5. They remind you of an important narcissist in your life.
This is actually a fairly common occurrence, and in counseling, we call this transference. For example, if there is a female client and they have a female counselor and that counselor is close in age to the client, that client may start to treat that female counselor like a sister, even though they don’t realize they’re doing that. This is called transference.
Transference is when the counselor does this to the client, and typically, this is considered destructive, it’s not good for the counseling relationship. In the same sense, this transference, the reason you still love the narcissist is not necessarily positive either. So the narcissist that you’re in love with may remind you of a parent, grandparent, a brother, or a sister who perhaps was also narcissistic.
So essentially, that narcissistic relationship formed and left an impression on you, and then, the narcissist reminds you of that. So you’re in love with them as well, and it’s hard to separate from that. It’s hard to push them away. Even though they’re not with you physically, the love is still there. In the same manner that you like, we still love that other figure, the parent, the grandparent, whoever it was.
So that’s a very powerful way that attachment can form, an attachment of love or a feeling like love. Sometimes, of course, it’s really just dependency, but for this list, I’m talking about the feeling of love. So with all this in mind, the love that somebody has for narcissists can seem very strong and the love that the narcissist has for you can seem very strong and seem very real, and that’s because often it is.
The problem here is that it’s a projection of the love they have for themselves, at least in some cases it is. Nothing can make the narcissist not love themselves, that’s a powerful consuming an unconditional type of love. And again, because they have that love for themselves, it’s so strong and that can be projected they seem to love you a lot as well, again extremely powerful.
So another thing to consider here is just because somebody is a narcissist that doesn’t mean they can’t genuinely love somebody. It just means that the person is likely to come second to the narcissist. You’ll never be number one with a narcissist because that’s lots already taken.
Love and manipulation can also occur at the same time. This is something I think a lot of people don’t think of. Just because some of these are destructive and manipulative doesn’t mean they can’t also love. Sometimes what we see is the reason that somebody leaves a relationship with a narcissist, isn’t because the narcissist failed to love, it’s because of all the manipulation, the harm, the toxicity, and the destruction. Sometimes the bad outweighs the good.
Read more: Six Stages of Healing From Hidden Abuse
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