Why am I still in love with my narcissist?

There is no question in your mind that your narcissist spouse/partner/lover is ruining your life. He's manipulative, cruel, abusive, controlling, horrible in every way. You are miserable with him. Perhaps you've even left him, broken up with him already.

But you still love him.

You dream of being back together. You fantasize that he will beg you to come back. You think about him all day. You just want him to love you.

It's quite likely that you also feel like the world's biggest fool, that you are still holding a candle for someone who has done nothing but hurt you. You alternate between pining for him and beating yourself up for being an idiot. Your emotions don't make sense but you can't make them stop. You wonder if you've lost your mind.

Well, you aren't crazy, you aren't stupid, you aren't a fool. You're simply being the exact person your narcissist has spent months and years molding you into. This situation is less about you and any shortcomings in your personality or sanity, and more about the amazing talent your narc has for molding and shaping other humans into what he wants them to be.

Over the course of your relationship, the narc has subtly, craftily convinced you that he is the true judge of what makes a woman desirable. If you can make him love and want you, then and only then will you have proven your worth as a human being. Meanwhile, he has rewired your brain into abject devotion to meeting his needs. Maybe he used the approach of making you want to be the only one who truly understands him, or the only one who will put up with him, or the only one who can make him happy. So now without that purpose to your life, you feel meaningless. Or maybe he used a more negative approach, punishing you with ridicule, anger, or criticism whenever you failed to devote yourself to him and let him have his way. So now you're terrified that you've rebelled in heart or in action, and wish you could escape that fear by being obedient again.

Whatever the technique the narcissist has used on you, the result was some form of this: he trained you to stay in the relationship. So now, of course, you find yourself wanting to stay in the relationship. You think it gives you purpose, proves your self-worth, keeps you safe from retribution. Loving him, even though there are so many reasons to hate him, is safer and easier and can in fact seem like the only solution.

This is exactly how the psychological condition called "Stockholm Syndrome" works. Wikipedia explains the syndrome thus:

Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with them.

There are logical reasons for why victims of abuse experience these feelings that seem on their face to be so illogical. As Wikipedia states, "Identifying with the aggressor is one way that the ego defends itself. When a victim believes the same values as the aggressor, they cease to be perceived as a threat." In other words, you coped with the narc's abuse by perceiving it as a kind of affection. If he was cruel to you, it was because you mattered enough to him that he chose to give you that intense attention. No matter that the "attention" was negative and abusive--in order to bear up, your mind found ways to look at it as acceptable, deserved, positive.

The result of this is that your brain has been trained so that you no longer have normal means of protecting yourself. If another woman who hadn't been abused by a narc was dropped into your place, she would dump your narcissist within a day of experiencing how he treats you. Family and friends may have been telling you for a long time to leave him because they look at his behavior clearly. But your psyche is your narc's life's work...he put his whole effort into making you into a creature that takes what he dishes out and is happy to come back for more.

So you do still feel love for him. But you shouldn't. That love is not coming from your heart but from your programmed brain. The only way to get yourself free is to break through the fear, anxiety, and shame and look what has happened to you right in the face. Strip the mask off your narc and let yourself feel genuine emotion over what's been done to you. That can be very scary, but after you've processed that real emotion, trust me, you'll come out a whole person on the other side. Figure out his games, unravel the lies. Do not have any contact with him, including cyberstalking and following him on social media. If he tries to get you back, DON'T DO IT. And recover your self-worth not by caving and going back to a hellish existence with him, but by seeing clearly the great person you are and all you have to offer the world.

Lean on anyone in your life who understands, supports you, believes in you, and thinks you are a good person. Have patience with how hard it can be for others to understand what narcissistic victims go through, and look for the well-meaning behind their actions. Do things you enjoy--revive old hobbies, find the things that used to engage you before life became all about him. Choose to do what's right for YOU...this is the time for that.

There is one other thing that I personally believe can make a huge difference to narc victims who are trapped in feelings of love and stuck in their efforts to change. I will talk all about that in the next post.