cost you are varied, but all are as painful and difficult to overcome as each other.
First, there’s the lack of confidence that may cause you to emotionally eat, or stop standing as tall as you normally would. You don’t think to care about yourself, and so you stop doing so.
It’s easier for your heart to race, and not for passionate reasons, but through fear and uncertainty.
Your body reacts to the smallest threats it picks up on, and you learn to adjust to living this way.
Then there is what lack of sleep does to you over time, leaving you unsure of what day or time it is, and feeling like you are wading through tar just to get through each day.
You develop palpitations, knocking you off balance. You find it hard to focus because your mind is so taken up by thoughts of how you can next try to please the narcissist.
You lose your spark, instead feeling a sense of depression setting in. You can’t shake it, but you can’t fight it, either.
#5 Nobody around you
It goes without saying that eventually, a narcissist will get their claws into all the people you know and love.
Isolating you is their way of gaining full control of you, and becoming your only source of support.
They don’t want you relying on anybody else but them, and will do all they can to ensure you are distanced from the people you once saw as close to you.
It’s sad for you, because you will feel alone, yet the pull of the narcissist will make you feel like you at least have one person left, even if they are your abuser.
You’ll start to believe everything they tell you, which is exactly what they want to do.
#6 Goals? What goals?
Your goals are worth so much to you, like each person’s is to them. They are your goals specifically because you have a certain path you want to follow.
They bring out a side of you that wants to fulfill these magical thoughts, turning them into reality.
Until one day, you wake up and realize that you have none at all.
They didn’t just walk out the door, they were pushed out of your life purposely so that you no longer have direction.
What happens when you have no direction? You become lost. You need somebody to signpost you to where you want to go. If you don’t know where that is, you’ll happily be led to safety.
Or rather, the narcissist’s idea of safety.
In fact, it’s far from safe, but you won’t know that until you understand the true cost of believing the words and actions of a narcissist.
Your goals will turn into their goals, and how lost you feel will become unhealthily normal for you.
#7 Waiting for change
This is a big one, and I know is a common reason why victims of narcissistic abuse suffer the way they do.
Waiting for change is like waiting for rain in a drought. You wake up every morning wondering if that will be the day you see a different side to the narcissist.
You wait for the apology, you long for accountability, and you hope for a consistent set of moods that settle your nervous system.
Change never comes, but waiting for it will cost you so much time and energy.
#8 It’s never too late
As much as you can’t get any time back you spent on the narcissist, you can look at your future with more hopeful eyes.
You can see a way out of waiting and hoping by moving on and beginning your healing journey. What they cost you is already too much, so why waste another day?
Loving a narcissist makes you feel as though you have found somebody you were always meant to be with, but it’s all a ploy to get you hooked, attached, and never quite able to live on your own terms.
And the cost of that is through the roof.
