Can Narcissists Love: 10 Brutal Facts On Narcissistic Love

📅 12 Oct 2024 • 📖 11 min read

— Reviewed by Dr. Sandip Roy.

Narcissists—people who have narcissistic traits or even Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)—have a radically different way of loving than what we normally think of as love.

For most of us, love is about caring, being there, and doing things for our loved one — without expecting anything in return.

But not for narcissists.

Loving a narcissist can feel like a rollercoaster ride:

• Their overly sweet version of love can make you feel on top of the world. But after that initial excitement, often comes frustration and confusion.
• They frequently change the rules and expectations, making it hard for you to keep up. They replace their acts of love with neglect, criticism, insults, sarcasm, and contempt.

Read on to get answers to your big questions on narcissistic love.

Can Narcissists Love?

Yes, narcissists can love, but their love is more conditional and transactional love than genuine. Their love starts and sustains only when the other person fulfills certain conditions. Their gestures of love are to get something in return — validation, praise, or obedience.

Your narcissist’s love comes with strings attached. When they lavish you with attention, gifts and romantic gestures, remember, you have to pay back with something they haven’t told you yet.

In general,

• If you do things to make your narcissist feel special or important, they will show you love and care.
• If you fail to meet those expectations, they can pull back, go silent, or turn on the rage button.

“I’ll be nice to you and show you love as long as you make me feel good about myself.” — your narcissist’s unspoken words

Even worse, their lack of empathy makes it hard to even imagine that one could love someone without expecting anything in return.

• A narcissist’s love is based on grandiosity, egoism, greed, indifference, and self-gain.
• Narcissistic love expects admiration, validation, obedience, servitude, and loyalty in return.
• Narcissists in love don’t reveal their vulnerabilities, out of fear that it might make them seem less powerful and less in control of the relationship.

So, while narcissists can feel something that looks like love, it’s usually not the same as the genuine, caring love that most of us experience.

In the end, you realize that a narcissist’s self-love will always be bigger than their love for any other person. That their “love” was to secure you as a narcissistic supply — someone to supply them with attention, praise, being a slave, and tolerating their abuse.

“A narcissist’s love is there as long as you—the person of interest—give them more than they invest.”

10 Brutal Facts About Narcissistic Love (Q&As)

1. How to tell if a narcissist loves you?
   Narcissists typically show their love by showering you with attention and gifts, idealizing you, and mirroring your interests and behaviors. They often remind you of the things they did for you out of love.
2. When does a narcissist know you love them?
   Narcissists know you love them when they test you (by giving you little contempt, disregard, and coldness) and find that you are still with them, and even trying to please them. They feel sure that now they can control you at will.
3. Can a narcissist fall in love permanently?
   They cannot love a person for long, since they can’t see love as anything else than a transactional and conditional interaction. However, they can become dependent on their partner, while making their partners dependent on them (codependency), which may seem like long-term love.
4. Can narcissists love another narcissist?
   Narcissists can form relationships with other narcissists, but most of these are likely to be volatile, highly competitive, and envy-ridden.
5. Can narcissists love their children?
   Narcissistic parents treat and love their children as extensions of themselves. Moreover, much of this love is conditional—based on the child meeting the narcissist’s expectations. They tend to take credit for their children’s achievements.
6. Can narcissists love animals?
   Narcissists have a “disaffectionate” love towards animals—typically conditional and self-serving. They are quite capable of harming pet animals.
7. Can narcissists love their parents?
   Narcissists may have a complex relationship with their parents, either idolizing or resenting them.
8. Do narcissists love narcissistic leaders?
   Narcissists often have a “cult-like” fandom for narcissistic leaders and influencers, putting them on a pedestal. They are known to troll those people who oppose or criticize their favorite leader.
9. Can a narcissist ever have a healthy relationship?
   A narcissist can have a good relationship if they work hard to behave better, go to therapy, and learn healthy social skills and meaningful ways to express love. But they will probably fall back into their narcissistic ways, so they need regular follow-ups.
10. Can narcissists be cured so that they can love normally?
    No, narcissists cannot be cured. However, therapy can help them behave like normal people and express love, compassion, kindness in healthy ways. Don’t be a fool to think that your love will fix them — as this self-centered person can even gaslight their therapist.

When you meet a narcissist, you feel like you met your soulmate. Why?

• Because they mirror your dreams, aspirations, hopes, and desires, even your dislikes and fears.
• The mirror they hold up reflects your jagged edges, unconscious, unhealed parts of you.
• The mirror so much blinds you that you don’t see the narcissist’s true self.

Why Narcissists Can’t Truly Love: 7 Reasons

Some of these reasons will heavily surprise you:

1. A narcissist’s love is one-directional.

Narcissists crave love, but their love is one-directional, flowing only to them.

That means, while your love is for them, their love towards you is also ultimately for them.

Their show of love is to get your love in return. Unlike a “give more than take” kind of love, theirs is a “take and only take” kind.

2. Their love is transactional love.

Narcissists expect you to put their needs first.

They will give you love as long as you give them their validation. It’s difficult to romance them since they constantly belittle you for “disrespecting” them.

