Dating a Narcissist Feels Like.

It feels like you are far in the midst of chaos before you realize what is happening.

It feels like something you never could have imagine in being treated by someone. It feels like someone's fucked up idea of what love is.

It feels like then going up to your friends to prove they are going to treat you better than anyone else ever has but in actuality they will treat you way worse.

It feels like you kind of hate yourself because you somehow never saw it coming because if you never experience it before you never realize until you do.

It feels like chemistry instead of compatibility. It feels like carelessness instead of care. It feels like lack instead of love.

It feels like them telling you that they are like you. It feels like them making you think that you share the same values and ways of being.

It feels like the facade falling very quickly but somehow you are taken down with it.

It feels like screaming louder than you ever had into the void to only have your echo heard while the person who claims to have this grand love is right in front of you staring at you.

It feels like begging for the bare minimum.

It’s feels like begging for things. Begging for simple things. Begging for a shred love.

It feels like them always more concerned about their ego and how they look to others than caring about your feelings.

It feels like hearing them always tell you how much they love you but never proving that in anything other than words. It feels like you telling them that you don’t want to hear I love you anymore because it holds no value.

It feels like a million promises that you learn all too soon will never come true.

It feels like what you ask and want, it feels like growth you've challenged them to being always put on the back burner to their toxic wants and needs.

It feels like projection.

It looks like baseless assumptions and accusations of the disrespectful habits they will do to you but act like you can’t be trusted.

It feels like unwarranted insecurity towards you.

It feels like your loyalty is always in question even when you’ve given no reason for it to have any life.

It feels like don't want to change, it feels like they won't change. And that is what you have learned to make peace with, settling. It feels like it is on their terms.

It feels like them always saying that they want to find middle ground but you waiting alone forever there knowing they will never come.

It feels like at first a challenge, to fix and to help.

It feels like hope, at first. It feels like you just have to figure out each other. It feels like you can navigate this. It feels like you can grow. It feels like maybe you just need to be patient.

It feels like maybe you just need to hold space. It feels like maybe you need to show them the ways that others haven't so they can understand.

It feels like you just have to figure out your differences in communication styles, attachments, levels of growth/healing, and maturity but it feels like hope.

It feels like not understanding the severe lack of effort or trying from someone who claims to love them so much.

It feels like frustration. It feels like running into a wall over and over again and not understanding why because you know they aren't stupid. It feels like they claim to love you so much so why is this so hard.

It feels like constant back and forth.

It feels like every interaction with them, every conversation they are reactive instead of responsive. It feels like trying to communicate with someone openly and with awareness with someone who is closed off and doesn’t know how to.

It feels like passive aggressiveness.

It feels like them thinking that handling things by yourself escalating things is the best way to get their way even if you remain calm.

It feels like emotional unavailability. It feels like someone being present but emotionally absent. It feels like someone being involved but emotionally unengaged.

It feels like trying to communicating with someone incapable of articulating their own feelings and because they lack the maturity to understand your articulation of when you express your own.

It feels like immaturity. It feels like dismissive, avoidant.

It feels like fishing for reactions instead of proactively trying to avoid, address, and prevent conflict.

It feels like a lack of an ounce of accountability or responsibility.

It feels like they are hypersensitive to anything that they “perceive” as criticism even if it’s healthy.

It feels like they always get easily overwhelmed because they can’t emotionally regulate themselves.

It feels like extreme emotional meltdowns to try to manipulate you by guilt tripping you into giving in and feeling bad as if it is your fault.

It feels like they think that by smothering you in saying I love you will make everything better.

It feels like them proclaiming this grand love, the greatest love of their life for you more than anyone ever before but will never even live up to their own preconceived notions of grandeur.

It feels like one step forward, three steps back.

It feels like understanding that things do not happen overnight but that you just want to see an inch of progress, of trying.

It feels like not being prioritized.

It feels like the relationship not being important. It feels like the only thing they care about is themselves.

It’s feels like them making you think that you are on a pedestal to them but in reality the only person truly in their head was themselves

It feels like them being trying to make up for their lack of effort with all their “thoughts of you” on a daily basis or “bragging to everyone, always talking about you.”

It sounds like them making you believe you are their fairytale but being the hand that “accidentally, unintentionally” handed you the poison apple.

It feels like saying mean things that aren’t funny just to gaslight you and say “it’s a joke.”

It sounds like commitment issues. It feels like red flags that you thought you could grow past.

It feels like you’re way more invested than them but they will try to tell you with their words that they are.

It feels like words showing up instead of actions to the relationship.

It sounds like big words. It feels like little action.

It’s feels like a lot of sound that just makes a lot of noise.

It feels like commitment issues to everything in life except for what is convenient and able to be used.

