What to expect when you leave a toxic relationship
Navigating relations with ex-narcissistic partners, colleagues and friends
There comes a time in any relationship when you finally see the writing on the wall, and it says:
“I’m with a narcissist.”
“I’m in a toxic relationship.”
“He/she/they’re never going to change.”
And your heart and mind say that you’re done.
It can feel painful and also a relief when you accept reality because now you can plan a transition toward your exit from the relationship.
The decision to end will have also felt difficult because the other person is difficult. When I say difficult, I mean toxic, narcissistic, relentlessly challenging and tricky. Difficult.
You’ve come to realise all their behaviours toward you have been orchestrated so that you feel dependent on them meeting your emotional or economic needs either through extreme attention or through force and gradual deprivation of your own support and resources. Exiting this relationship can have emotional, psychological, economic, social and personal safety implications, which is why it’s not easy to leave.
Once you’ve decided that you’re done with the relationship, you already start creating distance between yourself and the other person. This might look like being less available to talk with them by phone or text and other measures that gradually reduces their access to you. It will also mean that you lose interest in spending time with them, even when they start to intensify their affection or attention toward you, because you’ve already begun to place emotional distance between you and them. You might feel turned off overall because you now see, and can’t unsee, what you couldn’t see when the relationship seemed to be going well. While all of these factors facilitate your exit from the relationship with the other person, you will need all your energy to manage what happens next.
Breaking up with another person will also influence the stability of many other relationships that are connected to the other person, yourself and to both of you. It’s a good idea to be prepared for and expect challenging times ahead as you navigate the ending of your relationship with a narcissistic soon to be ex.
What to expect from the other person
The other person is going to sense the distance even if you act as if everything is OK between you two. Even if you’ve been explicit about your desire to end things, they might sound accepting but will resist it internally. They will show their resistance in a number of ways.
Hoovering: They will intensify their affections and attempt all the grooming actions that brought you into a relationship with them in the first place. They will lavish you with attention, affection, gifts and other ways to appear like they’ve changed for the better. They have no intention of letting you go so you will have to resist the temptation to accept their gifts and the privileges associated with the attention that they’re giving you.
Reputation management: They will be reaching out to your mutual friends and your own connections to 1) make sure they get the chance to transmit and spread propaganda of their preferred narrative about themselves, the relationship and what happened 2) check out who they can trust to align with them 3) recruit flying monkeys to feed back intel about you and convince you that they’re a good a person and that you should really give them a second chance. They will virtue signal their maturity and strength by telling others how much they care about you and want the best for you.
Aggressive networking: They will begin an intense grooming campaign (ie. lovebombing, excessive attention and offering opportunities) with your friends, colleagues and others in your network. They will zone in on weaker connections that you had your eyes on for future work or projects to disrupt potential career, networking or project opportunities.
Mobilising flying monkeys: these are your mutual connections who “only what you both to be happy” and will support you to open up to them about the relationship and your feelings about it. They will tell you that they’re on your side, that you can trust them and they won’t disclose anything to the other person. They’re trustworthy because they were your friend/connection first, right?
Nope.
They are in it for the drama. They will echo their promises to you to the other person especially if they’ve been a target of the other person’s reputation management activities. If the other person ACTUALLY cared about your wellbeing or preserving the relationship, they wouldn’t be speaking to mutuals, thereby influencing their perception of you and your role in the deterioration in the relationship. These ‘friends’ are compromised and can’t be trusted.
Gaslighting: The other person will work hard to insert their preferred version of reality to you, to convince you that your experiences are all in your head or that you’re overreacting or reading too much into things. The other person will use content from confidential conversations they’ve had with others to affirm their narrative and self-image. They will also distort what others have said to 1) make you believe that those connections are loyal to the other person 2) make you doubt yourself and those you’ve trusted so you feel less supported. The other consequence is discovering who among your connections are compromised and potentially untrustworthy.
Veiled threats: When the other person realises that their tactics to win you back aren’t working, they will feel thwarted and pivot by showing you that you’re not that important to them. They will get really friendly with your connections/other new connections and flaunt these relationships. They will act as if you’re dispensable, that they have moved on and are happier than ever. They might also give others opportunities that were once reserved for you or threaten you professionally by befriending competition and collaborators. They want to make you hurt because of the hurt they feel.
Giving up and giving you space: They send you a goodbye love letter that appears as if they’ve given up and are letting you go. This could be the actual end and it can also be a tactic to give you just enough space away from them until they decide when you’ve had enough time to come to your senses and return to them.
