Dating After Narcissistic Abuse
It is very important that you heal from narcissistic abuse before you start dating again. You need to rebuild your self-worth and self-esteem. Become more self-assured and have belief in yourself. You need to develop a level of self-respect, where you will not let someone destroy your boundaries all over again. Boundaries are essential for your emotional and mental health. They are also essential to the development of a healthy relationship.
You may want to set boundaries to ensure that you are dealing with a person who will love and respect you. You may have dealbreakers like lying or cheating, any form of abuse or manipulation. There may be specific qualities that you would expect from a relationship partner. You may expect them to be loyal, honest, and trustworthy. You need to be at a point where you are able to regulate your emotions. You should also be practicing self-love, you need to love yourself first before you can expect someone else to love you.
Many victims of narcissistic abuse make the mistake of going from one relationship to the next, without taking any time to heal. This leaves them still in the role of a codependent.
The human magnet syndrome states that narcissists and codependents have a natural attraction to each other. So after your relationship with the narcissist, you may meet someone else and be in the love-bombing phase with them. You will then compare this stage of the relationship to the devaluation or discard phase with the narcissist. Not knowing that it is only a matter of time until this new relationship moves to the devaluation phase. And then it will just be the same thing all over again. Because you didn't take the time to heal from narcissistic abuse.
This is why the healing process is so important.
I believe that it will take at least one year to fully recover from this, but it does depend on the length of the relationship and how severe the abuse was. You need to take time to grieve the relationship you had with the narcissist. You need time to process the emotional distress. It also depends on how often you are practicing the healing techniques. If you are looking to have a relationship simply to end the pain of loneliness or isolation, then you are not ready for a relationship. You will be vulnerable to another emotional predator, as this is exactly what they look for when they are targeting their victims. They look for people who are lonely or people who do not have much support around them. So first be comfortable with being alone, there is a difference between loneliness and being alone. Learn to enjoy your own company. If you do not enjoy being by yourself, you don't have much to offer someone in a relationship. You are looking for someone else to provide you with some form of attention or affection. Or you want to give them something. Give it to yourself first, until you begin to feel whole and complete. You have to fill your own cup first before you can fill someone else's.
If you do not enjoy being by yourself, why would someone else enjoy being with you? You need to be having a good time already by yourself and then that's what will attract this new person to you. But make sure this potential relationship partner is already enjoying their own company.
Avoid anyone who appears too desperate or needy, that's a red flag and it suggests that they are not having a good time on their own. They are expecting you to provide them with something and most often these types of people will not give you anything in return. They are self-absorbed and lack empathy, most likely narcissists. When you start a new relationship, it is important to take it slowly, so that you have time to get to know the person. You should avoid any sexual contact early on in the relationship. If you become physically intimate early on, it may affect your self-worth, self-esteem, and self-respect. It may cause you to feel emotions such as guilt or shame. Any relationship which is built on the foundations of guilt or shame is destined to be an unhealthy relationship. It is important to take it slowly in the beginning so that you have time to discover any potential red flags. If you are with another narcissist, you may notice them projecting their feelings of insecurity on to you or someone else. They may devalue or degrade you or someone else. They may also deny their feelings, they don't like to admit that their feelings can be affected by someone outside of them. So if you ask them how they feel about you, they will quickly change the subject. Pay attention to what the narcissist tells you about their past, especially their family history. Their memories are often very contradictory. They might try to change your physical appearance in the beginning and then compulsively flatter you. They might tell you to dress a certain way or wear your hair in a certain way. Be aware of any pressure you feel to conform to an image of perfection.
When the narcissist first meets you, they will want you to be the perfect relationship partner.
In their minds, they believe that if their relationship partner is perfect, maybe some of their perfection could rub off on them. They also use people to obtain a narcissistic supply. Be aware of any need for control, any subtle forms of abuse, or manipulation. If you feel confused or uncertain about something, pay attention to your intuition.
Now I am going to discuss the issues of dating when you are the target of a smear campaign or gangstalking. The purpose of this is to assassinate your character. It is meant to isolate you and prevent you from meeting new people or having relationships. If you are the target of a smear campaign or gangstalking, you will be targeted by flying monkeys or gang-stalkers. These types of people will likely have a Cluster B disorder, they are not emotionally healthy people. Emotionally healthy people do not engage in these types of behaviors.
As an empath or highly sensitive person, you will immediately sense the energy of a person or group of people. You will immediately sense the vibe of a room or place. Because of this sensitivity, you will pick up the negative energy of narcissists or toxic people. So you should already be aware that the smear campaign or gangstalking, has caused the people in your environment to develop thoughts, feelings, actions, and behaviors that they wouldn't otherwise have. When you interact with them, their negative energy will be transferred to you.
