Maybe you bring something up calmly and clearly. You’ve probably rehearsed it in your head a million times to ensure it’s fair and reasonable, yet somehow it still doesn’t land. They act confused or say you’re being too intense, or they pick apart your tone or wording instead of engaging with the actual point. Suddenly, the conversation is about how you said it or the words you chose, and it’s not about the topic at all. You find yourself explaining things that shouldn’t need explaining—simple things, human things, like why you felt hurt or why it’s not okay to be dismissed. But they just keep twisting it.
You try again and again, thinking maybe if you just say it the right way, they’ll finally get it, but they never do because that’s not their goal. They aren’t confused; they’re actually dodging. The more you explain, the more lost you feel. Over time, you stop bringing things up altogether—not because you don’t care, but because you’re tired of feeling like nothing makes sense anymore. That confusion is absolutely the point for them because as long as you’re doubting how you’re saying it, you’ll never get to why it needed to be said in the first place.
Another sign of covert narcissism that shows up in a relationship but is not always obvious is that they forget things that don’t benefit them. Maybe you circle back to a conversation you know you had—something they said or promised, something that really mattered to you—and they act like it never happened. Naturally, you’ll get the “I don’t remember saying that,” or “You must be thinking of something else,” or “That’s not what I meant.” Now you’re not just hurt; you’re defending your memory, digging through old texts and reading messages, trying to find proof that you’re not making this up because you know you’re not. But the more they deny, the more you start to wonder if maybe you misunderstood or just wanted to hear something they never actually said.
This is how it works. They don’t erase the story, just the parts that hold them accountable. Every time they do, they repaint over the same wall, like the crack was never there in the first place, like you imagined it. The fact that you keep trying to prove what actually happened is not about clarity; that’s survival. When the people around you keep rewriting the past, you start to lose your footing in the present.
Another way covert narcissism shows up in a relationship that’s not super obvious is that the narcissist is warm in public but cold in private. When other people are around, they’re charming, thoughtful, engaged, and they smile when they talk to you. Maybe they make jokes or touch your shoulder like you’re close. To everyone else, it looks like you’re lucky; it looks like the relationship is solid. But then you get home, and everything shifts. They’re quiet, distant, or just not interested. It’s not just one bad day, and it’s not necessarily that there’s even a reason. There’s warmth when people are watching and coldness when they’re not.
That split starts to wear on you. When the house looks pristine from the outside, no one would imagine that the basement floods every time it rains. You start wondering if maybe you’re the problem, maybe you’re expecting too much. But you’re not; you’re just noticing the gap. That’s the danger of this kind of covert behavior. It doesn’t just make you feel unseen; it makes you feel crazy for seeing what no one else can.
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