Co-dependents are the most delicious of fodder for narcissists because co-dependents are really nice people who don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. They work hard at trying to earn love and approval and they’re usually very resourceful.
On the flip side, narcissists seek people like this to exploit as the parasitical entities that they are. They will hurt, punish, trauma bond and control this person creating a hellish enmeshment.
If this sounds all too familiar and you’re at that make-or-break point in this deadly dance with a narcissist,then this video is for you!
I was barely a millimeter from my total demise – don’t let yourself get that far down the hole. Instead, find out what the real remedy for the co-dependent narcissistic relationship is by clicking on the video.
Video Transcript
Many people ask why is it that narcissists and co-dependents get together and often share a love relationship? They do. It’s true. It happens all the time, and it is a deadly dance.
Today I’m going to share with you why this is and what to do if you feel like you’re in one of these unions that are not a match made in heaven, rather, it feels like you’re enmeshed together in hell.
So, let’s start off by looking at the first significant clue that brings these relationships together.
The Attraction Of “Emptiness”
I believe it’s the attraction of emptiness, and I’m going to start off by explaining my definition of co-dependency, and it’s this … Trying to get self from outside of self, rather than getting this from True Source.
Co-dependency is the illusion of separation. It’s a spiritual emptiness. It’s a feeling of not being whole, solid, and at peace on the inside.
If we believe at a deep core level that we are not good enough to be loved and accepted as we are, then of course we’re trying to get people and things from outside to fill us up, to try to feel worthy, whole, and complete.
Whether or not you believe in a Higher Power / Creator / God or maybe your understanding of infinite consciousness is something like Life Force or Love or the Universe – whether or not you consciously or logically or at a heart level believe in that – in my own personal experience, the coming home to my True Source and my Soul was the only way that I was able to feel solid and whole on the inside unconditionally. Which meant not because of what I did or didn’t have or get.
The wholeness, when we get it from a Source level, becomes a sense and a state of beingness.
Before I had that beingness, it didn’t matter how intelligent, hardworking, or successful I was or what I was or wasn’t getting, the feelings of anxiety and depression were only one perceived disappointment away.
It didn’t matter what I got or achieved. I never durably felt whole. I always felt like I needed to do more to be worthy of love. I never felt like I arrived in a place of durable, lasting contentment or happiness.
And I’m not alone, because it’s very normal to feel out on the edge and have beliefs such as, “Life is hard”. Always feeling precarious if people aren’t loving us because then we must be unlovable. I hope that those simple examples can help you understand how normal it is to have this state of co-dependency.
What this does is it leaves us looking for love in all the wrong places. Instead of establishing it on the inside by connecting back to True Source / Creation / Creator, rather we try to get that sense of peace and wholeness and fullness from outside of ourselves.
So when we’re in that disconnection and emptiness, what often happens is enter stage right … the narcissist. On the surface, it could really seem that opposites attract. People talk about that. It’s the opposites that attract. In that a narcissist likes to take and co-dependents like to give, but that’s only at a surface level.
The deeper glue at the Quantum, programmed, energetic, somatic, emotional level in the unseen world – which is where everything is actually created and becomes visible – at that emotional, deep, inner level, which is exactly where connection, chemistry, and bonding takes place, the match is actually about similarities.
It is like attracts like. It’s Quantum Law. So within, so without. It really is if you want to know what’s going on in the inner world, you’re going to see it in your outer world.
Now please don’t think for one moment that I’m saying you’re a bad person, like a narcissist. You aren’t. Co-dependents don’t like to hurt people, and in fact, they would prefer to hurt themselves than another in their quest for love.
What I am saying is that the narcissist, like the co-dependent, is also disconnected from True Source. They also don’t feel whole and solid on the inside. Narcissists are so disconnected from True Source that they’re also completely disconnected from their own Soul. Their entire life is lived from the outside in, instead of the inside out, which is the path to Source … the inside out.
Narcissists are so disconnected from their Inner Being and Source that they truly believe that they’re the center of the universe, that they’re God. That there’s no Source, that they’re Source. Yet the truth is the narcissist is like a deep black hole. They are the living epitome of the myth of vampires. They are the human equivalent of the living dead. Just like vampires, who are the living dead, they need to feast off humans to survive and have the illusion of being alive.
