Whether it’s during a break-up or a silent treatment (a break-up in disguise), we always want to know what the narcissist is feeling? Does he miss me? Does he think about me? Does he know he made a mistake? Will he ever know that he made a mistake? We obsess about the question of how he (or she, of course) feels as if it would make a difference in the outcome…as if him knowing he made a mistake would offset all those times that he hurt us and we’d live happily ever after OR we’d feel vindicated and be able to move on. So, what is the answer? The answer is that a narcissist doesn’t really feel anything and that this alone must be enough to satisfy our curiosity. It has to help us “get” what this is all about. The truth is that if he missed you in the way that you missed him, he wouldn’t be gone.
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Look, one of things about narcissism is that every behavior connects seamlessly to the next. When we truly grasp this fact, the answers to our nagging questions fall into place. It’s a game of Connect-the-Dots narcissist-style. The fact that a narcissist doesn’t “miss” us like a normal person would miss someone they split up with is because he doesn’t miss anybody. The reason that he doesn’t miss anybody is because he sees every single person in his life on the same emotional level. The reason that he sees everyone on the same emotional level (meaning he doesn’t care about you anymore than he cares about her) is because his life is completely compartmentalized. The fact that he compartmentalizes everything is the reason that he’s so good at being a narcissist! What the narcissist says and what the narcissist does are two different things. Actions speak louder than words and don’t ever forget that.
No one wants to believe that the person that they’ve spent a good amount of time with doesn’t miss them when they’re apart. Even in the most dysfunctional of “normal” relationships, there is always a time after a break-up where both sides – no matter who was at fault – have to adjust. Narcissist, however, don’t need to adjust because they’ve been adjusted all along! How can he miss you when he never really considered himself a “boyfriend” or you his “girlfriend” to begin with? We agonize over this as if it’s the worst thing in the world when it’s just a simple fact. This is what I’m talking about when I say our suffering changes nothing because nothing changes for the narcissist. Most of us suffer greatly during every silence, disappearance, or final discard – a discard, I might add, which (intentionally) never seems to be final. And while we suffer, wondering how he’s feeling and what he’s doing, life for the narcissist just continues along. It’s just another day!
It took me many, many years to wrap my head around the fact that during all those silent treatments, while I hid under the covers like a scared mouse, my ex just went about his day. I simply didn’t want to believe that! But over time, it was the only thing that could possibly explain how he could just stroll back in days, weeks, and sometimes months later saying, “Hey babe, how are you? I don’t even remember why we broke up but I’m back now!” I mean, how do you respond to that? It’s not like I didn’t try to set him straight on what happened – I did. But for that, I’d get the typical narcissistic stare and maybe a shrug. And so I let it go and time dragged on. Every minute that we ruminate on how the narcissist feels about anything is yet another minute that we’re stuck in the cycle.
How the narcissist feels when we’re gone is the top question I’m asked during consultations and, although no one likes my answer, I eventually get them to change their perspective. It’s all about breaking the confusion of cognitive dissonance. I explain how I turned the final break-up around in my own mind by accepting that my ex didn’t care and seeing that as a good thing. The fact is that I’d much rather think that my ex wasn’t capable of loving or missing me to begin with and that’s how he was able to do what he did rather than think that he did love and miss me as much as I loved and missed him and yet he did all that anyway. Do you understand this? Coming to accept this eliminated the rumination of “How could he do this?”, “Why doesn’t he love me?”, “How? Why? What?”.
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To get over the narcissist and move on with our lives, we absolutely have to change our perspective and I am adamant about this when I counsel people. It’s really as simple as this: If you and I were looking at the same picture and the way that you see it makes your heart break over and over and the way that I see it puts me at a place of peace, wouldn’t you want to see it my way? Wouldn’t you want me to explain to you why it is that I see it that way so you can get to that same peaceful place? Granted, my explanation had better be good and this is why I try to explain it logically. You can get to a place of peace with this, my friends. Connect the dots and watch the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Once this process begins, recovery isn’t far behind.
I promise you:)
Hayyaan
April 16, 2019 at 10:11 amI have just recently discovered that I was dating a narcissist. At the age of 21 I fell in love head over heels and to the point where I was ready to do anything for him. Until I realised he wasn’t treating me well. I had gut feelings which every single one of them were true. I always kept forgiving for his bad behaviour always chasing him and trying my hardest to see the good in him. I still don’t hate him because I have so much love for him and my hearts too big to actually hate anyone. It kills to think that I have to leave him and I have no choice because he will never realise how his actions or behaviour impacts me. I be crying for days over him and he seems to be getting on with his days normal without even contacting me.
