Are you a person of faith? Even if you’re not religious, you’re probably spiritual to some degree. Whether religious or spiritual, wherever you observe your faith should, of all
places, be an unquestionably safe haven, a place that can be frequented to both escape from what ails one’s spirit as well as find revitalization for one’s piety. However, it’s also the perfect place for a narcissist to lie in wait, looking for their next victim. So why do narcissists love the church so much?
“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast.” At one point or another, I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase, though most of us have heard it misquoted as, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.” Regardless of how we recount William Congreve’s words from his 1697 tragedy, The Mourning Bride, it’s long been known that music most assuredly has the power to sway the heart. But what about a heart that’s broken? Why are we compelled to listen to songs of sadness and loss when we are already drowning in an ocean of despair?
Just how unique, would you say, what you shared with your narcissist actually was? I’m fairly confident that for you, as it was for me, it was the first time you’d ever felt love for another person of such ineffable breadth and depth. But what if I told you that, for our narcissist, evoking such deeply soulful feelings from their empath was old hat? The status quo. The norm. Their basic modus operandi. Would you believe me? Probably not. After all, what
we shared with them was something that we have most likely never before shared with anyone else and we sincerely long to believe the same of our narcissist – that it was special, that we were special! To imagine any differently would, in our eyes, sully an unparalleled purity. But we are looking at what transpired through the naive innocence of our eyes, forming a forgiving opinion of an unforgivable and unsalvageably broken person’s inner-most thoughts, feelings, and intentions. For it was in loving our narcissist that we defied all logic and reason by seeing great amounts of good within someone where none ever truly existed. My beautiful, the truth is, what you shared with your narcissist, while unique and “once in a lifetime” for you, was nothing more than another romp down the same old bumpy backroad your narcissist has traveled time and time again with previous sources of narcissistic supply.
How amazing was it when you first met your narcissist? If it was anything like my 
first moment with mine, it was an ineffable experience that words will miserably fail. But let’s be honest with ourselves – we had absolutely no idea that the person who was initially standing there so longingly and lovingly smiling at us would turn out to be one of the biggest regrets of our lives, if not the biggest regret. But not knowing this at the time, in that moment, didn’t it feel like your soul looked at their soul, smiled and said, “Oh, there you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”?
How long did you fight for your relationship with your narcissist? Six 
months? A year? Five years? Longer? No matter how long or hard you fought, did you notice one repeating theme? The harder you fought, the longer you tried, the more you sacrificed, all of your efforts were directly inverse of your narcissist’s. In other words; for every step forward you took to make things better, your narcissist indifferently took two steps back.
“I lie because you keep digging!” Those were my narcissist’s, Julia’s, words to me during an argument close to the end of the 4-½ year trek through the fresh hell she called, “love.” I’d caught her in yet another of a seemingly endless procession of
lies or, as I came to call them, “fabricated truths.” Julia was quite adept at deception, possessing a knack for telling two polar opposite types of truths: the factual truth and what she wanted me to believe was the truth. She had mastered the art of deception so well that her truth and the truth elicited the exact same tonal inflections and facial expressions, so reading whether or not she was lying was bloody impossible. And that’s the thing about narcissists: they are master manipulators and deceivers.
Well, today is “the big day.” The “day for lovers.” You know what I’m talking about: Valentine’s Day! If you’re still on the mend from your time with your narcissist,
perhaps even feeling a bit nostalgic, missing them, I hope you’re not entertaining the notion of reaching out to them. As history and experience have proven time and again, it will not end well for you if you do. Hopefully, you’re past the point of feeling the need to celebrate Valentine’s Day with your narcissist, but I get it if you’re not. Truly, I do. It’s always nice to celebrate a day made specifically for lovers with the person whom you love. In fact, Valentine’s Day marks the anniversary of Julia, my narcissist, and my first date. The thing is, if you reached out to your narcissist, or if they reached out to you, and you did reconnect even just for Valentine’s Day (or night), you have to remember this one ubiquitous truth: you and your narcissist would indeed be celebrating Valentine’s Day with the person whom you both sincerely love, and it’s not each other.
Did you ever notice, while with our narcissist, how their moral compass always seemed to point N? At the time, we believed that needle was pointing due north, the true direction to which all the other 
facets of the relationship based their bearings to always find their way back home. And thanks to the repugnant power of gaslighting and trauma bonding, my narcissist always felt like home to me. I suspect your relationship with your narcissist ran eerily similar directional parallels, as well. But did you notice how, if your narcissist’s moral compass varied even in the slightest, and those bloody double-standards to which your narcissist held everyone else but themselves accountable turned their gaze upon him/her, your narcissist always had an excuse, a “reason” why those double-standards shouldn’t apply to them? But now that you look back, have you realized that your narcissist’s compass wasn’t actually pointing north, it was, instead, pointing to N for Narcissist?
Where did you go? No, not the ‘you’ who’s reading this now. The ‘you’ who fell
in love with your narcissist. Do you remember the beautiful, carefree spirit that everyone thought was so amazing? You know who I’m talking about: the person that walked into a room and quickly either became the focus of attention or the social butterfly effervescently flitting about from this person and conversation to that, the spritely person with whom everyone was eager to engage. Where did those mesmerizing smiles go? The sparkling glint in your eye that effortlessly beamed in the darkness? Where did the jovial laugh and hearty laughter go? The joy, the indomitable wit and witticisms, the curious, questioning, inquisitive, always eager-to-explore ‘you’ who attracted your narcissist to you in the first place. Where did the ‘you’ who’s truly you, go?
It’s been said that all is fair in love and war. Sadly, when involved with a 
narcissist, love invariably becomes a war. A war within ourselves, as well as betwixt us and our narcissist, wherein we are the prisoner. And therein, all pleas for peace and resolution go not only unanswered, but ignored. As with any war, there are always casualties. And, as with any war, there are always survivors. But can one sustain trauma, genuine PTSD, when one has “simply” been involved with a narcissist? Most assuredly and resoundingly the answer is, “Yes!”