It is entirely reasonable to call living with a narcissist exhausting. You can't explain it to somebody else who hasn't experienced it, but trust me, the feeling of walking on eggshells is just the tip of the iceberg. You want to feel safe, but what do you do?

The only way sometimes, is to try to escape them while still living with them. Here are 8 ways partners who have had enough try to do that.

And I don't mean packing a suitcase. I mean the tiny, invisible escapes you carve out of your own house just to breathe for ten minutes.

1 Your bathroom starts to be known as a haven of peace

The longer the shower or bath, the longer you get to be away from the narcissist, and let me tell you, it's no joke to want to get away from this level of continuous stress.

It shouldn't be happening anywhere, let alone the place you live, and so you have to find a pocket of space you know you can have a visible, lockable barrier between you and this toxic person.

I have heard of people not even needing to use the bathroom, who say they complain of a stomach ache just to get fifteen minutes sitting in there. They won't even be on the actual toilet, just sitting on the side of the bath, breathing, scrolling, thinking, being alone.

It does make a difference, and while that escape isn't for that long, or permanent, it is needed much of the time. Suddenly, that bathroom becomes your only place of serenity in the house, and so you learn to love it like never before.

One woman told me she started keeping a little cushion in the bathroom cupboard. That was her sanctuary, a locked door and a cushion on the tile floor.

2 Headphones plugged in, drama plugged out

I have to admit to wearing my earpods while I am out sometimes, and I don't even have any music on. It's my way of saying, "I'm in my own world," while still being aware of what's going on around me.

It's similar for victims of narcissistic abuse; they just want to be left alone and they pretend they're busy catching up with work stuff, or not feeling great.

All you want is that moment of silence you can claim as being your own, and the earbud distraction is a technique that never seems to fail.

If you get a narcissist who comes along and does not accept this as a way of blocking them out, they may pull at one and ask, "Are you even listening to a word I'm saying?"

See also11 Reasons Leaving a Narcissist Feels So Hard

If that's the case, go ahead and try every other way I am listing here! Narcissists take up so much energy and time that of course, it's natural to want to get away from it. It's effective, until they encroach that boundary and continue to bother you.

I hope for your sake, it works.

And if it stops working, you switch to something else. That's the game. Rotate the exits before the narcissist figures out which door you're using.

3 Bed early, bed late, either brings peace

Going to bed at the same time as a narcissist is a fatal mistake to make. You're asking for trouble if you're pulling the bedsheets back together to get in, because they will use that opportunity to start world war 3 with you just like that.

Why were you quiet today? Are you ignoring me? I hate it when you do that. I just want to feel like you listen to me. Save yourself the hassle, trust me! Get out of that loop, and start going to bed at different times.

See also5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their House

If you are a night owl, stay up and wait for them to be asleep before you head to bed. If you'd prefer to go first, try that (although they may wake you on purpose when they come to bed by 'dropping something loudly.')

Either way you do it, you're far more likely to have a more peaceful time than if you were to punish yourself by going to bed later.

It's never nice thinking you're about to relax and sleep for several hours when the narcissist's intention is to keep you awake just to create more stress. It's nice to pick later or earlier even to have that hour or two where they aren't laying with you.

Trust me, it makes all the difference in the world.

Sleep is not a small thing. Sleep is the one place they cannot follow you into, so protecting it is protecting the last bit of you they haven't touched.

4 "Oh dear, I must do this…"

Suddenly, all those errands look kind of appealing, right? They're appealing because you think if you could just get out of the house, or even get busy inside your own home, that you won't have to deal with the narcissist directly. I'll pop to the store, no problem.

I'll clear the yard. Anything to get away from them, and I fully understand why. You don't want the drama of having to deal with their next hissy fit, and so you take yourself off and make yourself look like you have five jobs to do. Happily so.

See alsoThe Narcissist Does Not Fear Losing You Until This One Thing Happens

You get to the store, and you decide to sit in the car for twenty minutes simply because you can, and you feel free. The narcissist knows they can't argue with you going there, as food is food, right? You've got to eat, so you go with zero guilt.

Usually, it might be that you choose to go out, and you get a million questions fired at you. Where are you going? Who are you going with? You're always going out! This errand is bulletproof, and you know it.

As you're strolling the supermarket aisles aimlessly, you feel as though a part of you is returning, even just briefly. And that is priceless.

You come back home with a bag of groceries and a slightly steadier pulse. They will never know that trip was really about you, not the bread.

5 Being really busy doing "nothing"

That garage, my God, do you see how much work you need to do to get it looking good again?

Well, it isn't me you need to convince, but if it really does look messy, I know you'd prefer to be shoulder deep in boxes rather than have to make a conversation with the narcissist. You want to avoid them, so you make yourself busy even if you're doing nothing.

You pretend to fix something. You give the bathroom another coat of paint. It has to be done, and you are a dab hand at pulling anything out of the home to do as a way of escape.

You then don't have to be near the narcissist, and if they come in and try to start world war 3, you just tell them that you're so busy and that you'll get back to that conversation later. We all know you won't…

And they know you won't either. But the busyness gives you cover, and cover is currency when you live with someone who treats your silence like a personal attack.

6 Making sure that your mind is your entertainment

The narcissist talks, you nod and smile. You let them rant and ramble, all the while you're thinking, "I wonder which color to go with at the hair salon next week? What should I get my mom for Christmas?"

You're miles away, and that's the aim here. You don't want to sit and be told everything that you've done so terribly. You just make sure you give the narcissist enough to make them think you give a damn, when really, it couldn't be further from the truth.

This is a skill you've learned, by the way. You've learned to look present, but not be it on the inside. It's a survival skill that you aren't proud of, but it exists because it's just what you have to do. Home should be your home though, right?

See also7 Toxic Morning Habits Of Narcissists

Not a place to survive.

You should be able to sit on your own couch without mentally redecorating a room just to get through a monologue about how you loaded the dishwasher wrong.

7 The car becomes a second living room

You pull onto the driveway and just sit there. Engine off, radio low, phone in your lap. Ten minutes becomes twenty, and nobody in the house has a clue you're even back yet. The car has become a strange little room of your own, one they can't reach into.

It has walls, a lock, a seat, a view. What more do you need?

Some people park a couple of streets away on purpose, so they aren't spotted through the front window. Others drive the long way home from work, taking the scenic route around the back of town just to have another fifteen minutes of quiet.

I know one man who used to eat his dinner in the car outside a gas station most Tuesdays, just because the thought of walking through his own front door felt heavier than he could carry that day.

The car doesn't judge you. It doesn't rant, it doesn't sulk, it doesn't weaponise your tone of voice. It just holds you for a while and lets you exist.

See alsoTHIS is What Makes Narcissists

8 Pretending to be on a work call that isn't real

You dial nobody.

The phone just rings against your ear while you pace the hallway with a serious face on, muttering things like, "Yeah, I can get that over to you by Friday." Meanwhile the narcissist is in the kitchen fuming about something, and you've bought yourself a solid twenty minutes of untouchable time because they can't interrupt a work call.

Work is sacred to them, mostly because it might affect the money coming in, and that they do care about.

I've had people tell me they've had entire fake meetings scheduled in their calendar. Recurring ones. Every Tuesday at 4pm, a "team catch up" that doesn't exist, so they can shut the door of the spare room and just sit in silence with their laptop open on a blank spreadsheet.

The awful part is how good you get at it. The fake laugh, the fake "sorry, one sec, let me grab a pen." You've become a small time actor in your own home, and the stage is the hallway.