Red Flags, My Favorite Flower

It took me a long time to sort my introverted narcissist out for the monster he is. Of course, part of that was my own denial. I loved him. I didn’t want to believe it. Besides, we had that one good day that one time five weeks ago. Isn’t that worth fighting for?! Sigh. Back then, red flags were my favorite flower, and he showered me in them.

Had I known better, I’d have been on the lookout for these signs you’re dealing with a narcissist (or person with narcissistic traits).

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is usually the first way to tell the thing, as long as you can recognize it for what it is. I didn’t. I’d never had anyone do that to me before, so I didn’t know what it looked like. This is pretty close, though:

Narcissists will use gaslighting to keep you off balance and maintain control of the relationship. You’ll get told that you’re crazy, that you’re making things up. You’re not going to get the information you want (likely because it would jeopardize their scheming). Everything you question will be reframed as if you’re the one who’s wrong. At some point, you’ll be led to believe that your way of thinking and living isn’t “normal,” and so much more, to the point that it’ll slowly kill your ability to trust yourself or your world.

Feeling crazy these days? Feeling like you can’t function in normal society without running it past your partner for approval? Don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground anymore? Guess what, sugar? Gaslighting.

Projection

Wooo, chile. This one’s my FAVORITE. Everything, and I mean everything you do, say, or think, is wrong. They’re always right, always smarter, always more socially aware, always. better. than. you. Always. Call them on their shit? Lawd. Get ready for a knock-down, drag-out brawl. Your life probably feels like endless double standards (since you’re socially inept and can’t be trusted to function but they have it all sorted).

Most everything they accuse you of is going to be something they’re doing. Their paranoia and insecurity will ooze out all over you like a leaking alley dumpster.

And nothing is ever their fault. It’s always some reaction to this horrific thing you did because you’re so dumb/abnormal/stupid/untruthful/attention-seeking/etc. They will accuse you of doing the crappy things they’re doing and make up ridiculous “evidence” to try and justify their accusations. They’ll lie straight to your damn face when you call them out. Red flag alert! Run like hell now. Don’t even look for more proof.

Word Salad and Other Forms of Mindfuckery

I’mma say this… just be ready to always wonder what the hell is going on. This has an effect similar to gaslighting. You’re going to try and discuss a matter with your narc, and they’re going to dance all around the thing that’s not the thing, and the next thing you know, you’re tangled up in a ball of bullshit so thick you can’t breathe. You won’t even know what the hell you’re actually talking about anymore because there’s no real conversation happening.

Disagree with them? Hold on tight, ’cause here comes everything you ever shared about any part of your life as a means to explain why you can’t be trusted to exist in the world without supervision. They love to weaponize information. Keep yours close.

Narcissists are some of the first people to rant about how much they hate drama, but they’re almost always the ones creating it. They feed off it. Things going nicely? A narc’s gonna jack it smooth up. For fun. Watch out for blanket statements and accusations that sabotage your attempts to wade through the sewage spilling from their faces.

Putting Words in Your Mouth

Narcs have all the answers. Just ask ’em. They’ll tell you so. They know what you’re doing wrong and how you should fix it, particularly if they’re somehow offended or their control’s been threatened. So oftentimes, when you call them out on something that bugs you — my personal favorite is the double standard — you’ll find the tables turned on you and a bunch of sweeping generalizations being made to excuse away the offense. No consideration will be given to the thoughtfulness you’ve put in or the points you’re making. And rest assured, no responsibility will be taken by them. Your thoughts/opinions/feelings will be used against you to make you feel guilty or shameful for having even mentioned it in the first place. How dare you…

For extra enjoyment, this can also manifest as you making choices based on hearing their voice in your head. I was so “wrong” all the time, so troubled and so incapable, that I quite often, and with great fear and paranoia, asked myself, “What would he do?” or “What would he want me to do?” in the given situation.

Changing the Rules All the Damn Time

Holy shit, y’all. This one is so frustrating. Nothing was ever good enough. One expectation would be met, but wait — that wasn’t what I should have been striving for or I didn’t do it fast enough or his way enough or something enough. Lemme just tell you this. It’s a moving target. You’ll never hit it. You’ll be repeatedly criticized for sucking at even trying to hit it to the point that your self-worth is for shite and you don’t believe that you’re capable of breathing without step-by-step illustrated instructions.

