Narcissists & The Game of Life

“To all normal players, the point of The Game – as reflected in the rules – is not so much about winning as it is about collecting as many Happiness points as possible without bumping other players off the board.”

Sorry, but you’re way off about this. First of all, there is nothing that “all normal” people live for or consider to be “the point” of life; nor are there any universal “rules” dictating your claim. The Bible is my set of rules for life, and it does NOT say that happiness is the objective of living.

I live for so much more than happiness, and life is not a game. I am here to serve my Lord in heaven to the best of my abilities. And it IS about winning; winning salvation through Jesus Christ and defeating Satan. Amen.

Morning Zari…I’m doing some archived reading this morning, after reading your latest post to come up in my email of Sept 16 2018.
I’m making a comment on the above post of July 6 2017.
I sure hope he downloaded your book.
I’d imagine, that others take advantage of these archived articles, or at least…I hope they do.
I wanted to comment on “projection”. I can see many examples everywhere, but wanted to point out for others the clear…but not so obvious projection that was in this post that some may miss.
He says thought he was being bated…in a way he most definitely was…
He quotes this woman of having said ” That if I’m pushy, I will just get tired & walk out, while she will be waiting more & more and that will be a pity”.
Because he, and many others don’t yet fully understand “Narc talk” at the time they are hearing it…one way to tell is… how does it make your heart & stomach & head feel…if you say, bad or confused…it’s narc talk. What she was “really” telling him was…
” if…she…continues to have to push him so much toward where… she needs him to go (meaning have him be in her life) within her boundaries, …she…will walk out…& …you (he)… will be forever waiting more and more for me (her)…and that is a great & pitiful thing that will happen to …you…and that will be my goal to make sure that happens quicker than I have planned for you…I will see to it…& I won’t be happy about that, but will be happy for your misery & how much pain & confusion I can extract from you.
If we can get others to just think about how they are actually being projected to on occasion…& get them to actually understand that this kind of talk…is the only time a narc tells the truth to us… to our faces…but again…it stems from not being able to be accountable for any of their actions…usually what ever they blame us for, or accuse us of…is their truth…there pathology, and we need to help teach them to turn around some things being said to them…which are a Narcissists projections which are usually their, what we call “Tell”…short for clear tell tales signs. I’m very sure you have written about Projection Zari…I thought it was a good place to show this obvious to me & perhaps not so obvious to others clear example.
And yes also the clear example of giving you what you want for a short time to avoid having to expend energy talking…or finding them out…through these talks…as you probe…she was still in the golden period of grooming him & not yet wanting angry word fuel or the negative energy from him yet.
Thanks again for your sight & your like mine “Hard earned wisdom degree” from the School of hard knocks. X’s. Elaine.

