Does your partner frequently behave in some or all of the following ways?
- Love bombing: This involves your partner showering you with compliments and affection, e.g. buying you expensive gifts and saying things that they know you want to hear. This may seem positive at first, but it is often a manipulative tactic used to earn your trust and as a tool to eventually guilt trip and control you.
- Emotional blackmail: This may include threats, intimidation, or punishment, often pursued with the aim of making you feel fearful, obligated or guilty – commonly referred to as ‘FOG’.
- Gaslighting: This is an intentional attempt to make you doubt your perception of reality. For example: denying hurtful behaviours; pretending that they don’t remember; or accusing you of lying or not understanding their version of events.
- Withholding: Intentionally withholding things such as money, communication, sex, or affection from you. This is often done when your partner is unhappy with something that you have done; they may explicitly tell you this, or remain silent so as to make you re-count and question your recent actions in a bid to work out why they are withholding things from you.
- Isolation: They frequently prevent or heavily control the access that you have to family, friends and third parties more generally.
- Character assassination or slander: This involves them spreading lies or malicious gossip about you to others.
- Competition: They are always trying to one-up you.
- Exploitation and objectification: They take advantage of you for their personal gain, irrespective of your feelings or needs.
- Projecting: This involves your partner shifting the blame onto you for something that they have done, instead of taking accountability and apologising.
- Ignoring boundaries: This type of behaviour can manifest in all different forms, including: going through your phone; following you around; or doing things you have previously asked them not to do. Attempts at reinforcing boundaries typically result in arguments, anger or accusations.
- Triangulation: This is where your partner typically attempts to involve a third-party during conflict in order to strengthen their side.
- Nitpicking: This involves frequent criticism, usually over trivial matters, eventually resulting in you feeling as though everything you do is wrong.
During your relationship, do you often feel any of the following?
- Isolated: Like you have no allies and no one that you can confide in outside of your partner.
- Anxious: You over-think and worry extensively over what to say and how to act in fear of provoking your partner.
- Lacking confidence: Experiencing feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness.
- Lacking an identity: You no longer feel as though you are a separate, individual entity from your partner.
- Depression: You struggle to complete day-to-day tasks and have lost interest in activities you once used to enjoy.
- Mistrust: Generally not trusting both yourself and others.
If you do experience some or all of the behaviours and feelings listed above as part of your relationship with your partner, then you may be a victim of narcissistic abuse.
Since narcissists are often well adapt at concealing their behaviours and undermining their victims, it is not uncommon for victims of narcissistic abuse to be unaware that they are, in fact, victims. Upon learning of their abuse, survivors of narcissistic abuse often use the analogy of a frog being slowly boiled alive in a pot of hot water to describe the abuse: if you initially put the frog into a pot of room-temperature water, then slowly crank up the heat, by the time the frog realises what’s going on, he is already in hot water.
If you would like to talk to one of our legal advisors about narcissistic abuse, do not hesitate to contact us on
- Meg Walters, Paralegal
