By: Sara E. Teller
You’ve started to notice more and more blatant red flags in your partnership that seem to suggest you’re in a toxic dual with a narcissist. Stripped of your confidence, you’ve nevertheless chosen to get out once and for all. You have a safety plan in place and supports who are willing to help. What can you expect to happen when you leave?
First and foremost, it’s important to validate your feelings at this stage. You may be experiencing an incredibly wide“ range of emotions, and each is entirely valid. Being in a close relationship with a narcissist is exhausting. You’ve likely experienced early love-bombing only to have witnessed the switch being abruptly flipped off. You’ve endured days, months or maybe even years of gaslighting that has only gotten worse with the passing of time. This has left you mind-effed, questioning everything about yourself, while, at the same time, questioning why you stayed. Your decision to stay (if you can call it a ‘decision’) may mean you’ve pulled away from friends and loved ones. You may feel mostly isolated and alone.
All of these things are common at the end of the first two stages of a narcissistic partnership, and it’s no wonder why there’s a whirlwind of mental and emotional chaos happening within. Narcissists purposely drive their victims to this point, so they second-guess any opportunity they have to leave. Creating a mental prison ensures entrapment. Even when victims are physically able to walk out the door, this prison often makes them stay put.
Taking the time to recognize each of these confusing emotions without judgment can help propel you forward. You’ve been through hell and now it’s time to get out. But the person who put you there isn’t likely to hold the door open and wish you well. In fact, as the tension rises just before a discard, you must rely on your own inner sense of direction to escape and never look back. You can also expect your captor to make some last-ditch attempts to quiet your institution and keep you trapped.
This is a downright dangerous situation to be in. Already fragile, it may seem next to impossible to pick yourself up from your bootstraps and turn away from the abuse you’ve endured. In fact, you may have grown so used to this abuse it may feel easier to stay and let it continue. As your wrestling with this internal decision-making, the narcissist will almost surely return to love-bombing. Suddenly, he is everything he was in the very beginning – everything you ever dreamed of having in a partner. This may be so intoxicating that you momentarily forget the bad, and the narcissist will exploit this moment of weakness and hesitation to the fullest.
Validating uncertainty in this moment could be the very thing that saves you and keeps you determined to start living anew. You’ll have plenty of time to sort through the mental chaos, but you’ll never be able to do so as long as you’re a pawn to this puppeteer. Things may not entirely make sense when you first breathe in your newfound freedom but it’s important to get there so you can eventually, objectively, see that you’ve made the right choice.
Once you’ve left, don’t look back. No matter how much easier it may seem to continue the twisted normal you’ve come to know, give yourself the chance to create a life free from the clutches of a narcissist. Returning will only mean you’ve given this person the fuel to perform a life-destroying discard, and you’ve already been through enough. More than enough. Go out into the world and go entirely no contact for good.
Break the silence, break the cycle.