A narcissistic relationship is a grand fiction built with lofty ideas and dopamine.
A narcissist enters every relationship ‘drugged up’ on grandiosity, exhibiting uncanny confidence and enthusiasm. The narcissist achieves this by idealising their target, dissociating from their repressed shadow, and compartmentalising reality in a specific way — only good vibes and superior concepts are allowed into this grandiosity-fuelled space.
Dazzled by the show, the target lowers their boundaries. They allow themselves to enjoy being adulated as perfect, and revels in being made the single focus of an ‘amazing’ person’s attention. Being idealised is intoxicating. Much like a drug, the idealisation experience gradually overwhelms the target’s senses, until their reality is consumed by fantasy.
As the weeks and months pass, the target invests all of their emotions, thoughts, actions, energy, resources, hopes and ambitions into the relationship, convinced that it is real. However, much like a drug-induced high, the inevitable comedown approaches. When it does, the narcissist’s shadow comes howling out, and the relationship takes a dark and toxic turn. And what does someone do when the drugs wear off? They seek out more of it. However, the more they take, the less effect it has.
Both narcissist and target struggle to resuscitate the fantasy, growing more desperate as the relationship devolves into anger, mistrust, resentment and abuse. When the end arrives, and the narcissist tosses the target away, the target realises that everything they gave to the relationship was for nothing.Finally, the target realises the most soul-crushing truth of all: They invested their mind, body, soul and being into a fiction.
Coming down from a night of drug-fuelled partying is rough. A months-or-years-long version of the same thing proves calamitous. The house of cards comes crashing down, except there is no ground to fall onto — only the abyss. A core part of the target’s psyche collapses with it, destabilising their mental balance.
Then the nightmare begins.
When a large chunk of your life proved not to be real, you are left questioning what reality actually is. When you’ve lowered your boundaries to zero and been left defenceless to a toxic person for long periods, the trauma seeps in like a poison which takes many years to dissipate. When you’ve had someone systematically reprogram your views and beliefs about the world and yourself, you are left with a virus in your mind which continues to torture you long after the relationship has ended.
‘Devastating’ is an understatement.