It breaks me that he’s my first love and that I was just a victim and to think he never really loved me. I’m finding it hard to let go because I love him but after reading everything and searching for many different answers it seems like there’s literally no cure or treatment and I will just be expecting for the impossible. Honestly as a victim I have started to see everyone as narcissist as bad as it sounds it has turned me away from people I have trust issues with everyone. And it continuously puts me in fear of losing him when he’s not even mine. I suffer from anxiety because of him and so much more. I have been through everything with him in such a short period of time and it hurts to think my love means nothing to him and at the end he will only remember me as a stain in his memory even though I wasn’t the bad person. I know I need to cut ties with him completely in order for me to move forward no matter how hard it is. I just don’t understand how the victim should actually heal?
I want to keep him in my life regardless because I learned he’s never going to change. It’s just the attachment that I want to still see him here and there but I know he doesn’t value me in his life enough to actually keep me around if it doesn’t benefit him.
Linda
March 5, 2018 at 6:38 pmHello Zari, so my ex boyfriend and i dated for 1 year and 6 months. He left me the first time with no explanations. He came back after like 3 months and wanted to try again and told me he was sorry and still loved me. I believed him and dated him but throughout some of I️t he was great and after awhile he moves back home which is three hours away from me. We were seriously wanting to get married and work on starting something new. After awhile he said he didn’t want kids anymore or to even get married ever.
He always treated me like crap and when i called him out on I️t he was like well i don’t know what i want we fight to much. But we only caught because he would be little me or ALWAYS put me last. Which was sad. He put his car before me and said he didn’t want to put the miles on me and his job and his wrestling literally eveyrthing. He Beever put me first. We faught the last day and he said i can talk to you whenever the heck i want to in a more worse way to say it. Then he told him if he loved me he should prove it actions speak louder than words like you said and i said that and he never called me or anything so i begged for his attention and wanted to get back with him cause i thought i did bad. But the next day he went to a party and told me it wasn’t working out. And never answred me as to why. So i feel like he will come back but i am confused here. Can you help me please?
jean
June 26, 2017 at 11:43 amI’m trying to rebuild myself from the final discard. It has all been so horribly wrong. My 4 year long story is the same as everyone else’s it seems. He broke up with me on our 4 year anniversary by angry phone call after only an hour earlier he told me he was going to talk to his other girlfriend and tell her that we were still together & he’d be over soon. I guess she changed his mind to drop me instead. I had so many plans made for our anniversary and then it was like a tidal wave hit me. It was crushing. Again. Giving me hope then taking it away.
The lying, the cruel games played, the constant serial cheating, me compromising over and over again and waiting and hoping for him to change. Well, I guess he has changed, but not with me. His new girlfriend demands monogamy and he cut me lose to give that to her. Hurts more that he does that for her. I should be happy he’s gone but it hurts no matter how much time passes and no matter how I try to rationalize this is for the better in my head. Just trying to get thru each day. and move forward. and try to heal my broken self.
Zari Ballard
July 10, 2017 at 1:59 amHi Jean,
I’ll of course tell you that a narcissist never changes but first let me ask how you could be planning an “anniversary” if you knew he had another girlfriend or that he was a serial cheater? If he had, instead, showed back up after supposedly “telling his girlfriend” would the anniversary celebration still been on? My point is that forget the anniversary…what on earth was there to celebrate? This guy is not going to change. Do you honestly believe that he is NOW suddenly going to be monogamous?? Of course he isn’t! The good news is that it’s not your problem anymore. He actually gave you the PERFECT anniversary present by NOT picking you, girl. Did you really want to spend your life chasing a serial cheater and pathological liar? There’s nothing to rationalize. Everything worked out perfectly. Now you are free to live a normal, narcissist-free life.
Zari xo
Jillian
January 23, 2017 at 9:42 amHi Zari,
I’m so glad I found your site and bought your book. I spent the last four years of my life degrading myself to someone who really didn’t deserve me or care about me as much as I thought. I met my N in 2012 and we instantly fell madly in obsessive love (one that I was sure was mutual). Within six months he pulled away bit by bit but always sling shooting back afterwards. A few months later, after he had already started to convince me I was mentally unwell, I moved across the country to live with him. Long story short, the next four years were him doing things that I knew weren’t right (staying out all night, texting female “friends”, picking fights and leaving on vacations without me). It started with him picking fights leading up to all of these things then saying that if I had acted differently he wouldn’t have gone places without me, or his silent treatment was in response to my attitudes. It always led to me feeling bad and apologizing and internalizing that I was in the wrong. One time, he actually spent a week in Vegas with a female friend claiming he needed it because I was causing him too much stress. I felt awful that I could do this to someone I loved and genuinely believed I was too much of a nag.
