I have loved many narcissists and by now I can safely state a few things about them.
The first Red Flag is this; they will always fuck up your schedule.
Maintaining a sense of control over you + being sure they’re always your first priority = your own commitments go out the window.
It can be school, or even a big exam, it certainly includes messing up your dates with friends (thus accomplishing another goal, isolating you), it can be about your health, or the health of someone you love – somehow you don’t make it to the hospital to support a friend or family member, it can be your necessary time alone, or reading, or your favorite sports routine – anything, ANYTHING that you care about will look like a challenge to a narcissist, ‘Does this matter more than me?’. Depending on the narcissist, the tools can go from aggressive to passive aggressive to histrionic to anything really violent, as long as it derails you – anger, spite, causing a fight over nothing, shaming, or suddenly complaining about their health, or deciding to throw in a big announcement, or actually ending up in the hospital because they drove into a wall.
Of course, a lot can be explained away by the first ‘throes of love’, but pay attention; if you’re systematically late or canceling plans, or do not ever feel joy at meeting with friends because he threw a tantrum as you were walking out the door, if you’re falling behind in all ways, academic, professional, sportive, spiritual, sit up and watch yourself. A true lover should support you and your goals, and love all the things that enhance your life and make it meaningful.
My first boyfriend, ‘Lesson #1’, prevented me from sleeping all night every night. He would wait until I fell asleep then wake me up by announcing he was going to kill himself, multiple times a night. I believed him and hit heights of anguish I hadn’t thought possible. What I didn’t know at the time was that he snorted cocaine, thus reducing his own needs for sleep, and he simply enjoyed seeing my very genuine terrified reaction on demand, just as I was ‘leaving him’. After a few weeks, I became a shell of my former self. This is, after all, the way to break war prisoners as I later learned. Tears were constantly, irrepressibly falling from my eyes. I couldn’t help it at all. At first people were concerned, but ‘Lesson #1’ would come up to me, drape his arm around my shoulders and say ‘Oh, don’t worry, she’s had a bad night’s sleep. She’s such an insomniac.’ And laugh. And I would say nothing because I was genuinely confused.
This went on for months. I was his, and I was broken. My relationship to sleep has been problematic since, but let’s be clear: I LOVE SLEEPING!
My father’s wife once drove into a tree because my father was having lunch with us, his children.
My aunt also drove her car into a tree because her mother, sitting in the passenger seat, was relentlessly yelling at her. Pulling the ‘hospital card’ trumps a lot of other engagements.
Besides, once you have stripped yourself of all that ever mattered to you, the narcissist will dump you for being ‘boring’. In true vampire fashion, he will have sucked you dry.