They will also have a distorted perception of you. People who are involved in smear campaigns or gangstalking will always have a negative view of you. They have to see you as an unattractive person, or someone with no qualities, talents, or positive traits. Which is really just a defense mechanism. And I have talked about this in my playlist on Flying Monkeys & The Smear Campaign. As the only reason, they have targeted you is because they are envious and jealous, and they know that without the smear campaign or gangstalking you could easily move on and create a happy and fulfilling life. Think about it, if they really believed that you are not attractive, or you do not possess any qualities, talents, or positive traits they wouldn't even need to create a smear campaign or gang-stalk you.
What would be the purpose of that if they already knew that you do not possess the capabilities to achieve or obtain anything? The smear campaign or gangstalking is necessary because they are aware of your capabilities, they realize that you are a potential
threat to their dysregulated emotions. They are not going to go through all of the efforts of harassing and stalking you every day if they know that you are not capable of
anything. That wouldn't make any sense. So be aware that the purpose of this is to assassinate your character, your reputation... and then isolate you, preventing you from
meeting new people or having relationships. But you have to ask yourself, why would you want a relationship with a flying monkey or a gang-stalker anyway? Anyone who engages in these types of behaviors has got to have a Cluster B disorder. At the very least they will have low esteem, pathological envy, and jealousy, self-hate. You will never have a healthy relationship with someone like that. They will be constantly competing with you due to their low self-esteem. Projecting their envy, jealousy, and self-hatred on to you. They would also run the risk of becoming targets of the smear campaign or gang-stalking if they did have a relationship with you. And it would give the flying monkeys or gang-stalkers more motivation to destroy you. If you are the target of a smear campaign or gangstalking, you cannot have a relationship with anyone in your environment. You should not even desire to be around these types of people. They will often use a tactic where they are displaying relationships to you, as a way of projecting their own envy and jealousy on to you. But just know, they're not satisfied with their relationship either. If they were, do you really think they would take the time to harass and stalk you?
These people are miserable, they've got nothing better to do with their lives. They entertain the negative energy, negative thoughts, and feelings and this then leads to actions and behaviors, which creates an addiction. You cannot have a relationship with a person who has this type of addiction. The addiction will always be the priority in their lives, it will always have more importance than you do. Of course, I understand that isolation is extremely damaging to your emotional and psychological health. Loneliness will affect your sleep patterns, attention, logical and verbal reasoning. A cascade of stress hormones and inflammation. It messes with your sense of time and you may experience an altered sense of reality. In the 1950s and 1960s, China was meant to have used solitary confinement as a way of brainwashing American prisoners and the trial had to be stopped as they became too distressed to carry on. Few of them lasted beyond two days and none of them lasted as long as a week. Isolation will cause anxiety, depression, bizarre thoughts, temporary senselessness, extreme emotions, paranoia, and significant deterioration in your mental functioning.
So I understand that isolation will be extremely damaging to your emotional and psychological health. But so will interacting with flying monkeys or gang-stalkers. They will abuse and manipulate you, which will only cause more problems and further fear of trust or fear of intimacy. The best option in this situation is to leave the environment. This might sound extreme, but this is your emotional and psychological health we are talking about here. And isolation can even lead to physical pain. If you are a target of a smear campaign or gang-stalking, you may need to move to a different country, rather than a different city.
I have been a target for around 11 years, it got more extreme over the last 4 years and I have experienced isolation for around 16 months. I experienced the same form of gang-stalking even in a different city, so you can be sure that this dysfunctional behavior is highly
contagious. The problem is, once you start to develop the extreme symptoms resulting from the isolation, is that the flying monkeys or gang-stalkers will then use the symptoms to further abuse and manipulate you, further distort your reality and assassinate your
character. This is why it is so necessary for you to leave your current environment.
You will then be able to meet new people and have relationships. With healthy people, not flying monkeys or gang-stalkers.
So I don't recommend dating in your current environment if you are a target of a smear campaign or gangstalking. In those types of environments, you will only find cluster B personalities, healthy people simply cannot exist in these environments. But the dysfunctional people will stick together and team up to abuse and manipulate you. So please take this into consideration and just get out of there while you are still able to assess reality. It might take you some time to be able to trust people again or to be intimate with another person. But that's a far greater alternative than remaining in the toxic environment. I couldn't find any information on what happens to people who experience long-term isolation, but I would imagine that it completely strips you of your natural way of thinking, feeling, acting, and behaving.
Whether you were in a relationship with a narcissist, or you are a target of a smear campaign or gangstalking. You will be experiencing C-PTSD. You will need to heal from narcissistic abuse. And you will need to remove yourself from the damaging environment, which will only destroy you in the end.
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