This past summer we moved and bought a house together, and to no surprise I did all of the work moving and spent all of my money furnishing a home that he was spending less and less time in. Over time he convinced me that my emotional outbursts (often in response to his actions IE STAYING OUT TILL 7 AM ON A WEEK NIGHT) were the reason he chose to spend so much time outside the house and that he would never leave me for another female but I was driving him away. He convinced me to see a psychiatrist who reluctantly but me on medication however verbalized concern for the environment that I was living in. He involved my parents and his to try to intervene saying that I was “unstable” and he was “scared” to be around me. Meanwhile, I was the most loving and supportive partner through his peter pan party ways and each time he lost a job (four in four years). He was a good provider while employed and made me feel like because of this, I had no right to question what he did. His favorite line is “I’m going to do what I want.” I am convinced in years to come it will be on his tomb stone.
After truly convincing me that I had a mental illness causing paranoia, anger and anxiety issues, he told me the only way it was going to work for us was if I drove back across the country to visit my family “and find myself” again. I was devastated! How could he be asking me to leave my home?! But I loved him so much that I convinced myself he was correct and I packed up very few of my belongings and drove 22 hours home. He was a bit standoffish but none the less still present. On the day I was set to drive back to our house, I found out through social media that he had moved a 21 year old female into our house and had begun a relationship with her!!!!! He’s 33!!!!!!!! After four years of promising me we would be getting married soon, having me be a part of his family and me adjusting to life in a new state, he left me without a second look back. Once I confronted him about it he told me I should have known and it wasn’t up to him to justify this to me. All over text!!!
I was devastated and am still trying to pick the pieces up. I have not gone home to get my belongings because I know I’m not mentally strong enough. He has refused to give them to my friends as well. Meanwhile, his 21 year old girlfriend and her friends have been harassing me on social media, sending me pictures of them wearing my clothing, holding my pets etc. I have also heard rumors of him turning to cocaine with his new found younger crew. I have not heard from him other than him ripping me apart via text and telling me my belongings are on their way….its been two months and I haven’t received even one box. I am at a point where I don’t make any contact, nor do I look at their things on social media. When I was, he was posting things like pictures of her at my favorite restaurants, sporting games we used to go to etc. Its awful.
I am dealing with the fact that after four years, he never cared. He never loved me. He changed me like a pair of shoes and isn’t doing the whole hoover back this (yet). He has let this young woman terrorize me and she has now let me know they are having my pets sent to a shelter because they want their own. I know Narcissists exist, but this is truly truly shocking.
I don’t know if I will ever be the same.
Zari Ballard
January 28, 2017 at 6:35 pmHi Jillian,
Is it possible for you to book a consult with me? Your story is horrible and there is so much I want to say. The girlfriend and her friends terrorizing you is so bizarre, I can not stand it. That is worse to me than than what HE did and is doing – although he certainly should be shot for that. What about your house??? Is your name on it? Don’t you have a family member or a friend who would be willing to make the trip back with you so that you can get your things? These people can not be allowed to get away with this. Forget about the fact that he never loved you – you can deal with that fact later! Right now you need to be MAD not SAD,…do you understand this?
If your name is on that house, you have LEGAL rights here. You could, for all intents and purposes, drive back, walk right in, and call the police to kick these people out. Is there a lawyer you can talk to? I truly believe that this guy is beyond narcissism…he is a sociopath…and this girl and all of her friends have become his flying monkeys. I would fly back, rent a U-Haul, and go to that house and take your stuff out of it – ALL OF IT. You have to change your perspective of this, girl. Who cares if he didn’t care! We’ve all been through that and, believe me, you WILL get over that. Right now, in my mind, it’s all about the house, your pets, and your belongings! You don’t have to accept any of this. To a narcissist, every day is all about what they can get away with and – man oh man – he is sure getting away with it. What a complete asshole!
Please consider booking a consultation so that I can give you a confidence boost to start getting things done. Enough is enough already. You must push past the sadness and get to the anger and fast. He’s counting on you NOT doing that and you need to catch him off guard. I am so sorry that you are going through this but there are things that you can do – there has to be!
