If you’ve ever been in a relationship with a covert narcissist, you know it is an incredibly confusing experience. It is a series of hot and cold, and hot and cold emotions coming from this person, who you think loves you and who you think you love also. There are lots of abusive people out there who will abuse people under the guise of love, so the abuse does end up feeling like love. But with a covert narcissist specifically, there are reasons why it feels like love and why it’s so, so incredibly confusing. We’re going to cover that in today’s video, so stay tuned!
Today we’re talking about why the covert narcissist’s abuse feels like love so often. We’re going to get straight to it.
One of the reasons why it so often feels like love is because there is a bit of a genuine nature to it. It’s not love, but it feels like it because of what’s going on within the covert narcissist. So, to truly understand this, you have to understand how conflicted the covert narcissist really is. Unlike their overt counterparts, the overt narcissist, the covert narcissist does not have the luxury of being as outwardly grandiose. The reason for this is that the world does not reflect that grandiose image back to them. So, the covert narcissist does believe that they are something special, but the world does not reflect that to them. They don’t always get what they want, and sometimes people aren’t nice to them. It’s puzzling because they know how special they are, but it’s just not coming back to them in the way they feel they deserve.
What happens in that case is that they will kind of take it out on the person they’re in a relationship with, because that’s usually the person who’s closest to them. So especially if you are feeling on top of the world and you’re in a relationship with a covert narcissist, they’re going to knock you down a few pegs.
In the times when they’re really being nice to you and they’re doing everything you want, in most cases they’re idealizing you. It could be straight-up manipulation in some cases, but usually, it’s idealizing. They think you’re amazing in those moments, and they so desperately need you to reflect that sentiment back to them. They need you, the person who they think is amazing, to think they’re amazing too. The situation is to reflect the grandiosity that the covert narcissist feels inside.
If you’ve been in this situation, you can probably relate. Once you’ve bought in, once you’re feeling all the lovey feelings, is when the other shoe tends to drop. That’s when they’re going to knock you off your pedestal. This is when they’re going to devalue you, and you’re going to get those subtle abusive comments and behaviors that you’ve come to know in your relationship with this covert narcissist.
If you’re in this and thinking that because sometimes the feelings are genuine, maybe you might want to stay, I urge you to rethink that. Because even if the feelings are genuine, what those feelings are is different from what you expect them to be, or what you might need them to be in a relationship. You can imagine the narcissist looking at it this way: “I love me, and I need you to love me, so I’m gonna do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
They’re looking at you in a way that looks like love, but because the narcissist does not have emotional empathy, they’re not capable of genuine connection. You can’t have a genuine connection if you cannot feel other people’s emotions. So, they can’t actually reflect your love, and so it’s super confusing for us. A lot of the time with a covert narcissist, you can spend a long time in this phase, or you can go back and forth very quickly, even in the same day.
It can be love dominating or idealizing, and then back to devaluing subtly, and then more love bombing, and then more subtle devaluation. Because the devaluation is so subtle, they may even convince you that it’s your fault—that either you’re too sensitive or that somehow you did something to deserve it. So you have all of this stuff that you like—love, all of this, you know, lovey-dovey stuff: the hugs and the kisses, the kind words and the “I love yous”—that are confusing because that’s kind of what somebody would do if they did love you. Then you have this other part that is something that somebody who loves you would never do, but it’s so hard to recognize because it’s so subtle. They are tearing you down, but very subtly and usually over a long period of time.
The difference between this and real love is not that you don’t have that moment and not that you don’t occasionally get at each other in an argument. The difference lies in the conditions of it. In a healthy relationship, there’s going to be an unconditional nature. Now, everybody isn’t always going to show unconditional love 100 percent of the time; that’s kind of unrealistic. But a narcissist will show conditional love always, 100 percent of the time. So, it’s completely on the opposite end of the spectrum. A narcissist can only provide conditional love, which is not really love.
Essentially, if you’re in a relationship with a narcissist, you might feel like, “Well, if I put on a few pounds, or if I leave my stressful job and take another one where I make less money, or if I change my hair or my friends, this person might leave me.” The worst part about you feeling that way is that if you feel that way in the relationship, you’re probably right. In a normal, healthy relationship, you would not feel that way; your partner would not want you to feel that way. But with a covert narcissist, they do want you to feel that way. They do want you to walk on eggshells because this relationship for them is all about pleasing them. They want you walking on eggshells, and they want you thinking that they could leave at any time, because then you might be more inclined to please them to get them to stay.
It’s a very warped sense of reality; it’s a very warped sense of love. But because it happened so slowly and subtly, and because there’s often a whole lot of gaslighting, you end up wondering how much of it was you and how much of it was them. It can be very confusing. So that part of it—the abuse part of it—is very confusing. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors around it, but the love part—that part feels good; that part feels right. The other part is just very confusing.
This is how our relationship with a covert narcissist so often ends up feeling like love: because you focus on the part that’s not confusing; you focus on the part that you like and the part that you know, which is that connection that you feel with the person.
Once you start learning about the conditions and about relationships like these, you realize it’s not a genuine connection. But in those moments, you cling to what feels good, and it’s only natural. So, if you’re in this and wondering whether it’s worth it to stay, I would urge you to seriously, seriously consider what you’re getting out of this relationship. Because you can spend an entire lifetime trying to please a narcissist, trying to make yourself good enough for a narcissist, and you will never succeed.
You cannot—it’s an impossible task. But here’s the thing: you are good enough. You are good enough, and you are whole without this person. You don’t need this person to make you feel whole; they actually need you to make themselves feel whole. That’s the irony of it all. But even if you’re struggling with some level of codependency and you feel like you do need another person, you can heal. You’ll have a lot easier time healing than somebody with narcissistic personality disorder.
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