Narcissim & Settlement

How to Tell the Difference Between Settling and Being Comfortable

and Being with a Narcissist who Looks for your Comfort to Make you Settle

Every relationship starts with happiness and butterflies. Eventually, those butterflies start to fade. Often, when this happens, couples break up or contemplate breaking up because they mistake the comfort they now feel with being the end since they no longer feel the fluttering they had been feeling. Like a new sofa or leather shoes, the break-in period doesn’t mean a break up when it gets comfortable.

That is unless you are dealing with a narcissist. When dealing with a narcissist, they will look for the comfort zone because they can let their guard down and begin their abuse once you become comfortable.

You see, when you reach the comfortable stage of your relationship, that usually means you are in a good place. You can be comfortable around each other and not feel like things will go crazy just because you don’t have your makeup or are sick and crabby. On the other hand, some people mistake comfort for settling in a relationship.  

The Narcissist will use your comfort to get you to settle.

At first, a narcissist uses a technique called “Love-bombing.” “Love-bombing” manipulates you. 

The Narcissist will buy you over the top gifts or will talk about having a “future” with you and professes his or her love to you early on because he or she has never met anyone like you, and he or she can see him or herself with you in a way they have never seen with anyone else. (Archer, 2017)[i]

Love-Bombing is a narcissist’s way to get you to let your guard down. Once he or she has gained your trust and made you feel loved in a way you have never felt before, the daily, numerous calls to see how you are throughout the day stop. The gifts and flowers you have grown accustomed to getting, stop. The attention he or she showered upon you stops. And, when you begin to miss the attention, the feeling of love, the way you felt like you were a priority and important, you’re blamed. That’s right; it all stopped because you made it stop. 

The Narcissist will have a way to turn the tables when you approach your feelings on how you miss his or her daily calls. The way you two would sit together and watch TV at night or the fact that they don’t come home for dinner anymore. When you approach him or her about these issues, the Narcissist will blame you. 

In a calm, calculating, non-emotional way, you will be brushed off, and when you call him or her out on the behavior, you will be told you are overthinking things, you tend to be too emotional, or exaggerate. After the discussion is over, you will be second-guessing yourself; do I exaggerate? Am I too sensitive? Do I expect too much? Am I asking for too much? He/she has been busy lately. Maybe I need to lay off.  

Soon after, the love-bombing will begin again, not as heavy as before, but enough to calm your fears and have you back off for a bit. Once again, when the comfort is back, all will stop. And the Gaslighting will begin.

Gaslighting is a form of abuse that narcissists use to get you to self-doubt. When you bring up things that don’t seem right, your partner “will convince you that what you believe is wrong.” Your partner will get you upset about something, enlist self-doubt, and then blame you and give you the silent treatment. This treatment will continue for days. Until you “come to your senses,” realize “you” were wrong, and apologize. When you are dealing with a narcissist, you will find they are never wrong. They will turn and twist the truth until you feel like everything you have ever known to be true is all a façade. They do this all in the name of “making you think and feel like you are crazy.”

However, when you catch on, and the Narcissist is still in need of your supply to fill his or her ego, the Narcissist will once again love bomb you and get you calm down. This is when you realize you are in love, and you are “comfortable” with this person, and things are okay, because after all, “no relationship is perfect.” The truth is, these are the signs that you are settling.

When you are no longer able to think straight, you are settling if you stay. When you are no longer able to think of the Narcissist’s actions without justifying what is being done to rationalize the behavior somehow, you are settling in your relationship.

No one should settle. 

Being comfortable is a nice place to be with someone, but not at your expense and sanity.

Until then~

Keep Sparkling  

  [i] Archer, MD, Dale, (2017) Why Love Bombing in a Relationship is so Devious. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-between-the-headlines/201703/why-love-bombing-in-relationship-is-so-devious

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