Ellen M. Lerner
2 min readDec 11, 2021

What Are The Ways Narcissistic People Deal With Partners?

In the beginning, you are sheer perfection.

Everything you like, they like. It’s uncanny.

But if you are not a suspicious person and this has never happened to you before, instead of realizing that you are about to be taken on one big, scary ride, you actually believe you have found your soul mate.

Then reality hits. It hits hard. You are not perfect anymore. Infact, it seems everything you do is wrong. You keep trying though…because who walks away from their actual soul mate?

Then you become a bit of a Chore. But they still need you for certain things, so think of a servant.

You do everything they ask, pretty much everything they say. You take care of them because this person is your partner in life.

Maybe they are going through a bad time, you wonder. Or maybe you are really doing all of these things wrong. Yes. That’s it. It must be you….better do something about that…

So you turn to them for advice and support. Think of how cruel that irony actually is. Your abuser now has the power to not only abuse you, but they tell you it is all in your mind.

You are crazy. You need some serious help. And you believe them.

It is quite easy to fire a servant. Just get rid of them and find yourself a new one. Maybe younger this time, who knows exactly what you like and how you like it done. Because this time it’s going to work out! All the past ones were crazy. They tell everyone this…you know what’s really crazy? People believe them.

You are cast aside and not just ignored, you have become a distant memory. You are worthless.

The new partner (servant) believes the narcissist. So they now have an allie. Several, actually.

If you hear enough times, over and over how crazy, delusional, terrible and just plain wrong you are, more than likely you are going to start to believe it.

That’s what happened to me. For a time…

That is just a brief synopsis of how narcissistic people deal with their partners…but they don’t look at them as partners. You are lucky if you are considered a servant by the end…but honestly, by the end, you were just some crazy person they had to put up with for a little while…no big deal…on to the next one.

Ellen M. Lerner

My name is Ellen. I am a Composer. A Pianist and Vocalist. A Student. A Writer and most of all...I'm a Survivor.