When You “Abandon” the Narcissist

We’re going to take on a question that we often don’t think about with narcissism, but it’s a big part of the dynamic, which is abandonment.

When we play out the usual narcissistic relationship cycle, idealization, devaluation, discarding and hoovering. It can look like the narcissist is fully in control.

It feels like the narcissistic person is the one pulling the strings, doing the love bombing, engaging in seduction or doing the deep die into pseudo empathy. And once they have you, they start getting uninterested in you, they devalue you.

It’s their contempt at the point they have you and their incapacity for intimacy. The chase is typically the most engaging part of a relationship for a narcissistic person. Then oftentimes it’s them who decides to leave or at least threatens to leave.

But sometimes and I would argue far more often than you would think. People leave narcissists. In fact, as we get more awareness of narcissism and narcissistic abuse, I think people are actually leaving narcissistic relationships more often than we think. Because people recognize that these patterns are probably not going to change.

When you leave a narcissistic relationship in general, the narcissist does not like it. It means that they have lost control of the narrative, and frankly, lost control in general.

It means that they’re going to be losing validation, losing whatever conveniences you brought to their life and losing power.

Their responses to being left by you or being off by anyone will range from rage, to mockery. ‘ You really think you’re going to make it without me?’ to seeming indifference.

The piece that many people forget about is that people who are quite narcissistic or have narcissistic personality styles are very vulnerable to feelings of abandonment.

We often view abandonment in line with more sort of fragile or despairing personality patterns or mental health issues. We think that the Narcissist is too cold for that. Abandonment, though, is also a bit of an interpretation issue.

Abandonment can even be experienced when somebody just goes away on a trip or goes to work or just goes home. For a little while.

Just that moment of separation activates something quite primal in people who are narcissistic. It’s not true that narcissists are immune to abandonment.

For a variety of nuanced psychological issues narcissists do not regulate abandonment well.

Some of this relates to work that comes from the world of attachment theories, which hold that people who have narcissistic personalities are likely to have attachment styles that are characterized by anxious disorganized, or avoidant patterns.

As a result, it can be very, very difficult at a primitive level for a narcissistic individual to safely put roots down with another person.

Departure

For people with these kinds of attachment styles, the moment of departure is always very difficult for them. It activates all that attachment stuff.

Now some of you in relationships that are characterized by narcissistic patterns, or who have been in these patterns and these relationships in the past, may recognize this pattern.

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Let’s say in a narcissistic relationship, you may need to have to be away from each other for a few days or a few weeks a business trip or some other travel work thing. A family issue that needs to be dealt with. And the day of departure is getting closer and closer.

You will notice that things will get more and more tense in your relationship and the narcissist will get more and more agitated.

They will start arguing with you about small things, the relationship will just feel more difficult. You may feel frustrated because you want your last few days or hours with this person to be pleasant. But the more you try, the worse they behave.

You may get into a blowout battle on the way to the airport or whatever, as you get to the hour of departure.

A similar pattern can arise when you see them again when they get back from the trip or when you get back from the trip. Instead of falling into each other’s arms with each other. You may find that your your narcissistic partner or narcissistic person may be tentative, almost detached and distant.

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These patterns are not uncommon and people who have these attachment issues anxious, avoidant or disorganized attachments. All of this is consistent with the idea that, that upcoming departure starts triggering those primitive abandonment feelings. And the coming back together is actually kind of characterized by anger.

“I can’t believe you left me in the first place.”

And this happens even if it’s the narcissist who was the one leaving on the trip. Doesn’t matter who’s going. Its that you guys are parting ways for a little while. All of this is because abandonment is a very primitive experience.

It’s not an adult goodbye, ‘see you later’ or ‘call you when I get there’ and you feel confident that you will see them later. It’s the terror a baby feels because it doesn’t understand that their caregiver is something separate from them. They can’t understand what happens when that person leaves the room. It’s like a part of them goes. It’s primitive and the narcissistic person as an adult is obviously not in touch with this.

As a result, when somebody in an adult relationship with them is going away or they’re going away for hours or days. Maybe in some cases forever. Internally they experience it as a cataclysm.

Now people with antagonistic personalities are high inequality, called rejection sensitivity. The experience of rejection for them is emotionally unsettling. And they are often quite hyper reactive in the face of any kind of rejection. Even someone not wanting to come to their house for dinner.

This is sort of a lower grade level of abandonment fear may not be as big but that rejection sensitivity can explain some of the excessive reactivity that rises in any form of criticism. Again, not showing up you say ‘I can’t come to lunch today’.

They may interpret that as a really primal loss of love, or regard. Outwardly, despite all of this fragility, it’s a different story.

