It’s only natural to wonder, does a narcissist miss you after you left them (or they discarded you)?
After giving everything you had to this person, you just want to know if you ever actually meant anything to them at all. They promised you the world, they said that they loved you… yet they also had the capacity to be horrendously cruel and vindictive.
You just want to feel validated that after everything, they did actually care for you and love you. Knowing if the narcissist misses you would give you some confirmation that you did matter, that you were a worthy partner and that they did appreciate everything you offered them.
However, one of the most devastating truths about breaking up with a narcissist is to find out years or even decades later, that the whole thing was one big sham. They never were the person you thought they were and any ‘love’ they showed you was not true love at all.
Yes, the narcissist can miss you after you’ve left, but not for the reasons you had hoped for. They miss seeing their false reflection in your kind, caring eyes. They miss you believing in their fake facade and validating it for them. They miss what you gave to them and did for them.
Let’s dig deeper and explore the real reasons behind the question, does the narcissist miss you after the relationship or friendship has come to an end?
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Does a Narcissist Miss You If You Leave Them?
First off, let’s talk about how narcissists view people because it’s not the same as how you and I see others.
When the narcissist was younger, a situation or their environment caused them internal trauma, which left them with deep shame, unworthiness and humiliation. Their emotional state was stunted and they subconsciously made the decision that to be vulnerable and sensitive was too dangerous.
The only way to get their needs met in life was to shoulder their way through and take what they wanted.
Through this process, they severed all access to their True Self, effectively eliminating all of the aspects that make us inherently human – compassion, empathy, kindness and authenticity.
What they were solely left with was their ego self, which is what represents the self-centred, survival aspects of being human – competition, greed, lying and coercion.
For the ego to remain in existence, it needs constant feeding. So, the ego created a False Self to be the alter-ego so it can pilfer what it needs from others.
The ego’s dependent drug is known as narcissistic supply, which is achieved through attention being funnelled out of other people and into the narcissist. Good attention or bad attention, they don’t care as it all feeds their ego.
Therefore, to the narcissist, your only purpose is to serve them, give them attention and provide them with your life force energy. That’s it.
They have no empathy or compassion towards you, but man can they switch it on like a Hollywood actor when they need to manipulate you for their agenda!
So, given that your role is to hand over supply to them until you’re completely empty, does a narcissist miss you if you get up and walk out?
Heck yes, they will panic big time!
But not because they genuinely miss you as a person. No, the reason the narcissist misses you is because you’ve effectively ripped out their life support tube. And beyond having their supply tap removed, the narcissist doesn’t have control of the discard, you do – and they hate that!
“How dare you unplug me from your life force supply!!!”
From the moment you fall for the narcissist’s love bombs, they believe that you are theirs forever.
They put the time into acquiring you, hoovering you and ‘training’ you with their manipulations, punishments and rewards, therefore they own you. The narcissist thinks that they are entitled to you whenever they please, no questions asked.
Think of it as a transaction. The idealisation phase was the purchase, which you unwittingly agreed to, not knowing that there were lifelong terms and conditions.
Because the narc thinks of you as their possession, they also believe that any discard should be coming from them, not you. When you discard a narcissist, their ego takes it as a huge rejection, which they simply cannot handle.
Get ready for all sorts of punishments, projections, smear campaigns and other backlash if you are the one to leave a narcissist.
But does the narcissist miss you underneath all of the vindictiveness? Well yes, they can certainly miss what you provided for them, but they do not miss you as a person.
Here’s what it means when a narcissist says, “I miss you:”
- “I miss having someone do all of the housework for me.”
- “I miss having sex with you.”
- “I miss the money you provided me with.”
- “I miss how easy my life was.”
- “I miss the attention I received based on your status.”
- “I miss having a personal slave.”
- “I miss how you adored me.”
- “I miss the power I gained by being able to control your every move.”
- “I miss having access to your life force energy whenever I demanded it.”
- “I miss the material items I could have with you.”
In other words, “I miss what you give to me,”
not “I miss you as a person.”
