Category: Breaking Up With a Narcissist

Looking back, my process for going no-contact with my ex-boyfriend actually started over two years before it came to a complete end. I didn’t understand what was happening to me at the time, nor would I have been able to explain it to anyone else. There were times when I wanted desperately to leave, but I couldn’t envision any possible future without him, and there were times when I wanted nothing more than to stay and forced myself forget the things that had made me want to leave. There were times when I also wanted him to leave, and times...

If you’re reading this, then like I once was, you’re likely caught in the seemingly endless cycle of trying to break up with a narcissist.  It feels like a madness that we can’t escape. They depart suddenly for reasons that seem either minor or made up completely. They may pretend as if you don’t exist. When they do decide to speak to you again, they act as if they are lowering themselves to interact with you. Or perhaps you are the one to leave because you can’t take their actions anymore, but they won’t stay away. This time, they treat...

The relationship ends. Abruptly. It doesn’t matter if you went no contact or whether the narcissist suddenly cut off contact as if you never existed. You’re on the emotional roller coaster. You can’t stop thinking about what the narcissist is doing at the end of the relationship even though you tell yourself you shouldn’t care.  Why We Obsess about What the Narcissist Does When the Relationship is Over From an outsider’s point of view, from those who haven’t experienced it, the way we endlessly talk about the things they’ve done or how it ended may seem excessive and unhealthy.  What...

Can I get real with you for a few minutes? Can we have a talk? Is your relationship with the narcissist ending, but then not really? Are you still breaking up and then getting back together with the narcissist? Does he or she come back around every so often? Do you stay in touch with him or her, or keep the lines of communication open in the hopes that he or she will reach out? Forget about the past for a minute, and how he or she used to treat you at the beginning of the relationship. Let’s ignore in...

Relationships with narcissists keep us in a walking sleep-state. They hold us captive, tethered to them by the competing emotions inside of us and the death grip they have on our hearts. And what does every resource tell us about that death grip and how to deal with a narcissist? The narcissist is not going to release it. There are many forces that keep us there that we probably aren’t going to be able to completely understand while we’re actually in it. We have to break it ourselves and go no contact. But what if you can’t?  I’ve written a...

We can’t leave a narcissist and begin our journey toward narcissistic abuse recovery until we go through five stages.  These stages embody the necessary psychological steps that will give us back our lives. I’ve written before about eleven things that can happen before a partner goes no-contact. These are things I experienced in response to what I was enduring in my past relationship. They included things such as epiphanies I had, unusual behaviors I exhibited, and inexplicable emotions I felt. I wrote this not long after I went no-contact as I thought back on the relationship and the psychological turmoil...

When you’re with a narcissist, you’re typically in limbo where either you leave and then they draw you back in once again, or they give you a silent treatment or discard you, leaving you baffled over what has just taken place, often only to return after a period of days or weeks to tell you that they can’t live without you. We need to be able to outsmart the narcissist in order to ever break out of this pattern that keeps us locked in invisible chains that weaken our ability to ever leave at all. There is a reason you...