10 harsh truths about narcissists I wish I knew at 20

When I was 19, I had just been accepted to transfer from junior college to a uc. The day before my move, during a going away party at work, my boyfriend showed up unannounced. What followed changed my life forever. Standing outside the office while my boss and co workers ate cake and pretended to not watch us through the window, my boyfriend asked, then pleaded, then begged me not to leave. He said, you can go to college anytime. That can wait, but our love is once in a lifetime and if you don't choose love, you will look back on this when you're 50 and regret it. He got what he wanted. I delayed college. I moved in with him, married him and had a child with him and I ended up divorcing him 16 years later. I thought I had chosen love, but what I'd actually chosen was a narcissist. And now that I am 50, I do have regrets. But I also gained insight and strength. In the next 10 minutes, I'll share 30 years of hard earned wisdom about narcissists, 10 beliefs I once held and the harsh truth that shattered them. At 20 years old, I knew I had suffered physical abuse from my parents, but I didn't understand that the emotional scars were far worse than any mark left on my body. While most of my therapy and recovery was spent on the trauma of physical abuse, what I completely missed was the narcissistic abuse I had endured. While I am grateful for the help I received, I was still dangerously naive to the narcissistic abuse pattern and I had no idea that I was repeating the pattern again. The first harsh truth I know now is narcissistic abuse is more insidious, more destructive and more painful than any physical violence I ever endured. It left lifelong scars on my sense of self worth, it shattered any hope of healthy boundaries, and it made it nearly impossible to recognize and assert my own needs and relationships. This led me to another misconception. I used to believe that most people were generally good, honest and loving. So I tried my best to focus on the positive in others and always put forth the nicest, kindest version of myself. I didn't realize that my over giving, people pleasing, performative kindness was a dysfunctional trait related to the abuse that I had endured. The second harsh truth is being raised by narcissists trains you to be a perfect container for narcissistic supply. You become bait and predators are hunting you. When you fit this pattern, you attract people who want to use you, who want to hurt you. My performative kindness wasn't genuine generosity. It was a Learned behavior that left me vulnerable to this type of exploitation. This. This led me to confront the next painful truth when something went wrong. In my past marriage, I used to believe everything was my fault. I lived in constant hypervigilance, trying to make him happy. This mindset kept me trapped in this cycle of anxiety and misplaced responsibility. And I constantly thought that if I could just fix myself, everything would be okay. Years later, in an Al Anon meeting, I learned the third harsh truth. The three C's. You didn't cause it. You can't control it and you can't change it. And what this means is, it's not your fault. This led me to perhaps the most heart wrenching realization of all. Before my daughter was born, I had thought I knew what love was. I thought loving someone meant that you were all consumed by them, completely merged with them, without boundaries or disagreements. I thought loving meant focusing on their potential, holding on to who they could become. Of course, I couldn't have known what love was. I had never been properly loved. It's like growing up in the Sahara thinking that you know exactly how to navigate an Amazon rainforest. So harsh truth number four hit me one night as I was holding my infant daughter. My love for her was so overwhelming, so fierce, so protective, so true. And I asked myself how. How could my parents have treated me that way? And the crushing reality, they didn't love me. It was never love. And even though this was a brutal truth, it allowed me to finally reframe my idea of what love, love actually means. This led me to confront the next painful truth. I used to struggle accepting kindness because I was afraid that I was going to owe someone in return. If someone was nice, I felt obligated to be their friend. A smile meant I needed to be polite. So I tried to accept nothing, need nothing, and ask for nothing. I didn't realize that this transactional mindset was a byproduct of narcissistic dynamics that I had grown up with. So harsh truth number five is kindness isn't a debt and love isn't transactional. This belief that you owe people for basic kindness is dangerous, and it's rooted in narcissistic manipulation. Narcissists exploit this trait mercilessly, using small favors to demand excessive payback. They weaponize your sense of obligation to control you. You don't owe anyone for basic decency, and anyone who makes you feel otherwise is probably manipulating you. This realization led me to face another difficult