You’ll jump through all the hoops trying to make them happy, appease the gods. The rules will change and you’ll roll with it trying to do right by them — after all, you’re completely incapable of adulting and have no real understanding of the ways of the world and need them to constantly tell you what’s going on, remember? — but you’ll always “fail.” They’ll make sure of it because they’ve got to create that drama they claim to hate and keep you unstable in the process. They’ve got to be able to keep the upper hand.

Bait and Switch

Wanna call them out for something? Good luck!! Next thing you know, you’ll have a list of every offensive thing you’ve ever done in the history of evers thrown back in your face. Most of the time, one thing had nothing to do with the other. This is avoidance of responsibility and deflection. My favorite was when my narc would literally tell me, “We’re not talking about that right now” when I’d call him out on something, even if it was a related matter or part of why we were in the present situation. Infuriating.

Alllllll the Threats

Wanna challenge them? That’s not going to work out for their fragile little egos. And guess what it’s going to get you? Punished. Literally. I remember sitting on the front stoop of my building one night on the phone with my narc, bawling my eyes out, begging him to follow through. I flat-out got told that wasn’t happening because I was being punished.

Seriously.

And y’all… my dumb ass STILL stayed another couple years hoping for changed behavior. I mean, he kept saying sorry and all. Surely it was just around the corner? /eyeroll So yeah… they’re great at making unreasonable demands and then getting pissed off at you when you can’t meet them. Get ready to “pay for it” whenever you challenge them. It got to the place where I was so paranoid to be out in the world for fear that I’d be punished for not meeting some moving target expectation I didn’t even know existed, which, of course, I’d been convinced was because I wasn’t “normal” (using my childhood trauma against me) and I was suffering from a (non-existent) addiction and couldn’t control myself. On that note…

Name-Calling

This one, man. I have a running list of insults I had spit in my face, sometimes with enough force that I was literally spit on. When a narc feels cornered from being called out, the “lowest of the low” of them devolve into a narcissistic rage. I promise you you’ve never seen a more deranged version of anger than a narc who’s trying to restore their control over you.

I’ve been called all kinds of things — his faves were whore, bitch, piece of shit, and liar. One of my particular favorite conversations (read, he yelled at me the whole time) was him telling me I was lying because something I’d done didn’t make sense to him. Bish… Einstein’s Theory of Relativity doesn’t make sense to me but that doesn’t make it less true!

I’ve been called stupid and not normal and had my character attacked when he couldn’t make a valid point in the actual discussion. No one who actually gives a crap about you is going to resort to repeated name-calling. Narc or not — get out of that mess.

Destroys You

This one, y’all. FFS. You know how when you start dating a person and they love all these things about you in the beginning only to slowly get you to change those things over time just to fall out of love with you because you’re “not the person they met”?

No kidding, dude. Wonder where the hell she went??

Your goals are stupid. Your time isn’t valued. Make plans? They’re irrelevant (and they’ll likely be ruined last minute). Every trip I planned with my narc he backed out on me, sometimes on the day of, leaving me with the bill. Sometimes it was blamed on something I’d supposedly done and him bailing was my punishment. Sometimes it’d be something he’d drag up from months ago. Pretty sure half the cancellations of trips and holidays he ended up spending with someone else. Anyway. Point is that you get paranoid that you’re constantly going to do something to displease your narc and then these types of things are going to be the consequence.

You’ll find yourself isolated from your tribe. Every person you came into the relationship with will, over time, have some kind of flaw identified that’s a bad influence on you or, in my case, a “threat” to my therapy goals. Really, it boils down to their attempt to get rid of anything and anyone that might endanger the control they’ve attained over you. You will always walk on eggshells and your nerves will always be shot. Your soul will know a level of tired you didn’t think was possible.

Lies about You — Stalks You

This one’s fun, too. Not stalking like you might think. More like lurking through all your shit with the goal of trying to expose you in a lie or gather information to use against you later. They’ll talk crap about you to people to try and make themselves look like the “good guy” or the not-crazy one. I found out recently that while I was with mine, he was actively talking crap about me while telling me not to talk to others about us because it wasn’t their business. It’s so laughable now, but damn it was NOT funny then. Nice to know people are learning the truth about me, though.

The fun part was defending myself against false accusations from a man who was actually doing the things he was accusing me of. Momma always said you point one finger out, you’ve got three coming back at’cha. Psych 101 rears its ugly head again.

Love-Bombing

And they are great at this… In the beginning, you’re the bee’s knees. They will invest all their time and effort into making sure you know just how much they love and adore you, how much they want to do life with you, how there’s never been anyone like you, how you’ve got some sort of connection they can’t explain, that no one’s ever been like you and all the ones before you sucked. (Caution: You’ll play this “crazy ex” role for the next victim later.) Then you’re hooked.