What to expect from yourself
Emotional rollercoaster: You might experience a range of emotional states that will fluctuate between peace and confusion about your decision to leave. Being emotionally bonded to someone else means that the relationship is a container for shared beliefs, values, expectations and emotions. When you feel something deeply in a narcissistic relationship, you might be experiencing vicarious (the other person’s) emotions. As a result, you might notice that the feelings you have are more intense or erratic than usual. These are not all your emotions and are intensified when you think about them (or when they’re thinking about you). This is why a goal during this time is to gradually emotionally distance from them so you can be less under the influence of the other person’s emotional states. This one-way invasion of their emotions was established at the beginning of your relationship through the grooming and emotional bonding process that enabled their needs to dominate during the relationship and now at its end.
Let’s break down some of the specific emotions you might feel:
Guilt: You will feel guilty for wanting to leave the relationship, especially when the other person seems vulnerable or on good behaviour. You might have thoughts that you should give them another chance or that you’re being too hard on them.
Shame: You’ll feel a sinking feeling and ask yourself why you didn’t see this sooner or listen to your gut or ignore the red flags. You might feel stupid for having been led by them for so long. Anything that blames yourself for the outcome of the relationship or makes you want to blame them will keep you stuck. You are only responsible for your contributions to the relationship, not for its survival or its end.
Doubt: You have made your choice but there will be times that you doubt your decision especially when the other person is behaving like the ideal. You’ll question if you’ve been too hard on them or have high expectations. This is you bargaining with yourself but really it’s about you continually pleasing the other person in the end, and sacrificing your values to do that.
Nostalgic: You yearn for the days when the relationship was easier. Tapping into the good ‘ol days feeds the doubt about your decision. You’ve made a choice and everything inside you is angry for developing the eyes to see the dysfunction, wishing you can get the fantasy back. Nostalgia is a way of protecting yourself from the harsh reality and the work involved in liberating from the relationship. Notice the fantasy but don’t live in it. You’ll have more time to reflect and consider your future relationships. Now is action to extract from the relationship and manage all the challenges with it.
Inadequate: You will feel demoted, replaced, dispensable, insignificant and inadequate as a result of the actions the other person is taking that were described above.
Hypervigilant: You will have a hard time knowing who you can trust among your shared connections. This might make you check and recheck who is following you on social media, make you look at profiles and posts checking for conversations between your ex and others, mass block the other person and their friends and other behaviours that stem from feeling under surveillance and threatened.
Betrayed: People you trusted, including your soon to be ex, are showing you that loyalty is fickle and easily bought. Discovering who among your network of supports is not going to be there for you and would rather show allegiance to the person who made your life difficult will sting the most.
Grief: You might also experience symptoms of grief as you anticipate the loss of the relationship and the person from your life (anticipatory grief). It doesn’t matter if you still view the other person and the relationship with a positive or negative light. Loss is loss and you might already be feeling it. Grief will be able to surface once you have more distance from the relationship ending.
What to expect from others who are connected to both of you:
Shunning and smearing: The people who are connected to the other person will block or no longer engage with you. They will likely transmit propaganda from the other person to others in the network leading others to shun you. They believe their actions are appropriate to protect others from whatever they’ve been told about you and protect themselves from their conflicted feelings.
Surveillance: You will be watched by mutuals and other flying monkeys, some of whom still claim to support you. People are waiting for you to misstep so they can catch you out to affirm any suspicions about you.
Feigned concern: Harsh truth - mutuals can’t be trusted while you’re exiting or have just exited the relationship because they’re also unclear about what to believe. They’ve been hearing or wanting to hear intel from both parties so they can make a decision about who’s in the wrong or affirm a belief that you two should still be together. It’s about them and quenching their thirst for drama. If they were truly trustworthy, they would stay out of it.
Network shrinkage: This is an expected and natural result of the relationship ending. You won’t be able to control who will suspend you from their network. You DO have control over who you keep in your circle of trust, who you suspend from accessing you, and who you no longer trust but remain friendly and connected (with a view to Gradually Gray Rock them) while you’re in this transition. It’s important to be strategic about what you tell your connections and how you continue to engage with them to soften the blow that network shrinkage will cause.
What to do about it
Emotional regulation. You’re going to feel really pissed off about everything that’s going on. As tempting as revenge might seem, avoid using the same methods they’re employing to hurt. Your conscience will benefit from your restraint and self-soothing skills in the long run.
Preserve your energy. You might feel tempted to go to war and fight against what they’re doing. I would suggest you sit back and watch what they and are others are doing (as long as you’re physically safe and your safety is not under threat). Observe, notice patterns, make predictions and take actions that are energy preserving, not draining.
