2. They don’t understand love.
If you’ve ever been loved before and you’ve also gotten involved with a narcissist, whatever kind of relationships these were, you know that it’s very, very different. A relationship with a narcissist is going to be very intense in good and bad, and it’s also going to be very chaotic. And if you find this appealing, you probably have experienced narcissists before and you may have confused addiction and codependency and chaos with love. And this unfortunately fits perfectly with the way the narcissist loves. The narcissist’s so-called love is just intensity, is all it is. It’s chaos, it’s intensity. And if you don’t know what you’re looking at, that can make it feel like you need to be this with this person. So ultimately, if you’re ever feeling like you are addicted to a person, like you do not have the strength to walk away from a person, that is a relationship to look very closely at, to see what’s going on there.
3. They actually need you to care.
Apathy is like kryptonite to the narcissist. And one of the worst things that a narcissist can feel is insignificant. They need you in order to feel significant, and they need to feel significant in order to validate their false persona. So they are going to act like they don’t care about you all day, every day. But they need you to care about them. And the reason why they’re acting like they don’t care about you is to get an emotional reaction out of you. And that’s also the reason why they’ll push your buttons. So if you start acting like you don’t care, that’s when they’re going to start to try and push your buttons.
Recommended: Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse.
So do whatever you can to suppress those emotional reactions because when you share an emotional reaction with a narcissist, essentially what you’re doing is you’re opening the door. You’re opening the door to deeper levels of yourself and essentially letting that narcissist in. Keep the door closed by keeping your emotional reactions in check, and the narcissist will have a lot more trouble finding ways to hurt you.
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