When you do not hold them accountable, when you smooth things over immediately after they abuse you, they don’t feel relief; they feel contempt. They look at you and think, “I can do anything to this person. I can cheat. I can lie. I can steal. I can scream,” and they will still make me dinner and sleep in this bed. They see you as weak. To a narcissist, kindness is not a virtue. Kindness is a vulnerability. They do not respect the high road; they view it as an opportunity to gain ground. Every time you step back to keep the peace, they step forward to take more territory. This whole fiasco does not end there; you also pay a biological cost that we are going to discuss.
Being the bigger person usually means swallowing your anger, right? It means suppressing your natural biological instinct to defend yourself. When someone continuously attacks you verbally, emotionally, or psychologically, your body screams “fight or flight.” Your heart races, cortisol spikes, and muscles tense. That is your nervous system trying to save your life. But because you want to be the bigger person, you override that system. You force yourself to sit still. You force your face to be calm. You force your voice to be steady. You effectively tell your body to shut up. Where do you think that energy goes? Energy cannot be destroyed; it can only be transformed or transferred. When you do not release that anger outwardly, it turns inward and starts attacking you. This is why victims of narcissistic abuse suffer from chronic fatigue, autoimmune disorders, migraines, fibromyalgia, and gut issues. Your body is keeping the score. You are forced to poison yourself to keep the narcissist comfortable. Your circumstances compel you to set yourself on fire to keep them warm, hoping that they will thank you for the heat. But they won’t; they will just complain that you are not burning bright enough.
Furthermore, being the bigger person denies reality. It’s a form of self-gaslighting. By acting like everything is okay when it’s not, and by moving on without a proper apology or changed behavior, you unconsciously participate in their shared fantasy. When that happens, they sweep the abuse under the rug and turn you into an accomplice to your own erasure. You tell yourself, “I just don’t want the drama.” But what you are really doing is trading short-term conflict for long-term soul destruction.
There is another dangerous trap here: the moral superiority trap. Sometimes we stay the bigger person because it is the only thing we have left. The narcissist has taken your money, your confidence, your friends, and your joy. The only thing you may have left is your identity as the good person, and you cling to it. You tell yourself, “At least I did not stoop to their level. At least I kept my integrity.” That is true; you kept your integrity. But what’s going on with that? They are weaponizing it against you, and in the process of keeping your integrity, your children are also getting traumatized. You are suffering every single day. I’m not blaming your lack of effort. I know how complex it is to leave. But what I’m trying to do is wake up that part of you that says, “No, I can take it for one more day, maybe one more year. It’s okay.” No, you need to prepare yourself to leave and find your way out. The narcissist feeds off this loyalty and loves the fact that they can use your empathetic side against you. See, empaths are matchsticks, and unfortunately, martyrs suffer in silence. You give second, third, fifteenth chances, and they are busy abusing you. As long as you’re busy trying to be a martyr, you’re not busy packing your bags, calling a lawyer, or reclaiming your life. Your pursuit of moral perfection is the exact thing that keeps you trapped in hell.
continue reading on the next page
Sharing is caring!