When it comes to my dating life, one of the most difficult things that I’ve ever encountered was dating a narcissist. As hard as it was to remove myself from the situation, I gained a lot of valuable life lessons as a result of my experience.
Here are eight things I learned from dating a narcissist.
1. If it feels too good to be true, it probably is.
When I first met my ex, I thought he was the perfect guy. I found myself falling fast and hard. It wouldn’t hit me until I completely removed myself from the situation that the magical feeling I had wasn’t just butterflies on steroids; it was the product of manipulation. My ex knew exactly what I wanted to hear, and he used that to his advantage.
2. Their ex is almost never the “crazy” one.
As Carly Pearce sings about in the song “Next Girl,” the narcissist will always tell the next girl that his ex went crazy. And while I hate to use the term “crazy”, if anyone is crazy, it’s him.
At the end of the day, a decent person won’t say that his ex is crazy — let alone that all of his exes are crazy — unless there’s a valid reason. It becomes an even bigger red flag when all of their exes are crazy, which was allegedly the case for my narcissist ex.
Now, he gets to tell the future women in his life that I, too, am one of the “crazy” ones.
3. No one who cares about you will ever try to isolate you from friends and family.
I’m so close to my friends and family that there was no way in hell I would have ever let my ex isolate me from them. But I can’t tell you how many times he tried. He’d say, “You should drop all of your friends. I’m the only friend you need,” or “I’ll be your family once we get married. I’m the only family you need.”
Early into this relationship, I believed that my ex had good intentions and just wanted to spend more time with me. I didn’t realize that his motives were simple: isolate me from my loved ones so that I’d be easier to control and manipulate. Thankfully, I was strong-willed enough not to agree to what he wanted, or it may have been a lot harder to pull myself out of the situation.
4. Your boundaries should always be respected.
When you’re in a safe, loving relationship, the other person will always respect your boundaries. But when you’re the victim of a toxic relationship, the exact opposite will happen. Any time I told my narcissist ex about one of my boundaries, he would go out of his way to cross my boundary in the future.
The lesson learned? Anyone who cares about you will always respect your boundaries — narcissist or not.
5. You should never give someone too many chances.
A person can only apologize for the same thing so many times before it becomes clear that they aren’t really sorry. Narcissists find excitement in being forgiven over and over for the same thing. It makes them feel powerful to know that they can get away with it repeatedly. They begin to see you as weak or a doormat that they can walk on as many times as they want without you ever walking away from them.
6. If your gut tells you something is off, listen to it.
There were so many times when my narcissist ex told me he was working overtime or spending time with his children. In reality, he was actually moving on to his next supply of women. But instead of listening to that little voice inside my mind and that feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me something was off, I ignored it because I trusted him. Now I know to never doubt my intuition again.
7. Never make excuses for people.
I was always making some type of excuse for my narcissist ex. If he didn’t call or text me at the same time he always did, I would just make up some sort of excuse for him. “Maybe he’s just running late at work” or “He must be on the phone with his mom.” I was constantly giving him the benefit of the doubt, even though he didn’t deserve it majority of the time.
This all resorts back to lesson #6. Listen to your gut. If something feels off, it probably is. As the old saying goes, trust nothing that you hear and only half of what you see. Don’t always believe people’s excuses, let alone make excuses on their behalf — especially if they prove time and time again that they’re unreliable.
8. No matter how much you love someone, sometimes you have to say goodbye.
At the time, I thought I was madly in love with my narcissist ex-boyfriend. I would later learn that what I was in love with were his manipulation and lies.
But it was a hard pill to swallow that no matter how much you love someone (or think you love someone), sometimes you have to let them go. This life lesson can be applied to any toxic relationship, whether it’s romantic in nature or involves a friend or family member.
At the end of the day, sometimes we have to walk away from who we love and care about in order to put ourselves first.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