3. They crave to boost their self-esteem (ego).

Narcissists use their “love” as a tool to bind you in the relationship and boost their ego.

Their exaggerated self-importance and emotional shallowness prevent them from making the genuine connections vital for a good and long-lasting relationship.

4. Narcissists lack empathy and compassion.

Narcissists struggle to understand other people’s feelings and emotions. Their typical reaction to a friend’s success is that of jealousy and envy.

Since they are unable to feel the pains of others, it is difficult for them to build empathy-based bonds.

5. Narcissists are attention-hungry people.

Narcissists put their own egos above their partner’s well-being. And it’s more than being self-absorbed.

Their desperate craving for attention, admiration, and validation causes them to disregard their partner’s needs and problems.

6. They keep trying to manipulate you.

Narcissists use love bombing to lure you into a relationship by pretending to be in love with you.

They can weave unrealistic capers and envious accomplishments to trap you.

Then they manipulate and gaslight you to control and dominate you, making it challenging to form a healthy and equal partnership.

7. Emotional intimacy is hard for narcissists.

Narcissists wear masks and crave deep emotional connections, but fear showing their vulnerable side, resulting in only surface-level relationships devoid of emotional intimacy.

12 Signs You Might Have Fallen For A Narcissist

Narcissists lure you in with charm and charisma, but then devolve into their trademark narcissistic abuse cycle.

1. They are incredibly well-behaved in the early stages of romance and go to great lengths to impress you.
2. They mimic your positive behaviors and expressions to manipulate you into believing they are likable.
3. They have a lot of confidence in their abilities and love to be praised, often showering you with attention and gifts to earn your admiration.
4. They do not take criticism or negative feedback well and may give a blank look when corrected.
5. They, especially the grandiose ones, are egocentric, arrogant, aggressive, and exploitative, showing contempt for those they perceive as socially inferior. They often yell at others and can be harmful to your pets.
6. They do not have many long-term friends, as people tend to avoid them. Narcissists are known to use manipulation and exploitation of others to achieve their goals.
7. They have a sense of entitlement and expect special treatment from others, including unreasonable levels of respect, love, care, and attention.
8. They bolster their fragile self-image with fantasies of success, power, beauty, or ideal love, believing they are special and unique. But deep inside, they suffer the shame of being mediocre and average.
9. They crave constant admiration and expect you to praise them every time you talk to them.
10. They rarely feel guilt, remorse, or regret after hurting or abusing others.
11. They do not trust you entirely and are almost paranoid about signs of betrayal from you, often putting your trustworthiness to the test.
12. They make excuses for their weird behaviors, often blaming you for their actions, and even using aggression to get you to agree to their version of events.

What happens when a narcissist falls in love?

How to know when a narcissist is falling for you? How do they show their love?

Warning: A narcissist wants you in their life to secure your love, manipulate you into validating them, and inflate their ego. Look out for red flags like a lack of empathy or a constant need for praise.

Here are some specific love behaviors of a narcissist:

1. They try to win you over with grand gestures, intense flattery, and excessive attention.
2. They show extreme eagerness to spend time with you and lavish you with expensive gifts.
3. They present themselves as wealthy and successful people who can meet all your material needs.
4. They often boast about their qualities and achievements and are often given to humble-bragging.
5. They do not support you during your difficult times and may belittle your successes and awards.
6. They can be very competitive, making you feel bad about yourself if you’re in the same field as them.
7. They view you as a means to satisfy their entitlement since their relationships revolve around them.
8. You may find it hard to end your relationship with them because they instill a neediness in you that is known as narcissistic codependency.

A narcissist in love can make you think, “He has followed me across three continents to gift me a Gucci and a Rolex. I’d be a fool to turn him down.” With that, you are one step deeper into their world of abuse.

Moreover, it is often painful to choose between staying and leaving them.

It is so because they keep you tied in a trauma bond, which they create through occasional gestures of love in between abusive behavior.

What Happens When A Narcissist Knows You Love Him/Her

“A narcissist in love is truly amazing, until it isn’t. At some point, they will conflict entirely. You cannot love the way that they love, and they cannot love the way you do.”

— PHILLIP JOHNSON, QUORA

Final Words

A narcissist’s love is transactional and conditional — never forget that.

Can a narcissist fall in love with a high-empathy person (commonly called empaths)?

High-empathy people (empaths) seem to have a “fatal attraction” to narcissists. Empaths are likely to go out of their way to satisfy, fix, ease the pains, and meet the narcissist’s needs and demands.

While the narcissists are emotionally needy and demanding people. So they make serious efforts to lure empaths to them with their sob stories while they are moved to fix the narc.

Such relationships seem mutually compatible. The narcissist provides security to the insecure empath while the empath boosts the narcissist’s low self-esteem.

Lastly, even if you think a narcissist has fallen for you, it’s almost always a bad idea to fall for them. They require therapy, not a person willing to love them despite their nature.

• • •

√ Also Read: 10 Safest Ways To Trick A Narcissist Into Telling The Truth

√ Please spread the word if you found this helpful.

• Our Story!