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- Leaving any relationship is difficult.
Leaving a narcissistic relationship seems to be harder.
- [Dr. Ramani] Oh, absolutely.
- Why is it harder, and how do they leave?
- Many times people leave narcissistic relationships
from a place of frustration, exasperation, fear, confusion.
These are not healthy states.
I mean, ending a relationship is always difficult,
but if it was a relationship with two healthy people in it,
they may simply be able to acknowledge,
"We grew apart, and this hurts,
and thank you for being a part of my life,"
and not saying nobody gets hurt.
It can hurt, and it can hurt badly.
But in a narcissistic relationship,
by the time you get to the breakup point,
there have been lies, deceit, anger, rage,
all kinds of negative situations.
It's confusing.
Now, a couple of other things happen, too.
Many times when people leave narcissistic relationships,
they've tried everything.
They've tried to change the person,
which obviously was never gonna work,
but they keep trying.
"I'm gonna convince 'em.
I'm gonna show them the error of their ways."
But one of the big fears
that keeps people in narcissistic relationships
and makes it hard to leave
is this idea
that the minute they leave the relationship,
the narcissist is gonna change
and be a better person for the next person they date.
I hear that all the time.
"He's gonna change,
and now he's gonna be really great to this next person."
I say, "Why would that happen?
They're gonna go through exactly what you went through.
If anything, you should send them a condolence card now.
- Right. - But they're convinced.
- Well, even if they did change for somebody else,
they're not changing for you, so who cares?
- And they're not gonna change.
- And I know that.
- More absolute, but they're not changing for you.
- Right.
- And so, and many times,
narcissists trade into a new relationship very quickly,
because relationships are so superficial for them.
For the rest of us,
leaving a relationship that meant something to us
or even that was just confusing...
our roots went deep.
So it takes a while before you can reconstitute
and enter a new relationship.
Narcissists, boom.
They've often replaced you by next Saturday night.
They'll post it on social media.
It's really, really destabilizing for people.
So, that means, though, that there's a con--
There's actually, there's a word for it.
When people are in narcissistic relationships that end,
now all of a sudden the narcissist gets interested again,
and now they wanna go back to love-bombing.
So they do something called Hoovering.
- Hoovering? - Hoovering.
And hoovering is when you suck someone
back into a relationship.
"Baby, I miss you.
I didn't realize how good I had it with you."
Every time.
"You know, I really messed up.
If I had known what a gift and an angel you were,
I would, I --
- Even as you're saying this, it sounds so good.
- It, oh yeah.
- I would love to be told that.
- It's everything you ever wanted to hear.
So you either have got nerves of steel or,
most people fall back down the rabbit hole
and they say, okay, let's talk.
And then for a while
the narcissists might even act different.
They'll be attent-- it's love bombing part two,
- Love bomb 2.0.
- And so they go through that again and boom
back to the discard, the cycle starts again.
Now, if you do leave them, expect hoovering might happen.
It doesn't always but it might.
Expect that you'll probably be traded out really quickly
and replaced very quickly which can hurt.
If you leave them you can also expect
if you're married to them
it's going to get really messy, really fast
messy custody, messy divorce, messy cutting up the assets.
They may often do something called
enlisting flying monkeys,
flying monkeys are the people who were close to both
of you in the relationship, your family, your friends.
And they'll start to try to turn all of them against you.
"Hey, just so you know
you think your sister is such a great gal.
She did this, this and this"
and they'll tell them all these lies.
And then they'll,
Now these people will start turning
against the poor person who left the narcissist
and this flying monkeys phenomenon actually can often
re traumatize a person
after they do the hard work of leaving a relationship.
It works sometimes, it doesn't work all the time,
but they might be able to sort of mobilize friends
who were sort of on the fringes of the relationship.
People who really know you, that's a bit harder
but it can be, it can also be dangerous.
A person, a narcissist does not like to be left.
- So they are going to fight
- [Dr. Ramani] They're gonna fight.
- And almost, it sounds like be revengeful.
- Oh, very much so they're very vindictive.
And so they just don't like that
it looks bad for their ego to be left.
They may have had a plan.
They may have thought you're taking my kids from me
all kinds of things.
That's why they had no interest in being a father
or mother to them while you were in the relationship.
But now that you're saying this isn't healthy anymore
they don't want to hear about it.
If you do go into couples therapy
they often hijack the couples therapy.
They often try to charm or win over the therapist
making the person who's enduring the abuse look
like a crazy person, literally like a crazy person.
- And they do so successfully with the therapist
- Oh, very much so, all the time.
- All the time.
- The therapists even can get sucked into it.
- All the time.
And so a lot of people are afraid to enter a couples therapy
with a narcissistic partner
unless they've got a therapist is really well-trained
in these issues and they, and so they, again
they hijack the systems.
And so at this point, as a per--
people when they finally do leave narcissistic relationships
they have been thinking about this for months,
if not years, it is a very slow process
of trying to extra gate, extricate from these relationships.
So it's going to be messy.
It's going to be painful no matter what
whether they replace you quickly, whether they don't
whether they make it a messy and painful divorce
or whether they really threatened to stalk a person,
that's not unusual, they'll stalk them.
They'll, they'll bother them through social media.
Sometimes people have to block them, which is hard.
If you've got kids.
A lot of times the courts, judges, mediators,
custody evaluators, lawyers, don't get this.
They're like, come on.
Why can't you come to the table and I'm like, oh my God
they can't come to the table.
This isn't going to work.
So we've got a ways to go to educate people.
Now on the flip side, if your narcissist leaves you
of course, my temptation is to throw you a parade and say
you are lucky, but that's not how people feel.
They feel abandoned.
They feel like I've done everything,
and this person has the nerve to leave me.
- Is it likely that a narcissist would leave?
- Heck yeah, they replace people all the time.
They trade, they trade partners.
They want uh, someone younger.
- Yeah. They trade up.
- They trade up,
they, I mean, I would say they trade down
because the person they've left is probably
usually a solid loving person
but they'll choose someone younger, someone richer
someone they met at work
and they will think nothing of just switching out like that.
And so people will feel very hurt.
A narcissist typically will not leave a relationship
unless they've got someone already waiting in the wings.
That would be too much of an ego blow for them.
So that under those conditions, they may very well leave.
But most commonly narcissists like to have their cake
and eat it too.
If they're married, if they're going to try to have the
the affair on the side and make it all work
and be so surprised when they are told,
no you can't have both.
So sometimes these things can sort of blow
up in their faces, but it is messy.
- How do you prepare to leave a narcissist?
- Preparing to leave a narcissist is no small task because
if you have kids and it's going to be a legal mess
you're not doing this divorce via mediation.
You're going to need an attorney.
And you're going to need an attorney who
understands narcissism, which is not all of them.
So you have got to do your due diligence.
You've got to get all your financials in order.
You have got to know what you're dealing with
because if a narcissist senses you're going to leave them
they'll sometimes start spending money, moving assets
like you really, you have, this is, this is war.
And so, but you can't start screaming
and yelling where you need to very quietly
behind the scenes, do your preparation
figure out where the money is.
Who's got what?
So if they do start moving and hiding money
you'll be able to at least sort of know what's going on
and be able to get what is
what belongs to you in terms of custody though
that's the most painful by and large courts
in the United States want to award joint custody.
And many times the narcissistic parent will fight
for custody.
Not even because they're equipped to be a decent parent,
but to stick it to the person who is leaving them.
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