We like to hope that the narcissist misses us because we want them to feel some kind of remorse or loss as a result of their behaviour. However, the narcissist does not have the ability to feel remorse. If they do go there for a split-second, their ego will quickly grab that and project any painful feelings they’ve got straight back onto you.
They’ll blame you for the very things that they did to create the breakdown of the relationship. They’ll lie and rewrite the storyline so that they can paint themselves to the world as the poor victim, while you are the evil perpetrator.
Their ego needs to do whatever it can to protect itself at this point. Your leaving them makes you a direct threat to the unravelling of their False Self. So now you must be annihilated in order to exterminate that risk.
The survival of their False Self is the only thing that matters to them because, without that, they will be left to fall into the black hole that they are within. To the narcissist, that is a fate worse than death.
It’s not that the narcissist misses you, they simply have a knee-jerk reaction to you ripping out their life support cord. They miss having narcissistic supply being pumped into them on tap.
When I left my narcissist ex, he turned into a monster more evil than I’d ever witnessed throughout any of the relationship abuse. He tried every manipulation tactic in the book because he was freaking out!
He clearly didn’t expect me to actually leave him – he thought I’d stick around and put up with his bullshit forever.
However, I was so drained that I really didn’t have much left to give. So, it was probably only a matter of time before he discarded me, which would have been a thousand times more devastating.
Since he wasn’t expecting the break-up, he had not secured another form of supply. So, he had to try to guilt-trip me, threaten me, devalue me and even attempt to re-love bomb me, all in desperation to get his supply back.
I held my ground, as difficult as it was (I still had to see him because of the kids). Then as soon as he acquired a new supply (about two months after the break-up), it’s like he’d finally lost my number all of a sudden.
He went from proclaiming that he’d, “Never love anyone, ever again,” to being totally ‘in love’ two weeks later and just like that, I was (thankfully) forgotten about. Although he did actively use his new supply to trigger me over and over again, which was one of the most horrendous experiences I’ve ever had to go through.
Does a Narcissist Miss You If They Discard You?
As much as the narcissist expects you to always be there, fulfilling their needs, they will just as quickly discard you once you start to show signs of depletion or they’ve found a more supple form of supply elsewhere.
This is why it can feel so utterly devastating to be discarded by a narcissist, even though they were only there to use and abuse you anyway.
You can go from thinking that you were each other’s whole worlds, to being dropped like a hot potato without a backward glance. I’ve heard stories in this community of narcissists proposing to their partners after being together for years and then a month later, they’ve totally replaced them with a shiny new supply.
It can be easy to think that the narcissist must miss you on some level, because you’re probably missing them, right? I mean, how can you spend years or even decades with someone and walk away with zero emotions around all of the memories you’ve created together?
Due to the nature of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), they cut off access to those empathetic and emotional resources within themselves a very long time ago. Their False Self cannot feel anything authentic that would cause them to miss you as a fully autonomous human being.
All the ego can miss is what resources it gained by being with you. Those resources could include money, sex, status, material items, connections, security, adoration and of course your ability to hand over life force energy to them.
And even though you hate that you miss them and wonder about them, you want them to feel bad for what they’ve done to you. So, you stalk them on social media, only to find them happier than ever with someone younger, richer and more attractive than you are certainly feeling right now (especially on the flip side of narcissistic abuse).
| READ: Cycle of Narcissistic Abuse → |
Your insides are yearning to know that you actually did mean something to them. They’ve infiltrated your whole world, shattered you into a million pieces, then walked away without so much as a “Sorry.”
The reality is, if the narcissist discarded you, they are much less likely to even miss your resources. Narcissists rarely, if ever, discard without at least one other good, solid supply waiting in the wings.
Narcissists are no different to drug addicts. Everything they do is based around hunting down and securing their next hit of supply. Think of yourself as a drug dealer since you have access to an abundance of life force energy. The narcissist isn’t likely to leave their current supplier if they have plenty of stock on hand, without having a ‘better’ dealer already lined up.
Hence they will discard people who they’ve energetically depleted in exchange for someone who’s nicely filled up.
