One of the most desired things by your messages and emails is wanting to know what a narcissistic man is really like, and not just how they present to you. You want to overlook the charm, ignore all the fake smiles and promises, and get to the nitty gritty.
You’ve had enough of smooth talkers; now it’s about finding out the truth. There’s a way to do that, and that’s to look at the woman he left behind, potentially for you. Find her, and you find the answers to everything you’re searching for.
She’s the receipt. She’s the evidence. Whatever he’s showing you now, she lived the other version, and her story tells you exactly where yours is heading.
1 How she ended up was not by chance
If you look closely at a woman the narcissist left behind, you’re mostly going to see someone who is nothing like how she used to be. Once upon a time, she would have lived a confident life.
She will have had opinions that differed from other people, and some were the same. She used to share hers without apologizing for it, and there would have been friends she saw regularly that she didn’t have to check with anyone else before making them.
One day, she met the narcissist, and everything changed. Not immediately, but over time, in the most subtle of ways. Now you see someone who regularly flinches, or overexplains every time she’s questioned.
This wasn’t who she used to be, and she probably doesn’t even realize she’s quite as different as she is, but I assure you, that change is there. What you’re seeing in this instance is someone who has been through it all with a narcissist.
From the moment they met, she was chipped away until there was barely anything left. She started to believe the narcissist when they told her she wasn’t good enough because she heard those phrases so frequently.
What’s happened is the evidence that she was involved with someone so toxic is plainly obvious. And the whole time she was being abused, that narcissist was smiling throughout it all.
Smiling because it was working. Every time she shrank a little, he grew. That’s the trade he was after from the very first hello.
2 It’s all been said
Whatever tactic he’s got for you, he had for her, too. All those infamous, destructive lines that spewed out:
You’re so annoying. You don’t ever remember events correctly. Your memory is atrocious. Why do you always have to be so needy? Those, and more.
Not just for you, but for anyone he dated, and who is going to date in the future; those games will be the same, just with a different person.
He won’t come up with anything new for anyone, and all this means is the erosion of the relationships will all be the same, too. The woman he’s leaving behind, potentially so he can be with you, has heard it all, and more than that, she sadly believed it, too.
Hearing and believing abusive statements for so long is enough to erase anyone’s sense of joy or purpose. That’s why all victims walk out of relationships a shell of who they used to be.
I had a client who told me she couldn’t remember what her own laugh sounded like by the end. Years of the same lines will do that.
3 “You’re crazy!”
That’s what he loves to call the woman who was in his life before you. She will be crazy, insane, unstable, difficult, temperamental, critical; whatever it may be.
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseThink about it like this; if he can label her anything like this, then whatever she says about him will immediately be thrown out of the window and disbelieved.
Nothing she has to say will count, because people will have her logged as someone who lies and isn’t quite with it. And so the story goes that she’s a bitter, twisted, resentful old hag who didn’t get to stay with her true love.
The same thing will eventually happen to you at some point or another, but right now you might not see that fully. This story is needed so badly because without it, people will believe her. They will understand where she’s coming from, and they will want to side with her.
But you wait. Her flaws will come up, and she will be in every topic of conversation somehow. That’s because he will almost enjoy telling you how impossible she was, and all the trouble she caused. He isn’t being honest, he is simply in control of her reputation.
And here’s the giveaway. Every single ex is crazy? Every one of them? Not one reasonable woman in his entire dating history? Come on. The common denominator is him.
4 She’s the problem, and you’re … the cure?!
The narcissist will have long treated the woman he left behind like a problem he had to be in charge of. On top of that, he’s going to ensure you feel like the answer to it all; everything he ever wanted.
While she was being difficult, you came along at just the right time to make everything okay again. You’re just such a joy, and so light to be around. Of course, these are early days, and the narcissist wants you thinking that meeting you was fate.
You understand him, while she ruined his life. The comparisons are there before you even asked him to hand you one. The reason he wants to get in with those comparisons is down to wanting you to believe you’re his forevermore.
He sends the message to you that he’s healed from his past and that toxic woman he left behind, and now he is going to give you everything he has to make it work. He’s not moved on or grown up in the slightest.
He’s just using you as his next chapter, the way she filled up his last. If you believe that you’re the cure, you’ll treat every problem of his as a problem that you need to fix in order to fulfil that role. I ask you, please don’t do that.
This is an old trick designed to get you to run around after the narcissist while they sit and watch you falling at their feet.
Their ego will tell them this is the treatment they deserve, but as soon as you fall out of favor, you’ll be punished the same way she was.
And you’ll wonder what changed, when in reality nothing changed at all. He just ran out of the fresh feeling you gave him, and the script resets.
5 Her existence is his evidence
I want you, if you can, to note a few things about the woman this narcissistic man left behind. She is an anxious mess, and she can’t shake her past. She is someone who constantly says sorry, even when she’s done nothing wrong.
She doesn’t have many friends around her because during her time with him, he taught her that they don’t matter, don’t care, or that she’s too good for them.
The old version of her is lost, and she’s trying to find her, yet all these negative aspects of her life didn’t come out of the blue; they were programmed into her by someone who thought they could control her forever.
He will always have her framed as the reason that relationship failed, and he will make her sound like she is some kind of burden, or a problem he wishes he never met.
You’ll hear him say things like, “She was just so unstable, I did everything for her.” Meanwhile she’s the one still picking pieces of herself up off the floor.
If you map her properly, you’ll see that every footprint on her soul belongs to the narcissist, and now she has to work to sweep them away to find herself again. Believe her. She isn’t resentful, and there’s no anger there.
She is just a woman who needs her voice to be heard, just like you will one day if you fall for him.
6 Watch How He Talks About Her
Listen to him for two minutes. Just two. That’s all it takes.
Is she “crazy”? Is she “psycho”? Is she “the worst mistake of his life”? Because if every single sentence about the woman he shared years with drips with venom, you’re not hearing about her. You’re hearing about him.
Healthy men who leave relationships say things like, “It didn’t work out, we wanted different things.” They might sound sad. They might sound quiet. What they don’t sound is bitter years down the line.
The narcissist though? He’s got a whole script.
“She was mental.” “She cheated on me, I think.” “She turned my kids against me.” “She was obsessed with me even after I left.”
Notice how she’s always the unhinged one, and he’s always the calm, reasonable narrator just trying to make sense of the chaos. Convenient, isn’t it?
The way a man speaks about the woman who is no longer in his bed tells you exactly what he’ll say about you when you’re gone. Same words. Different name.
7 The Friends She No Longer Has
Ask her who she used to hang out with, and watch her face go a little quiet.
See also The Narcissist Gets Sick on Day Two of Your Vacation, and It's Never RandomThere’s usually a best friend she stopped calling. A sister she drifted from. A group of women who used to meet for coffee, and then didn’t, because he made every visit feel like a chore he was doing her a favour by allowing.
He didn’t like her friends. Not really. He said things like, “She’s a bad influence,” or, “I just don’t trust her around us.” Slowly, quietly, the calendar emptied out.
And here’s the part that stings. A lot of those friends tried. They messaged. They checked in. They got vague replies, then none. Eventually they stopped trying, because what else could they do?
So if the woman he left behind is rebuilding a phone book from scratch, that’s him. That’s what he did while she wasn’t looking. Isolation dressed up as love.
The good news? Friends often come back. Slowly, awkwardly, with a lot of “I’m so sorry I disappeared.” And they mean it.
