Narcissists are self-obsessed creatures who are entirely in love with themselves. The idea of them being obsessed with anyone outside of their own reflection is kind of hard to wrap your head around.
There are a few reasons why narcissists become obsessed with people, but at the end of the day, their motives are always self-serving.
If you’re wondering how to make a narcissist obsessed with you, I must disclose that I do not recommend taking that path. A narcissist is a conscienceless ‘no self,’ who lacks any moral compass. The vast majority of people who end up enmeshed with a narcissist come out the other side shattered into a million pieces.
Enter at your own risk!
However, out of pure interest, I’ve put this article together to explore why narcissists become obsessed with people and how to make a narcissist obsessed with you.
This post contains affiliate links, for more information, see our disclosures here.
Why Narcissists Become Obsessed with People
Data Collection
During the ‘love bombing’ phase the narcissist will spend hours, days, even weeks studying the newest object of their desire. This is where people understandably mistake the narcissist’s absolute attention for someone ‘who’s a great listener and extremely attentive.’
What the narcissist is actually doing is collecting as much data as they can on their prey and storing it all safely away for later use.
The workings of a narcissist go like this…
- The narcissist appears as a temporary illusion of what you truly want them to be.
- You feel safe and quickly trust the narcissist. You open up and share all of your deepest hopes, dreams, desires, fears and insecurities.
- The narcissist stores away all of the information you’ve given them to use against you at a later date.
- Once you’re hooked, the narcissist begins to erode your sense of self, gaining complete control over you.
- The deeper you go into the relationship, the more you’re programmed to hand over your life force to the narcissist, while becoming totally insignificant, worthless and diminished.
While the narcissist has zero intention of putting in much energy throughout the future relationship, they have no problem becoming obsessed at the beginning. They aim to fully understand this new person so that they know how to completely control and manipulate them for their own agenda.
| READ: Full Cycle of Narc Abuse → |
Possessiveness
Narcissists do not view people as independent, autonomous beings with their own emotions, goals and desires. No, to them a person is merely a tool to use in order to get whatever it is that they want.
The narcissist’s ego needs constant attention from the outside world to prop it up and validate that it truly is as important as it deems itself to be. To gain the required attention, the narcissist needs to always be the best at everything. They need the best car, a house in a better neighbourhood than their friends and family, the best-looking or most successful partner, the best position at work, the most trendy clothing and on it goes.
Once a narcissist has set their sights on someone to claim for bettering their agenda, they will become possessive over them. In their mind, they want that person because they see that the person can give them things that their ego needs, therefore no one else is allowed to have that person.
Remember, narcissists view people as objects.
Narcissists become obsessed with people when they believe that they ‘own’ them. This also applies to the exes of the narcissist. In their insane reality, if they’ve owned you once, they own you forever. They don’t want you to move on and be happy with someone else and they certainly don’t want you to move on with anyone they know. Narcissists are like sullen toddlers who hate sharing. How dare someone else play with their discarded toy!
There are so many stories in this community of people who’ve been stalked by their obsessed narcissistic ex who refused to let them escape their control. Please don’t be mistaken into thinking it’s because the narcissist loves you and misses you. They just cannot stand losing control over you and losing your supply. That’s it.
| READ: When a Narcissist Loses Control! → |
Fear & Control
If you’ve gotten too close to the narcissist or they know that you recognise what they really are under their mask, they may become obsessed with you.
For a narcissist, being exposed is their greatest fear. The False Self, which their ego has created, must be protected at all costs. Without the False Self, their whole imagined reality will crumble and the narcissist would only be left with all that truly sits inside of them. What’s at the core of the narcissist is the lowest form of shame, self-disgust and unworthiness you can imagine. To have to sink down into that pit is a fate worse than death in the narcissist’s eyes.
If they are feeling threatened about you telling other people any semblance of truth about them, they will become obsessed about what you’re doing, who you’re hanging out with and what you’re saying to other people.
After breaking up with my narcissistic husband of twenty years, he became obsessed with who I was talking to, what they were asking me and what I was telling them. Obviously he did not want me telling any mutual friends or my family any information that sat outside of his agenda. He needed to be seen as the poor victim who’d done absolutely nothing wrong to have deserved his family leaving him. He would interrogate me and want to know exactly how conversations played out, right down to, “What did the other person say? Did they ask about me? Because this is all your fault.”
