They were convinced the phone would light up, convinced your name would pop up on their screen. That little rush of power would wash over them one more time. But it didn’t.
Today, we’re going to talk about that holy, heavy place called silence. Not the silence that punishes you, but the silence that saves you. There comes a moment with a toxic person when everything shifts. Not because a narcissist changes, but because you do. It’s that moment when you stop chasing, stop explaining, and stop begging for clarity that never comes. It’s the stillness that scares a narcissist more than any words ever could.
You see, the narcissist has a script: push you away, ignore you, block you, smear you, and then sit back and wait for the explosion. Family members who freeze you out. Friends who suddenly ghost. Romantic partners who vanish overnight. Bosses who quietly sabotage you at work. All of it is designed for one purpose: to elicit a reaction from you. The narcissist isn’t improvising; they are running a program. Every cold shoulder, every unanswered message is a calculated move to pull your heartstrings like puppet strings.
But something beautiful happens when you do what the narcissist never expected: you don’t call. You don’t text. You don’t run after the door that slammed in your face. That’s when heaven leans in. Many of you are empaths—deeply feeling, deeply caring souls. You’re the peacemakers, the bridge builders, the ones who sit up at 2:00 a.m. rehearsing every word, wondering if you could express it better, softer, clearer. You fight for relationships. You apologize just to keep the peace. You over-explain to fix misunderstandings you didn’t even cause. The narcissist is counting on that.
To the narcissist, you want a whole person with a heart and a history. You’re a fuel source, a battery, a place to plug in and dump all that fragile, shaky self-worth that can’t stand on its own. You are validation, attention, and emotional regulation packaged as love. So when a narcissist pushes you away, it’s rarely about wanting you gone forever. It’s a test, a power move: “I’ll reject you first.” The narcissist thinks this will make you come crawling back to prove that they matter more than you do.
The narcissist remembers everything that trained them to believe this works: the times of silent treatment that made you panic and apologize; the times you wrote long paragraphs trying to clear things up; the countless moments you folded just to stop the tension. In the narcissist’s mind, the training is complete. They push the button: your anxiety, your empathy, your need to fix, and they expect the same reaction every time.
This is where intermittent reinforcement comes in. Like a slot machine that pays out just enough to keep you hooked, the narcissist sprinkles crumbs of affection over long stretches of pain: a random compliment, a rare “I’m sorry,” a sudden moment of tenderness, and your brain attaches hope to those crumbs. “Maybe if I hold on a little longer. Maybe if I’m a little more patient, the good days will come back.” The narcissist is betting on that addiction. They believe your withdrawal from their absence will be so intense that you’ll break your own heart just to make it stop. The narcissist is waiting for your craving to overpower your dignity.
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