truth. I remember lying about my parents in fourth grade when my teacher asked about the bruises on my legs. I told her that my mom and dad were nice and they didn't mean to hurt me. Years later, I covered for my ex husband's drinking problem, his bankruptcy and his cruelty. And I thought loving meant that I was supposed to make them look good. Spinning a positive public narrative while hiding the truth at home. And I didn't realize I'd become a classic enabler, keeping myself stuck in narcissistic abuse. The sixth harsh truth is it's not your job to make someone look good, it's their job to be good. By doing the heavy lifting for my parents and my ex, I not only prevented them from facing consequences, but kept myself trapped in a cycle of feeling overly responsible and unable to leave. This led me to a truth that was both terrifying and liberating. The when my mom was dying, I got on a plane alone while my ex stayed home to ski. I told myself, it's not that bad, I can handle it. When I announced my pregnancy, he disappeared for days. Again, I told myself, it's not that bad, I can handle it. While I cared for our baby, he'd lock himself away secretly watching porn. And still I said, it's not that bad. I can handle it. It wasn't until he planned a family trip to an illegal pot farm that I realized harsh truth number seven. It is that bad and I cannot handle it. This wasn't about my personal feelings about pot. It was about willingly exposing our four year old daughter to a potentially dangerous criminal environment for an entire weekend just so he could score weed and hang out with his buddies. I could no longer normalize his reckless behavior. And this is what finally led me to file for divorce and truly begin healing. This led me to confront a truth that would change how I approached every relationship. Before that shocking event, I'd always thought that having disagreements, conflict, or even saying no was something like being ruthless or rude or even morally wrong. And of course I thought that I'd been trained for 30 years to be as agreeable as possible by this echo chamber of narcissists around me. In a narcissistic dynamic, you're not allowed to have a voice of your own. You're supposed to agree to their wishes, cater to their needs, and keep the peace. So harsh truth number eight is that saying no is not only necessary, it's healthy, kind, and also a moral duty. By being overly agreeable, I wasn't just harming myself, but enabling and participating in harmful behavior. To start building self worth, you have to have a sense of self and you can't say no if you have no sense of self. Saying no helps strengthen you. It helps empower you. It gives you boundaries and edges. It's an act of self respect and a way to create healthier relationship dynamics. This led me to a revelation that would forever change how I would interpret relationships. My whole life up until that point, I had always believed the words people said. My mom used to say, what would I do without you? Hugging me tight against the bruises that she'd left on my body the night before. My ex would tell me that he loved me after his belittling sarcasm pushed me to the point of tears. And as always, I'd take it upon myself to try to make sense out of this. Exhausting myself with mental gymnastics, trying to justify and explain the behavior in the context of love. Harsh truth number nine is what changed this for me. Behavior tells the truth. Words lie. After a lifetime of trying to make sense out of behavior that didn't really match words, I'd finally found what I could trust. I could trust the behavior and ignore the words. This helped me spot patterns and understand what was actually true and empowered me against manipulative tactics. And this was a game changer. As I absorbed this truth about actions speaking louder than words, I found myself face to face with the final and most painful false belief I'd been clinging to all along. And the harsh truth that shattered it would ultimately set me free. Before leaving him, I'd always thought that if I just improved myself, that maybe he'd finally love me if I was nicer, thinner, prettier, or if I was more athletic or made more money. I was always chasing a mirage, hoping that there was a possible future where I could get back to that guy outside, the one who was telling me to choose him, to choose love. So Harsh Truth number 10 is not only that he did not care about me, but that he never did and never could. And that whole song and dance that he did outside my office to keep me from leaving for college, that wasn't what I thought it was. It wasn't romance. It was a lie. It was the idealization phase called love bombing. It was a manipulation, and it was fantasy. And there was nothing that I would ever, could ever do or be that would turn that into real love. If you recognize any of these patterns in your life, I am so sorry. This is a terrible pain to have gone through. Know that you're not alone in this experience and that your worth isn't determined by someone else's inability to love you.