I didn’t know. You did. You tested me as soon as you met me. When you knew I didn’t see through you, you shamelessly sunk your teeth into my integrity. Your mask went on and you played me like a fiddle. I became the fuel supply for your narcissism. You thrived off my empathy as you told stories of how you were the victim in every relationship. You rationalized that you just hadn’t met the right one. You wanted to show your kids you are capable of having a normal relationship. Determined to fool me and everyone around you that you were now a family man. I called off your debt collectors. I organized your travel. I trained your dogs. I stabilized your home. You saw I was a fixer. You took advantage of my gifts. I didn’t know your covert narcissistic playbook existed. I knew of loyalty, responsibility, integrity, commitment, and dedication. I had never seen how faint the red flags of intentional deception could be. Neither had my family. You educated us all. I will continue to help others. You will not take my ability to show up with integrity. I will heal because you will not destroy the high values my family taught me.
Life In The Pickle Jar.
The Supply.
A Covert Narcissist looks for these in their supply.
Empathy
Loyalty
Self-Sacrificing
Optimistic
Why? They will prey on these gifts and turn them into weapons of destruction against their partner. These are the narcissists' ways to control their supply. This is how a narcissist controls their supply. They will masterfully leave a breadcrumb trail of good behavior, just enough, to let optimism and empathy make an excuse and to forgive their bad behavior. When a narcissist identifies a gift of self-sacrifice, they know it will allow them to slowly negotiate away boundaries, dreams, and goodwill from their supply. They begin tightening their grip and control over the supply. For the supply, the gift of loyalty towards a partner means they will stick it out with the narcissist regardless of their unacceptable behavior. This is the narcissist's guarantee for a constant feed of supply. Empathy brings out the good and beautiful in the world. A narcissist's need for control will consume and destroy any of the good and beauty in an attempt to fill the dark hole in their soul.
Like a parasite feeding from its host, the toxic energy exchange goes undetected. Once the illusion of trust is established, the narcissist will begin to dump their darkness and negative energy on their supply. Any reaction, positive, negative, or empathetic is all fuel for them. The narc gets their high by slowly gaining control of every aspect of their supply's life. Eventually, forcing them into submission. That submission fuels the narc, they see the supply as below them, it feeds the narc's sense of grandiosity and further emotionally drains and exhausts the supply.
The supply will clutch to their gifts, it is who they are and it is hard-wired into our nervous system. The supply doesn't recognize the narcissistic tactics, they often don't know such evil can exist. When the thought of leaving enters their mind, they realize the narc has control over every aspect of their lives - their finances, their family, their work, their sense of worth, and their reputation. Leaving feels impossible. The supply has trouble reconciling the reality of how the relationship began to how it is now. The supply starts questioning their memory and then the narc's intentions. The narc will then spew more lies, more false goodwill, and grandiosity or generosity to cover their tracks. Well played. The supply will excuse, forgive, reason, and buy into the deceit. Why? Because the pain of not buying in means they, too, are living a lie.
The supply begins to believe it's their own shortcomings that cause the narc to act in such ways. To a narc, self-reflection, and vulnerability shows weakness. A narc's inability to connect, and feel emotion and love requires them to feed off others' energy. It is an undetectable emotionally abusive cycle. Their supply will be left in a confused fog, with feelings of low self-esteem and exhaustion on every level. The supply will often start questioning, how did we get here?
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