Number 1: Stop making their behavior about you
One of the most painful things about being in a relationship with a narcissist is how easy it is to start believing that their behavior is somehow your fault or means something about you. They’re cold, and you think you did something wrong. They’re distant, and you blame yourself for being too much. They cheat, and they convince you that if you had just been better, they wouldn’t have looked elsewhere. They lie, and when you catch them, they make it about how you’re too controlling or paranoid.
You start bending over backwards, twisting yourself into knots, trying to keep them happy because somewhere along the line, they made you believe they brainwashed you into believing that their dysfunction is a mirror of your worth. That’s how their game works. It’s subtle, it’s slow, it’s constant, and before you know it, you’re carrying all their shame as if it’s your own. That’s why I call it “alien shame.” But the minute you shift internally, you stop accepting the idea that their behavior means something about who you are because it doesn’t.
Their coldness isn’t a reaction to you being too much; their lying isn’t because you were too emotional; their cheating wasn’t your failure to be enough. It’s them. That’s who they are. It’s how they operate. It’s how they stay in control. It’s how they protect their fragile ego by projecting their chaos onto someone else, and that someone just happened to be you. You don’t owe it to them to keep making sense of their damage. You don’t need to keep interpreting their silence or decoding their moods, that’s not your job. Your job is to protect your peace, and part of protecting your peace is refusing to let their behavior define you.
Let them ghost you, let them guilt-trip you, let them explode, let them sulk, let them lie, let them play hot and cold. You don’t need to internalize any of it. You don’t need to make it your responsibility. Because when you stop tying your worth to their emotional roller coaster, something powerful happens. As I said, they lose their grip on you. You stop flinching when they go quiet, you stop chasing when they pull away, you stop spiraling when they act like you did something wrong because deep down, you know you didn’t.
You know that you were showing up with love, with honesty, with effort, and their response isn’t a measure of your failure in any way. It’s a measure of their inability to receive what you have to give. You get to stop dancing around their moods. You get to stop reading between the lines. You get to stop performing for someone who never planned to see you clearly in the first place.
You may also want to read this:
Once the Narcissist Hurts a Loyal Woman, She Will Never Be The Same
What Happens To Narcissists When They Get Older?
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