The Goal of No Contact For the Discarded Victim: The Narc Must Be Dead to You True recovery from narc abuse and a return to mental health requires the victim to totally purge the narc from their system. The day you say to yourself “I don't care what the narc is doing or what will happen to the narc” is a pivotal day. It's the day you can see real, tangible progress. This means you don't care if the narc is in pain or turmoil or suffering or if the narc is doing well with their new relationship. You truly don't care anymore. The no contact period had many phases and it seems you have arrived at the final phase for yourself when you no longer care. But let's be clear , this progress may only be temporary or short-lived. But as long as you never see or hear from the narc again, you may actually have arrived at the end of the tunnel, or you can see the light at the end. My personal journey to this point took place in 6 phases as follows. Lets have a brief look at the phases of no contact, and try to assess the progress made. Please note, this is referring to the narc abuse victim that has been suddenly discarded, not the victim trying to get rid of the narc. Phase 1: Your concern about the welfare of the narc, how they felt, how they were doing, if everything was OK with them constituted the first phase of no contact for you. The bizarre scenario where you still really loved and cared for them and wanted nothing but the best for the narc, while at the same time the narc presented themselves as your worst enemy and instituted a cold policy of NO CONTACT with you. Of course, in this phase, you may not even have been aware of covert narcissism and you just assumed the narc partner was a normal person capable of love, remorse, and empathy. Phase 2: The learning phase, where you did multiple web searches, using the bizarre behavior you had observed and wondered at as criteria for web searches. For me that was cold lack of empathy, lying , psychopathic behavior. I actually searched my web browsing history, especially my YouTube browsing history and I went from sociopaths, then to psychopaths, then to covert narcissists. When I arrived at the covert narcissist I had the beginnings of getting answers. Phase 3: After coming to the tentative conclusion that your partner is a covert narcissist you entered the discovery phase where you had to try to answer the questions and try to understand what was going on with the narc and what was really going on in the relationship. This required reassessing and reanalyzing every word and every occurrence and every interaction you had with the narc and then reinterpreting everything with your new knowledge. I will now give three examples that actually happened to me to illustrate the point. There are many more. First, in May I got a very short hair cut and when my partner saw me right after, she was very excited about it, more that I would have expected. She then made the comment that it reminded her of a military cut and she really liked it. I received a lot of attention from her just because of the haircut and I was confused as to why this was so important to her. How uncanny that she was totally into military men and has befriended many military men and chose one as her intimate buddy right after the discard, about 6 months later. Second, my narc partner made the comment on the Adele song titled “Hello”, she stated: “that song perfectly describes my life, I totally relate to the lyrics”. I later that day looked the song up on the internet and was shocked. The song was all about a man who had been so hurt by the breakup that the woman couldn't even talk to him and tell him how sorry she was. That's how destroyed the man was. Now being in a great relationship and having your partner say she relates to this lyric hits you like a lightning bolt. When confronted with the lyric, the narc simply does a classic diversion and no clear answer is obtained. This is so seamless, that you just move on, subconsciously already knowing you will never get any more clarity on the subject. Looking back on it, you now understand that you were already conditioned by the narc to accept ambiguity and you were never even aware of it. Third, during one of our times of peace and intimacy she starts talking about a stalker she once had and hoping that I wouldn't be like that. She had brought this up once before about a year previous. This was puzzling to me and I wanted her to clarify , so I told her “but we are in a committed relationship, so why are you even worried about me stalking?” at which point she changed the subject and minimized what she just said. How blind our trust is in the evil narc, how willing the victim is to believe their lies. Not 2 months later came the sudden and unexpected discard. So let's think about this. Judging from the above three occurrences, I come to a number of conclusions with my 20 20 hindsight. Let's tackle them in order of appearance. The military man reference clearly shows she was already looking for someone different than her current partner and was already convincing herself that a veteran or military man that loved animals was more the type that she wanted to be with and she was beginning to do research and making friends. The Adele song opens up three possibilities. 1, She was cheating on me with another man and suddenly ended it. 2, She is talking about a past relationship that she tried to rekindle while with me. 3, She is already plotting my painful discard and has given her hidden intentions away. Then the comment about stalking, someone stalking her in the past. According to the narc, you were only the second person she was ever with, the first boyfriend wasn't an intimate relationship, then her husband, then you. But somewhere in between came the “stalker”. Well it is possible that that stalker took things too seriously, but based on my knowledge of the narc, I find it highly possible that we are dealing with another intimate relationship where the narc made all sorts of promises and then pulled away unexpectedly and suddenly. As for me being only the second person she was ever with. That is highly unlikely when I look back on things now, but I will spare the details and evidence I discovered about her past. It isn't good, and judging by her behavior totally plausible. Phase 4 of the no contact phase is trying to convince yourself your partner is a narc and never was the person they portrayed themselves as being, and NEVER loved you. During this phase you do intense research and studying trying to understand the mind of a narcissist and trying your hardest to believe that your partner isn't a narc. You intensely hope that your partner will show up and be truly remorseful and because she really loves you is ready to repair the relationship. Time goes by and the reality that your partner is a narc becomes undeniable. Phase 5 is fighting recurring resurgences of bitterness, anger and the urge to seek revenge. This also paradoxically involves constant concern about her well being. You want her to be suffering like you are and be in pain, but at the same time you want her to be happy and at peace, but you definitely don't want her to be happy with the complicit aggressor flying monkey weasel new intimate partner. You want to shake her and hug her at the same time. Throughout phase 5 one thing is clear, you don't really want to know what is going on with the narc one way or another, but you are still curious. The final phase, phase 6, the phase that started this video, is when you don't want to know and you don't care to know and you aren't curious to know anything about the narcissist. You are now very concerned about your own mental health and you want to continue the peace and tranquility and stability you have fought so hard for. The greatest danger to the narc abuse victim in this phase is having the narc reappear either in person, or by someone reporting to you about them. You literally become nauseous at the thought of the narc and returning to the incredible misery of caring and being totally shut out. The narc is now dead to you and you want to keep things that way. Is there another phase? Others will have to tell us, because this is literally where I am at the moment and I can see a bright future for myself, but I don't know if I am truly free. Only time will tell. Thank you for watching, comments are always welcomed.