How a Narcissist Makes Sure You Can't Leave

The narcissist's plan is to keep you under his control both, during and after, the relationship ends.

Common techniques he uses to ensure you can't leave include:

Financial control: He manages the money, leaving you without access to your own funds. This financial dependency makes you afraid to leave because you don't have the resources to go anywhere else.

Isolation: He keeps you away from your family and friends for so long that you're scared you've lost your support network and don't have anyone to turn to.

Using children: If you have kids together, he uses them to control you by turning them against you, or, after separation, by preventing you from seeing them or refusing to see them himself, which upsets the children.

Pregnancy: By getting you pregnant, he ensures that even if you break up, you can never fully get rid of him. This connection allows him to continue manipulating, bullying, and harassing you.

Marriage: He can guilt-trip you into staying by using financial control, shared assets, and bills against you. This makes it difficult to leave without facing more challenges of setting up independently and disconnecting from him.

A narcissist will use tactics to make sure you can't leave.

Threats: He makes you too scared to leave by threatening to hurt you.

Public humiliation: He uses social media to publicly humiliate you, making you worry that people will believe him and think badly of you, which makes you feel alone and afraid to leave.

Undermining confidence: He erodes your confidence and makes you feel unworthy of love, so you believe you'll never find anyone else and choose to stay with him rather than be alone.

Emotional Manipulation: They use guilt, shame, and emotional blackmail to make you feel responsible for their well-being, making it hard for you to leave without feeling guilty.

Dependency Creation: They encourage or create dependencies, such as moving you away from your support network, and e.g.: making you rely on them for transportation.

Sabotaging Independence: They might interfere with your job, education, or other opportunities for personal growth, ensuring you lack the resources or confidence to leave.

Creating Drama: They generate constant conflict and chaos, making you too emotionally exhausted to contemplate leaving.

Triangulation: They involve a third party to create jealousy, competition, or insecurity, ensuring your focus remains on them and not on leaving.

Promises of Change: They make promises to change their behaviour, often during moments when you express a desire to leave, giving you false hope.

Using these tactics, means the narcissist is making it more difficult for you to leave. To combat this, maintain your independency by:

• Ensuring you're responsible for and have access to your own money.

• Save an emergency fund that he doesn't know about.

• Continue contacting and seeing your support network.

• Don't become reliant on him for things you need, for instance: housing, money, food, transport.

• Don't do anything you don't want to -keep your boundaries and don't commit to situations that you don't 100% want, or are comfortable with.

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I'm Aimee, a #MentalWellbeingCoach specialising in supporting females who are recovering from #DomesticAbuse. 

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