From there, they start dissecting everything you do, piece by piece, until they’ve broken down everything about you they once praised you for. Please watch out for this one. It feels great in the beginning, especially for empaths and codependency cases, but it’s all crap. They’re naturally drawn to our big hearts because they know we’re going to let ’em get away with that shit for a hot minute. Codependents with big hearts are gonna let it happen for a looong minute.

Defensiveness

Sweet, 8lb. baby Jesus. Can’t even get a word out without them getting defensive or, more fun, spinning it around and projecting their behavior/choices onto you. Don’t let them spin things on you so hard they make you question your sanity. You’re not crazy.

You’ll see this play out when they try and tell you how great or trustworthy they are, too. Proactive defensiveness. They wanna get you before you even question what just happened.

Even if you’re duped, you’ll see it start to crumble in time. It takes a LOT of energy to genuinely care about others. It takes even more to pretend you care about others. While they will drain you of your life force trying to maintain, they can’t. Pay attention to their actions, not their words. People will always show you who they are. Believe them. And then believe in yourself to know that you’re right.

Triangulation

Ooof. This one’s just mean. This is where a third party somehow gets brought into the mix and it all goes to hell. With mine, I had multiple doses of this. There was another woman and I was always in competition with her, left to feel unchosen, insecure, etc. He gaslighted his way back from that a few times with both of us. There was the fun triangle with the family I was never allowed to associate with. Big fan of all the comparisons to others he made randomly to show me how horrible a person I was. And then there’s the folks who got dragged in to “validate” the things he was on about. (“People talk, you know.”) It never stopped.

The whole point of them doing this is to leave you screwed up about yourself. You start comparing yourself to everyone, doubting yourself, losing trust in your ability to discern the world around you, and eventually, you end up in a ball cowering in the corner. Paranoia is your best friend.

Picking Fights

A narc has to keep you feeling like shit about yourself or the game doesn’t work. So sometimes, they’ll pick fights with you, even if just little ones. Usually, they blow up spectacularly. The bigger the better, even. I can’t tell you how many times this happened to me over the three-ish years we were together. I’m usually a really chill person, and while I’ve certainly disagreed with someone, I never got into any actual fights with any of my exes before. This was next-level, and I just wasn’t ready.

It usually always starts with some kind of comment that’s supposed to be rational (but usually isn’t) and then you start to have what YOU think is an innocent conversation about a thing when BAM! All of a sudden, you’re on the defensive and you’re confused as to what the hell just happened. Now you’re all worked up from their manufactured nonsense, questioning reality because nothing makes any sense anymore.

After the little disagreements, I usually got a small apology that turned out to mean nothing. After the follow-you-sobbing-and-barefoot-through-downtown-Memphis-begging-you-to-talk-to-me-like-a-human ones, I got a hand in my chest and a door slammed in my face. My walk of shame back home on that crowded Saturday night ended in a situation where an old friend saw me and took care of me looking a hot wreck. I “paid for” that consultation until the end, over a year later. He canceled a beach trip with me because he just couldn’t be with someone who’d act like that. (Story below — stay tuned!)

And I can still see that malicious, delighted smirk on his face as he nodded his little “you like that?” nod at me that night in my courtyard where his words hurt me so badly that I was visibly rocked. Only a monster does that to someone.

Boundaries and Boomerangs

You’re gonna be tested like you’ve never been tested here. Problem is that you can’t afford to fail but inevitably you will. I’m a giver, and this was the most epic fail of my life.

Narcs push. They test you to see just what you’ll believe and what they can get away with. You let ’em because you love ’em, right? Well… just that one time. Then it’s another. Then it’s even worse than the first two times. Now it’s a part of your routine. Keep your boundaries established by having consequences for them being disrespected, even if one of those consequences is walking away.

When you do, though, be ready for the boomerang. When you finally stand up for yourself and leave the asshole, here come the apologies and promises of change and the love-bombing. Double down on those boundaries/consequences. “Sorry changes behavior,” I used to always respond to my narc. Foolish of me to think that reminding him of that for so long was actually going to inspire him to be genuine. I’m right, though. A true apology will be demonstrated.

