Go Ahead – Leave

“The longer you stay with a narcissist, the less you’ll love yourself.”

Does the narcissist want you to leave? Absolutely they do!

The gamble of getting you to leave is just that – a gamble to them. The narcissist expects to be the one who wins, no matter what they want to accomplish. In the end, winning is their goal.

If anything, it’s a power dynamic – after all, the narcissist thrives on control and power, which they do quite successfully through a series of manipulative actions. Their goal of winning comes at the expense of destroying the relationship that they might actually want, and even a relationship with their kids. They must remain on top.

A narcissists idea of winning might be:

• Manipulating you to believe their lies
• Convincing you to come back to them
• Showing no empathy or resolution to arguments about your relationship
• Continued lying to their partner with no accountability
• Withholding sex, affection or attention
• Hurting your feelings
• Cheating you out of money

A lot of narcissists want you to leave the relationship – but they don’t want you to know that they want you to leave.

They will intentionally push their partner to leave the relationship, even if they don’t want the relationship to end. In their push to get you to leave, they will treat you so terribly…

They’ll emotionally disconnect from you

There will be no intimacy.

They will financially disconnect from you.

Subsequently forcing you to pull the cord on the relationship.

Eventually, you leave

And suddenly they have a built in excuse – that you left them, you neglected the family, you are at fault! You leaving them allows them to play the victim – they establish another lie to the world that you never cared. You were faulty.

This plays into the the image they so desperately want to preserve. They want everyone to think they are an amazing spouse, great parent, good Christian, and now – unfortunate ‘victim’ of abuse.

Your narcissist wants you to leave because:

• Your narcissist could tell people that you left him, that you left or deserted your family, that you were sleeping around – when in fact, your narcissist might be the one being unfaithful
• They don’t want their image hurt – leaving you would have made them look like they messed up the marriage, family, etc
• Chaos is normal for them – it gives them supply (negative supply is still supply!)
• They don’t have the guts to leave you. Narcissists deal with feelings of shame – leaving you would have played into that shame
• They don’t want to pay child support and divide their finances – they don’t want to lose their stuff. Child support affects their image. And to narcissists, material items feed their [broke] ego and insecurities – they have no self worth or confidence so stuff makes them feel like someone

Leaving them helps keep their ego in check. Image is everything!