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evile
I would say that if a narcissist ‘comes on’ to you with the idealization, excessive praise, lavish attention, etc. and you don’t respond with the ‘right’ signs of being overly-empathetic, codependent, willing to discard others in favor of the narcissist’s time and company, then the narc may go ahead and cut you off in order to go looking for easier prey. And, believe me, this may hurt your feelings or feel as though you were ‘ghosted’ for no reason, but it’s honestly the best possible outcome when deaing with a narcissist. They tested your boundaries and self esteem, found that you were firmly grounded, and went on to a more likely target.
Another possibility is that they have several potential new sources going at the same time and they pass you over in favor of cultivating another source who has more of what they want or who seems more compliant with the narcissist’s wants. Think of this as someone at the grocery store who decides they’d rather have ice cream than cookies, so they leave the cookies (you) on the shelf and put the ice cream into their basket. They didn’t have the cookies long enough to tear up the wrapping and eat half of them and then decide that cookies are disgusting and throw them out. Lucky cookie! If you are unlucky, they may still come back for the cookies once they’re done with the ice cream. Hopefully you will be long gone by then!
A third possibility, though I haven’t seen it, is that the ‘devalue’ phase is done internally within the narcissist’s mind rather than outward acts of cruelty or debasement of the target. In other words, they idealize you, suck you in, then mentally devalue you without doing anything outwardly to tear you down, they just get tired and bored and discard. Again, usually because there’s another target that they think is a better source of supply— richer, prettier, more social status, or whatever it is that the narcissist wants at that moment. They may not let YOU know that they’ve devalued you, but you can be sure that they have.
What is most likely, if you aren’t able to spot the ‘devalue’ is that it is being done so slowly and in such a manipulative way that you aren’t able to identify it while it is happening.
As an example, I used to enjoy writing—fiction and poetry mostly, but other things as well. My friends, family, classmates, teachers, and college professors all told me I was a good writer and that my stories were imaginative and enjoyable.
I was in a relationship for 13 years that I eventually came to realize was abusive, and somewhere along the line I stopped writing. For the longest time, I didn’t even remember that I had once enjoyed writing. To my knowledge and memory, my ex never told me I was a terrible writer or anything like that, but he treated my writing as if it didn’t matter, never wanted to read anything I’d written, etc. And so gradually I came to believe that my writing was worthless, and that spending time writing was a waste of time. When he started dating a new woman and bought her a laptop to write her stories on, because she called herself a writer and he believed in and supported her writing, was when I realized how badly he had devalued my talent, over such a long period of time, and in such small ways, that I never noticed it.
Editing to add: Posts tagged 'quora' were originally my answers to peoples' questions on quora.com. They were monetized but I am giving them away for free here.
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