When the narcissist is afraid of being exposed they become obsessed about rewriting history and controlling the storyline. Don’t be surprised to see them enlisting flying monkeys and publicly smearing you. If the narcissist feels threatened by you, then you become public enemy #1 and must be annihilated before you annihilate them.
| READ: 13 Things That Make a Narc Panic → |
Needing Supply
A narcissist is like an ice addict. Their whole life revolves around getting the next hit of their favourite drug, which is narcissistic supply.
In a nutshell, narcissistic supply is anything that feeds the narcissist’s ego – attention, admiration, validation and flattery. To gain such things, the narcissist believes that they must always be the most superior being in the room, therefore maintaining centre stage and having everyone’s attention fully fixed on them and no one else.
Essentially what this attention amounts to is life force energy. Deep inside, the narc feels utterly worthless, so in order to disown that despised part of themselves, their ego took over. The ego is not an authentic aspect, it’s purely a false illusion. So, to keep that illusion around, it needs constant feeding.
When the narcissist is running low on narcissistic supply, they will start to drop lower into themselves as their False Self diminishes.
The narcissist absolutely cannot stand for that to happen, therefore they become obsessed with people who they think will feed them the life force energy they’re so desperate for. The more critical the situation becomes, the more obsessed the narcissist will be about locking in a new source of supply.
How to Make a Narcissist Obsessed With You
The basic premise of how to make a narcissist obsessed with you is to beat them at their own game. In fact, the way you need to treat them and respond to them is extremely narcissistic, which is why I don’t recommend it.
These strategies could go either way for you. On the one hand, they could work and make a narcissist obsessed with you. Or, they could totally backfire, with the narcissist discarding you because you aren’t granting them with the supply they are seeking.
Here goes…
Be Physically Enticing
Narcissists are fully fixated on how things look and how others perceive them based on those appearances. If they think you’re physically attractive, they’ll want you on their arm, because you will make them look good. The attention your good looks attract from other people will directly reflect back to the narcissist.
Since they only view you as a tool to gain supply, they really don’t care about who you are inside. As long as you look good (much like a designer handbag or watch), then you are good for their False Self’s image.
By making yourself physically enticing, the narcissist will see how much attention you get from others and will view you as a prize that they just have to win.
Narcissists are extremely competitive! Their ego is constantly whispering in their ear that for them to be worth anything, they must be the best. For them to lose would mean to be less than the dirt underneath their shoe. It simply cannot be allowed to happen.
How to make a narcissist obsessed with you is to make yourself a trophy in which they must win.
Make Them Jealous
Another way to make a narcissist obsessed with you is to flirt with others and make them feel jealous. If the narcissist has decided that they want you, but they see you entertaining other people’s attention, their possessive trait will kick in.
In their mind, they’ve already decided that they want you to be their item, therefore they’ll get very jealous when seeing you flirting and interacting with others.
You’ll want to give them just enough glances to make them feel like they’ve got a shot, but subtly give the attention the narcissist is craving to other people.
Ultimately, the narcissist is severely unhappy inside and seeks to fill that void with external things, which they think will bring them happiness. As they watch you provide that ‘happiness’ to someone else, they will desire it for themselves even more.
Completely Overlook Them
Narcissists are used to controlling and manipulating those around them and having people fawn at their feet. If you know that they want you, yet you completely overlook them, you then provide them with a challenge.
Your confidence in yourself to not be needy and codependent is very appealing to many narcissists in the beginning. Down the line they will still expect you to hand your power over to them because they believe that they are superior, therefore that’s what they deserve.
However, by overlooking them, they will see you as a conquest. Winning you over and ultimately ruling you is much more of a challenge to them than the ‘easy’ prey who just hand themselves over. It’s not that they see you as more worthy, but rather, they see it as a bigger win for them.
They will think, “I am so powerful that I can even get self-assured people feeding from the palm of my hand.”
| READ: 14 Ways to Make a Narc Miserable → |
Don’t Proceed Beyond ‘Love Bombing’
During the love bombing phase, the narcissist expends a great deal of energy maintaining their false facade and pretending to be the ‘perfect’ person that you’re looking for. All the while, they are collecting as much information about you as they can so that they know how to painfully trigger you down the track and extract your life force energy.
