The Weird Ways of The Abusive Narcissist

How to identify the ingredients in the ‘crazy-making soup’

You’re living in an alternate reality where up is down and down is up, and you’ve long forgotten what’s what.

You might think you’re going mental if you haven’t already, and your partner’s suggestion to get yourself checked out by a professional—because you’re hysterical—is sounding more reasonable every day.

You’re convinced that you love this person and can’t live without them, but on the other hand, you’re not entirely sure you even like them anymore; why does your stomach turn to knots every time you approach your shared home?

You fight, but you’ve lost track of why and what about.

Most of the time you fight about the fact that you’re fighting, and you never get to the bottom of anything.

Each battle follows the same old script, which main points you can recite by heart. You know what’s next and when you’ve hit the point of no return; when your only real option is to ride the wave until it comes crashing down—an hour, or a few, later.

Because of their predictability, the fights barely make you cry like you used to. Mostly, they exhaust you and drain your energy, and therefore you do anything to avoid them. Sometimes that means shutting up for hours, only to mention what’s absolutely necessary.

Acceptable topics of conversation have narrowed down to three things:

1. What to eat next.
2. What to watch on Netflix.
3. How everyone else is an asshole who suck and are trying to take advantage of them or both of you.

Even these you approached with caution, just in case you say something the wrong way. You never really know.

If you recognize yourself in this scenario, it’s very likely that you’re sharing your life with a verbally abusive narcissist, and chances are you have been for a while.

Exactly three years ago, I was in the process of leaving a relationship that looked like the one above. At the time, I didn’t have the vocabulary to make sense of it all.

I had tried to talk to others about it, but because it was all so strange, it was complicated to explain, and even harder for them to understand.

In a previous article, Is Abuse Ever Subjective, I discuss the complexities of psychological abuse:

It’s usually composed of a multitude of minor feints that won’t always sound severe to an outsider, especially when presented as isolated instances. But when all these seemingly small infractions amalgamate, the impact is monumental.

Here, I compare emotional abuse to a “river made up of many small streams”. These streams can be almost impossible to spot when you’re near-drowning.

Now that I’ve found shore, dried myself off, and had a chance to reflect, I see them clear as day.

I’ve identified a few of the odd, and often less obvious, ingredients in the complex crazy-making-soup I was fed for a decade. While the details may vary from person, I believe they’re often universal in the case of the emotional abuser:

1. They only compliment you in front of an audience.

The majority of gestures and compliments made by my ex happened publically, on either of our Facebook walls.

There, for the world (aka our thousand-something common social media “friends”) to see, he’d make grand statements like “my wife is the most badass, amazing woman on the planet”.

“I wish my boyfriend would say those kinds of things about me in public,” my girlfriends would swoon. I used to think I was lucky and that this meant that he must really, really love me.

Later it occurred to me that I never heard similar declarations in private. He never looked me in the eyes and told me that I was amazing, or beautiful, or special to him. Sometimes he said the complete opposite.

You should’ve heard his wedding speech. I was “the only person who truly cared and really got him”. Later, in private, “I didn’t give a fuck and never understood him”.

What’s up with this?

Narcissists have an excessive need for attention and admiration, and they like to paint a picture of themselves as the perfect partner, and you two as the most adorable couple. A compliment given to you in private is, therefore, a wasted opportunity to keep this supply flowing.

Besides, the narcissist doesn’t actually love you—they only love themselves, and you’re merely a gadget to them.

2. They don’t fill your cup.

Over ten years of sharing meals together, my narcissistic ex filled my water glass less than a handful of times without being prompted.

He’d consequently fill his own glass and put the bottle down. He also forgot to get me cutlery when he grabbed it for himself. As if I was invisible, he served, poured, topped up and took care of himself, failing to check if I wanted something too.

A few times, getting out of a taxi in front of me, he slammed the door straight in my face.

—Oops, I forgot that you were there!

Sure, sometimes we’re absent-minded and lost in thought; we all forget once in a while. I don’t require knight-like chivalry and I’m not sitting around waiting to be served by anyone. Common decency, on the other hand, should be a basic requirement, and repeated neglect is intentional and not simply forgetfulness.

Why do they do this?

