ARTICLE DESCRIPTION
When ending a relationship with a pathological narcissist, it is crucial for the person starting the process to be prepared for a decisively direct, passive, or passive-aggressive counter-reaction. Individuals diagnosed with narcissistic, borderline, or antisocial personality disorders frequently resort to extreme measures of coercion and harm to prevent a separation and the subsequent termination of the relationship. Understanding the seventeen tactics narcissists used to sabotage breakups can help survivors escape toxic relationships and minimize the damage inflicted by their ex-partners.
THE 17 TACTICS NARCISSISTS USE TO SABOTAGE BREAKUPS
Ross Rosenberg, M. Ed., LCPC, CADC
Ending a relationship with a pathological narcissist requires careful preparation, as the person initiating the breakup should expect a strong counter-reaction—whether direct, passive, or passive-aggressive. Those with narcissistic, borderline, or antisocial personality disorders often react severely when faced with abandonment, sometimes resorting to manipulation, coercion, or even harmful behavior to prevent the relationship from ending. Understanding these potential reactions can help individuals stay firm in their decision while taking necessary precautions to protect their emotional and physical well-being.
To be more specific, when someone recovering from self-love deficit disorder™ (the updated term for codependency) executes a thoughtfully crafted escape plan from their narcissistically abusive partner, they must expect a series of calculated counter-reactions aimed at sabotaging their efforts. In response to the termination of a relationship, a pathological narcissist may exhibit reactions akin to the life-threatening deprivation of oxygen.
Fueled by the terror of being abandoned or plagued by pathological levels of loneliness, such narcissists employ a combination of cunningly manipulative strategies to circumvent, reverse, or derail their partner’s escape attempts. Whether unconventional or familiar, all are intended to impose severe consequences to weaken the escapee’s resolve to end the relationship permanently.
Emotional manipulation, sabotage, mind control, aggression, and passive aggression, to name a few, are designed to deceive, entice, or compel the “escapee” to the restrictive confines of their relationship “jail cell.” This article offers crucial information, support, and guidance for partners escaping abusive relationships, covering both the potential consequences of leaving and the challenges of survival.
The following escape-neutralizing strategies are arranged in a sequential order. However, because of the variability in both self-love deficit disorder and the three pathological narcissistic personality disorders, they may not unfold sequentially. Nonetheless, this list can assist individuals in developing more effective strategies for ending relationships while simultaneously mitigating the negative consequences inflicted by their narcissistic ex-partner.
1. Calling the Bluff
In poker, a person “bluffs” when they try to get everyone to “fold their cards” or leave the hand by exuding confidence about their cards and betting the maximum amount when it is their turn. Because they believe the bluffer’s hand is too good to beat and staying in the game would cause even more losses, they choose to cut their losses and fold. But if one person stays in because he suspects the bluff, he continues the high-stakes betting. Then, at the end of the game, this person “calls the bluff” when he asks the bluffer to show his sub-par hand.
Narcissists assume the codependent statement about the end of the relationship is a bluff. Not only do they suspect their partner lacks the personal strength to leave them, but they also bet on them not having the resources to make it happen. Hence, they stay in the “hand” until the cards have to be shown. Then, when they call the suspected bluff and find out they were mistaken, they become enraged and, consequently, motivated to punish the departing codependent.
2. Reverse Psychology
Reverse psychology is a method of getting someone to do what one wants by pretending not to like it or feigning to want something else (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2023). For example, pathological narcissists use reverse psychology when they pretend not to care about or even encourage the codependent to end the relationship. By triggering the codependent’s unconscious and conscious fears of abandonment, the narcissist assumes the codependent will reconsider their plans to leave the relationship. In addition, by reversing their vehement opposition to the relationship’s end, aka a surrender, the narcissists hope for a reflexive fear of loneliness, regret, and even long-lost memories of love.
3. Religious or Spirituality Distortions
This strategy works best on codependents who share similar religious or spiritual beliefs with the narcissists they’re leaving behind. The narcissist uses a variety of tactics to persuade their partner to either allow them a chance to seek “forgiveness” from God or a higher power they both believe in, “repent” for the harm they caused, or postpone ending the relationship. These tactics often distort biblical references and exploit their shared religious beliefs and practices. If this form of manipulation or coercion doesn’t work, the next tactic employed is the “you are going to hell card.” This desperate attempt aims to weaken the codependent’s determination to end the relationship.
4. Turning Up the Gaslighting
Narcissists attempt to break the codependent’s resolve by amplifying past implanted gaslit narratives that include, but are not limited to, implanted mental illness, weakness, isolation, and dependency-based gaslit narratives. The narcissist’s primary goal is to remind them what was already indoctrinated into them: the futility of escaping and not being lovable, attractive, or desirable. Other “refreshed” indoctrinated narratives include powerlessness, dependency, paranoia, and incapacitation.