Narcissists, rather than a vampire sucking blood, need narcissistic supply, which is Life Force from others. Attention. They need stuff, things to feed the False Self, their ego. Shiny new toys, the latest and the greatest, the biggest and the best. Like vampires they need to keep sucking energy from outside of themselves.
So that’s saying that we’ve been programmed into, “I need you to complete me,” applies to both the co-dependent and the narcissist. The co-dependent believes that they’re needing a narcissist for love and approval and to feel like they’re secure and they can survive, and the narcissist has the neediness for the co-dependent to feast off them, to exploit them, to get energy, attention, resources, and Life Force.
It’s a powerful glue. It’s two sides of the same coin, with the co-dependent giving and giving until it hurts to try to earn love and belonging from the narcissist. The narcissist is parasiting off and emptying out the co-dependent because that’s what narcissists do.
Why And How Narcissists Ensnare Co-Dependents
So why and how narcissists ensnare co-dependents is very important to understand. Co-dependents are the most delicious of fodder for narcissists, because co-dependents are really nice people who don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. They work hard at trying to earn love and approval. They’re usually very resourceful. They take on more than their fair share. They take on responsibility for people who won’t take responsibility for themselves. They’re comfortable giving, but they’re not comfortable receiving. They struggle to lay boundaries and say no.
A co-dependent struggles to ask for what they want and need. And co-dependents usually don’t even know what they truly deserve or how to take a stand for their values and their rights and their voice. Co-dependents give to get. Their unconscious credo is, “If I can just please you and give you what you want, then you may grant me love, approval, security, and survival.”
Narcissists are extremely skilled at working out what makes people tick. They are con artists pretending to be what will charm people and get them to trust them very quickly and even fall in love with them, bond quickly, and let the narcissist get in without healthy boundaries and scrutiny and due diligence.
Narcissists know how to size up a co-dependent, and they appear interested and caring and can ask them some questions and find out what their particular missing piece is. Has this person suffered infidelity? If so, the narcissists can tell them how they themselves personally are completely monogamous and they will feign empathy for what this person went through.
Or, if this person has always felt invisible, the narcissists will pretend to see and show up and care in ways that make this person feel like they are the most special human being who’s ever existed. If somebody has suffered controlling, paranoid, jealous people, the narcissist will pretend to be uber secure within themselves and allowing and trusting and granting this person space.
All of these acts are simply that, they are acts. Academy Award performances. They’re not real, and they don’t hold up as real and true. In fact, upon the co-dependent falling into the narcissist’s clutches they allow the narcissist quickly into their heart, their home, their body, their Soul, and their finances, because it feels so right.
Then, the narcissist will flip the switch and start delivering more of the co-dependent’s wounded parts, the things that have hurt them, the unfinished business from their past, to hurt, punish, trauma bond and control this person.
The co-dependent is now bonded. They’re trauma bonded. In a trauma bond, what the co-dependent does as we all did, is try to get the narcissist to return to the original person who seemed to be the saviour of our wounds. But this isn’t the truth.
The truth is the narcissist is the messenger of even greater blows of these wounds that are now being ripped open all over again with far greater ferocity. These are the original wounds that were usually created in childhood and even beyond, that we’ve been living out as patterns, and these wounds were always unconscious. We thought they were our normal, and we just had to live with them and maybe we’ve had therapy, but we’ve never really been released from them. They’ve never been truly healed.
As the co-dependent focuses on trying to lecture, prescribe, fix, and change the narcissist, they lose even more aspects of themselves. That is the sickness of co-dependency. The more we try to control another person, the more out of control we become ourselves, and we lose the ability to let go and take care of ourselves, heal, and create real relationships going forward, which are about sharing healthy power rather than toxically battling for it.
The Tragic Ending Of Co-Dependent / Narcissistic Relationships
Let’s have a look at the tragic ending of co-dependent narcissistic relationships, because there are no happy endings there.
Generally these relationships go through many cycles of idolize, where the narcissist has you on a pedestal because you are giving them amazing narcissistic supply, in their head you’re the best thing since poached eggs. But then of course real life comes around and you don’t serve the False Self, the ego, the master adequately, and you become the enemy. You’re going to be devalued and discarded. The relationship starts spiralling downwards into greater and wider cracks.
