It is often difficult for victims of narcissistic abuse to understand why someone who was so loving, so compassionate at the beginning of their partnership would one day wake up and start treating them so poorly. Victims usually cannot wrap their heads around what is happening because they believe if the person they’re with says they love them, they wouldn’t do the things their own intuition is telling them they’re doing. When did this sudden, drastic change occur and is it really as bad as they believe?
What tends to get overlooked is the concept of narcissistic love. Narcissists are incapable of loving at the level most individuals do. They view individuals solely as extensions of self. Thus, they love on the surface and out of convenience. So long as a partner is serving them the way they need to be served, they’ll ‘love’ this person – but only the same as their car that gets them to work on time or their bed that helps them fall asleep at night. In the mind of the narcissist, all are to be loved because all are made to serve.
And because victims are merely a piece of the narcissist, in their abuser’s eyes, if that piece breaks, he will simply replace it. The narcissist has no use for anything that does not offer narcissistic supply. Wearing a victim down will always lead to less supply and, eventually, the narc will replace the victim with a new target. How quickly this happens depends on how much supply the victim is willing to give. The breakdown can take weeks, months, or even years. Individuals who try to ‘tough it out’ and stick with their partner for much longer than they should tend to feel like shells of themselves, unable to identify with the person they were prior to the relationship.
Love, to a narcissist, has nothing to do with heartfelt emotion that causes an individual to care for and respect another person while maintaining healthy boundaries and valuing their partner’s perspective. This is a completely foreign concept to a narc. So, just because a narcissist says he loves you, this doesn’t mean you won’t fall victim to the sadistic game played to enhance his self-image. And, yes, he will do these terrible things to you despite claiming to love you. He will test you repeatedly to see if you’re willing to stay, and offer him the reserves he craves, or if you’ll bottom out quickly and need to be replaced.
Relationships with narcissists are exceedingly damaging, and things only get worse over time. The sooner you understand the meaning of narcissistic love and recognize its psychological impact, the sooner you can get out and go not contact once and for all. Knowledge is power!
Break the silence, break the cycle.