5. Intellectualization
To change the codependent’s decision to terminate the relationship, embattled narcissists induce a rational and unemotional re-evaluation of the underlying reasons supporting the fleeing partner’s decision to terminate the relationship. By emphasizing the importance of analytical discussions focused on “cause and effect” while repressing emotional dialogue, these narcissists attempt to reestablish the gaslit narrative of shared responsibility. In other words, they try to “re-plant the seeds” of uncertainty and insecurity, inducing self-doubt and insecurity over the decision to terminate the relationship.
This method of mind control can be seen as an expansion of the gaslighting from which the recovering codependent is trying to escape. Alternatively, it can be viewed as a desperate attempt to employ gaslighting to prevent the termination of the relationship. If successful, it can lead the partner to doubt their emotional response to the harm inflicted upon them, thereby allowing a distorted intellectual narrative to be implanted. This, in turn, might provide a valuable opening for “one last chance to change.”
6. Increased Verbal and Emotional Abuse
The amplification of verbal and emotional abuse is used in tandem to break down the codependent’s plans to escape and terminate the relationship. When the pathological narcissist is successful, they re-orientate the escaping codependent to their former bully-victim powerless role. Such a strategy is most effective for people living with a pathological narcissist who has a history of violence and abuse.
7. Threats of or Actual Physical Aggression/Retaliation
Physical aggression is often the most intimidating and harmful of these manipulation strategies. Whether a threat or an act, the resulting physical and emotional harm intends to break the codependents’ resolve to flee their prison-like living conditions.
8. Covert and/or Passive Aggression
Passive aggressive harm is covertly and secretly executed to cause maximum damage while escaping responsibility. It is executed with great care to create an impression of innocence. As a covert manipulation and power and control strategy, it relies on misleading or inaccurate evidence to disprove claims of responsibility.
To achieve plausible deniability, the passive-aggressive person may outright deny it or claim it was an accident for which they provide insincere empathy and a fake apology. When the perpetrator is confronted about their duplicity, they cite a lack of evidence while often pushing a gaslit narrative that portrays the accuser as paranoid, overly reactive, delusional, and/or mentally incompetent.
9. Triangulation/Alienation/Relationships Sabotage
Like a precision military strike on a strategically important bridge, the bonds between the exiting parent and their children, family, and/or support systems are strategically weakened. By “poisoning the minds,” the embattled narcissist forms a unified coalition that directly attempts to break the resolve of the escaping parent. “Successful” triangulation requires a believable backstory for the perpetrator and a fictionalized narrative that casts them as the aggrieved party and their victim as the harmful person. With the “burning” of the “support network bridge,” the victim is rendered powerless, demoralized, and/or isolated.
In this scenario, relationship sabotage, parental alienation, and triangulation are covertly used to manipulate the couple’s children into believing that the escaping parent is responsible for the marriage problems. At the same time, the desperate narcissist is sympathetically viewed as the unfairly treated innocent victim. The narcissist parent systematically breaks down the children’s loyalty to the authentic caretaker by pushing a false narrative that casts them as victims in desperate need of their children’s support and sympathy. The narcissist inculcates the children’s sympathy and concern over a dramatized depiction of fear, loneliness, and vulnerability.
10. Convincing Apologies and Promises
This trick occurs when the narcissist skillfully presents believable and authentic-seeming promises to change. The strategic delivery of apologies, filled with manufactured remorse, empathy, and sensitivity, is intended to tug at the heartstrings of the escaping partner, mainly because they have limited prior experiences with such behavior. This trick holds significant power, as the narcissist often rejects, disputes, or shifts blame when confronted.
11. The Bait and Switch Negotiations
In a desperate attempt to stop the quickly approaching “termination train,” the narcissist brokers an agreement in which they dishonestly agree to stop or curtail their most harmful and hurtful activities while seeking a near-impossible agreement from the codependent. For example, the narcissist may promise to seek employment and contribute to the family if he is allowed to keep drinking with his friends. This technique is effective because it finally delivers what the codependent has been wishing for throughout the relationship.
12. The Humanization Trick
Narcissists exploit the codependent’s capacity for empathy and forgiveness by expressing previously undisclosed details about their severe childhood abuse, neglect, or abandonment. In recounting the trauma, they regress to the deeply sad, frightened, anxious, and tearful emotions that, until the tactic, were dissociated from their conscious awareness. This is when the narcissists experience debilitating core shame, which evokes otherwise deeply buried dissociated memories of abandonment.