Narcissists are extremely selfish people who lack empathy. First, they don’t pay attention to your needs, and if they did they wouldn’t care anyway—unless someone’s watching, that is.

3. They verbally exclude you when recounting shared events.

My ex almost always said I or me when he was really talking about us or we. In conversations with others, while I was right there, he’d tell stories of how he went to an exhibition, how he saw a concert or how he spent the weekend in a cabin—when we were, in fact, doing all of these things together.

After our wedding and the birth of our child, guess what? Yep, he got married, and he had a kid.

I would either just ignore it or ‘raise my hand’ and point out that; “well, actually, we did those things together. I was there too”.

Whenever I brought it up, telling him that his speech came across as rude and that it made me feel excluded, and even humiliated, he responded, verbatim:

“Actually, this is how all normal people talk—they speak for themselves and not for others. I won’t speak for you. That would be rude!”

I’m not sure about you, but never in my thirty-something years of life have I ever had another friend or partner recount our shared experiences in this way.

What the heck is this?

This is a form of gaslighting where your role is being denied and erased, causing utter confusion. Further disorientation and manipulation take place when you’re not being heard or taken seriously when raising concerns.

4. They refuse accountability.

“When do you think you’ll be home this evening?” was one of the most common fire-starters in our relationship.

“When I’m done,” was a common answer back from him. I was lucky if I got a 2-4 hour ballpark indication.

Whenever we planned our summer holiday, because we worked freelance, he refused to commit to a timeframe and buy a ticket until shortly before. My family—with their steady jobs and set vacation times—would pull their hair trying to schedule their own plans to accommodate ours.

“Tell your family that I don’t want them planning around me, they should just do their thing and we come when we come. Let’s be easy-going!”

What’s going on?

The narcissist claims to be ‘easy-going’, but in fact, they’re the complete opposite, causing everyone to tip-toe around them, keeping their lives and plans on hold at their whim. This is not just inconsiderate, but blatant manipulation.

Further, the narcissist tends to keep their schedule open for something potentially better and more exciting to come along. Family-vacation; they’ll commit a week before. Their favorite festival takes place in six months; they already bought tickets weeks ago.

5. They ‘already told you that!’

You’ve been waiting for a piece of important information forever, such as when they’re planning to go away on a research-trip for a work project. Related to the last point, they hold off on making clear plans for as long as possible.

When you ask them again, they’ll eventually answer: “I’m going next Monday, remember? I already told you that!”

If you were in the mood for a huge fight, you’d tell the truth: “No, I’m sure you never told me.” But, because you’re so goddamn exhausted, you lie and say, “Oh, sorry, I’m an idiot, I must have forgotten!”.

This happened more and more frequently in my relationship making me wonder whether I perhaps was a crazy idiot who didn’t listen.

My second explanation was that because our lives were so intertwined, he thought he had told me, just because he had thought about it a lot. Or, last option; did he know that he hadn’t told me and did it to save face or confuse the crap out of me on purpose?

Which one is it?

Because the narcissist sees you as an extension or reflection of themselves—which you by default become to an extent—I think that the second option is plausible as well. But most likely, “I already said that!” is simply the close relative of the common gaslighting technique “I never said that!” — also referred to as denial—or straight out lying.

Frankly, I could go on and on, and then some, about the weird and wacky ways of the narcissistic abuser.

Their soup of deceit is a complex one, and the more educated and intelligent the narcissist, the slyer and more cabalistic their concoction.

The abuser will tell you what you think and feel as if they’ve climbed into your head and know you better than you know yourself. Keen observers, they often have to a degree—apart from the fact that they’ll never be able to understand or relate to how you feel.

They’ll twist reality in every way available to them; tell you that they didn’t say what you think you heard, or the other way around. They’ll create huge ordeals out of nothing, and then, undermine something that’s meaningful and important to you.

If you’re deep in the wild woods of the narcissist and can’t see the forest for the trees; if you’re drowning in the deep river, unable to make out the many small streams, I hope that some of these scenarios can act as wake-up-calls.

The soup is poison — stop eating the soup!

Whether you want to hear it or not, the chance of finding your footing is minuscule unless you pull yourself up on shore—on your own—and let the abuser drift off without you.

It will be hell at first, but I guarantee that it gets better once you’ve dried yourself off and warmed up!