Let me know how you are doing . I would be happy to speak with you so please keep that in mind…
Zari xo
Kristen
September 1, 2017 at 3:51 pmZari why are you asking dumb victim- blaming questions that are not helpful or supportive when you know the answers yourself from your own posts? She has a trauma bond that he built with her on purpose and a codependency of hope. Wow.
Zari Ballard
September 2, 2017 at 2:19 pmHi Kristen,
It seems to me that you are the only one asking a dumb question here. I assume you are referring to the post title since it’s the only question asked in the entire post. As a NAR Coach who speaks with people every day about their relationship with a narcissistic abuser, the question “Does the narcissist miss me?” is the most frequent question I get asked and therefore I wrote an article to answer it. Obviously I am not the one asking the question because if you spent any time at all on my website, you’d know that I clearly know the answer to that. The question itself, by the way, has nothing at all to do with victim-blaming…it is simply a question. If you knew the answer, all you had to do was move along to the next website for some more pertinent information to whatever it is you were searching for.
Thanks for sharing…
Zari
Esther Mary Chatterpaul
December 5, 2016 at 1:48 amHi Zari, going through the final discard right now, he cheated and got the woman pregnant and is marrying her cause he asked for our divorce decree…our 2 children are in the custody courts right now and he is enjoying all the drama because he looks like the loving dad fighting for his kids..I have been tempted to expose his disordered ass but I choose the higher road for my kids…I will be moving out of state soon and visitation back to him for the kids will be trying… I am getting to the only plausible perspective to have and that is this is a mental illness and should be treated as such, have no emotion and proceed with caution and safety measures in place for my kids well being…my hurt and pain are not about him anymore but of healing my childhood traumas and unmet needs. I feel guilty that my 2 innocent children are involved in this abusive manipulation-ship and we all are in counseling…some days I do ruminate about everything and I grieve the illusion….anger, pain, revenge, loss, all go through me too often for my sanity but I am trying and trying to keep moving forward and with self
reflection, self awareness and self development wee 3 ladies will continue to thrive. “No one leaves your live before your lesson has been learnt” Pema…
Zari Ballard
December 13, 2016 at 3:59 pmHi Esther,
I am so sorry for all that you are going through, girl! However, I am THRILLED that you will be leaving the state. As a parent, he will likely drop off eventually anyway…and this includes with the new woman. It’s all the same to a narc!
Listen, though, I have to say this: narcissism is NOT a mental illness. People with mental illnesses would give anything to be better and there are medications that can help to manage the symptoms. Neither apply to the atrocious evil narc who feels perfectly entitled to do what he does whenever he wants at anyone’s expense. So while narcissism is definitely a DISORDER, it is no where near a mental illness and to think that, even if it gives you peace, is to give him a free pass. A narcissist absolutely KNOWS right from wrong, he just doesn’t give a shit. And that’s a fact.
Stay strong for your children but know they will be perfectly fine without him in their lives. Make sure you get the financial support that he now OWES you and move as far away as possible. If he wants to see his children, make him work for it. Read my articles here on co-parenting because I went through it too and my son turned out awesome. Just be the great mom that you are and keep doing what you are doing.
I am going to go to my personal email right now and send you something so please look for it. I will send it to the email (tuscany….) that you used to submit your post. I think you can use a boost right now, my sister:)
Zari xo
Shelby
December 2, 2016 at 2:02 pmHonestly. You are speaking VOLUMES! I am so thankful that someone, YOU, cared enough to write for all of us suffering with someone who is a narcissist. Everything you have written speaks so clearly and is helping me. Now I won’t forget that there will be a low coming in soon and I hope to survive it. I will just keep reading your articles over and over again. God bless you!!
Zari Ballard
December 2, 2016 at 5:52 pmThanks, Shelby! I’m grateful to be able to help and I appreciate you!
Zari xo
tina barnes
November 7, 2016 at 11:31 amHi Zari,
It has taken me 9 months to come to grips that all of this was a game and nothing was real, except my feelings. I just wanted to thank you for all the great work you do. I have visited your site several times and after reading your articles it seems to always help me pick myself up and think that this really is a blessing that this relationship is over. Why would I want to continue something that made me so miserable? I never thought I would ever get to this point it’s been a long and confusing process. But I made it through to the other side!! Thank you again for all your words of wisdom!!! 🙂
Zari Ballard
November 7, 2016 at 4:52 pmHi Tina,
Your welcome and congrats to you for making it out alive! Please feel free to respond to comments and share your wisdom here with those here who need it. To me, recovery is a team effort and we have to stick together. The more survivors, the better!
Zari xo