Here’s a question a reader emailed me:
Why does my Nex still care what I’m doing?
“Nex” is online slang (especially on Reddit and Quora) for a narcissistic ex-partner, and a Nex only cares about what you’re up to post-break up for one reason.
You left the narcissist. The narcissist did not leave you.
That’s really it.
You did the ego-wounding. The narcissist did not.
As sad as it is to say, you were never really an autonomous person in your ex narcissist’s life or the narcissistic relationship you both shared. You were a convenience, an extension, and an object the narcissist could use at his whim whenever it suited him best.
Money, sex, cleaning, cooking, doctor appointments, work parties, walking the dog—whatever it is, you existed to fulfill the needs of the narcissist whenever a need arose. And you better have your ass in gear and ready to go to fulfill that need ASAP, since narcissists don’t like waiting.
In the mind of a narcissist he really is the center of his own universe. He does the leaving if and when we wants, for whatever his reasons are.
You, however, do not.
So if you’re the one standing up, saying you’ve had enough, and moving on with your own life, all the while the narcissist is still getting something out of his relationship with you… well, he doesn’t like having his toys taken away from him.
Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Let’s look at this from the opposite perspective.
When the Gay Narcissistic Relationship ended for me, I was obsessed with every move my ex, the Gay Narcissist, made with my replacement, the New Supply. It made me sick to my stomach every minute of every day, but I could not stop obsessing over it.
I was discarded, left to wallow in all of my “what if” scenarios, and blame myself for everything. All of this for me (and nearly all other targets of narcissistic abuse, I’d wager) was an obsessive pain point I needed to fix.
But, when it’s a narcissist on the other end of a breakup, I feel confident in saying it’s not coming from a place of pain.
It’s born of rage.
Who jacked my car? Who stole my iPhone? And… who had the nerve to leave me?
This question pushed me to go back and look through some of my books on narcissism and narcissistic relationships, and I found two good passages from the writings of Dr. Ramani Durvasula.
The first is from Should I Stay Or Should I Go: Surviving A Relationship With A Narcissist (please buy the book here), and in it Dr. Ramani writes the following:
Why can’t narcissists just go gentle into that good night? Much of it is ego. None of us like to be left, abandonment never feels good, and even the most transcendent among us will have a moment of grief and discomfort when someone decides to pack it in and bid farewell. But in the case of a person who is pathologically narcissistic, it goes deep. Being left is an awakening of their vulnerabilities, and their inability to regulate emotion becomes their undoing.
Whereas many of us may go quietly to lick our wounds, eat some ice cream, drink some vodka, and cry it out, the narcissist feels inconsolable. However, this inconsolability manifests in a very unsympathetic way. Narcissists’ propensity to rage and their emptiness make it nearly impossible to regulate the strong emotions that accompany a perceived abandonment, and as a result they have a terrible tantrum.
The second is from Don’t You Know Who I Am: How To Stay Sane In An Era Of Narcissism, Entitlement, And Incivility (please buy the book using this link), where Dr. Ramani draws parallels between the behaviors of narcissists in relationships and those who are more generally attached anxiously:
People who are narcissistic most often look anxiously attached—they are always worried that their love object won’t return their love, and they get vociferously angry when their needs are not met. Because of the narcissism, they are often inconsistent, cold, rejecting, and unempathic with their partners and act surprised and upset when they are rejected.
In addition, narcissists can become “obsessive” in relationships, especially with partners who are believed to bring cachet to the relationship (youth, beauty, wealth, fame, power) and will find themselves caught in an obsessive push-pull with a partner, with lots of dramatic arguments, anxiety, stalking, and begging the partner to come back. It’s the anxious attachment come to life in adult form.
It’s all about objectification and control.
Important Above All Else
Also, I’ve been emphasizing this more and more, and it’s important to do so here:
Narcissism is not a disease or diagnosis.
It is a descriptive term explaining a personality style and a pattern of behavior.
That is all.
Even if someone is slapped with the fabled “narcissistic personality disorder” (NPD), all that means is a mental-health professional has spent enough time to analyze a person’s personality and patterns of behavior to rubber-stamp it as “narcissistic.”
But you can swap in narcissistic behavior with any other kind of non-psych term and it still fits: toxic, antagonistic, bullying, abusive, manipulative, difficult, mean-spirited, you name it. In the end, they all describe a pattern of behavior that is harmful to your peace of mind.
All of this describes a person who views others in his life as objects to serve him when needed, and to obediently fade away when a discard is imminent.
If you leave first, it breaks the narcissist’s computing that he is important above all else. And in order to correct that, he obsesses over you.
Go no contact, protect yourself, and wait for him to get bored and move on to someone offering fresh narcissistic supply.