Dear Zari,
I just found your website and I think it is the best one I have ever seen on this topic. I have been in a relationship with a narcissistic man for the last 7 years. Everything I have read here describes our relationship to a tee. About a month into our relationship, he started putting me down and making me the butt of jokes, especially in front of my children. I told him that wasn’t cool and I found it hurtful. He said he didn’t mean it to be hurtful and that I was being over sensitive. He is a game player, a liar and a porn addict. He kept the porn use a secret for a couple years until I found out. I felt devastated and believed our relationship to be a lie. He’s never understood my feelings about. I know he still looks at it and lies about it. It seemed the more I made it an issue, the more he used it to hurt me. He owns his own business and makes his own schedule. He has customers that depend on him for a product and a service. In all the years I have known him, every single one of his customers has become angry with him before their project is complete, mainly due to him not keeping his word to them. I have witnessed him lie to everyone he knows, even when the lie wasn’t necessary at all. He minimizes my feelings, tells me I’m making shit up. When we met, I had a full time job. The nature of my job was very stressful. He told me he made enough money to support us and to quit if I wished. I resigned my job and to my now regret, I let myself become financially dependent on him. He seems to take pleasure in telling people that I do nothing but sit around on my butt all day. He is incredibly messy, sloppy, like picking up after a toddler. He has been badgering me and putting me down for not having a job. So, I found a job but needed 7 days of classes before I could start the work. Usually, he doesn’t even leave the house before noon, but the days I had class (and needed a ride), he got up early to go to work. I needed to be at class by noon. Each and every day, he arrived late to pick me up for my class. He acted as though it was out of his control to be there on time. I was in tears each day by the time I arrived. I managed to complete the classes, despite his sabotage. My first day of work, late again, but now my potential employer no longer wanted to hire me because I looked like such a big flake. It has been years of similar incidents. Years of telling me one thing but doing another and then he somehow twists things around like its me. He has been gaslighting me, he denies things he has said. I started to record him and when he could no longer lie about things he still did! It’s incredible, there can be proof staring him in the face and he still will deny it. If I say the sky is blue, he’ll say it’s green. Just always contrary. Last Valentines Day, he gave me a card stating how much he loves me. My real gift came 2 days later when he set me up to find a homemade flash drive with approx 5,600 pornographic pics and videos of other women, really graphic and disgusting stuff and then I was met with a smirk of satisfaction on his face. He kept denying he set me up to find it, I didn’t believe him, told him so. He finally admitted he intentionally set me up to hurt me. I want to leave him. I feel trapped. He always finds a way to throw me under the bus and then denies it. When I needed a knee surgery, he dropped me off at the hospital, but didn’t stay because he had something else he had to do. I am always a last priority to him, just above the shit he scrapes off his shoe. Yet, I continue to give him love, care and affection. The final straw came just a few days ago. My mom died a year ago. There was a memorial planned for the one year anniversary of her death. My siblings, my stepfather, other family were to meet in California for a service and to scatter moms ashes in the ocean. It was planned months in advance. Up until about 3 days before the trip, he (we) had planned to go. Without going into too many details, he made me miss my mother’s funeral. I was heartsick. Even my grown son said it was not accidental, it was malicious and told off my significant other. He said, she only has one mother, one lifetime, one funeral, how could you do this to her? My son told me, Mom, I love you but because of his behavior, I’m not going to be visiting as often. I don’t ever want to be in the same room as him again. My SO has the nerve to call my son a little shit when my son shows more maturity than my SO ever has. I want to call you but right now I don’t have money, it’s under his control, I feel so trapped!

Hello Zari, I am so glad that I run into this website.

I just started a relationship with a woman who I think has a narcissistic behavior but I am still on the doubt.

We have been dating since late April and at the beginning I thought she was just trying to play “hard to get” and needed time to sort out if she wants to be in a relationship or not. She is independent, which is good, but also disappearing at times and not too much caring about my feelings. A bit capricious and wanting things her way. We always have a good time together but, specially at the beginning, she played this kind of thing when we can only meet when she is available and I have to be running after her. Including not replied messages and so on. Maybe I am a bit intense, but come on, it was too unbalance. So finally she told me I was being a bit pushy and that she wasn’t sure about being in a relationship. I decided to be a little bit patience (thinking maybe she just needed time, gain her trust, get relaxed with me, etc) and things got a bit better (still she was never too much about expressing emotions). We started spending much more time together.

Still she had some suspicious behaviors. One day in the morning she left my place to go to work and told me she will be back as soon as she finish her job. That was supposed to be after lunch or so, but she came back around 8. She texted me at 5 “i am coming back now”, and then after almost 3 hours she is back. Then she tells me she run into some friends and that’s why she is late…. without having me said anything before. I found it quite not respectful to have me waiting all day, so she could have told me on time she was going to be late. This is the kind of thing upsets me the most.

About holidays it got worst. I asked around may if she has days off she could take and she said maybe she wants to go traveling with some friends, and that it is too soon for that kind of thing, and I say, ok. After one month, when we were getting closer, I asked if she has any more free days to take and she said no. But she just arranged another trip with colleagues… which she never told me about. She said that if I am pushy I will get exhausted and walk out, while she will be waiting more and more, and that will be a pity. But it sounded like a bait to keep me going. You will want more, when? when I bluff I am going away? When I am actually going away? Before this trip and me getting a bit angry and disappointed, suspiciously she got a bit closer and spent even more time with me.

She always have some other plans coming out of the blue, comes and goes all the time, without having me in consideration. When I got pissed off about this last things, she just play the “you are right” card, “one month ago was too soon”, and stuff like that. She even said “I could cancel that trip and go with you”, which sounded absolutely like inverse trick. Then she told me in may she wasn’t sure about being into a relationship, but that now it would be lovely to be in a relationship with me. She only said this after I told her I wanted to talk. I said, ok, lets try. And she said: but actually we are already trying. But I don’t really think she is. I even told her that I was being so nice to her and that her behavior was a bit bitchy. She got the message, but her actions didn’t change so much. And it seems she is being a bit more caring but still… she has been coming and going all the time since I met her. Ok, she has her own life, friends, colleagues, demanding work, whatever, but…. my instinct says to me something is not in place. Why she didn’t tell me about that other trip before? What if she is actually going with somebody she doesn’t want to tell me about? Why I am not feeling secure with all this? how can I trust her? Am I getting crazy? should I give her credit? is she or not narcissistic? I always liked things simple and straight, and I don’t want to lose my nerves or my time with somebody I can’t rely on. What’s the point of that? What’s the gain? One thing is to be independent, another thing is drive somebody else crazy. What should I do?