How to make a narcissist obsessed with you while knowing this inside information can put you in a very powerful position.
While the narcissist is idealising you, they will be obsessed with you because they really do think you’re going to be the one to fill their empty void with the happiness they’re so desperately seeking. They’ll take you out on fancy dates, be extra attentive, flatter you with compliments and make you feel like the most special person alive.
They will be all-encompassing throughout this initial phase because they want to gain your trust and hook you in very quickly. The idea is that they need to secure you and get you under their command before you abandon or reject them.
They want your supply and they need to lock you in place for you to continuously hand it over to them.
How to use the love bombing phase to your benefit:
- Enjoy the attention they’re lavishing on you without becoming needy for it
- Don’t jump every time they request it
- Avoid handing over any deep personal information, keep things light and fun
Once the narcissist thinks you’re hooked, they’ll start to test the waters with some subtle devaluation to see how you respond. If you shrink and dull your shine at their put-downs, they’ll know they’ve got you. If you laugh it off and counter their belittling comments with a better one directed at them, they’ll know you’re not so easy to manipulate and control.
How to keep a narcissist interested during the love bombing phase without actually playing into their hand is a very fine line. You need to give them enough attention and validation to feed their ego, but not fully hand yourself over to them.
Eventually, if they can’t get you past the idealisation stage and lock you in, they’ll tire of the charade and move on to a new target. They will probably keep you on the shelf as a future source of supply if need be though.
Be Elusive
Given that the narcissist wants you to be living and breathing them, they will want to monopolise all of your time, especially during the love bombing.
What the narc wants is for you to need them. They plan on abusing you and trauma-bonding you into believing that they are your only source of validation and security, therefore you’ll be bound in place and won’t abandon them.
| READ: What is Trauma Bonding? → |
To counter this expectation of theirs and get them obsessing, you need to be regularly unavailable. This is where you play them at their own game of hot and cold behaviour. We know it works because they use it on other people all the time!
If they call or message you, wanting to catch up, instead of being free at the drop of a hat, you need to be busy at least half of the time. Be sure to give them a taste of what they want, then withdraw and take it away at random intervals. Make it so they never know when you’ll get back to them or when you’ll be free.
The fact that you are emotionally unavailable will have them obsessing over you and wanting it all the more… for a while.
Be prepared for the narcissist to quickly lose interest though if they aren’t getting anywhere with you. At the end of the day, everything is always about supply for them. If you’re not putting out (supply), they’ll discard you and seek it out elsewhere.
| READ: 12 Narc Discard Signs → |
Remain Exciting
Narcissists thrive on gossip, drama and excitement. It makes them feel alive, important and validated.
If a narcissist has some information (gossip) about someone else up their sleeve, they’ll treat it as currency to be used when they need to feel significant and in the loop.
Excitement and adventures give them a sense of superiority that their life is way better than everyone else’s because they’re doing all of these cool things. It makes them feel superior.
Drama stirs up intense reactions and emotions in people, whether positive or negative, it matters not. The narcissist absolutely loves to feed off of the life force energy that naturally occurs in dramatic situations. Whether it’s a local disaster, chaos at work, turmoil with those around them or upheaval in your relationship. Drama offers Grade A narcissistic supply for the narc.
To keep the narcissist obsessing about you, keep your life filled with drama, gossip, excitement and adventures and they’ll continue coming back for more.
Retain Your Independence
The narcissist aims to dominate your thoughts, emotions and entire perspective of everything. They want to completely control the storyline and will work to have you questioning your own memories and experiences.
Retaining your independence will have the narcissist obsessing over you because you are presenting a challenge to them.
It’s important to hold firmly onto your own authentic version of events, as well as your emotions, memories and decision-making abilities. Narcissists are masterful at twisting people’s reality and getting them to doubt themselves without even realising that they’re doing it.
Discard the Narcissist First
One thing that drives a narcissist nuts is being discarded first. It’s a natural part of their abuse cycle to discard you at some point, but they do not think you should have the power to discard them. Discarding will cause an immediate blow to their ego in the form of rejection, which goes directly against their false image that they are perfect.
