Whether you’re an adult child, partner/spouse, or other family member of a person with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), perhaps the most difficult aspect of the relationship is coming to grips with the fact that this person does not and will never love you.

Narcissists may say they love you, and even believe it. They may for a time put you on a pedestal and treat you like royalty. After they have shown their cruelty, they may at times appear remorseful and make promises to change. Under certain circumstances they may behave benignly, even affectionately and generously.

But what may appear fleetingly to be love is conditional and self-serving. It is at best sentimental attachment or idealization, which will crash and burn into disappointment, mounting criticism and rage, serial abuse, and possible abandonment, no matter how high you were elevated and how special you felt.

Why Narcissists Will Never Love You

Pathological narcissists can’t love. They are developmentally arrested at a formative age, probably somewhere around 2-4 years old. Having experienced disrupted attachment with their primary caregivers, which may also trigger a genetic predisposition, people who compensate with narcissistic adaptations rarely make up for early developmental deficits. They fail to integrate a stable sense of identity and self-esteem, and they do not learn to engage empathetically with others, remaining primitively ego-centric throughout their lives no matter how sophisticated they may become in other areas.

Lacking a resilient sense of selfhood and plagued by shame and self-doubt, narcissists wear a mask of entitled superiority and work continuously to repress their feelings of inadequacy and banish the possibility that others may see their weakness and fear.

Narcissists can’t love because they

  1. are developmentally stunted young children;
  2. never learned to love themselves;
  3. don’t care what others feel;
  4. are consumed by their own needs and always see them as paramount;
  5. project their lack of empathy onto others;
  6. lack self-awareness;
  7. don’t understand emotional nuance;
  8. view others as inferiors to be humiliated, competitors to be defeated, or superiors to be won over;
  9. see life as a war zone; and
  10. ultimately despise any club that would have them as a member.

Why It’s Dangerous to Love a Narcissist

"me" sign will never love you

As pitiable as it may seem, NPD by nature is an abusive disorder. To varying degrees, most of us try to live by The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do onto you. Narcissists violate that code as a matter of course, viewing it with cynical contempt. Their mantra is, It’s all about me. And their “code” is to get what they believe is theirs no matter the cost to others. Particularly malignant narcissists walk through life crushing everyone in their path, dominating “the pack” ruthlessly and often sadistically.

Loving a narcissist means a world of hurt for you because s/he will never love you back and it opens you up to potentially devastating harm.

People with NPD never learn to play nice. They

  1. manipulate,
  2. exploit,
  3. lie,
  4. project,
  5. betray,
  6. hold grudges,
  7. deny,
  8. shame,
  9. blame,
  10. mock,
  11. bait,
  12. belittle,
  13. neglect,
  14. stonewall,
  15. scapegoat,
  16. play favorites,
  17. take revenge,
  18. terrorize,
  19. torture, and
  20. punish in myriad ways.

They will isolate you from support, destroy your self-esteem, kill what you love, blame you for their behavior, and abuse you emotionally, psychologically, physically, and/or sexually. You are an object to them, not a someone. And they feel justified in treating you with scorn and bringing you to your knees.

Think you can change them? Tame their defenses and rage? Re-parent and heal them? Finally win their love with your devotion, kindness, and self-sacrifice? Then you are exactly who they are looking for.

Listen to Julie being interviewed on The Addicted Mind Podcast and Narcissist Apocalypse Podcast.

Julie L. Hall is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Hachette Books.

Need support? Julie provides specialized narcissistic abuse recovery coaching to clients around the world.  

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Image courtesy of Toppazzini, Pierre-Olivier Carles, Creative Commons.