The co-dependent is getting emptied out of Life Force, health, resources, and sanity. The narcissist keeps feeding off the co-dependent until that is no longer sustainable because the co-dependent becomes too damaged, emptied out, and sick, and may even now need the narcissist to care for them because they’ve become so ill, and that’s unthinkable for the narcissist who believes, “You’re there to serve me. I’m not there to serve you.”
Or the narcissist will procure a more fertile source of narcissistic supply, or the co-dependent escapes permanently from the narcissistic clutches, or the co-dependent starts becoming catatonic and just completely minimalizes their life, their rights, their needs, their self to coexist with a narcissist who is going to keep replacing them, getting new supply, abandoning them, and is never emotionally available for them … which isn’t living.
On those occasions where the co-dependent has stayed, they have to detach and tolerate incredible things to try to survive. They’re never going to have their true emotional or Soul desires healthily met, because there’s the abuse, the neglect, and there’s so much abandonment and pain that’s going to go with all of that.
The narcissist is always going to keep replaying their cycles. They don’t learn from their mistakes. They have no desire to grow, heal, and reignite or heal back to a True Self or Source relationship. They’ve got no desire or resources or capacity to do that. Therefore there is no ability to have a true relationship with life and other people.
Just as there is no True Self inside the narcissist, the narcissist can never see you as a True Self, as a flesh and blood autonomous human. Rather, the only entity that the narcissist is ever serving is the False Self, the ego construct. That is not a True Self. It’s simply an ego fictitious construct that is a bottomless pit, and that’s what the narcissist is serving. The narcissist does not acknowledge or love themselves, and others are mere props and tools to feed the true master. That’s it.
Because the co-dependent has not turned inwards to heal and love their True Self back to True Source, unknowingly, unconsciously, as co-dependents, we’ve been seeking false idols and attaching to False Selves, False Gods to try to get real wholeness, which is kind of like, as George Carlin said, taping sandwiches onto yourself to try to have lunch. That’s a narcissist. It’s a False Self.
The Remedy To Co-Dependent / Narcissistic Relationships
So, what’s the remedy to co-dependent narcissistic relationships? What is the remedy to not repeating these patterns and being stuck in them?
It’s about really realizing that true healthy relationships – that of course are not perfect – always take teamwork, empathy, and solution building. Yet they are based on people who are doing the work and seeking their own wholeness and taking responsibility for their own happiness and fullness who are able to share power, rather than trying to get their Life Force from others.
Most of us before Thriver recovery from narcissistic abuse, absolutely we were carrying the unhealed wounds from our childhoods. We were still feeling – we didn’t know it until we recovered really – but we were feeling like broken children within adult bodies, unconsciously hoping that a parent would love us better this time, and that’s the expectation we had on a partner, that they were going to save us from our feelings of insecurity and fear and pain.
Of course, this was all deeply unconscious. But the problem with this is we kept replaying the patterns of our unhealed inner love traumas by choosing the people that represented these same wounds over and over again.
As children, we’re unable to choose our own Souls, Source and True Self rather than false idols. Of course we were attached. We were co-dependent on our caretakers for love, approval, security, and survival. But as adults, we can turn inwards to do the inner work, to be able to grow up our previously unconscious unhealed inner parts and come home to True Source, which means that we choose our Soul.
We can establish and choose and stand in our own true values. Then we get better and we do better with healthy choices. We get to be able to have the ability to let go of unhealthy people in situations and make choices that are life-affirming, courage-building, and ones that grant us the permission and power to honour ourselves. Have healthy boundaries, say no – lose it all to get it all.
We can lose people rather than lose ourselves and start being ourselves, instead of the co-dependent pattern of thinking we needed to twist ourselves into a pretzel to be a shape for somebody else to love us.
Narcissists on the flip side are never going to choose to change and heal, and they’re always going to seek people to exploit as the parasitical entity disconnected from Source that they are. Whereas as co-dependents, we can heal if we choose to. What it really is, is letting go and realizing that the narcissist is not in your life for you to fix and change so that they become your healthy source.
