This Is How You Beat the Narcissist at Their Own Game

Iwrote about how I was discarded by my ex (who is a covert narcissist) after he planted a used condom in my bed and blamed me for it (the setup for the discard).

After he left, I took the weekend to myself and only reached out to end the relationship that Sunday. He was defensive from the start and I made it worse by initiating and maintaining a conversation full of narcissistic injuries.

I told him I thought something was seriously, mentally wrong with him. I then began unexpectedly revealing all his dirty secrets I wasn’t supposed to know, telling him he needed help, and that he would essentially live to regret losing me more than he could ever anticipate.

He knew the jig was up and he flew into a narcissistic rage. The conversation went from me letting him know I could never move past what he did or the kind of person really he is to him telling me —

“I love you but I’m tired of this. From this day forward I am dead to you. Lose my contact number.”

What disgusted me was his audacity in trying to shift the blame, only making himself appear uglier. And the guilt trip he unsuccessfully tried to place on me using a very specific selective word choice.

For example; usually, people say that you’re dead to them but he reversed it to “I’m dead to you” to give me the responsibility as a means to attempt a guilt trip. To make staying away from him my responsibility because he likely didn’t believe I could. We were on and off for over three years.

However, this was different.

He had now fallen into this category the moment he revealed he was cheating on me by putting the same condom he used to sleep with another woman in my bed. In other words,

Now, he was dead to me.

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“Wow… alright”

These were my very last words to him

Mainly because I was genuinely shocked at his cruelty but also because that ugly display of his character was the final moment of me ever seeing him as a man or someone that I could respect in any way.

After I wrote those words I saw that he was typing and figured he’d said enough to hurt me for one lifetime so I deleted the Telegram account I was using and left him to his unfinished thoughts. I didn’t fight him nor was I gonna fight for him.

At this point, I had already changed my phone number and deleted my email accounts. But now there was no way to contact me unless he reached out to my mother. I had had enough. I had told him I thought something was seriously, mentally wrong with him. He knew the jig was up.

We were done and that was how I left it. Don’t get me wrong, it killed me but a new me was being born, whether I liked it or not. I was finally tired so I allowed him to win and took the temporary loss. And in doing so I did the one thing that disables a narcissist the most.

I stayed gone.

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And The Holiday Hoover Begins

He reached out on Thanksgiving

Most narcissists use the holidays as a way to regain contact because our hearts are usually more open during those times of the year, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas.

He used this holiday to text my mom a dry and formal “Happy Thanksgiving” text, still showing ego and entitlement. She replied politely with “Thank you” and left it at that but I was no fool. This was a ploy to get me to reach out to him. This was for me to do the heavy-lifting of chasing.

I was supposed to think he cared enough to reach out regardless of what happened and come running back. I still had that condom in a Ziploc bag to remind me of why I was in the position I was in. In other words, reaching out to him was never going to happen, and it didn’t.

Once someone makes it clear they don’t want me in their life, I’m gone. Especially a narcissist because they like to play this game. But this is when that same game plays against them once they go off and do their own thing only to realize —

you’re not calling
you’re not texting
you’re still not coming around
you’re actually gone

This realization would begin to settle in for him around the middle of January when he texted my mother again saying he hoped our holidays went well and really hoped I was happy. To which my mother, who now knew everything and saw the condom,

Said absolutely nothing.

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Silence Is Golden

When he didn’t hear anything by Valentine’s Day he panicked

I know this for a fact because I was supposed to be so heartbroken that this was supposed to be a difficult day for me. It was actually the best Valentine’s Day I’d had in years. I celebrated with my true love, my mom.

We had a blast.

I was slowly getting back to myself and once he still hadn’t heard a thing from me by Valentine’s Day, and immediately after, he knew something was wrong. He knew then that not only was I really done — he knew it was his fault.

After all, wasn’t he the one who told me to go on with my life as if he was dead to me? Technically, I was respecting his wishes. Needless to say, very soon after, my mom got a message from him that again received no reply.

And that’s when the phone calls began

He began calling my mom back to back one evening after he got off of work. She wasn’t responding to anything and he was beginning to panic because he knew she must have hated him for what he did to me.

In other words, he knew she knew.

His secrets were out and he was unmasked to more than just me and let me tell you, this is a narcissist’s worst nightmare. Eventually, he kept calling to the point where she cursed him out and told him I wanted nothing to do with him and to never call her again.

I found all this out after the fact because my mother was shielding me full force from any and every one of his advances. But I also didn’t have my phone cut on at the time because I took seven months, off the grid, to really heal. I accidentally saw it on her phone.

By then, the house visits began.

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Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash

They Always Come Back

He has made several attempts to come back

You’re probably thinking that my mom was giving him what he wanted by giving him an ounce of attention. This is not true — not when a narcissist actually wants forgiveness. Remember, narcissists hate being hated.

