Every time you talk about seeing or spending time with friends, they’ll pout or start an argument. If you actually leave them to go be with friends, they’ll call or text with an emergency. The first few times you leave them behind to go do something, they may actually harm themselves, a child, or a pet, so that you have to come home and clean up the blood, or drive them to the emergency room.
Eventually the drama and dread of just knowing that if you leave the house they’ll cut or burn themselves, a child or pet will suffer a fall or an injury, makes you decide you prefer to stay home and ‘take care’ of everyone.
Or they may call or text while you’re out spending time on a planned activity to ‘remind’ you that you didn’t do a chore or something that you ‘promised’ you would do before you went out to have fun. Never mind that you don’t remember ever saying that you would do that thing, you cut your time short and return to do the chore you don’t remember saying that you were going to do, so that you can keep your promise that you don’t remember making, because the crying, screaming, pouting, punishments, and/or silent treatment from the narc just aren’t worth it.
The narc will convince you that your family and friends are trying to ‘tear us apart.'
That one is actually probably true. Anyone who cares about you is going to dislike a person who uses, manipulates and abuses you. So, yeah, your friends and family probably do dislike your abuser and do wish that you would break up.
The narcissist amps up their helpless pathetic victim act, tells you that they can’t live without you, you are the only person they’ve ever loved, you are their one and only, you are the only one who understands, and/or performs sex acts that would cost a lot of money if they were performed by an acrobatic double-jointed prostitute in Bangkok, so you stay, against your common sense, better judgement, and all instincts for self preservation. Once they’ve snagged you, you’ll never see that particular underwater sex trapeze lingerie-clad backwards-sideways-all-orifices-included goat rodeo again, by the way. So enjoy it while you can, you’ll be paying dearly for it over the next few years or decades of your incarceration.
Gradually, over time, step by step, friend by friend, relative by relative, the narcissist will force you to choose between everyone and the narc, delivering ultimatums, concocting lies, starting fights, and expecting you to step up and always choose the narc, always protect the narc against ‘attacks’ (which are actually fights the narc starts and then expects you to finish)
You’ll eventually just decide it’s easier and less hassle to spend all your time with your abuser. If you must work outside the home to support him or her, you will find yourself living under constant surveillance—they’ll monitor your phone, install keylogger apps on all your devices, you’ll have to account for every mile on your car, every minute of your commute, every second of your time away from them, every dime spent on fuel or food away from home, and just constantly prove and re-prove your loyalty.
It’s a slow moving slippery slope, but eventually you’ll find you have no friends, your family is estranged, your work associates don’t speak much to you (they don’t want to be accused by The Crazy of sleeping with you or worse), and your career advancement is stalled out (no one wants to hire a person who is constantly on their office phone or personal cell phone ‘yes dear-’ing, constantly having to check in via phone call or text to their abuser, or having to rush out for ‘emergencies’ at home.) The narc may need your paycheck but s/he will resent every minute you spend out from under their thumb.
I’ve met more than one person who lives like this and it happens so slowly that they don’t even seem to realize that it is bizarre and really awful to live like this and that normal human beings don’t have this sort of relationship with their SO, partner or spouse.
Best advice: take any new relationship slow and watch for red flags and exit any relationship where it seems that the person you are with is jealous or unpleasant to your existing relationships with family and friends.
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