Can a Narcissist Genuinely Miss You?
Or do they just miss what they got from you?
When I managed finally to end my extramarital affair — to break the tedious, traumatic cycle that it had become — I thought that this would take the form of a normal breakup. I’d been very clear with my lover that the relationship was over. He had always claimed to love me deeply and I told him that if this was true, he would respect the fact that I now wanted him to leave me alone forever.
“OK,” he said. “I do believe you mean it this time, and I won’t be in touch. But please don’t block all forms of communication. That feels so knee-jerk and brutal. I won’t contact you, you can trust me on that, but we respect each other too much to have a childish delete-and-block policy. Don’t we?”
I thought there was a strange logic in this maturely worded plea. Adult humans, I told myself, didn’t need the safety net of digital padlocks to keep each other at bay. I knew I wouldn’t be contacting him again and he had promised me he wouldn’t bother me. So I agreed to the terms.
In doing so I was, as so often during that year, an absolute fool.
Not even a week had passed before his first text message popped up. “I am sorry to text you when I said I wouldn’t. But I have realised that we shouldn’t sit in our separate houses…