They are not the healer of our wounds. They appear in our lives making our unconscious wounds incredibly conscious because they smash them directly and they become so painful that we can no longer carry on as normal with our wounds.
We’ve come to the point where we hit a brick wall, where we’re at that make or break place of either letting go and coming home to healing ourselves and getting this right by returning to True Source, or we get sucked into the dark abyss further until we will be emptied out to our literal disintegration and demise, which is where so many of us have gone. I was a millimeter off that, as I know many of you have been or are as well.
In Conclusion
I want you to know it is possible to let go and reverse the damage from a narcissist. It’s possible to exorcize, like an exorcism of that toxic pollution of a narcissist out of your mind, Soul, and Spirit, and go free from it. If you work at doing this the Thriver way, not only will you escape their clutches, what is brilliant is you will also reverse your co-dependency.
All of the ways that you were giving to get, all the ways that you struggled to lay boundaries and didn’t have a voice and were worried about being yourself and you didn’t have the power and the confidence to know that you can look after yourself and generate the life you truly want safely and powerfully, regardless of what other people are or aren’t doing. That’s true personal power. That’s what this work brings you home to.
The first starting point of how I can help you make this journey out of co-dependency and susceptibilities to narcissists is the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP). That’s my 10-step Quanta Freedom Healing process that heals those parts of you that were out of seeking and falling for false idols.
For those of you who’ve already taken the NARP healing journey and you want to go further, which is solving co-dependency and work on an even greater ability to empowering your boundaries, then I recommend my Empowered Self Course, which has two specific co-dependent modules and three specific modules on boundary healing and setting.
I hope that this has made sense to you and that you realize that the powerful glue is about similarities, and I hope that this helps you understand what your healing path is out of this. Please remember to like and subscribe to my channel, and if you find this helpful, please share it with others who it can help.
All of this is so very true. I do find it difficult to demonise my covert narcissistic husband of 29 years. But I do understand that his survival instinct is to manipulate and take, whereas, my survival instinct is to give in order to get. He was a master of manipulation. And as my good good friend once told me, “whenever you come up against a master you are going to lose. So forgive yourself and be kind to yourself and gather all that you love and that loves you back to yourself.”
Letting go and letting God / Higher Power (whatever that Higher Loving Source means to you) be the centre of your universe again – rather than letting the narcissist take up that Higher Power position in your life with their wants “needs” and demands of you – has been the way back to healing for me.
Thank you, Melanie, for being such an important part of this healing journey for me! 💖
I love Lisa that you have been letting go, and coming back home.
Big kudos and love to you.
Also, please know how welcome you are!
Much Love
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Really invaluable – – thank you!
1000 yeses!! I struggled for a lifetime with the emptiness inside me. Achievements, compliments were appreciated but every morning I woke up beginning at square one.
I didn’t know what personal boundaries were or if I had the right to express my feelings.
I believed that I didn’t have the right to expect or to ask for help. I was on my own since I was a young girl.
This video was valuable information that easily explains the dance of the Narcissist and Co-dependent …and why we are so drawn to each other.
Thank you for reinforcing this as it is vital that we understand this in our recovery and to thrive
It’s my pleasure Lori.
I’m so pleased it helped.
Mel 🙏💞🦋
I have never heard anyone describe so accurately the feelings and stages of narcissistic abuse so in sync with my lived experience! Being emptied out and discarded, etc.. etc… I am a dancer so the title “Deadly Dance between narcissist and co-dependent” couldn’t be more à propos. Thank you Melanie over and over. I
You are very welcome Corrine,
Blessings to you
Mel 🙏💞🦋
My relationship has been officially over since last year. But every few months we meet up.
I’ve made myself so sick. I feel so worthless.
I’ve cut off everyone. When I attempt to reach out to friends I make them uncomfortable.
I’ve lost myself entirely. It’s a terrible place to be. I feel like suck a loser for not getting past this.
Big hugs to you Sarah,
being hooked in is such a painful place to be.
Please consider NARP http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp It is the healing system that got me out of this deadly entanglement and has helped so many others.
