GETTING caught up in a relationship with a narcissistic partner can be a life-changing experience, often not a good one, but many people who are in relationships with narcissists remain stuck because they do not understand the type of person they are dealing with and the lasting damage that the relationship can have on them.

Many women just know that the man in their life drives them nuts because he can be the most loving person they ever met, but on the other hand, he is also the reason they are experiencing a high level of emotional turbulence, such as they have never experienced before.

The reason for the emotional turbulence is because they are in love with a narcissist.

Narcissistic partners have a “me, me” mentality, they come to take from you, not to give to you. Everything you receive from them comes with a selfish motive. The attention you receive does not come from a pure heart that loves you, it’s part of an overall strategy to get what they need from you. Last week I gave four typical behaviours to look out for to know if you are with a narcissistic partner, and this week here’s four more.

They get a high from your pain

Narcissists thrive on watching others in pain because of their actions. When a narcissistic man hurts you, the more you cry and wallow in self pity, the greater the high he gets. They don’t care about your tears or how badly they are hurting you, if they hug you while you’re crying it’s because they get a thrill from knowing that they have the power to put you through hell.

The narcissist revels in your pain because they don’t identify with empathy, they identify with power and control. They target people with a high level of empathy because they are easier to manipulate. It gives them a sense of great satisfaction and power to know that they can cause you pain. They get a thrill from squeezing your buttons and watching you fall apart.

A narcissistic person may have been through a lot of unhealed pain in their lives, which they are still angry at others for inflicting on them and they have not dealt with the pain, they masked it. So if you are soft hearted, a narcissistic man will take advantage of your good heart. He will have you pay for what someone else did to him.

Never holds himself accountable for anything

Once you fall in love with a man who is narcissistic, it wont take you long to realise that everything he does is always someone else’s fault. He does not take responsibility for the consequences of his actions.

If he is caught cheating or flirting with other women, it’s always their fault. He will say things like ‘She likes me, she didn’t stop trying to get me to kiss her, she wants a relationship with me’. It is never ‘I like her, I kissed her or I’m interested in a relationship with her’.

He is going to purposefully direct the blame to the other person because being seen as perfect is extremely important to him and Mr Perfect does not cheat nor does he flirt with other women.

If that man you love is narcissistic, he will never admit his faults or wrongs because he cannot handle criticism, it reminds him of the imperfect person he is, and that affects the Mr Nice Guy image.

From time to time, if you are observant, you may have seen signs of a quick temper, anger, deep insecurity and other red flags beneath the cool, likeable persona that he exudes.

This is because he has buried the negative parts of his personality. He is hiding his true self beneath the Mr Nice Guy image and he is doing his best to avoid any blotters to his name or any negative connotations, so whenever he does something wrong, he cannot see himself at fault. It has to be someone else who is blamed.

People’s perception of him is very important to him

If you’re in a relationship with a man who is narcissistic, quite likely you have already noticed that he is a people pleaser and he cares a lot about how people perceive him.

This is because he is displaying a carefully contrived false persona and he does not want any negatives attached to him that could threaten that image so he becomes the ‘nice guy’ whom everybody can rely on for help.

He will fix things for the old couple next door, he will help your friends and his friends with tasks around their house and he will drop what he is doing in a minute to go run an errand for a friend.

More than likely he has been through a lot of rejection in his life, possibly abuse too, and the trauma of these experiences caused him to want to please everybody to avoid being rejected again because he fears it. Because a narcissistic person wants to get away from the reality of their traumatic past, they will create a totally different persona and an image, which makes them feel better about themselves.

A man who is narcissistic craves attention and validation so people’s opinion of him matters a lot and that is why he will go the extra mile to please people, especially those in your circle, because it matters to him that they see him in a good light.

He will gaslight you

The moment you begin to discern who he is and try to hold him accountable, that seemingly caring and nice man will begin to gaslight you. He is going to make you think something is wrong with you for even suggesting that he has done something wrong or that something is wrong with him.

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which the person who has done something wrong tries to create confusion and doubt in your mind, to distort the reality of what happened and cause you to question your own judgement or sanity.

For instance, if he oversteps boundaries with other women and you express strong disapproval of his behaviour he will accuse you of having anger issues and wanting to control him or prevent him from having friends.

He will choose to gaslight you rather than admit he did you wrong because admitting wrong will strip him of the mask he is wearing and he cannot afford to be unmasked.

Marie Berbick is a motivational speaker, empowerment coach, spiritual mentor, and pastor of Marie Berbick Ministries Intl based in Queens, New York. Follow her on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok @Marie Berbick and on Facebook @RevMarie Berbick. Website: www.marieberbick.com, e-mail: marieberbick@gmail.com.