If you know any narcissists, have you ever sat back and watched partner after partner leave, before the dust has even had a chance to settle?
If they cut a friend off due to boredom or something that's happened, a new one will be waiting in the weeds without you even noticing. I want to say how impressive it is, but I'd be lying:
It's just what narcissists do to survive.
Narcissists aren't very good at walking away from a certain type of relationship though. No matter how much they want to, swapping them out just doesn't feel as possible.
Losing everything is manageable, until this one loss is staring them straight in the face.
1The narcissist can't lose themselves
That's what this is all about: the narcissist being unable to lose themselves.
These people have non-negotiable audiences, but they aren't real people, they're the audience of one living in their minds constantly.
The audience is kept alive with every single thing they do, from each conversation they have to every performance, and carefully carved out text they receive or send.
Everything gets run past an internal inner critic that never really learns how to switch off. For them, they find that a normal part of their life because they're always watching themselves anyway; this is just the voice that goes along with it.
The narrative is that they have a narrator in their minds, and it goes something like this:
- "Did everyone see how good I was just then?"
- "Did people see what I did there?"
- "Was I funny enough?"
- "Did I come across well?"
- "Did I win that moment?"
While everything from friends to coworkers to partners come and go, that internal audience is a part of them that never goes anywhere, and never even closes down for the day.
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I personally think that's why the narcissist likes to discard the way they do; because they know they can get rid of literally everything else in their life aside from the one thing that sticks:
The voice.
2The narcissist can't shake this
The narcissist is so good at pretending to love you. When they lose you, they need to replace the use you have.
Someone else needs to come in and admire them, otherwise they malfunction. Someone else can take the blame, and someone else can start to be controlled.
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The narcissist will, therefore, love to replay any argument they have, or write endings they didn't really like. In their heads, they need an ending that means they've won.
They're also good at rehearsing conversations they will either have, or may never get to have.
Best of all for you; a narcissist will sit with a conversation they had maybe ten years ago and still feel that flicker of anger they originally felt back then.
Isn't that the weirdest thing?
That inner voice doesn't go away, not ever. Because it remains so constantly, it's always going to be the thing they seem to be stuck with.
Questions, doubts, wonders, thoughts, assumptions, criticisms; they all exist; stuck to the narcissist's mind like glue.
3You were nothing but a character
This is why the narcissist listens to their internal voice so much. Losing you, hurting you; it was never really about you at all.
Think of yourself like this character in a play the narcissist is in charge of. The only audience was the voice inside:
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They say, "You always make me look silly." The narcissist doesn't care about your feelings when they say that, they just want to know how much that inner voice judges that moment.
Did they do well enough? Did they cause enough pain? Did it feel good?
They say, "You never give me any support in anything I do." The narcissist doesn't care if it's true or not; they only care about getting what they need from you at that moment in time. Nothing else matters.
They say, "I do everything and more for this family, and for what?" What they really mean is, "I need that inner voice inside me to tell me that I'm winning, and that nobody else is as good or successful as I am."
Do you see how everything they do leads back to themselves?
Everything trails back to the one audience that never claps loud enough: the harsh, cold, toxic inner critic.
All along, you weren't meant to play any kind of main role in their life, you were there to serve the purpose of keeping that audience of one alive.
4With the audience never being enough, they constantly need more
Narcissists are always seeking more and more, and even when they have everything going on, it will still be far from enough.
I want you to be aware of this:
The narcissist's internal voice? That audience? It's savage. It's so brutal I can't put it into words.
This internal audience is never happy, not even slightly. No amount of admiration a narcissist gets will please the voice, or make it be positive in any way. That voice is always ready with some kind of harsh word, or horrible reality to hit the narcissist with, that's why in turn, they are never happy either.
When you know a narcissist, you know just how many people they need in their life to try to compensate for this. They need more and more supply all the time, the more the better. That voice has to be hushed in some way, and a narcissist tries to do that with all the attention they get from everyone they know, but it doesn't really end up working.
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- More reactions.
- More pain.
- More tears.
- More compliments.
- More fear.
- More triggers.
- More compliance.
If you were to stop, and everyone else, too? The narcissist wouldn't know what to do with themselves. They would fall apart without the knowledge that you are there to fulfill the role as some kind of problem.
They will hold it against you if you don't comply, as this is what narcissists are best at doing.
It was never about you, and always about what you had to offer the narcissist.
It hurts, I get it. You just wanted to love, and be loved in return.
If only it were that simple.
5Here's the one thing you can learn from this
I bet you're thinking, "Come on. What on earth am I taking from this?"
You can learn a whole lot, starting with the fact that you can't love a narcissist out of this. I know you want to. I probably even know that you think you can; that you're the exception.
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You're not.
You'll never be patient enough, or understanding enough in their eyes, even though you have all of that and more going for you.
You can't fix something that the narcissist intends on keeping broken, it's just impossible.
Realizing that you're a prop means you always know your place, and that this show they put on will always stay the same.
Don't ever think you'll silence their inner critic; it was made to last.
