Test 4: The Crisis Test
The next test is one that breaks your heart: the crisis test. Ideally, you never have to run this test, but life will run it for you. Eventually, you will get sick, lose your job, or experience a family member’s death. You will have a bad day and become temporarily useless to them. You will need to lean on them. Watch their reaction.
In a normal relationship, this is when your partner steps up, not steps out. They bring you through, hold your hand, and say, “I’ve got this; you can rest.” The narcissist, however, gets annoyed, may disappear, or suddenly have too much work to do. Or worse, they will make your sickness about them. Imagine you are lying in bed with a high fever, and they come in saying, “I can’t believe you’re sick today; I have such a busy week. Who is going to make dinner? You are stressing me out.” They act like your pain is an inconvenience to them. They look at you with cold, dead eyes—there is no warmth or concern, only irritation.
They fail this test because they lack emotional empathy. They do not see you as a human being with feelings; they see you as an appliance. Think about your toaster. If you push the lever down and the toaster doesn’t work, you do not feel sorry for it; you get annoyed, you hit it, and you wonder why it’s broken. You want to throw it away and get a new one, don’t you? That is how they see you. When you’re sick, you are a broken toaster; you’re not making their toast anymore and not serving their needs, so they resent you. They may even punish you for being human.
I’ve heard countless examples of women who have undergone surgery, and the narcissist, right after the procedure, wanted to get physical with them, completely overlooking their stitches and pain. How inhumane is that? This clarifies the fact that these people are not human; they merely look human.
Test 5: The Crazy Thinking Test
The final test is the delusional test, where you test their grip on reality. Narcissists live in a fantasy world where they are always right, always the victim, and always the hero. To run this test, you simply introduce a tiny piece of reality into their fantasy. You confront them with a simple, undeniable fact. Perhaps you show them a text message they sent you yesterday—one in which they insulted you—and say, “Look, you sent this.”
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