It feels consuming. It feels draining. It feels obsessive. It feels unbalanced.

It feels like nothing you have ever experienced by someone who says they love you. It feels like emotional abuse.

It feels like an inevitable high and very low, low. It feels unstable. It feels inconsistent.

It feels like you are on the same football team together, the captain and the running back thinking you are on the same playbook but then they change their mind but expected you to be where they threw to.

It feels like it is somehow your responsibility to keep trying for someone who you know isn't trying for you.

It feels like being pushed to the emotional edge of the grand canyon and then them letting you fall over and over without even reaching out a hand to try to save you.

It feels like nothing you ever wanted and everything you know you don't deserve.

It feels like they start to turn you into a version of yourself who you aren't no matter how healthy you have become and how much inner peace you have worked so hard to find.

It feels emotionally unsafe, yet you still can't walk away because of so desperately wanting it to work.

It feels like being aware of how wrong their behavior is and what they are doing but still trying to make associate it as differences that can be fixed.

It feels like not being able to even fathom where the disconnect is because it is so insane.

It feels like no matter how many examples, how much you try to show them, or how many different ways you try to explain something it will never click and that is the most astonishing thing. It feels like you cannot wrap you head around why that is.

It feels like you keep seeing the patterns but wanting to believe that you can break the patterns. It feels like somehow you will be different for them, that maybe you can help them change until you realize you aren't.

It feels like you showing up at 1am in the morning to talk to them but they leave you at the gate upset on the phone for twenty minutes crying because they refuse to come see you and talk to you because they do not think they did anything wrong and that matters more than whatever you are feeling.

It feels like you just want to be proven wrong, for once.

It feels like selfishness in everything they do. It feels like a self-centered mentality. It feels like they act like they are single even though they aren't. It feels like they act like that because they do.

It feels like no empathy. It feels impulsive.

No consideration. No thoughtfulness. No thought of you period.

It feels impulsiveness. It feels like indecisiveness.

It feel like they need instant gratification. It feels like an all or nothing mentality with inability to problem solve and flexibility to pivot.

It feels like they intentionally always are overwhelming themselves so they can use the excuse of “too busy.”

It feels like they are “too busy” or “too tired” until it is something that they want.

It feels like there is always a double standard. It feels fake.

It feels like they are always putting on a show. It feels like they always need to be seen. It feels like they are incapable of just staying home. It feels like they are incapable of acting like mature.

It feels like they always have something to prove.

It feels like their ego always has a chip on their shoulder. It feels like they always need to one up you. It feels like they can't accept help but then they also won't ask. It feels like they can't take a compliment.

It feels like putting off an air of hyper-independence.

It feels like they try to act humble but have their arrogance about the way they talk. It feels like a superiority complex they try to disguise as confidence.

It feels like they think that they have a victim complex masked as a hero.

It feels like overly preoccupied and obsessed with reputation and image.

It looks like being more concerned with looking like a good person than being one at least to try to portray this character as different than they actually are to those closest.

It looks like saying and doing things to seem a certain way but in actuality it is all a facade.

It feels like they act like a victim but have this sense of entitlement because of their self-pitying mentality.

It feels like the only thing that registers with them as wrong is cheating so if they aren’t going that they “aren’t doing anything wrong.”

It feels like they say without ever thinking. It feels like acting without thinking.

It feels like they always miss the point because they don't have the awareness to begin to understand past themselves. 

It feels like they treat their friends better than you. 

It feels like them paying for a million little random things but never anything of value or thought. Just a handful of random things from a gas station. Just a late night trip to McDonald’s because you drank too much even when you kept saying you wanted to go home. 

It feels like they try to make you feel like you asked them for the whole damn galaxy but all you ever wanted was for them to act like you star because that was all you ever were supposed to be together, stars shining together in a galaxy.

You are always "coming at them." You are always "attacking them." You are always "too much." It feels like gaslighting. It feels like petty shit when you call out their gaslighting, when you catch them in the act.

It feels like they are always the victim. 

It feels like them tell you how being called "too much" is a trigger for them but then that is what they call you even though no matter how far you are pushed you never call them that.

It feels like you are somehow always the problem.

It feels like your feelings are always wrong for reacting to something they do that is disrespectful to you or the relationship. It feels like instead of taking the time to understand why you felt that way that it is all on you. It feels like you are alone.

It feels like explaining your pain to someone who is going to weaponize it against you.

It feels like the opposite of everything that you know you are supposed to feel.

It feels like being asked to forgive and forget over and over again.

It feels like them always wanting things to just be easy without wanting to do the work. It feels like wanting to go back to the beginning when you didn't have set any boundaries or push back.

It feels like isolation. It feels like chaos.

