This causes all relationships with the narcissist to be strained and exhausting. When the narcissist plays the victim so well, it leaves you with two roles in life. You are either the therapist or the enemy. You are either the rescuer or the perpetrator. The trouble is that healthy people do not want to play these roles with their loved ones.
Your Role as Therapist
Healthy individuals recognize that they cannot serve as a rescuer to their parent, spouse, adult child, friend, boss, etc. When a person is constantly relying on your approval and validation in order to feel good about themselves, this is not a healthy situation. You are not helping them or yourself. You are not their therapist and should not serve as such. They need to be working on their own problems on their own, just as you should be with yours.
You might think, “But I’m just trying to be supportive? Wouldn’t it be mean to not let them open up to me and talk with me?” I’m not saying you shouldn’t be a supportive friend or family member. It is okay for them to share with you what they are dealing with and what they are learning, as long as they are learning and taking action to work on it for themselves. What are they doing to get healthier and stronger internally? Are they doing anything? It is not okay for them to expect you to make them feel better so they can then go back to ignoring the problem they have. This is an endless and exhausting cycle that will leave you completely drained!
Your Role as Enemy
On the flip side, healthy individuals also do not want to be seen as the constant enemy or perpetrator. A narcissist will play the victim role over and over and over. You begin to feel like their number one enemy. They are extremely good at the victim role and can convince the kindest person in the world that they are to blame for all the narcissist’s problems and unhappiness. Every bad feeling the narcissist has is somehow your fault. This is simply not reality and not healthy.
When they see you as the constant offender, everything you do and say is wrong. For a narcissist, everything is offensive to them. You will apologize over and over to them, even at times when you have no idea what you are apologizing for. You apologize anyways, simply to try to put some peace back in your life.
That peace, however, will be short-lived. There are not enough apologies in the world to satisfy the victim role of a narcissist. Their pain comes from within, and yet they constantly look for external reasons and external solutions. Those solutions will NEVER be good enough. To stop being the perpetrator, you have to set your own boundaries and walk away. They will never stop, so you must!
It is not possible for everything that is wrong with them to be your fault. Please hear these words!! It is not your fault!! You are allowed to be human. You are allowed to do things that maybe you could have done better, to say things that maybe you could have said better. No one decided that you have to be perfect, except the narcissist in your life. They decided you must be perfect and then set you up again and again for failure. Stop playing their game!! Simply walk away.
Of course, they will then blame you for abandoning them. But that is simply not true. You are an adult making an adult decision. Set your boundaries and stick with them.