Remember, a person with a narcissistic personality does not like to look weak to other people. So they will deny the impact of these departures and are actually more likely to rage against you. Because you’re the person who has activated these uncomfortable feelings they don’t understand.

Then they are going to be wanting you to understand that. You may be so used to them being the controlling dominant one in their relationship, that you are surprised that they are becoming so fragile in the face of an upcoming or even possibly sort of threatening super separation to them that doesn’t even exist.

And when you try to become sweet and soothe them, they may actually become more contemptuous because in some ways, you’re sort of bringing their fragility to light.

Fears about abandonment and strong reactions against it are often considered to be a part of what is designated as what’s traditionally been thought of as a borderline personality style.

Abandonment and borderline personality are often viewed together. But the borderline and narcissistic personality styles are sort of closely related in terms of some of their origins.

So the abandonment crises of the narcissistic personality. Just theoretically, in light of the attachment stuff does make sense. We just aren’t expecting it with a narcissistic individual because we don’t see the same levels of sort of despair and instability that we might see with for example, more of a borderline style.

The issue of abandonment can also explain hoovering

You may be wondering if they’re afraid of abandonment, why would a narcissist leave and then try to pull you back and they might try to pull you back?

If you’re the one that left foot why?
Interestingly, narcissists will often leave relationships because sometimes when people are afraid of something, they try to get ahead of it. They try to abandon the other person first. It allows that person, the leaver to control the narrative, to control the fear.

It’s like knowing when the scary part of the movie is going to come rather than being startled by it. But after a person who tries to kind of get away or get ahead of the abandonment by pulling out themselves, there can be a primitive attempt to work this through. “Can I bring that person back?”

That disorganized approach of avoidance. “Go away” , “No, come back”.

That’s a style that often characterizes narcissistic relationships. And that’s where you often see the hoovering and you may fall for it.

Then the whole cycle starts again. Again, it’s like the child that aggravates the mom, the mom steps away and the child’s like I want to get mom back.

The fear of abandonment shared by many narcissist is often related to the fear of losing validation, narcissistic supply, control, and then there’s the activation of shame scripts around being rejected.

When you think of it that way, it may make more sense. But all of this adds to the roller coaster quality of any relationship with a narcissist.

So that begs the question, what’s the antidote to abandonment?

How do any of us keep our abandonment fears at bay? By feeling secure and safe in the world.

Now, how does a person get there if they didn’t have healthy attachment experiences earlier in life?

It comes down to therapy and doing the work, doing the work of self compassion, of self reflection of self awareness, and recognizing that emotions are not scary.

None of this comes easy to people with narcissistic personalities.

Some of you didn’t have early secure attachments, but you have been able to do the hard psychological work of helping yourself as an adult feel safer in the world. For a narcissistic individual, though, that is highly, highly unlikely.

There will always be this sense of threat and remember something I wrote, think of the narcissistic individual as somebody who feels a constant sense of threat from the world. They always feel like something is coming at them. Even when there’s nothing coming at them.

Part of it is sort of what they’re saying to themselves in their own head and abandonment is pretty high on that list of threats a person with a narcissistic personality style feels.

A great example of this would be some of you who’ve been in narcissistic marriages. You yourself would say I don’t want to get divorced. I don’t believe in divorce. I want to stay married. I have to stay married. We have kids together. Our money is like this. It’s my culture. It’s my religion. Whatever your reasons are, you don’t want to divorce.

You’re in a narcissistically abusive marriage and one day you finally can’t take it anymore. Throughout the relationship, something that is not unusual in a narcissistic marriage is that the narcissistic partner will threaten divorce.

Threatening divorce or threatening to leave a relationship and not doing it is actually a form of gaslighting. It’s a way to keep the other person on their toes so they fall in line with you. Because they think that “oh, if I don’t fall in line with them, they’re going to get up and leave”. It’s not an uncommon Gambit by a narcissist.

Well, here’s where it gets interesting. More often than you would know, the person in a narcissistically abusive marriage, especially the one who doesn’t want to get divorced. Will hear this threat over and over again.

One day you decide enough is enough, “You you want to divorce? Sounds great. I’ll give you one”, then the narcissist will often say that we can work on this.

So the abandonment script got activated, as long as they were running the narrative they were the one who could threaten divorce. Then they were in control of it, especially when they realize you didn’t want it.

But the day you give it. It is amazing how often the narcissist will say, What wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean?

That’s what I mean about that abandonment.

I hope this gives you some insight into some of the vulnerabilities inherent in this personality style. If it happens to you or happened to you, I’m hoping for clarity.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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