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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Debbie Mirza
Read between
September 21 - September 25, 2025
attention gets turned around on you and off of them. They will blame you for their bad behavior: “You made me do it, you drove me to it, this is your fault…”
CNs will constantly criticize and judge you. Because they are covert, they do it in ways that are not always obvious.
Sam’s CN partner never said he was jealous of him, but Sam would feel like things were different when he started experiencing more success and happiness in his life. He started noticing that his partner wouldn’t have big reactions when Sam would tell him exciting things that were happening in his life.
Narcissists are deeply unhappy people. They get
jealous of you when you are experiencing life and happiness. They do not want you to be happy and strong, as those feelings threaten their ability to control you.
He never let on how much he hated himself, but subconsciously projected his issue onto her.
There is almost a robotic feeling about CNs, as if they are scripted.
You think a CN is connecting with you when both of you are talking about feelings, but when you look at your history, you were the one carrying the connection.
“Flying monkeys” are people in the narcissist’s life who act on their behalf. These are the CN’s biggest fans. They have a solid belief the narcissist is the victim, and that you are to blame for a multitude of things.
CNs are master manipulators, and their flying monkeys are often additional victims of their deception.
On the other hand, she recalled all the times she had given him praise, complimented him, and told him how impressed she was at things he had done. She had always supported and encouraged him.
What often goes unnoticed is what wasn’t there.
A relationship with a CN must be all about them. When it stops being that way, they have no more use for you and move on to their next target.
CNs are very passive. They put the responsibility on you to make sure they are happy and blame you when they’re not.
He was more concerned about what the other people thought than about standing by and supporting her.
Survivors often feel like prisoners in their own homes during the later stages of the relationship.
It doesn’t feel like clean love. It doesn’t feel like it comes from someone who cherishes you and enjoys loving you.
They Don’t Make Love; They Take It
It’s all about the CN. Sex
A CN cares more about what others think than protecting you.
is a strange thing to witness your spouse or parent not knowing who you are and not having an accurate picture of someone they have lived with for years, sometimes decades.
CNs wholeheartedly believe the stories they create in their minds and leave you perpetually blurting out, “What?!”
They have no interest in putting effort into relationships.
With each year that you are with the CN, you find yourself feeling less energy, less excitement for life, less confidence, and less joy.
This eventually leads you to depression, forgetting the person you used to be, the carefree spirit who was full of life.
The truth is that CNs create drama, but they do so in such a covert way the victims don’t notice.
CN will tell his new girlfriend stories of how terrible his ex was to him, how hurtful and difficult she was, how dramatic she was, how crazy she was.
the CN has now given her subtle messages of how she must behave for him to want her and stay with her. She will live out their relationship making sure she never does or says what his ex used to do and say.
Instead of talking to you about it, they will go to a third party, someone whom they know will agree with them. The CN will often confide in people who barely know you. Then he or she will make sure you know they have been confiding in someone else and that this person agrees that everything is your fault and they should leave you.
CNs do not respect you. They do not care about your feelings. They have a lot of rage and no empathy. They only care about themselves. This is the bottom line.
Intermittent reinforcement
fact, psychology experts consider it the most powerful motivator in existence.”
The relationship becomes a mixture of subtle cruelty and periodic affection. They will woo you and withhold from you. This conditions you to keep trying to please them in order to get the reward of love.
A CN will say loving and nice things to you, compliment you, make you dinner, buy you gifts, but only on a random basis. Mixed in with this nice, loving behavior that keeps you thinking this is the person you fell in love with is also belittling that keeps you feeling weak and small, silent treatment that makes you think you’ve done something wrong, moodiness that makes you believe you are the source of their unhappiness, and several other means of making you feel insecure and not good enough.
It makes you feel desperate, dependent on their attention, working hard for a reward of love and attention that only comes on their terms, intermittently, and unpredictably. Many times victims think they are codependent because they act in ways that a codependent does, but the truth is that many victims I’ve met are not codependent. They have been manipulated in such a way that they behave in ways they normally wouldn’t. When they get out of these relationships and begin to see things clearly, they come back to themselves, and in fact become a much stronger version of their previous self.
CNs don’t have empathy, but they know how to act like they do.
“You blame me for everything because you won’t take any personal responsibility.”
Sadly, it is common for CNs to use their children to get back at the victim.
Instead, they will phrase belittling, degrading, and disrespectful comments in a way that makes you wonder, Was that a putdown? It sounded like a putdown.
Throughout Sara’s 15-year marriage to Bill, he would tell her he wanted her to go after her dreams and be the artist she had always wanted to be. He said he made enough money, so she didn’t have to work. She felt incredibly lucky to have such a generous and supportive husband. She spent their married life raising their kids and pursuing her art. During the discard phase, Bill told her she should have been working the whole time. He said she only married him for his money and never really cared about him.
They will pull away and starve you of attention and affection. They will do things to inconvenience you, disrupting your life in some way.
CNs despise helping you when you are sick or in need of care, so they will subtly punish you during these times.
You lose track of what a loving relationship looks like and, tragically, you begin to believe you don’t deserve any better.
CN parents seem to either be overly enmeshed in their kids’ lives, or they are the parent who is uninvolved.
The parent who is absent or uninvolved will connect with their kids if the conversation centers on a topic of interest to the CN parent.
As with all narcissists, they project their own issues onto their children, calling them manipulative, controlling, selfish, and other traits that they possess themselves.
The child feels alone and unseen.
Some CN parents will focus more time and love onto the “golden child” who gives them the most adoration. The CN parent will become frustrated and angry with the child who doesn’t want to “get into their world.”
They also don’t expect to be unconditionally loved, so often they choose partners who don’t treat them with consistent, pure love.
They never feel good enough and can live with underlying despair and unhappiness for a long time.
