5. Hot & cold.
Another sign that you’re texting with a narcissist is that they tend to run hot and cold for no reason—seemingly for no reason, let’s say. So, this person might be all about you; they might be all love-bombing and not give you a second to yourself, right? They want to spend all their time with you, they want to text you all the time, and hear from you. And then suddenly, as if out of nowhere, they’re aloof. Maybe they’re even ghosting you; they disappear, and then they come back, and you’re wondering what you did to deserve this kind of treatment. But there’s no real answer.
So, when it comes to these kinds of things, it doesn’t always mean that somebody is a narcissist just because they were interested and then not interested. The red flag is the interested, not interested, interested again. So, going from hot to cold and hot to cold without any real explanation, you can bet there’s something else going on there—there’s something going on behind the scenes. And if somebody is making you feel like you have to compete for their attention, like you are somehow not good enough at any point, especially in this early phase of a relationship, this is your opportunity to see your way out.
6. They get offended very easily.
And now I’m going to tell you a story that happened to me, and I’m not saying that this person is a narcissist, but what we’re talking about here are red flags in the early stages. And so, in these early stages, you’re seeing red flags that mean that this person could be a narcissist, and they’re bold enough; they’re blatant enough that you don’t want to take it further. So, should you ignore these red flags and take it further, you might find out that this person is a narcissist, and it might be too late.
Okay, so this person you’re texting with gets offended very easily—very, very thin-skinned. And this is similar to going hot and cold, but it’s essentially all in the same conversation. So, you are—everything’s fine, you’re texting back and forth, and everything is cool.
From my experience, I was texting with somebody I had known for years, but I didn’t know him very well. We were supposed to be hanging out as friends, but we were just texting, I guess, the night before, and I was making this dumb joke. And it wasn’t negging; I was not making fun of this person in any way at all. It was just kind of like a goofy joke that I took too far. And by “took too far,” I mean I let it go on a little too long. But here’s the thing: it was nothing more than that. I just made too many jokes about the same thing, and I could admit that, and I can even laugh about that—like how goofy that was that I did that, it’s fine.
And I wouldn’t have minded if he laughed about that or kind of like jokingly gave me a hard time about it. That’s not what he did. He got angry; he got very, very angry, and he tried to shut me down in a very rude way, I might add.
And I don’t remember exactly what he said, but the way the tone of the conversation shifted so drastically, so fast, was definitely a red flag for me. And so, I took a minute; at this point, I was kind of just starting to work on boundaries. But I came out with it and I said, “Listen, I’m getting kind of a weird vibe, and I don’t think we should hang out tomorrow.” And let me tell you, this person went off the rails. There was this whole long rant about how I was questioning his integrity and how he’s the nicest person in the world, and everyone agrees how sweet he is—that is his reputation. And there must be something wrong with me for thinking that I wouldn’t be safe hanging out with him, and I never said that. But that’s kind of where he took it.
And so, I went to respond like, “All right, calm down, it’s okay, I’m just getting a little bit of a bad vibe, and maybe we should do this another time.” That’s kind of where my head was at.
My text didn’t go through because I was blocked. So it went from making goofy jokes to the tone changing a little bit too quickly, to things escalating like crazy. And then I was blocked because we were also Facebook friends. I instantly checked there; I was blocked there too. And it was like my head was spinning—what is going on here? But I can tell you that I took this as a major, major win because if this had happened in person, I think it would have been scary. So I was counting my blessings that this happened over text and that I didn’t end up hanging out with this person.
So that was my experience, but I’m going to bet that many of you have had similar experiences where things just really got out of hand very quickly, and you’re kind of left scratching your head, like, what even happened here?
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