Over time, you explained why, you tried to reason with the narcissist, and you poured out your feelings in a way that was careful, yet honest. You waited for the narcissist to show up, hoping they would listen and appreciate you. Instead, you got the opposite.
They stayed absent, and you ran out of ways to make them see your love for them. Narcissists never really show up all the while you're there begging them to notice you.
They want to make sure that the moment you turn your back is the time they decide they will reach out. If that's 2am, then so be it.
The moment you go quiet is the moment they suddenly find their voice. Convenient timing, isn't it?
1 All those words you tried to use? They were pointless
Before you were absent, you were very present for the narcissist. You'd spend day after day trying to tell them how you feel, to the point where you would try to use every word known to man.
If it meant you would've been heard, you'd have written a 100 page report to them to tell them exactly how the narcissist made you feel, but at the end of the day, none of it will matter, because they won't listen to you.
It feels pointless to even try, right? You want to speak perfectly, and you end up feeling, yet again, like you're not even close to good enough. The second you remove yourself from a relationship, or say you even just want a little space, that's where everything immediately changes.
Suddenly the person who couldn't spare five minutes for a conversation is blowing up your phone at midnight wanting to talk. Funny how that works.
2 Silence lands so differently, trust me
Your silence versus the narcissist's silence are two different things according to them. For them, they're allowed to give you the silent treatment whenever they want to. They use it to punish you, or control how you feel.
They go silent to intimidate or worry you, or manipulate you into changing your mind about something they're not happy with. Your silence isn't allowed. It's bad. It's inconvenient. It's attention-seeking (The irony…). It makes you look too big for your boots.
It panics the narcissist (although they'd never admit that). When you take yourself off the radar, you become someone the narcissist is constantly checking for. They used to ignore their phone half the time, now it's glued to their side.
The narcissist used to talk over you all the time, now you aren't even in the room with them. They took you for granted as a huge and necessary source of supply, and now it's all just stopped.
At the time of having you, like all narcissists, they don't process you being there. It's as if you should just be there without question. It's only when you've gone they think, "Oh my God. What do I do now?"
Every word you speak before you leave that lands on deaf ears may not have made any kind of impact, but you walking away and leaving will be louder than anything you've even tried to get across.
I had a client tell me once that her narcissistic ex sent her a paragraph the day after she went quiet, longer than anything he'd written in three years together.
3 No narcissist sees your absence as a lesson
I don't want you to get confused here, because you won't get a desperate person chasing you and wanting you back.
Their ego is far too big to even suggest they're going to want to make it so obvious, so expect more subtlety in the narcissist's attempts to find out why you made yourself so absent. They will be quiet, so as not to rock their fragile ego. Hey. How's things?
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseI'm just checking in to see how you are. It'll be breezy because that's how they will want to appear to you.
The narcissist can also start to show up in places where you frequently go, or they may reach out to a mutual friend to see how you are or what you've been up to.
It's all by design to eventually get directly back to you, and it will start with appearing to be remorseful or reflect on their time with you.
Remember, the narcissist's ego is big, and so you're reminding them that in your absence, their ego has nothing to fill that void with. There is no way the narcissist can express how they're feeling, but they're still feeling that discomfort.
And that message? "Hey stranger, hope you're doing okay." Casual, breezy, calculated. They practised that line before they hit send, believe me.
4 You never want to think this is a punishment
I don't want you to see your absence as a form of punishment for the narcissist, you can't make it out to be that way at all.
The last thing you should be thinking about is how you can best get revenge, because when you get to that point, you're still strongly and firmly under their control. Avoid that at all costs, okay? Leaving has to be for you and nobody else.
You have left to find a quiet space in your life to live in, and you can't put that at risk by bringing dramatic energy into that space.
Victims choose distance because they've grown so sick of having to be someone for a person who will never truly love them, and now, for the first time in a long time, you're putting yourself first. This alone will rattle the narcissist, who has never seen you prioritize yourself once.
That shouldn't stop you from continuing with that, though. The problem does come where victims end up feeling guilty for wanting that space. Prioritizing themselves doesn't come naturally to them, and that's where the slightest pull from the narcissist will bring them right back to where they were.
Don't let that happen.
The second you frame your absence as revenge, they've still got a grip on you. Freedom means their name barely crosses your mind anymore.
5 The narcissist will learn something that might shock you
I'm going to compare the way a narcissist learns with the way you learn, because the two certainly are not the same. For the narcissist, there will be no sitting down and reflecting on a situation or their behavior.
They don't have room to grow because they don't allow that room to exist, besides, the ego is taking up all that space.
The only thing the narcissist learns here is that you have limits that you're clearly showing by leaving, and there's nothing they can do to change that if your mind is strong and truly made up.
A person cannot control another if that person is absent, so you being gone has to be a permanent thing in order for them to realize they no longer have a hold on you. It's not a big, loud win, but it is a quiet one.
A win where you get to leave and leave behind everything that made you suffer. A win that means the narcissist has to sit with it and stagnate in their own emptiness. That has to be somewhat satisfying for the narcissist.
They sit there with the version of themselves they've been running from for years. No audience, no supply, no you to blame. Just them.
6 You owe these scumbags nothing
Don't give the narcissist anything, and I really mean that. You have to stick by whatever it is you're doing, without offering any kind of explanation their way. They don't deserve a single word, not when you spent years trying to get through to them to no avail.
You always end up feeling worse after doing this than before, so what's the point? You showed up for a long time, and now you walked into a free space that's yours. Don't look back.
Any explanation you offer becomes ammunition. They'll twist it, quote it back to you, use it in the smear campaign. Silence protects what you've built.
7 The panic move: reaching out through other people
Watch what happens when the direct route stops working. The narcissist won't just sit there quietly wondering, they'll start pulling on threads through anyone connected to you. A message to your sister asking if you're okay.
A friend you both know suddenly bringing them up in conversation, "They asked how you were, said they're worried." Cue the panic move.
And why do they do it this way? Because reaching out through other people gives them plausible deniability. If you don't respond, they didn't technically try. Their ego stays intact. They can pretend they were just being thoughtful, or concerned, or checking in as a decent human being.
It's also a way of testing the waters without exposing themselves. They want to know if you've spoken about them, what you've said, whether you're doing badly enough to be reachable again.
Anyone bringing the narcissist's name into your space is, knowingly or not, a delivery service for their next move. Take note of who suddenly starts mentioning them. That's rarely a coincidence.
8 What your absence exposes about their real feelings for you
Their absence during the relationship was them not caring enough to show up. Your absence now, and their sudden scramble to reach you, tells you everything about what you actually were to them. A supply. A reliable one.
See also THIS is What Makes NarcissistsNot a partner, not a person they respected, not someone they were building a life with. If they had genuinely loved you, they would have loved you when you were sat right in front of them asking to be loved.
That's the part that stings, and it's also the part that sets you free.
The chasing you see now isn't affection. It's withdrawal. They miss what you gave them, the attention, the patience, the reassurance, the emotional labour, the free therapy. They don't miss you as a person because they never really knew you as one. Sit with that for a second.
Not to hurt yourself with it, but to stop questioning whether you should go back.
What they're feeling is inconvenience dressed up as longing. And once you can tell the difference, going back stops being a temptation at all.
