How often in your relationship with a narcissistic partner did you reach a point where you just couldn’t take anymore? But then things subsided, the Narcissist backpedalled  and you fell back in love with the person who you first met. Or, at least, wearily re-embraced your long-cherished, somewhat threadbare dream of what your relationship could still be.

Obviously, the process with a narcissistic parent is slightly different. You can reach a similar point of being ready to walk away but then they:

a) find a way to pull rank,

b) work the poor health and encroaching helplessness issue

c) focus your mind on their impressive victim story

d) use some family gathering or crisis to work your guilt muscle and remind you of the obligation of (one-way) family loyalty.

Narcissists really do find a lot of ways to play you.  They use every ounce of deviousness to run rings around you and they do so to great effect. They know that you are a straight down the line kind of person. That enables them to dance around you and constantly come at from as many different angles as it takes to destabilise you.

The more I do the work that I do, the more I believe that we empaths are vulnerable to Narcissists because we fail to understand exactly what they are doing and why they do it. So, today, I want to take a closer look at nine things a Narcissist does –   to make you fall back in love with them.

As you already know, Narcissists have a flair for mixed messages. They know that the way they repeatedly flip from love to… well, loathing is, in itself, a powerful hook for you. So, these 9 things exploit the power over you of alternating love and rejection.

To start with the negatives:

4 Negative things a Narcissist uses to make you fall back in love with them

The negative four things a Narcissist uses to make you fall back in love with them are:

1. Working your fear triggers

   They do this primarily by making you believe that you need them to survive. The outside world, as they paint it to you, is too hard and cruel a place for you to survive without them. They have spent most of the relationship feeding you a series of doom and gloom threats about how awful your existence would, inevitably, be without them.

2. The scarcity angle

   Let’s face it, most of us humans are triggered by scarcity. You just have to think about, say, the clothes websites that helpfully let you know how many people are looking at an item you are viewing – which just happens to be one of the last in your size. Narcissists work that same scarcity angle when they tell you that nobody else would ever love/want/protect you the way that they do. Are they really that arrogant that they think that they can speak on behalf of 7.753 billion people? Quite possibly. But they certainly know how likely you are to fall for it.

3. Their capacity for a great relationship with someone else.

   For all of us who have been there, that really is the nightmare to end all nightmares. Our relationship with a Narcissist was based on our desperate need to matter to someone and be deemed lovable. If they can find happiness with someone else, we take that to mean that we are replaceable, unimportant, unlovable and The Problem in the relationship. In other words, their happiness annihilates whatever vestiges of self-worth we may have. It’s a nonsense of course, that a Narcissist will ever be truly happy with anyone because happiness is anathema to Narcissists. However, they are persuasive liars and when they work our vulnerabilities, we can be alarmingly easy to convince.  

4. Using pathos to appeal to your better nature.

   A Narcissist has no compunction about bleating on and on about real or imagined illnesses, their real or imaginary victim story or anything else they can possibly find to make you feel obligated to look after them and make it as right as possible for them. They know that your empathy and compassion are your weakness and they will use that, ruthlessly, against you.

The 5 positive ploys a Narcissist uses to make you fall back in love with them

1) The truthy, oh so sincere apology.

Okay, not everyone gets too many of these in a lifetime. It just depends on how desperate they feel the situation is for them and their convenience. If,  they reckon, the situation is looking decidedly problematic for their continued convenience, then you will get The Apology You Always Wanted To Hear. It will be moving – not least because they will be moved, quite possibly to crocodile tears, by their own playacting. It will serve to wipe the slate absolutely clean for you. For a little while, anyway. However, it will not herald any real, enduring change. If, on the other hand, they don’t feel the situation is serious, you will get the kind of half-assed, take-it-or-leave-it apology that is designed to diminish you still further.

2) The unexpected act of kindness.

Narcissists are anything but – in the privacy of their own home, at least. So, when the Narcissist does anything that can be conceived as going above and beyond the incredibly low bar they set for themselves, they know that you will latch onto it as proof of their fundamental – if elusive – goodness. It is no such thing. I liken it to putting a piece of cheese in a mousetrap. A person does not do that because they love mice and don’t want them to miss out on something they love.  They do it because they intend to trap the mouse. Those little acts of “kindness” are a trap and a calculation.

3) Sudden reasonableness.

Nobody would accuse of Narcissists behaving in a reasonable manner at home. They prefer to gaslight, goad and torment you just for the hell of it. So, when they suddenly do espouse reasonableness, you interpret it as them crossing some kind of relationship Rubicon, finally seeing the light, transitioning into the reasonable person you always knew they could be. Sadly, it is no such thing. It is just a great way to set you up for another fall that will render you even less powerless than before.

4) The sudden realization that they loved you all along and they want to spend the rest of their life making it (their past behaviour) up to you.

This is actually a cheap ploy that most Narcissists use – often quite frequently – to make you feel that you have hit the emotional jackpot. It makes you feel – briefly – that all that hard work, love and dogged persistence has finally paid off. Just like you knew it would. Only it hasn’t. Someone who has lived with you for years, or even decades, and managed not to love you is unloving. Period. They have not had a personality transplant and never will. They will “love” you for as long as it takes to lull you into a false sense of security and then they will tear it and your life up all over again. That will leave you even less strength to react appropriately and get yourself away from them.

5) Morphing into good parent/good partner

Once again, Narcissists do this to play you. They know exactly how much it matters to you.  They also know – approximately – what being a good parent or partner would look like. So, if needs must, they will put on a show for a little while. It will be quite a good show – albeit with some slightly creepy undertones – but it will just be a show. They will revert to their norm of narcissistic partnering and parenting. Once again, they understand how much it matters to you to have a good partner and co-parent. So, they will make a show of it – for you – for a little while. And then they will revert to type.

Are you noticing a theme here?

Narcissists understand who you are, how to play you and when they need to pull something exceptional out of the bag for you. But it is no guarantee of anything – apart from the fact that you are living with a Narcissist who will continue to hurt and manipulate you every which way.

If you are struggling to free yourself from the hold that a narcissistic relationship has over you and know that you need new ways of dealing – more effectively – with the challenges that you face, then check out my Break Free Membership . It offers a comprehensive array of the tools, blueprints and techniques that you will need – in addition to insights and information – in order to liberate yourself from the hold the Narcissist has over you.