Do you remember those initial, charming days where the narcissist couldn’t help but throw their grand gestures at you from left, right and center? You’d get a big bunch of flowers, you’d get this energy that came with a dose of wanting everything to be okay between you.
What happened? One day, it simply stopped. They stopped wanting to keep you in the game, and that silence became quite scary for you.
That’s because the narcissist stopped performing, and that is exactly what made them their most dangerous.
1 I know you want to feel relief
When a performance drops, so does the need for you to walk on eggshells. I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that was a nice feeling, because to those who are so used to craziness and conflict, it probably is.
You used to get that love-bombing before the emotional crash afterward occurred, and now? Now it’s stopped.
Something about it feels off, and you’d be right to question it.
You see a narcissist stops performing, but the problem isn’t that they’ve stopped, it’s that they haven’t given up, they just don’t see you as a person who needs management any longer. It’s as if you’ve been filed away and forgotten, and that’s quite a dangerous place to be in.
It feels dangerous because it is. You want to feel relief at this point because peace is all you ever wanted, but this isn’t that.
2 Being dismissed? It looks like this
You’re saying something that you think is important, but all you see as you’re saying the words is the narcissist staring at their phone, seemingly a million miles away. You raise an issue you have, and they greet you with an unbothered shrug.
They don’t raise their voice. They don’t mutter, “Here we go again,” and roll their eyes. There’s nothing, and it’s unsettling.
At this point, tears may fall, and the narcissist decides now is a perfect time to get up and go make themselves (not you) a drink.
They don’t return, and you feel more alone than ever.
I feel like you don’t care any more.
The narcissist looks at you like you’re talking a foreign language, and they just say, “Okay.”
Nobody wants to be in this kind of situation, as being with a narcissist will already feel extremely isolating.
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseThis isn’t peace though. It’s the narcissist deciding that they want to erase you.
3 Their performance meant you stayed seen
What do I mean by that? Well, before you think the narcissist sees you in a loving way, I want to make sure we are on the same page here.
When the narcissist was performing, they were performing to you, a person. When they would yell and get angry and rage, that was still a response. Even when they were busy manipulating you, they were doing it as a way to get something from you that they needed badly.
When a narcissist gets to the point where they’re cold and eventually stops altogether, you stop being that person to them. You stop being someone they go to for their toxic needs, and start being treated like a piece of old furniture in the house.
You don’t get any explanations, and you don’t get apologies. You’re simply ignored or used, and nothing in between.
That’s got to hurt, right? As if it wasn’t bad enough being constantly criticized, now you’re discarded like you’re yesterday’s news, and you have to live beside this person who treats you like you’re worthless.
4 Gaslighting becomes silence
Gaslighting was a way for the narcissist to interact, right? It was a way for them to register that you had a reaction to the games they were playing.
Now it’s all about silence. You bring something up that matters to you, and the narcissist stares at you like you’ve spoken a language they don’t even understand. There’s no argument, just a simple blank wall they’ve built so that you cannot see them or have access to them.
For people who’ve been around abusers in their life, this is a very unsettling period. It leaves those moments wide open for you to interpret anything, and of course, victims are always programmed to overthink those worst cases.
Our brains are wired to need a response, so it seems unfair that we have to sit and try to figure out what’s going on in this instance. It won’t be long before you start questioning yourself without the narcissist even saying a word to help you do that.
You get smaller and smaller, because that’s how it all makes you feel, and you haven’t even been told to do it. Do you see how the abuse you tolerate leads you to naturally start doing those same things to yourself over time?
A silent narcissist leaves you to take over their role, and because it’s all you’ve learned, that’s what you do.
They’re counting on you to run with whatever they’ve taught you, so that you are doing their hard work for them.
It’s cruel, it’s unfair, and it’s dangerous.
5 The most dangerous stage because…
The reason this is the most dangerous version of the narcissist is because they did it all with absolutely no effort at all.
They made you think that the problem all this time was you, when in fact it was the opposite.
In the time they’re silent with you, making no effort whatsoever to do what they usually do, you’re there starting to believe that you’re this terrible person, and you look more for a reaction.
You don’t even care if that reaction is bad. You’re faced with this wall, and all you want is connection, so any attention would be good for you.
You pick a fight. You start a war. You raise your voice. You slam a door. You sigh overtly over their favorite TV show. You want that rise, and the moment you do any of that, the narcissist has won.
The reason victims do this is because they just want to feel like they exist to that person. The narcissist is making them feel like nobody at all, and so they pour their energy into a person who stopped seeing them as worthy of any of their toxic performance a long time ago.
If they could say, “I’m over it,” they would.
They don’t though. They wait instead, because they know that eventually, you’ll come running like you always do.
That’s where they can smile to themselves, knowing they still have the control and power over you to determine how you act, what you say, what you think, and how you behave.
6 Here’s where you fit in
Name it. Call it for what it is, and that means avoiding any kind of, “Oh, this is a little bit of a rough blip.” The narcissist isn’t having a bad day; they’re not stressed.
See also THIS is What Makes NarcissistsThis is their contempt for you spilling out and becoming loud noise.
It’s a message that you need to listen to, otherwise you’re going to live like this forever.
Is that what you want?
I hope not.