Verbally Berates You; Says It’s a Joke

Researching more about this trait just triggered me up one side and down another. Shook, I tell you. Narcs love taking cracks at you for their amusement. You find yourself in a place where something was said and it makes you feel like crap but you’re told you can’t take a joke or that you’re too sensitive. I’mma just leave this right here:

The contemptuous smirk and sadistic gleam in their eyes gives it away, however – like a predator that plays with its food, a toxic person gains pleasure from hurting you and being able to get away with it. After all, it’s just a joke, right? Wrong. It’s a way to gaslight you into thinking their abuse is a joke – a way to divert from their cruelty and onto your perceived sensitivity. It is important that when this happens, you stand up for yourself and make it clear that you won’t tolerate this type of behavior. ~ Thought Catalog (Emphasis mine.)

That f’n smirk. That sadistic gleam. You won’t ever forget what those look like if you get hit with them.

Sarcasm, Condescension, and Patronization

The trifecta. Constantly belittled. Constantly worn down. Even the should-sound-complimentary stuff like, “Jennifer, you’re not this stupid…” is nothing more than manipulation. And if the sarcasm stings, then it’s your fault for having feelings. You’re made to feel the sting because you should feel bad for that thing you said/did.

You’ll be treated like a child, talked down to and parented so thoroughly and cruelly that you become hyper-vigilant as not to disappoint. You’ll walk on eggshells and you’ll be easy to shut up because you’ll eventually just quit talking. Don’t do this. Scream. Call these people out. You are not a pawn.

Shaming

They’ll either literally say that you should feel shame over a thing or treat you in such a fashion that they create shame around the situation. My narc was a tad more passive-aggressive about his shaming than just outright saying a thing.

When I did something that tweaked his insecurities or when he felt I’d disobeyed the rules he set (yes, literally, there were so many rules), then I was absolutely made to feel bad about it. Just another one of the many things he used against me to destroy my self-worth. Sometimes, too, he’d even contradict himself, depending on the results he wanted from me.

Good day in therapy? Real growth happening?

Him: “Jennifer, you’re not going to ‘fix’ yourself overnight. It doesn’t work like that. It takes time.”

I have what he considers a “relapse” (his word) in the real world?

Him: “Why are you still like this? You should be progressing faster. What’s wrong with you? You’re not this stupid.”

You never win…

Mmmhmmm. It sucked. Sadly, there was so much worse that repeating that story here doesn’t even faze me. The hardest thing about dealing with this is that you never know what the hell to do because you’re always wrong. Here’s where I got hit with all the childhood trauma I’d shared with him, too. Narcs pick at your wounds, not clean them.

CONTROL

Saving the best for last. Sure hope you made it this far with me because FFS, narcs love their control. Every. F’n. Aspect. Of. My. Life. was subject to his approval. How’d he do it? Manipulated the shit out of my big heart and mental health journey.

This guy, y’all… I had rules for where I could go, when I could go there, who I could be with. There was rules about how much wine I could have in my own home and how much I could take outside with me if I wanted to sit out in my building’s courtyard where there would be other people around. Don’t even think about talking to a man. Not even my guy friends from before him were acceptable. He had reasons why all of them were threats. Ridiculous.

“I hate that we’re here like this, but it’s the only way…”

Kind of a tangent, but my personal favorite example was the follow-you-sobbing-and-barefoot-through-downtown-Memphis-begging-you-to-talk-to-me-like-a-human night. Literally. I’d been standing in front of my door trying to stop him from leaving my place one night because he just kept running from every real conversation I needed him to have with me. (I understand why, now, but was clueless then.) He’s got about 60lbs on me. I’m not an obstacle. He picks me up and sets me aside. My flip flops fall off in the shuffle somewhere.

He hits the elevator. I follow him. There’s a very awkward five-floor ride down. I follow him out into the alley and the entire three-block-plus walk to his place down the street, begging him to talk to me. Crying. Trembling. It’s Saturday night. People are everywhere. He hates a public scene. Makes him look bad. Good. He should look bad.

Follow him up three flights of stairs to his floor, make it through the external door and stand waiting, still sobbing, while he hurriedly unlocks his apartment door, simultaneously opens it, steps inside, and puts his hand in my chest, arm outstretched, and then he screams at me and slams the door in my face.

I love you, too, baby.

I’m crushed. I’m still barefoot. Downtown is gross. My tetanus isn’t current. I have to walk home now. I can’t even imagine what I must have looked like to the party crowd that night. When I make it in front of The Orpheum, I hear my name being called out. A high school buddy of mine was there in front of a limo out on a guys night, and he’d taken one look at me and was immediately in help mode.

