Love comes easily when we love the right people, right?
The kind eyes of your grandpa, the caring heart of your favorite teacher, or the innocent mind of your child.
Love is there to give and appreciate.
So what makes a narcissist love you, and why can’t you stop loving them?
I have 8 reasons here, and I think each one will bring you back to reality.
Learn About Love
Love is a difficult concept to understand when you’re not a professional.
Who do we start with? We all have to fall in love for the first time, and there’s no real guide to what it might feel like until we dig deep.
For the lucky ones, love is taught as a foundation. Being human is about loving, and being loved is about being human.
Related : Why Do Narcissists Claim To Be Experts in Things They Know Nothing About?
Some fall into the right environments that are warm, respectful, and create a stable consistency that nurtures a healthy self.
Others don’t fall into these environments.
For them, love is a distortion. Love is something they feel they must earn in order to be accepted.
If I really did well in school, you would tell me you love me.
If I passed this test, you would show me affection.
If I kept my room tidy, you would love me.
Love is not.
But as these people get older, they take what they learned and knew as children into any relationship they get into.
8 Reasons Your Love for a Narcissist Will Not Go Away
I know it’s a tough subject to deal with, but you can do it.
1 You Believe They Love You
No matter how badly they treat you, you believe the narcissist loves you.
It’s the story of all the victims who deny that what they’re going through is actually abuse.
A relationship with a narcissist has been carved out as love, but that’s not normal, is it?
It’s not normal to feel like you’re walking on eggshells.
Related : 20 Reasons Why Narcissists Secretly Hate You
It’s not normal to be embraced one day, then pushed aside figuratively (or literally) the next.
It’s not normal to be manipulated or isolated.
But when you think this is love, when these standards are set for you, it’s impossible to think otherwise.
2 You’re Addicted to Them
Narcissistic abuse, like any abuse, is addictive for both the abuser and the victim.
I know there’s a part of you that thinks, “Wait. This is hell. How can this be an addiction?”
You’re right. It is hell. But in between the hells are tiny, almost minute-long slivers of pure bliss. These are the moments that victims cling to.
Maybe they’ll change.
They love me, after all.
I’m finally worthy of them.
But before you know it, the whole dynamic flips.
The abuse starts all over again, and you’re left feeling like you mean nothing to them again.
It’s not right, it’s not fair, but it’s a vicious cycle you’re in.
Just because it’s familiar to you doesn’t make it safe or healthy.
Abuse is not love.
3 You hope it will change
One day, this will all be over, and you can finally be happy together.
One day, their job won’t be so stressful, and they’ll come home in a better mood.
One day, you’ll cook dinner well and they won’t criticize you.
Related : The ONE Thing That Makes Every Narcissist Snap
You wait and wait, you work and work hard to get everything done, and yet the narcissist doesn’t change.
That’s because they never set out to do it.
4 You believe them
Telling you that it was your fault and that you need to be better only inspires the victim to seek to address the flaws in the relationship.
You believe them when they tell you whatever they tell you. Whether they’re yelling at you for being useless, or telling you that they love you in those rare moments,
What the narcissist says is what happens.
And you can’t stop loving them because of that.
5 You Don’t Value Yourself
Anyone who doesn’t value themselves has the ability to somehow take that value away from them.
Let this sink in for a moment.
Devaluing yourself means stripping yourself of the love you need for yourself in order to keep only healthy people around you.
If you have bad habits and negative thoughts, these are the types of people and situations you will attract to yourself.
But you won’t always see them as negative. They will just be what you feel you deserve.
This level should never be determined by the false assumptions you make about yourself.
6 Attachment
A traumatic attachment occurs when the narcissist manipulates the narcissist into an overwhelming emotional state.
Related : 5 Normal Things That Drive Narcissists Nuts
This causes the victim to feel:
That their abuser is the only one for them.
That they can’t live without them.
That the push and pull in relationships is so strong, it’s actually intoxicating.
That the connection they feel with their abuser trumps any form of abuse they’ve experienced.
The final point? This is why victims stay.
It seems that no matter how the narcissist treats their victim, the bond created by the trauma is the way they remain tied to the relationship.
7 You Learned How to Earn Love
From a young age, love was probably a concept that you only learned when you tried to earn affection, love, or time from a parent or caregiver.
You felt happy when you did something they liked or thanked you for, and the rest of the time you spent trying to figure out how to get it all back.
Love never needs to be earned. It just exists. There is no conditional way to deal with it or feel it.
But for you, if you are the type who sees love as a paycheck, you will always see it as working like love.
8 Love is a Distortion
You think it is what it is not, and what it actually is will never come from someone so toxic.
Related : The Surprising Reason Narcissists Fake Empathy So Well
Slipping into such relationships would destroy you. In a world where you are supposed to grow and learn about love and how people should treat each other, you get used to the alternative.
The alternative is to be treated in every way you have ever known that you consider real and true. In this case, this treatment is not good. In fact, it is horrible.
But you know it and you accept it. That’s all you know, so you keep dealing with it. Even if it affects you little by little.
