At first, that confusion almost breaks you. You ask, “Why did it work yesterday and fall apart today?” You start blaming yourself—maybe I said too much, maybe I pushed too hard, maybe I’m the problem. But slowly, you realize something bigger: that so-called love was never solid to begin with. It wasn’t unconditional; it wasn’t rooted. It was a transaction. The narcissist never offered real love; they offered terms. As long as you stayed in line, you were valued. Step out of line, and suddenly you were difficult, dramatic, selfish, too emotional, too demanding. That wasn’t affection; that was control wearing a costume.
Real love doesn’t disappear when you disagree. Real love doesn’t punish you for setting boundaries. Real love doesn’t ask you to bleed to prove you care. Real love doesn’t make you feel guilty for having needs. When you finally see this, it shocks you. The mask falls. You look back and realize that what you thought was romance was actually a long exam. Every moment together was measuring: how far will you bend, how much of yourself will you give up, how deeply can a narcissist control you? That realization hurts but also frees you, because once you see that the game was never about love, you stop trying to fix something that was broken from the beginning. You stop asking, “How do I become enough?” and start asking, “Why did I ever have to perform for love in the first place?” That’s where your power begins.
When you stop living inside the rules the narcissist created and start writing your own, the narcissist is emptier than you ever imagined. In the beginning, the narcissist might have seemed mysterious, intense, and deep. You may have told yourself, “No one thinks like this. No one feels like this. This must be something rare.” It felt like you were being invited into a special world. But once your eyes clear, you notice something chilling: it was all recycled. The dramatic stories, the emotional swings, the patterns of manipulation—just the same cycle over and over again. Different days, same script.
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