Only they are allowed to write people off, so to speak. So once it happens to them and they are unable to control the narrative you have of them in your own mind, they begin folding. Especially if this narrative is causing you to ice them out.

This is when they get desperate and either hoover or hoover more aggressively, and my ex was no different. After the text messages and phone calls failed to summon my presence he started coming to my apartment. In fact, he came to my apartment several times over the course of spring, summer, and winter of 2021.

The Universe must have been working overtime because each time he came by not only was I not home, my mom was there to block him off at every turn. She was protecting me from him. The very last I heard he was at my door hysterically crying and telling my mother —

I’m so sorry. I am so so sorry.

Which was met with her saying how little she gave a fuck before slamming the door in his face. She didn’t want to hear it and neither do I. He has no choice but to live haunted by what he’s done and what he said.

He is also stuck living with my final words to him detailing how I knew what a narcissist he really was and how I felt he truly needed to get medical help. He lives every day knowing I’m not coming back because I’m disgusted by him — and he is the only reason for this.

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Here’s What No One Tells You About Hoovering

Narcissists actually do carry their regrets throughout life

And in many cases that regret is genuine. After all, if they can’t forgive others, you bet your ass they do not forgive themselves. This is where the hoovering comes in. Hoovering is an active admission of guilt.

The fact of the matter is, that most narcissists don’t change because the guilt they carry is too deep to face, so their shame grows instead of them. Shame is humiliating and humiliation is a public affair. There’s nothing worse than knowing you left a poisoned legacy in someone’s life — even if it’s just one person.

It’s painful to continue realizing that no matter how you evolve, that stain on your record will stay with you. That’s because the more mindful and self-aware you become, the more angles you can see the ways you’ve hurt somebody — that’s a responsibility. That takes maturity.

In some cases, they knew they were fucking up but chose to convince themselves to do it regardless. The embarrassment of being that fucked up is part of what makes narcissists take so long to come back, but it’s also why they come back.

But once they do and realize they’ve truly ruined things and left it damaged for so long they can’t use any of their maneuvers to “make it right” they fall apart. That’s what my ex is going through right now and that’s entirely his problem to deal with since he chose to create it.

He hoovers because he needs to change the narrative I have of him in my head. Narcissists need you to like them again because you hating them hurts. It forces them to acknowledge that who they truly are is fully capable of making someone like you refuse to acknowledge them.

In other words, this is finally one mess the narcissist cannot clean up. Correction, it’s finally a mess the narcissist has no control over cleaning up. You do. And you’re not doing it.

Because you no longer find them worth it.

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This Discard Did Me a Huge Favor

It was in the discard that our power move is directly hidden

The problem is we usually can’t see it through the pain. I know I couldn’t, but by allowing myself to be discarded, I allowed him two things he never anticipated —

His power, and
His destabilizer

Responsibility. Remember, narcissists only like taking responsibility for things that make them look good.

Imagine blowing apart a beautiful relationship or a healthy connection that could have lasted, for no real reason other than being greedy, unappreciative, vengeful, and deceptive (you know, all the qualities they hate in other people)? Who wants responsibility for that?

Certainly not a narcissist.

But by leaving them with the responsibility of pointlessly burning their bridges with us, we force them to eat every word they’ve said and to remain haunted by every cruel action they’ve taken towards us.

My ex is reminded of the bridge he never had to burn

He’s reminded every single time a new prospect fails, and he returns every time it does, to no avail. Now, he is left to spend the remainder of his life wondering “what if?”. In trying to call my bluff I actually called his.

The reason for my victory isn’t because of his regret — it’s because I stayed discarded. I kept my distance. I stayed away. I gave him exactly what he wanted. I went through the grueling process of healing and began to move on.

Many of you reading this are doing (or have done) the same, but the point is we are moving, and not going back to our narcissists. This is why we have gained the upper hand. The fact that we’ve remained silent and upheld no contact is why we’ve beaten these narcissists at their own game.

These hoover attempts are evidence that some part of them (and their lives) is now irreversibly incomplete without us. Proof their guilt is eating them up. In other words, we’ve won.

Checkmate!

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If you want to read about the whole story of my discard, here is the link:

https://medium.com/about-me-stories/this-is-what-being-discarded-really-looks-like-bdf573fb71e7

Here are a few of my other articles unveiling the different aspects of narcissistic abuse — I hope they help you break the cycle once and for all.

https://medium.com/hello-love/yes-the-narcissist-is-grey-rocking-you-395762915026

https://medium.com/hello-love/this-is-how-you-destroy-a-narcissist-7a8958158a2d

https://medium.com/hello-love/this-is-why-you-will-always-end-up-chasing-a-narcissist-b919fecb06d8

Stay strong.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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