Discarding a narcissist first will completely throw them off-kilter as they obsess about how to win you back. By this point, it’s important to be aware that they don’t want you back because they care about you and miss you. They want you back to regain the position of power, then punish and discard you on their own terms.
I’d recommend using this opportunity to go No Contact with the narcissist and not allow them back into your world.
Move On & Be Happy Without Them
My favourite way to make a narcissist obsessed with you is to move on and be totally free and happy without them. Seeing how good you are without them will infuriate them because they are the God-like being who is way more superior to you. How can you possibly be happy without them?
They spend their whole lives searching for a way to fill their deep dark void with happiness, yet they do not know where to find it or how to fix it. Everything they get only ever provides temporary relief. Witnessing you move on and be able to find your own happiness without them is the biggest blow of them all.
Completely blocking the narcissist and cutting them out of your life is a good idea at this point. Some narcissists can become extremely vengeful and will stop at nothing to destroy your happiness in order to make themselves feel better.
Their warped view of reality will justify their unconscionable behaviours every step of the way as to why they are the victim and why you deserve to be punished.
It really is mind-boggling, but the most important thing is to protect yourself.
▶️ VIDEO: How to Make a Narcissist Obsessed
Why You SHOULDN’T Make a Narcissist Obsessed with You
Narcissists have been around the block more than once. They will outplay you and outsmart you more efficiently than you could ever imagine. While you may think that you’re in control of playing the narcissist, they will be expertly breaking through your barriers without you even realising that they’re doing it!
The reason I think it’s completely unhealthy to make a narcissist obsessed with you is because they are souls who’ve been taken over by dark energy and have zero conscience.
A person without a conscience is a very dangerous person given that they feel no remorse for anything that they do. Intentionally wanting to mess around with someone who lives their lives by seeking to destroy is utter self-sabotage on the grandest scale.
You might start out having fun, playing games with the narcissist, only then to find yourself still trauma-bonded and stuck in the abusive relationship years down the track!
Narcissists don’t get where they are by being B-grade players. They are masterful con artists who truly believe their own lies. They truly believe that they are Gods to be revered and that they answer to no one. Therefore, they (falsely) believe that the karmic rules of consciousness do not apply to them, making them very dark and dangerous creatures to mess with. However, they are also masters at getting other people to carry the weight of their karma, while they walk off free to destroy the next soul.
If you truly do want a narcissist to be obsessed with you, it’s time to look at yourself and ask, “Why?” Are you seeking their validation and approval? Are you desperately looking for revenge? Are you bored and think it’ll be a fun way to pass the time?
Whatever your reasons, I’m always going to counter you with the same thought. The only thing you need to be focussing on (even obsessing about) is your own healing.
The purpose of narcissists in our lives is to see how we are willing to hand our power over to an outside source. We’ve been taught, all through history, that the love, approval and security we’re searching for must be found outside of ourselves. However, that cannot be any further from the truth.
We all have the ability to access our own True Self and the divine creator of all that is. Narcissists are the exception here because they severed the connection with their True Selves a long time ago. You cannot heal them or manipulate them into being anything other than what they are – a defective half-soul.
This has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with coming home to ourselves. Once we learn to set healthy boundaries, take full responsibility for ourselves and not feel guilty for those who don’t accept that, we are in our full power. Once we heal our deep traumas and shift them out of our consciousness, we are our source of love, approval and security.
The narcissist becomes irrelevant and there’s no way in the world you’d want to lower yourself to their level of trying to get them to obsess about you. In fact that thought becomes repulsive because you do not want to ever enmesh with such a dark soul ever again!
I hope this article has been entertaining and enlightening as to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ behind obsessed narcissists.
Now it’s time to focus on you. Partner with yourself, engage in daily self-care and create the most beautiful narcissist-free life that you were always meant to live.
| READ: Self-care After Narc Abuse → |
Mental Health Check-in
Keep track of your daily, weekly & monthly mental well-being with these fun journal sheets (printable & digital)
- Sleep tracker
- Water intake
- Mood/ emotion tracker
- Achievements & positive moments
- Struggles & lessons
- Star ratings and more…
Pin It