In short, no the narcissist does not miss you after they’ve discarded you. In fact, they can still be extracting supply from you, while moving on to a new victim (or two, or three).
How does a narcissist still get supply from you after they have gone?
Sickeningly, narcissists are able to hook into you psychically and still feed from you remotely.
Every time you ruminate over the injustice of what they’ve done to you, or you feel triggered by what they’ve posted on social media, you are feeding them supply through that psychic energetic cord.
If they can get a rise out of you, even if you have zero contact with them, then you’re still granting them attention and feeding them. That’s why narcs really do get off on getting reactions out of their exes from afar.
Think about all of the ways they can still trigger you without ever having to see you. They can use ‘flying monkeys,’ badmouth you to your own kids, smear you to mutual friends, post pics of their new supply on Instagram, ‘accidentally’ send you a text message… the possibilities are endless.
| READ: 17 Examples of Narc Texts → |
This is why it’s so imperatively important for your well-being and ability to move forward into a healthy life, to focus on yourself and heal your inner wounds.
Until you’ve done that, you will continue to be triggered by the narcissist, remain stuck in PTSD and even repeat your programmed patterns in other relationships in your life.
| READ: PTSD from Narc Abuse → |
How Does a Narcissist Feel After the Relationship Ends?
Does ‘No Contact’ Hurt a Narcissist?
If you are the one to go ‘No Contact’ with the narcissist, they will see that as a rejection, or rather, their ego takes it as a direct rejection of itself.
The narcissist has such a superior view of themselves, that their ego immediately kicks back with, “How dare you reject me. If anything, you are the one who deserves to be rejected.”
So, they will wait for the right moment to punish you for the rejection, whether that be right away by lashing out at you in a rage, or a little bit further down the track with a public smearing or something else.
What’s really going on is that by completely cutting out the narcissist, you will trigger a narcissistic injury within them. One of the narc’s deepest inner fears is being abandoned (i.e. rejection).
Remember, for the False Self to remain in existence, it needs to be better than everyone else at all times, because the attention, admiration and power that comes with that, feeds the ego.
So with a rejection, the ego will jump straight into survival mode and believe that it needs to annihilate you because you are now a threat to its reality.
Therefore, ‘no contact’ does hurt the narcissist’s ego, however, it doesn’t hurt the narc on a level of sadness like it would a healthy person.
If the narcissist was the one to instil no contact on you, they won’t be hurting at all. This is effectively a punishing silent treatment on their part and they will have a solid supply elsewhere. So you are a complete non-event to them unless they continue to keep triggering you on the side so that they can keep extracting supply from you.
Will the Narcissist Come Back After ‘No Contact?’
Most narcissists will continue to keep coming back after no contact, especially if they think they can still squeeze some more life force out of you. This is where it’s up to you to set extremely firm boundaries and stick to them!
The narcissist already knows you so well and they’ll know exactly how to trigger you with guilt and/ or fear to get you to lower your boundaries for them.
If you don’t stand your ground, you will lose all credibility with the narcissist.
Here are some reasons why the narcissist will keep returning after no contact:
- Complete disrespect for your boundaries
- To ‘win’ the game
- To regain control over you and the situation
- So that they can be the one to discard you
- They don’t have any other supply
- They want something from you
- To save face publicly and stop a shame spiral
- They can still get more supply out of you
The reasons for not hearing from the narcissist again after no contact are if they’ve got another supply, to punish you or because they expect you to chase after them.
What Happens When You Ignore a Narcissist?
As we’ve established with the ‘no contact,’ narcissists hate being ignored. If you’re ignoring the narc, it means that you’re holding out on the very thing they live and breathe for – narcissistic supply.
In the narcissist’s warped reality, they think of themselves as a God-like being, who deserves to be idolised at all times. Therefore, they believe that they are unapologetically entitled to you and your life force energy whenever they put their hand out for it.
Here’s what happens when you ignore a narcissist. They’ll…
- Dish out reverse silent treatment
- Offer the fake apologies & promises
- Play the victim to guilt you and others
- Falsely accuse you
- Threaten & rage at you
- Conduct a smear campaign
- Contact your friends & family to rewrite the storyline
- Discard you and move on to the next supply
Does a Narcissist Ever Let Go of their Victim?
