Image by Alice Bitencourt
Written by Shahida Arabi, MA, psychopathology expert and researcher
A narcissistic person or manipulator is usually barely on your radar at the beginning of any relationship or dating scenario. In fact, they often chased you first in hot pursuit. Perhaps they pursued you ardently at first and tried to capture your attention with sweet messages, flowers, gifts, and romantic dates. They showered you with love bombing, flattery, and praise. They perceived you to be out of their league and behaved as if they were lucky and appreciative to have you. Once they got you hooked or you threatened their ego in some way, however, the communication likely became more sporadic and unpredictable. They tried to provoke jealousy in you, creating perverse love triangles to make you constantly on edge. They withheld attention on purpose and began withdrawing affection from you.
You will know you’re dealing with a manipulator in dating and in relationships when they want to emotionally destabilize you and place you in a state of constant chaos and confusion.
They will go out of their way to love bomb you one minute, then try to provoke jealousy in you the next. They will “bait” you into conversations they know violate your boundaries. They will deliberately make statements they know they will contradict with their behavior, just to keep you uncertain and focused on “figuring” them out. Their actions will contradict their words, revealing discrepancies and falsehoods they want you to become hyper-focused on.
The motive? To keep your attention fixated on them so you don’t detach from the relationship or explore better partners, friends, or opportunities.
What dark triad personality types fail to recognize is that people who authentically have options and are naturally desirable will usually not have to play such mind games to make themselves look valuable.
They want to keep you off-kilter and focused on analyzing them. They want you obsessed and focused on decoding their mixed signals, hot-and-cold behavior, and perverse love triangles. They want you to pine for them and the attention they once gave you. This behavior becomes especially chronic and intense out of envy and resentment, especially if they perceive you as being out of their league or having more options than they do.
Here are the three gaslighting mind games narcissists play to keep you on the emotional hamster wheel of chasing them after they pursued you first.
Creating love triangles ruthlessly, while normalizing these toxic dynamics and acting as if their victims are the “needy” ones when they disrupt normal and established patterns of communication.
The relationship cycle with a narcissist or psychopath begins with a heavy amount of praise, adoration, and idealization, as well as consistent attention and affection – only to abruptly withdraw into devaluation, withholding, and withdrawal. One of the ways narcissistic and psychopathic people like to poke and prod to evoke reactions in their victims is through jealousy induction, which research indicates they weaponize for power and control, as well as exacting revenge and testing the relationship. This means they often ruthlessly create love triangles in a way that would seem incredibly callous to most people.
For example, a male narcissist may continually bring up potential romantic prospects and options they have to emotionally destabilize a dating partner who he perceives to be out of this league. In longer-term relationships, they may take their wife or child to meet their mistress under the guise that their affair partner is “just a friend,” and proceed to call their wife jealous and insecure if they reacted to any kind of inappropriate flirtation they witnessed, and depict the wife as someone who doesn’t want them to have any friends rather than the actual reality of the situation.
Or a female narcissist might send raunchy text messages to the man she’s having an affair with while on a romantic dinner date with her significant other. When asked who she is talking to, she may gaslight her partner by telling him he is being controlling (this is different from the case of an actually controlling partner where an affair or deliberate jealousy induction is not taking place).
These types of love triangles are purposefully staged in order to provoke the victim, as narcissists and psychopaths thrive in chaos. Psychopaths especially tend to be high sensation-seekers and prone to boredom, and gain excitement and a thrill from being able to “toy” with the emotions of others. When victims react to such provocations, it gives the narcissist or psychopath a sense of being the puppet-master and a false sense of superiority as they try to compel people to compete for them.
Appearing to be concerned for you and expressing verbally that they don’t want to hurt you, but taking the very action they knew would harm you the most.
The manipulation of a narcissistic or psychopathic individual is frequently more carefully orchestrated than people think…