It feels like they want to be your whole world and keep everything between you. It feels like they only ever want others to see the good parts. It feels like they want to keep those close to you far from you emotionally when they can't themselves provide you that safety. 

It feels like they want to be your sun instead of understanding that a healthy relationship is never about being each other's suns.

It feels like everything they say is to try to manipulate you because you both know they mean the opposite.

It feels possessive. It feels unsafe

It feels like jealousy. It feels like obsession. It feels overwhelming. It feels like too much.

It feels like the person you are supposed to trust being the person you trust the least. 

It feels like the only things that you can trust them to do is not cheat and that's barely the bare minimum.

It feel like no matter how hard you try to show them how to communicate in healthy ways and process their feelings that they always choose to default back to their toxic ways.

It feels like you trying to handle conflict in healthy ways and them being unable to handle their emotions so they explode on you. It sounds like crying. It sounds like yelling. It sounds like unnecessary dramatics. It sounds like a tantrum.

It feels like being in a constant state of anxiety when you have never had any issues with anxiety. 

It feels like any conversation about feelings, wants, and needs turns into conflict because they do not know how to care about someone except themselves. It feels like rejection of your feelings.

It feels like being with someone so unhealthy and out of touch with themselves that things that never should be problems always become a problem.

It feels like constantly having your feelings dismissed over and over again. 

It feels like constant conflict instead of conversation because they are incapable of having an ounce of maturity.

It feels like conflict is just who they are and they are too unhealthy to begin to even see that.

It feels like deflection rather than reflection.

It feels like you being emotionally vulnerable only to hear that you're being heard but then stabbed over and over again by actions that clearly show that they didn't, or maybe it was they just didn't care.

It feels like constant excuses, justifications, and exceptions.

It feels like a lot of tiny white lies that add up. It feels like the universe tried to show me what you were when our story started at the same place that would be all you ever turned out to be, a white lie.

It feels like learning to hate the word intention. 

It reminds you of all the times they used it as a cop out for all of the shitty decisions they made that hurt you but that they didn't "mean to" over and over again. It reminds you of how someone can try to gaslight you into thinking that if their intentions are pure what actually happened didn't matter, that you feeling didn't matter. Although, you were strong enough to know better.

It feels like hearing "I'm sorry that you feel that way" instead of hearing "I am sorry that I made you feel that way."

It feels like being told that "you're fine" and to "just stop." It feels like always speaking to someone in a way that is loving and mindful of how your words might affect their feelings but always getting the opposite in return.

It feels like someone justifying them being rude instead of being mindful of their words with being "direct."

It feels like you have already hit so many breaking points that by the time you decide to end it, you just feel free like you’ve unloaded so much weight. You feel lighter.

It feels like you have set boundary after boundary that have been blown past. It feels like they have absolutely no concept of what a boundary is or what respecting one looks like.

It feels like they think that they are too precious to lose. It feels like they think you won't walk away. It feels like they do not value you, appreciate you. It feels like they never took you serious and that was always the issue. 

It feels like trying to fix and love someone who is self-destructive.

It feels like trying to evaluate if you are truly compatible or not but all they see it as is you questioning if they are "a good person" or have "a good heart" and they will never understand the difference.

It feels like you get no value but bring all the value. It feels like whenever you ask them for value that is when there is conflict.

It feels like disrespect because it is. It feels like not love because it isn't.

It feels like them saying they definitely are not a narcissist even though you never even call them one... 

It feels like you could hold a mirror to their face and they still would never be able to see what is wrong or truly see themselves because they have created such a skewed perception of how they see themselves and how they see others as a defense mechanism which prevents them from ever seeing the reality of how they are and how their actions can affect others.

It feels like you try to be open with someone who won't be open with themselves. 

It feels like you try to share introspection with someone who is afraid of being introspective with themselves. It feels like you're trying to ask for emotional maturity from someone who doesn't even know where to start.

It feels like they have no idea how to love someone other than themselves.

It feels like they like the idea of you. It feels like they like the idea of love. It feels like they have no idea how to love someone like you. 

It feels like you keep trying to emotionally connect with someone who is emotionally disconnected with themselves and lack the awareness that would give them the capacity to do so.

It feels like you keep trying to build a real connection with someone who isn't real with themselves.

It feels like selfishness instead of selflessness.

It feels like lack of reciprocity because it always was. It feels like you were used because you were. It feels like you poured into a cup that never poured into yours.

It feels like asking someone to change not who they are but how they are when they never will. It feels like no matter what you do, you have to accept that.

It feels like sacrifice. It feels like settling. It feels like caring for someone who doesn't truly care for you. 

It feels like if they wanted to they would, period.

It feels like fighting for someone who isn't fighting for you.

It feels like what you gave was love. It feels like what they gave wasn't.

It feels like you deserve more and you do.

It feels like a mind fuck.