Why You Secretly Love Narcissists

The title of this article may be triggering to some, and for good reason. Nonetheless, it is a topic that must be taken out of the shadows and given its time in the sun.

Enlightenment entails looking within our own personal shadow, where landmines hide, ready to explode. It means risking being emotionally triggered, so that we can access our core wounds and heal them.

Perhaps that is the allure of a narcissist. With their glittering fantasy world which transcends reality, we feel we can escape the consequences of our past, which includes difficult truths, as well as the repressed pain deep in our unconscious.

Yet the mind is a cunning trickster.

The narcissist’s realm, at first, is seamless, pleasurable, childlike and alluring. It lowers your boundaries, washes away your doubts, and unleashes your vulnerable, authentic Self. Eventually, however, the dysfunction arrives.

While the narcissist’s behaviour is well-documented, the target’s is not. You may begin the relationship rather happy, but eventually you notice yourself growing clingy, anxious, possessive even. It is not only until much later that you realise that the narcissist aggravated those feelings by shaming and gaslighting you. They may have even played exes and other people off against you via triangulation, which spiked your insecurity.

As the relationship progressed, you grew more erratic, sometimes pulling away, sometimes clinging, and sometimes growing suspicious and paranoid. You alternated between the heady romantic days, and dystopian games and misery. Your emotional attachment grew stronger at the same rate that the relationship devolved into craziness. Eventually, you began to question who you really were.

An important question is: How much of the emotions, behaviours and madness originated from the narcissist, and how much from you? While you may have not asked for the drama, you did partake in it. One could argue that you were trauma bonded, that you had grown addicted to a cycle of manipulation. Alternating between heaven and hell had become an all-consuming experience. But was there more to it?

You Are What You Love

Narcissists are puppet masters. They bring nothing of substance, but rather they work with what is already there.

So what does a narcissist find in their target? Yearning, hopes and dreams. This is what directs the initial idealisation phase. Yet that is merely the spark which lights the trauma bond. The narcissist also looks deeper than that. Your heartbreak from childhood. The despair you buried deep to keep it from breaking you. The abandonment which left you feeling unlovable and undesirable. Broken dreams which had no path for expression. The constant disappointments. To survive a bleak world, you left all of this behind, and focussed on the light. The narcissist uses that light to dazzle you, yet their focus is always in one place: The darkness.

Your shadow yearns to burst out into the light. Your repressed trauma and disowned parts create an unbearable pressure inside you. As a result, you loved the narcissist because they were the pressure release. Perhaps you were made to feel stupid in early life, and so the narcissist’s supposed intelligence lulled you in. Maybe you dared to share your dreams and ambitions with the narcissist, and they were the first to encourage you, knowing it would hook you on them. You might have felt brittle and hopeless, and the narcissist showed up and demonstrated strength and optimism. And the most difficult thing to admit: Perhaps you harboured hidden grandiosity, and found the narcissist’s audacity and bravado arousing. You wanted to be more, to have more, to experience more, and the narcissist was the way.