Love and The Narcissist: Can They Feel It?

After the hell that a narcissistic relationship has put you through, you may be asking yourself whether any of it was real.“Did they ever really love me, or was it all a lie?”

The answer to that question, is determined by your definition of “love”.

Love Bombing: A Facade of Love

Narcissistic people don’t define “love” the same way non-narcissistic people do. However, this isn’t obvious early on in a relationship, because love bombing looks and feels a lot like love!

Love bombing is a manipulation tactic used to emotionally influence a person, in order to abuse them later. The goal is to develop an intense connection as quickly as possible. It’s called love bombing because the narcissistic person has identified you as a target, and uses gestures and proclamations of love to gain emotional leverage over you.

They overwhelm you with beautiful words and sweet gestures that no one has ever done for you before. They paint you so beautifully in the beginning, and it creates a dependency on them. Since no one has ever seen you in this way or treated you this well before, you need them to keep that version of you alive.

This intense focus initially feels great, because you’ve never felt more special, unique, desired, or pursued before; and you’re honestly afraid to lose it. Love bombing turns the narcissistic person into a drug that gives you a high unlike anyone else you’ve ever met. You get addicted to the way they make you feel. However, once they’ve got you hooked, they’ve convinced you to fully surrender yourself to them.

Unfortunately, love bombing doesn’t last long. It’s only the beginning of a greater cycle of abuse. The next stage is devaluing, which doesn’t look or feel anything like love. That romantic, “sweetly obsessive” person you met begins to show a darker side. All of the sudden, you’re never good enough. That beautiful picture they painted of you is destroyed, and you are left scrambling to win their approval and get it back. This is where the hooks start to show.

What they do and what they say begin to contradict what you thought “I love you” means. That overwhelming warmth of the love bombing phase, was just a binge before hibernation. Now, you are starved of flattery and adoration, and they’ve been replaced with criticism, and manipulation.

This type of psychological warfare completely destabilizes a person’s perception of reality! All of the sudden, their sense of identity and source of love is on the line. In an effort to create a consistent reality outside of the love bombing phase, victims of narcissistic abuse will try to shape themselves into someone the narcissistic person will love again.

You’re also forced to survive on the scraps of love. Like focusing on how great the sex is, or that one good night you had together, or selectively hearing what you want to hear.

You desperately try to hold onto the memory of the love bombing phase, hoping these are small signs that version of them, the person you fell in love with, will come back. In other words, you learn to gaslight yourself to convince yourself that you are loved by them.

The Dynamics of Narcissistic Love

Once you realize you’re dealing with a narcissistic person, you start to understand their definition of love is monumentally different than yours.

“Love” for a narcissistic person is all about compliance and control. What they mean when they say “I love you,” is I see you as a great addition to me. I want to possess you and use you to make me look and feel better.

Inherently in the name “narcissist” and the categorization as a personality disorder, a narcissistic person’s only frame of reference is themselves. It’s all about how they’re feeling and how they’re perceived, because you are an extension of them.

Even in the love bombing phase — what you thought was them catering to you, was really about making themselves look like the perfect partner, and hearing you say how wonderful they are! That way, when the abuse starts later, they have a pile of evidence of how great they are to dismiss your valid concerns about their toxic behavior.

Early on in the love bombing phase, when the narcissistic person says they “love” you, it means they want to own and control you. It means they have chosen you to be their new shiny accessory and full-time ego manager. To a narcissistic person, when you say you love them, they take that to mean you will comply. That’s why they only treat you well when you supply them with attention, adoration, submission, and sex.

They leverage your emotional dependency on them to keep you under their control and chasing their approval. When you are in compliance to what they want and they’re in a good mood, saying “I love you” may just mean, I love me right now, and you’re here to be my hype man! Let’s have a good time celebrating me, together!

The Answer: Yes and No

Referring back to that initial question of whether or not they loved you, it depends on how you’re defining the word, “love.” Is love a feeling someone has towards us? Is love a way they behave towards us? Or is it a mix of both?

This can be really confusing, because in the love bombing phase, they verbally expressed feelings of love, and followed-up those words with behaviors that expressed love… But that didn’t last long, did it? Those expressions of “love”, later became devaluation and manipulation. We fell prey to love bombing, because we weren’t seen, loved, or pursued with vigor in the past. The love bombing looks like the beautiful myths of love we see in movies and hear in music, and we don’t have the reality of genuine love to be able to tell the difference. It’s intoxicating; and intoxication lowers our inhibitions.

The answer of whether or not they loved you, is yes and no.

Yes, they “loved you” in their extremely limited capacity. To the narcissistic person, they may sincerely believe they “loved you” because their definition of love is different than yours. To them, love is a fleeting feeling that comes and goes, it’s a reliance on your narcissistic supply, and a desire to keep you close to them for their personal benefit.

However, the answer of whether or not they loved you, is also a hard “no”. They didn’t love you in the way you tried to love them. When you said you loved them, you meant you care about their wellbeing, that you want to please them, are emotionally attached to them, and willing to compromise to make things work for both of you.

Genuine, healthy love is more than just a feeling you have towards someone; it’s consistent actions that align with the feeling of love. Love is mutual recognition, that you matter as much to me, as I matter to me. In narcissistic love, only the narcissistic person matters. Real love is reliable, where you do, what you say you’ll do. In narcissistic love, they don’t have to be accountable for any wrong doing. Genuine love is being attentive and attuned to each other’s needs, while narcissistic love is all about the narcissist. In healthy love, you get to feel like you, and not feel judged for it; yet in narcissistic love, you’ll be shamed for being anything other than what they want you to be. Real love is something you can rest in, because it’s empathetic, comforting, and secure. Narcissistic love is none of those things.

Unloved vs Unloveable

Deep down, I think a part of you knows they didn’t love you with the same definition. The question, “did they love me?” is a terrible question to ask yourself.

Better questions to ask are: “Did you feel loved by them most of the time? Or were you just holding onto the memory of the times when they were love bombing you?” When we’re caught up in the web of narcissistic abuse, we don’t realize that we’re the only ones keeping hope on life support with self-gaslighting.

This can be a heartbreaking blow. Realizing that you surrendered yourself to someone who didn’t love you the way you tried to love them. However, I need you to read this very carefully: the narcissistic person not loving you, does not mean that you are unloveable; it’s about their incapacity to engage in the emotional depth of love.

If you’d like to learn more about the difference between love and love bombing, check out my previous article, How to Tell The Difference Between Love Bombing and Genuine Love.

Where Can I Find More Help?

If you’re looking for a place to learn how to heal from narcissistic abuse, therapy could be a great resource for you! You can start by clicking the button below to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with me, and see if we’d be a good fit!

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