Sending you healing and strength
Mel 🙏💞🦋
I believe my experience with the narcissist woke me up and once I got out and saw the game and healed from the hirt- it had knocked me out of my codependence! Because I saw what a fraud this person was in reality and then I looked around and realized they’re everywhere in many varying degrees but I knew myself to be genuine and true. So really I had no business feeling I needed someone else to complete me.
Now I’m happiest I’ve ever been in my life. Truly content yet excited for the future. Enjoying myself and not chasing or waiting for anyone to “complete me” In fact I still feel maybe I am not really ready to have somebody special in my life.
I have not run across anyone I have any interest in and I’m not going to be chasing so?? I’m just letting it play out as it will and that’s fine-
It took me 55 years to get to this point I envy those who maybe got there earlier. But I can’t believe how happy I am -to my core, So it was worth the wait and everything healing that Melanie focuses on – is the right path
This is so lovely Kathleen that you have returned home to you!
Big kudos and sending continued love and expansion to you!
Mel 🙏💞🦋
I love how these articles are so pertinent and so accurate. Melanie, I can tell you have worked with several people who have lived the experience. I went over 4 days without doing a healing and I could def tell the difference. I went back to the little girl hurt mode where I was desperately trying to defend myself to the narcissist. Of course the narc never really listens anyways.
One of my narcs was an ex boss. She put me on a pedestal so long as I listened to her theories and reasons of why people behaved how they did. The moment I disagreed with her, she lost her narcissistic supply and she started treating me horribly. I thought that was the end of it. Ok, she doesn’t like me, time to move on. But no, you are so right, a narcissist needs us empaths to survive.
Since I would no longer give her admiration. She has switched over to obtaining her narcissistic supply through demeaning and harassing me. (all in the guise of how she wants to help). She still gets her hit of narcissistic supply every time I am bothered by her antics.
The only thing that has helped is doing the healings. Yes she still hurls insults by proxy, thru other people at me. But so long as I am doing the healings, none of her insults hit hard and most don’t hit at all. She still tries to exploit me and smears me. But her attempts seem more and more desperate to me. More and more exaggerated in order to illicit a response. I like how your article addresses when the nasty narcissist leaves the codependent high and dry. I would also like to point out that not all co-dependents get left, sometimes the co-dependent leaves the narc.
In that situation, in which the narc still sees you as her supply and is somehow able to forge contracts etc to get access to you. The only thing I have found that works is the healings. Healing up my wounds. That is where I am right now, Healings are awesome and amazing!! Love them. Narc is still attacking externally but slowly is appearing as less of a threat. I will love the day that I post on here, my wounds are all healed up and I AM SECURE BABY!!! cuz that day will come
Speaking of which, I need to do a healing now… as it has been awhile…..
much love to you all and take care
I am definitely a codependent people pleaser and doer. I really wish I would have come across this information earlier. It is so clear so accurate just amazing to listen to all of this information. I am just starting my journey healing from this. Unfortunately I realize now I have been in two narcissistic relationships but they were completely different. My first husband was definitely a narcissist and I believe bordered on psychopathy I was lucky to get out of there alive.
My most recent relationship of nine years has now ended. I see now that he was a benevolent narcissist extremely needy extremely giving for his own benefit. I was lucky enough to identify his financial abuse quite a while ago and I did stop giving which I believe triggered his treatment of me. He has now gone onto his new supply and I know people who know her but they are unwilling to believe me when I tell them what he’s doing, I know she is going to suffer the same fate as me maybe even possibly worse.
I wish I could go back in time, he is damaged me and my children I feel like such a horrible mother for allowing this. He has treated my young daughter the same I believe he tried to get to me through her and then discarded her she’s only 17 and I know she does not like me I hope one day she’ll forgive me.
Thank you Melanie, I really can’t thank you enough. I am doing the modules and it is so emotional but I can feel a difference. I feel so much stronger now even more so than a week ago.
Thanks again!
My parents were the perfect example of dad-narc and mom-codependent. They were married over 60 years, even before anyone knew what NPD or codependency was. I grew up in this toxic environment learning how to be a good codependent always thinking I was normal. It took many years, many tears, and many failed relationships before I saw what happened to me. I have been working on healing from the decades of trauma and destruction in my life.