I try to tell him what’s just happened.

“Where are your shoes??”

More story. I’m sobbing.

“Lemme text my wife…”

I love her. Their wedding was so beautiful. Geez, these lights are really bright. I need a drink.

“Hey, y’all. Go ahead on without me. I’m going to make sure Jennifer’s okay.”

That was a nice limo you just sent off. I wasn’t trying to take you away. Thank you for being my friend. Thank your wife for me. She’s awesome.

“You look like you need a drink.”

Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I do.

Shoes, phone, debit card and ID, smokes… All the things and we head to Bardog. He gets calamari to share and we have some drinks and we tell old stories and laugh and I calm down and then he walks me back to my building to make sure I’m home okay. His phone’s dead, so he can’t call an Uber. I bring him up to charge, sober up a little, finish our conversation.

The whole time, my narc’s been blowing me up about where I’m at and what I’m doing. Like he actually gave a shit when he slammed the door in my face. I told him, though. Why not? I wanted to talk to him still, and I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Boy was I mistaken!! Next thing I know he’s letting himself into my apartment about 230am with the key I gave him and serving my buddy a beer from my fridge.

Phone’s got enough charge at this point, of course, and there’s no more conversing to be done now that the narc’s on a sarcastic rampage taking control of a situation he believed was most certainly going sideways — “you’re not this stupid, Jennifer!” I should’ve been grateful that he showed up and saved me from what was apparently the inevitable!

Apparently two old friends of the opposite sex can’t have a conversation together without it leading to sex. Who knew? I’ve apparently been conversing wrong all my life…

(Someone really needs to invent a font for sarcasm.)

Then I got told that he’d even considered sitting outside my door just to be there when my friend walked out all post-coital. Nothing I said in an attempt to explain the evening was considered truth or rational. Didn’t matter what my intentions were (or the fact that my friend is both happily married and not a rapist). They don’t protect me from an “inevitable” thing.

Aight…

I paid for that night for the next year and some change. It came back up as the reason for so much cruelty from him. I’d earned that cruel treatment because I couldn’t stop being “addicted to male attention.” (Where’s that font…?)

That wasn’t the end of the control spree, though.

My narc was so convinced that I’d done something with my high school friend that he forbade me to talk to him or his wife, and then he created a fake email account as the wife, emailed himself something, screenshot his inbox to show me the first line of the email he’d written to himself as her, asked me before he opened it if there was anything I wanted to tell him about that night…

In that moment, I haven’t sorted that it’s all bullshit. I just know that I didn’t do anything wrong and if there is any concern that she has, that’s all it’s going to be. Nothing happened. There was nothing to report. Sad part is that I’m trained at this point. My heart’s racing, and I’m starting to panic. I know damn well there was nothing wrong with that situation, but the gaslighting and the trauma kick in, and all I can do is rack my brain in case I’ve missed something.

Never again. This ass…

This man had an explicit rule that he would never show me his phone (but he had the pass code to mine), and yet he just screenshot his inbox for me? Funny, too, that it was sent to a professional email he had. I asked him how she’d have that email address. “Off my business Facebook page, I guess.”

Light bulb.

You know what man? Fuck you. I’m in the checkout line at Kroger. G’on and open the damn thing. I didn’t do anything wrong.

“No… I think I’m going to wait. I’m not sure that I want to know what’s inside.”

Mmm hmm. Bet. So full of shit.

Honestly, I’m really glad that night happened. I’m glad he made up the email nonsense, which of course was dropped shortly thereafter because it was, indeed, the nothing I’d said it was, a friend helping a friend and a loving spouse who trusted her husband to be doing what he said he was doing. Because this happened, I started being more aware of the ways that he’d been manipulating me, things I’d seen all along but lied to myself about because I was so in love and I wanted so badly to make him happy and have the life he said he wanted, too.

I thought back to all the things that I’d been through with him up to that point and realized how so much of it was garbage like this. I think that event might have been the beginning of my awakening to what he was capable of and the lengths he’d go to control me. Despite the revelation, I stayed for more than another year. But my eyes were open, and every day that he turned a friendly conversation into an argument or reason to call me names, every shitty thing he said to me about how horrible a person I was, I got a little bit wiser and a little bit stronger and a little bit more able to walk away. Greatest feeling I’ve ever felt regarding him? Apathy.

Don’t be controlled, loves. Partners, not parents.

(Adapted from Thought Catalog). Featured Photo by Zachary Keimig on Unsplash.