You Will Never Understand a Narcissist

So don’t waste your energy trying

How could he do that?

Why would she do that?

What made them do that?

It makes sense that we try to figure people out. We want to know how they tick, what makes them tick, and why they even tick at all.

Even when someone has hurt us and broken our hearts, we still want to get to the bottom of How, Why, What?

Those of us who are in or have escaped an abusive relationship are used to asking ourselves these questions for the simple reason that we cannot wrap our head around the fact that someone we love and who professes to love us could be cruel or cause us pain on purpose. We rationalize and excuse and justify the reasons the one we love is behaving in such a way.

Maybe they had a bad childhood.

Maybe they don’t realize what they’re doing.

Hurt people hurt people.

Victims of narcissistic abuse, in particular, are inevitably caught in this web since oftentimes they are oblivious to the fact that they’re even victims or that their partner is a narcissist. They’ve been conditioned to think whatever problems existing in the relationship are their fault, plus narcissists are masters at normalizing their abuse so any victim remains in the dark about what is really going on.

Thus, those of us who love or have loved a narcissist spend a lot of time confused, unable to make sense of what has happened to us and why. Inevitably, we want answers.

How could he/she do this to me?

But the essential problem with trying to figure out any true narcissist is that we are starting from a place of goodness. We make assumptions that are in favor of the one hurting us since it defies logic to think otherwise — that someone would intentionally cause us pain.

Our rationalizations come from a place of love. We offer narcissists the benefit of the doubt. We trust that all people are inherently good. We love harder, give more, expect less. All in the effort to justify the actions of someone we are tied to through the bonds of love.

And surely, love will help see us through, right?

Wrong. Not when it comes to a narcissist. Here’s why:

When we’re trying to figure out a narcissist and find explanations for why they behave the way they do, we are embarking on a futile attempt that will leave us scratching our heads, pulling out our hair, and breaking our hearts even further due to one reason: narcissists are not like us.

While we operate from a place of humanness, a place where we believe goodness always prevails and no one is cruel or mean or bad on purpose, a narcissist operates from a place of self-service. Lacking any empathy for others, with their needs trumping everyone else’s even if it means incredible pain for those that love them, narcissists are emotional vampires who will not think twice about draining the lifeblood out of anyone around, but especially those who are closest to them.

So if we spend any time at all trying to understand how someone could actually want to intentionally cause us pain, we are wasting precious energy that should instead be directed at ourselves and our healing journey.

I made this mistake. After escaping an abusive marriage and a man who was clinically diagnosed as a narcissist, I spent way too much time trying to understand how he could do what he did.

I spent so much of my energy asking, Why did he act like he hated me? Why did he seem to enjoy watching me suffer? How could he cause his own children pain and not do anything about it to correct it or apologize for it?

I also wondered, what had happened to turn him into such a man? A man without integrity, without character, and without empathy for anyone around him. A man who saw people as a source of supply instead of human beings. And a man who would lie, cheat, and steal without batting an eye or feeling an ounce of remorse.

I couldn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now and I will never understand it no matter how long I live. Why?

Because I’m not a narcissist.

I can no more understand how narcissists think or behave than I could understand a murderous dictator or a serial killer or a child molester. I’m not saying narcissists are any of these things (though they very easily could be…Ted Bundy being a prime example). What I am saying is that sometimes we simply have to give up trying to understand them and just accept them as they are.

From a distance.

Because when we continue to make excuses for narcissists and continue to try and rationalize and justify their behavior, we are essentially enabling their abuse to continue.

Narcissists easily hide beneath the mask of No one is really that evil, which allows them to slip away unnoticed and continue their dirty work under the guise of Mr. Nice Guy or Prince Charming.

This is why it’s so easy for narcissists to get away with playing the victim, as anyone who’s been the real victim of narcissistic abuse knows all too well. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, the other sheep have naively assumed that the wolf is like them. Because what kind of person would disguise themselves in order to better carry out the harm they intend to eventually inflict?

A monster. An evil being. Someone we can’t believe exists outside of movies or history books — people who are removed from us and so we can see more clearly and have better judgment. We all know Hitler was evil. We all know Charles Manson and Jim Jones and Ted Bundy were monsters. These are people easy to figure out because we’re not invested in them and don’t know them personally.

[Again, not comparing all narcissists to serial killers, though all of the above were most certainly narcissists]

When it’s someone we love or married or had children with, however, someone we’ve invested time and energy and put our trust in, that’s when we are at a loss to understand.

This isn’t to say that learning about narcissists and the tools they use to abuse is a waste of time. In fact, in order to fully heal after narcissistic abuse, it’s imperative to understand what happened since you can’t fix the problem if you can’t name the problem.

Still, there comes a point when we can know everything there is to know about gaslighting, love-bombing, projection, intermittent reinforcement, the silent treatment — methods a narcissist employs to abuse their victim — but we still won’t understand, we still won’t comprehend, we still won’t be able to fathom how they could carry out these methods with the full intent to abuse someone.

We do, however, have the power to accept narcissists for who they are. This means that we see them and we believe them when they keep showing us.

Compared to the attempt to understand, acceptance takes zero energy, energy that is precious if we are at any point on the healing journey after narcissistic abuse.

This acceptance is how I finally found true emotional freedom from my past of abuse at the hands of a narcissist. And this is the only way to once and for all leave the pain behind for good.

Because while the seemingly bad news may be that you’ll never understand how someone you loved and trusted could turn on you in such a cruel and heartless way, once you accept and let go of the need to understand then you’ll be free to move forward and finally find peace.

So take your inability to figure out a narcissist as a good thing. This means that a) you’re inherently a good person, b) you are evil-impotent (my new favorite word), c) you lack a heinous bone in your body, and the bonus: d) you’re not a narcissist.

Which really is the best news of all.