The biggest reason you can never love the abuse out of a narcissist is that your love actually triggers their hatred and malice. You have been conditioned your entire life to believe that intimacy builds connection. You were taught that if you love someone hard enough, if you are patient enough, and if you provide enough safety, eventually the walls will come down naturally and the other person will feel safe to love you back. But with a narcissist, the logic is completely inverted. Intimacy does not trigger safety; it triggers a threat response. The closer you get to them, the more unsafe they feel.
While you are trying to build a deep emotional bond, they’re feeling suffocated, scrutinized, and engulfed. They do not punish you because you failed to love them. No, they pull away because you got too close. You saw too much to them. That closeness looks like a loss of control—an absolute loss of control. Your love feels like a cage they have to break out of.
Today, we are going to talk about why narcissists feel love in reverse and the biggest stage you never notice. To really understand what I’m talking about, we need to look at the relationship through their eyes, which indeed is a terrifying place to be, but it is necessary if you want to stop blaming yourself.
You are likely replaying the relationship in your mind, searching for the moment it all went wrong. You’re asking yourself, “When did they stop loving me?” But the reality is much more complex than that. We will explore the timeline of their emotions, which runs in the exact opposite direction of yours. I want to break this down into five distinct psychological shifts that happen in their minds, starting with the foundation of the relationship itself.
The Narcissist’s Snapshot: Love Bombing Phase
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