Zari! I LOVED this article – masterful use of the metaphor. In reading and listening to everything i can get my hands on as a post-narcissistic abuse survivor, it’s amazing to see all the absolute beauty coming from the pens and mouths of people who have gone through this horrific experience.

I married a narc who mirrored some very rare spiritual qualities that i was looking for that had kept me single until I was 47. within two weeks, he was sick of the charade and was struggling to keep the mask in place. I thought that it was just relationship growing pains. I didn’t know what narc injury was then, but I know now that I had him torn and bleeding with my constant requests for him to step up and be the man he promised to be.

The last straw, though, was when he told me that he had been going through my phone from the very beginning, and that he felt I was talking to someone else. His ‘evidence’ was my clearing my phone records on two occasions. I felt like an anvil had been dropped on my head – it was over for me then. I already had divorce papers from months ago when he disappeared on us while I was at work, so I just pressed ‘play’ on those and 3 months later, I left. It was married for 18 months.

I just wish I had known about these types earlier. My dad is a narc, and my son’s estranged father is a narc, but i didn’t know that they had true disordered personalities until after I married one.

What’s sad is that ‘true’ information about this plague isn’t widely available, and that it’s difficult to find a live, in-person group of people talking about this.

Hello, Zari.

I’m a south american woman who has been involved with a narcissist foreign man. We met during a holiday and had some kind of open (only on his side, of course) relationship, long distance most of the time, for over a year. I visited him for 2 weeks when he was living in Europe for a couple of months, he visited me in my country for over a month and after 7 months of long distance relationship i went to his country to stay with him for 3 months. And that is when things got really really bad. He asked me to live there with him permanently and wanted me to apply for a parter visa. A week later, we found out that it wasnt so simply to get the visa, we would have to wait a year living together to apply and he would actually have to help me with money for me to be able to stay in his country. After that, he simply gave up the relationship idea and didnt even mind letting me know of his decision, he just remained silent about what we should do next. When i confronted him, he said he was making his mind by talking to co-workers and to his mom (triangulation, also the mother didnt think i was appropried for him), because “he didnt know if i was a hard worker or if i just wanted him to support me abroad” ( accusation made out of nowhere!). He also suggested that i should go back to my country, save ridiculous amount of money, then quit my job, pay for new flights/visa and go visit him again when i had money to share his rent and bills, then maybe we could apply the partner visa and have a “real” relationship, acording to him. The next day, after this discussion, he created a fight over something irrelevant i said and then said we would not see each other after i got back to my country and that he didnt have to get along with me anymore, implying that he didnt want the relationship anymore because of what i had said, when i know he alredy didnt want it as soon as we found out we would have to wait and spend money (btw he was making lots of money and i had just graduated). He guilty triped me, was extremely condescending and said i was to pushy over the realtionship thing, when the “living with him” thing was all his idea in the first place! And i even questioned if i should really accept it at first, but i was in love and decided to give it a try… That big mess happened in the middle of my visit and i still had to wait for my flight to come back to my country, so over the next 40 days that i had to wait, he continued to tourture me with devalutions/idealizations, tried to normalize what was happening, exposed me to his family and friends telling them that “she was gonna stay but is too difficult because she is southamerican (racist!)” as if i we had come to an agreement over that. He also treatened not to go to the holidays i depended on him to go with me, because we had booked things together and he had bought some local flights for us. I had to remain quiet, because i needed to stay in his house and was traveling with him for the holidays. When i got back to my country he gave me the silent treatment and when i called him to try to get at least some kind of clousure, he blamed me for evething that went wrong and denied that he ever wanted me to stay in his country (using plausible deniabily), but said he wanted to keep in touch (for what after all?). After that, i started no contact, he tried to messege me 3 times in a few months, then i decided to exclude him from all my social media and we never spoke again. I lost a year being depressed, trying to understand what had happended and i’m still trying to fully recover. I love your website! Thank you for the work you are doing.