A narcissist most definitely can let go of their victims, but only when it suits them. If they’ve completely emptied you out and you no longer serve them any purpose, they will let you go like yesterday’s trash.
However, if they’ve ‘owned’ you once, they feel that they withhold the right to come back into your life whenever they please. Yep, that may even be years down the track!
If you allow them to come back in, they will not hesitate to hoover you back into their abuse cycle all over again, knowing full well that they only ever intend on using you.
It’s up to you to not allow them back in.
| READ: Why Narcs Never Give Closure → |
Does a Narcissist Regret Losing You?
The reality is that the narcissist has zero regrets about losing you, with only one exception. If they still think there’s more they could have bled you for, they may regret not having been able to get their dirty hands on whatever that was for them (sex, money, property, acclaim etc.).
If it was due to something the narcissist did, which caused the break-up, they may regret you finding out about that thing, but they don’t regret the thing itself.
For example, say you catch your partner cheating and that causes you to end the relationship. The narcissist won’t regret cheating on you, they’ll regret that they didn’t manipulate harder or that they got found out.
At the end of the day, it’s all your fault that the relationship ended (no matter how it went down), so they will forever be the victim.
To feel regret would be to take accountability for their part in the break-up. The narcissist will never take personal responsibility, therefore they’ll never feel regret.
The narcissist will never regret losing you as a person, because they don’t care about you as a person. They may regret losing what you did for them or gave them, but it was never about you.
“Three days after I’d left my narcissistic husband he came over to pick the kids up and was feeling all sad and sorry for himself. He said to me, “When are you coming home? I’m so exhausted from having to do the housework, cook and go to work. I only get like, 10 minutes to myself every day!”
Notice there was nothing said about missing me as a person. No, he missed having me as his live-in slave.
How Do Narcissists Feel When You Move On?
If the narcissist sees or thinks that you haven’t moved on after them, they will take that as a personal head swell. You see, if you haven’t managed to move on since them, it’ll make them feel very special and important. They will think that you can’t move on because they were that important to you.
Not only that, if they’ve moved on to a new supply, they’ll feel much more superior to you because clearly they are the ‘amazing’ one, who everyone loves… not you.
Given that they take no responsibility for any of their abusive behaviour during (and after) the relationship, the thought won’t even cross their mind that you would rather stay single than put up with anyone else’s BS ever again (or at least for now)!
So, what about when you do eventually move on and the narcissist catches wind of it? They won’t like it one bit, because it means that they’re no longer important in your life and have been replaced. Hence, they won’t be receiving any more supply from you.
They can also get very jealous because, to them, you are their ‘toy.’ Narcissists do not like to share and that includes you. They’d be more than happy to see you stay single and miserable for the rest of your life because it makes them feel superior.
Something that would trigger them even harder is if you move on with someone they know. That would be a double whammy for them because “How dare my friend/ acquaintance play with my toy without asking!” Yep, they are that childish with how they view other people in their lives.
But even more frightening for them is that if you move on with someone they know, they lose the ability to control the storyline. You now have the power to expose who the narcissist truly is and that is akin to death for them!
| READ: Narc Reactions When You Move On → |
Does My Narcissistic Ex Think About Me?
Narcissists can certainly still think about their exes if they are bored, needing more supply or feeling victimised. They may feel angry about what’s happened and feel the need to justify why they are right and you are wrong. They’ll particularly do this by talking bad (and lying) about you to family and mutual friends.
Even after the relationship has come to an end, the narcissist still expects to be the most important person in your world (crazy, I know!). They’ll stalk you on social media and try to find out information about you because ultimately they want to hear that you’re doing awful without them. It all feeds their ego and makes them feel superior.
As far as they’re concerned, you are to blame for everything, therefore you do not deserve to have anything in life. You are nothing without them… well that’s what they think.
The best way to shut the narcissist down is to go on and be the happiest, healthiest version of yourself that you can be. That will drive them crazy more than anything else!
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