It’s not about the narcissist realizing that they’re a narcissist.
It’s about you accepting that you are feeling mistreated, whether they are a narcissist or not, and saving yourself, in other words: removing yourself from the situation, from the person and going no contact.
Here is one of many examples: on the phone, if you call a narcissist crying or complaining about how they’ve been treating you, you are going to be dismissed or they will have a smirk in their voice when they talk to you. If you call someone who’s not highly narcissistic and you’re crying, they’re not going to get off on it, look down on you or dismiss you. A healthy person who cares about you is, in fact, going to worry about you and try to make it right. But you won’t have to call or text them or sit them down to remind them of how to treat you.
With a healthy person, you can clear up misunderstandings and they never happen again.
With a toxic person, the same or similar kinds of abuse happen again and again.
You will only have that frantic, knawing feeling wanting to fix things with an abusive person who has been taking up too much room in your life, so now you want them to somehow make it up to you. Or even worse: you might blame yourself and be wanting to make it right somehow.
All of this takes away time from your precious life that you will never get back.
The thing is: why even deal with someone who has abused you? That’s the absurd thing. We cannot talk anyone into changing. People either change out of their own will or they never will. You can’t talk anyone into changing for you.
And here I think it’s very important to be clear about one’s motivation.
Why do you want to sit them down and confront them? Why do you want to have a heart-to-heart conversation with them?
Probably because you’re not feeling seen and heard.
Why do you think that one more talk is going to change that?
This kind of behavior seems more like an addiction than an actual, realistic expectation or wish to connect.
We are wanting to be seen and heard by a person who has absolutely NOT been seeing or hearing us.
What are the chances for things to improve?
By confronting a person we’re actually just proving that their behavior is not acceptable to us. That already is your answer. So why bother confronting them?
Basically, once a person abuses you, the relationship should be over. For people who have a healthy dose of self-respect, it is. For people who cherish the relationship / fakelationshit more than they cherish themselves, it isn’t.
By wanting to continue and talking it out we’re just showing to the narcissist that we have poor boundaries and that they’re really important to us (more important than we are to ourselves). They will, of course, use this against us and exploit it for their own benefit. – And they already know who you are. They already know you are much too tolerant and would rather die trying than to give up and cut your losses. That’s one of the reasons why they were attracted to you.
It’s very beneficial to develop into a person who doesn’t have a problem with giving up and cutting their losses. Sometimes giving up is the only way to avoid sunk cost fallacy.
So, should you confront the narcissist?
If they have already proven to you with their words and their behavior, that they are an abuser or exploiter, over and over again, you will only get more proof that will tell you you should have left long ago. And this proof will hurt you and frustrate, anger, confuse you even more. But are you going to leave?
I would even say: as long as you’re even just considering to talk to the narcissist about how they’ve been treating you, you’re still addicted to them and you’re still choosing the trauma-bond over yourself.
But are you going to leave?
Probably not. You’re only ready to leave when you’re no longer wanting to confront the narcissist. You know what to expect – nothing but dimissive, defensive talk or worse – so you don’t even bother anymore and finally leave.
This is what a healthy person with a healthy level of self-esteem does. It’s a no-brainer to them.
So the goal is never to confront the narcissist and make them agree with you.
The goal is to develop into a healthy person with healthy boundaries and a healthy level of self-esteem. And that type of person doesn’t have much patience for narcissistic nonsense. Instead of joining the big drama and having long fights and discussions and back and forth with the narcissist, do yourself a favor and just move on without them.