The phone becomes one of the most triggering things for narcissistic abuse survivors because all the cheating, neglect, planning, and plotting took place on the phone, right? Narcissists stay glued to their phones the entire day to make you feel invisible. They’re so engrossed in their phones that they even take them to the bathroom for hours, and you start feeling like you’re living with a roommate. When you are eating at the dining table, they are on their phone. When you are in the living room, they are on their phone. When you go to a restaurant, guess what? They are on their phone.
And it’s not about the addiction that we all struggle with; it’s about the phone being a Pandora’s box. Everything is in there. Another reason is that they scroll endlessly in front of you to signal that you don’t matter. They would rather mindlessly look at those pictures and drop random cryptic likes than talk to you and have a real conversation. They use their phone at the dinner table to break emotional intimacy. They keep their eyes glued to the screen when you are talking to silently humiliate you. They pretend to be busy on their phone just to avoid acknowledging your presence. They use their phone as an emotional wall so you can’t reach them. And they scroll late into the night to avoid any physical closeness with you.
But the deeper truth is this: the phone becomes their silent weapon. It becomes the doorway to their double life—the evidence of the attention they give everyone except you. The proof that the connection you are craving is something they are giving to strangers online. And the worst part is the way your body remembers it: the late-night scrolling, the sudden giggles at messages you were never allowed to see, the locked screens, the turned-away faces, the bathroom trips that last for hours, and the way they would protect that device as if it were their oxygen. You start feeling like you are competing with a screen. You start feeling like you are begging for a human who is already gone. You start feeling like the phone is the real partner in the relationship and you are just the background noise.
Number Two: Financial Manipulation and Theft
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