Be strategic. Observe the behaviours of others and avoid doing anything abrupt - consider doing the opposite of what the other person is doing. If the other person is spreading propaganda about you and the relationship, don’t say anything about the person or what they’re doing. If they’re expending energy to increase their network at your expense, be selective and purposefully touch base with people you already know or work with. If they are all over social media and you don’t want to see them, consider using ways to hide them from your feed without affecting what they see from you. On the surface, appear as if you’re undisturbed by their actions and you’re carrying on with your life as usual. Behind the scenes, you’re limiting what you see that will have a negative impact on you.
Be consistent. You will feel like you need to do some reputation management of your own. Maintain the same way of engaging with others as you have been. Develop one explanation about your current situation and use this with everyone who knows you both. You might say “Thank you for your concern. It is a tough thing to go through” and leave it there. If someone tries to pry more information from you, you will say “I’m conscious that you know both of us and I prefer to not involve you or anyone else.” “You might also add “I also ask that you avoid getting involved because my experience is that it disrupts both people from being able to move on.”
Whatever explanation you use, keep it neutral and avoid speaking negatively about the other person, even if they’re leaning heavily into their narcissistic traits.
Avoid drama. I’m repeating this here because I need to stress that you are breaking out of an existing power dynamic. You can’t do that by feeding conflict. You can do that by doing the opposite of what your hurt feelings are telling you to do. Breaking free from the relationship and all its connections requires doing the opposite of what you instinctively want to do. They are going to intensify their actions to make it seem like you’re the villain. You will need to try tolerate the discomfort of inaction (or a different response) rather than attempt to restore comfort by re-engaging in their drama. Use every self-soothing and breathing exercise you know during those moments of discomfort.
Stick to your convictions. Know that these feelings and their behaviours are expected. Keep reminding yourself of what DIDN’T work each time you feel doubt about your decision to exit the relationship or when everything feels too hard and you want to hide. Make a list of the issues that led to your final decision to provide you with concrete evidence to back up your decision.
Relationship management. Don’t block anyone unless they’re harassing you and abusive toward you. Making unexpected or abrupt moves will make people curious and pay more attention to you. Be mindful about what you post online and correspondences you have with mutual connections during the ending because everyone will be looking for an uncharacteristic post or comment.
Who to trust?
The friends who knew you before you entered into a relationship with this person who also had doubts about them and don’t have any contact with them or their networks are likely to stand by you now. These are the ones you can trust to hold you through the transition and beyond.
Emotional distancing exercises. Each time the other person is in your awareness, you have a sudden shift in emotional state (ie. sudden anxiety, sadness or anger) or you feel you’re being watched, see this as an opportunity to untether yourself from another strand of the relationship web using visualisation and breathing techniques.
Debrief often. Make sure you have a support team composed of people who are not connected in any way to the other person and their network. Support people are close friends, family members who are skilled listeners (not advice givers), therapists and professional listeners. Ideally, you want at least one person who will remind you of the other person’s transgressions every time you waiver, can focus on your strengths, can help you reflect on your experiences and perceptions, who won’t try to fix or solve your problems, who will support you to remain patient while you implement the strategies listed above.
This transition period from ending, uncoupling to new reality doesn’t happen overnight. It can take some time until the dust settles and you regain stability so you can recover from the the toxicity that occurred during the relationship and the aftermath. Having a trusted, stable support team is vital for getting through this transition without further injury to your wellbeing.
I would like to thank the anonymous reader who inspired this piece and for our conversations that helped shape it. This is a great example of how feedback drives content development that aims to guide, provide strategies and support readers to navigate relationship challenges.
Please comment below with your content requests, queries and general comments about this content.
Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting and supporting my work,
Nathalie Martinek, PhD
The Narcissism Hacker
Hack narcissism and support my work
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Thank you for this article. I can confirm everything that’s written in what you can expect to happen. I have been through both at work and in an intimate relationship. And I highly appreciate the advice! The healing is still WIP.
Thank you, I learnt about four years ago about narcissism, twenty years too late. So many episodes of turmoil and soul destroying times. I am ready to leave now, but cannot disappear as I dream of. She is so totally reliant on me for her upkeep. She has never held down a job for more than a few months, and has always been a house wife and has no experience. So I feel I will always be entangled in her web, and can never completely break away. I love her so much, such a beautiful person, and I hate her with my whole being. If I came into money, I would split it, leave enough for her to keep going, and I would disappear. I have suffered enough, your entire article is true, except that living through it is the worst. Having people look down at you, because they have heard stories about you, horrors I would never ever do, slander and lies, disruptions at work, police investigations, physical abuse, she did absolutely everything to keep herself Holy. It always backfires on her, but having to live through that is so traumatic, and people don't forget. My children should never have lived through any of the above, and the affects on them have been very sad. All I need to add is that to completely leave a narcissist, you need to find another planet, because if they find you, the grooming starts, and you are then hooked, again.