It is worth mentioning that by employing this technique, the narcissist is tapping into previously dissociated memories of attachment trauma, which bubble up during this specific period of manipulative influence. The incapacitating experience of pathological loneliness and core shame occurs because the former barrier responsible for memory disassociation swings wide open, allowing the narcissist to re-experience the hellish nature of their childhood. Although the motivation for this deception is manipulation, its presentation is often genuine.
Such contrived “humanness” is most impactful when the narcissists express tearful grief and sadness while imploring their partner not to abandon them as their parents did to them. This trick often succeeds because the escaping partner’s empathy is predictably activated when witnessing any child’s authentic pleas not to be traumatically abandoned. Moreover, the expression of the “voice” of their buried, abused, neglected, and abandoned child, who, up until this time, was disassociated, can be powerfully persuasive.
Like the other sixteen sabotaging “tricks,” the pathological narcissist’s diagnosis impacts its believability; for example, the person with narcissistic and borderline personality disordered individual will experience and express the ruptured emotional state differently, with the latter experiencing abandonment more intensely. The humanization tactic employed by individuals with antisocial personality disorder is not a manifestation of genuine emotional intensity but a carefully orchestrated and amplified display intended to evoke an empathic response.
13. Agreeing to Couples or Individual Therapy
When put into a corner, these narcissists may agree to couples’ counseling while pretending to be open and willing to discuss the relationship’s problems. Unbeknownst to the codependent, the personality disordered narcissist is incapable of accepting responsibility for their actions or making any significant and acceptable change in such a therapeutic environment.
Predictably, the therapy ends because of a cascade of narcissistic injuries or continues because of the charming, beguiling nature of the narcissist and the clinician’s lack of experience and abilities with such a personality disordered client. Many times, the couple’s therapist unintentionally sides with the narcissist in their attempts to manage the therapy process. Such a poor response to the narcissist creates dangerous outcomes for the other partner.
Individual Psychotherapy: The “one more chance” pleading narcissists may finally agree to seek mental health services that, until this moment, were strictly avoided and often ridiculed. Although this is frequently a patently manipulative agreement, it is usually delivered with believable sincerity.
Unfortunately, when the individual therapist does not recognize the personality disorder, and the pathological narcissist successfully portrays themselves as a credible victim, the supportive but naïve partner is in worse shape than before this trick began.
Engaging in couples or marital therapy is highly discouraged and is almost always unsafe for the codependent partner.
14. Threats of Self-Harm or Suicide
When the previous manipulation strategies fail, the narcissist becomes incapacitated by fear of abandonment, pathological loneliness, or the shame-based belief that they will be forever alone. With the flooding of formerly repressed/disassociated fears, they selfishly believe the only way to escape the pain is to kill themselves. Those exhibiting manipulative and sociopathic traits may resort to threatening suicide or staging attempts to sabotage the codependent’s efforts to leave while luring them back into the relationship.
15. All-Out Attack/Destruction
The last gasp of the embattled narcissist comes as a no-holds-barred barrage of destruction. This is when the narcissist’s rage, hatred, and contempt are focused on the person they believe is trying to obliterate their grandiose claims and beliefs. With nothing to lose, all former impulses to manipulate the partner are abandoned. When faced with such situations, the codependent is at significant risk of harm, along with the possibility of the children being affected as collateral damage. Because of the severity or risk of harm, legal and protective services are absolutely required for this stage.
16. Acceptance
With no hope for reconciliation, the reality of the termination sinks in. Ultimately, the shame, loneliness, and predictable descent into a prolonged bout of severe depression culminate with the narcissist’s “white flag” of surrender. This is when the fight is over.
17. Replacement
The narcissist’s pathological ego cannot live in shame and loneliness for long. At this point, they resume a relationship “prowl” that initially trapped the now departing partner. According to the theory of the Human Magnet Syndrome, the narcissist is expected to pursue a new relationship with a vulnerable codependent individual to exploit them parasitically for their own benefit.
THE ESCAPE PLAN
If leaving your abusive narcissist is your goal, then there is no way around the need for preparation, education, practice, and skill mastery. To that end, the four techniques below and their YouTube video links will make an escape possible:
1. The Worst-Case Scenario Technique
2. The Three Strike Boundary Technique
3. Induced Conversation Defense Technique
4. The “Of-Course” Response Technique
Through psychotherapeutic services, proactive education, skill mastery, and much practice, the recovering codependent will not be lured back into their former dungeon, where their pathological narcissist holds the key. Instead, with the severing of the invisible tethers bonding them to the harmful and cunningly manipulative narcissist and the learned/practiced ability to resist the above seventeen manipulative strategies, the codependent will begin to experience a life of Self-Love Abundance™, which is the outcome of any successful mental health treatment using my Self-Love Recovery Treatment model.
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