A lot of narcissists will do a fake discard anytime that you try to hold them accountable for their behavior. They do it to scare you and basically trigger any kind of abandonment wounds that you might have if you’re codependent in any kind of way.
This usually happens whenever you’re trying to bring up anything that they’ve done wrong—anything that you’re trying to actually hold them accountable for.
Here’s how it plays out. You try to talk about something that bothers you, and instead of addressing it, they immediately threaten to end the relationship. They break up with you, tell you to leave, block you on everything, stop taking your calls, and it never gets resolved until you come back apologizing for reacting to their abuse.
One of the reasons for that is that it’s so easy for a narcissist to leave these relationships because they don’t care about you and because they have an avoidant attachment style. They’ll ghost you, give you the silent treatment until you start thinking, “I’ve done something wrong. I’m the problem.” Now the issue has shifted from what they did to you to poof—they’re gone. And now you’re focused on that.
They are gonna do this every time that you try to drag them out of the fantasy world that they live in. Sometimes they’ll start a fight with you and do this over nothing, and just break up with you and gone. Poof again. Ghost.
The cycle keeps you in a state of anxiety.
What this does is it causes you to live in a constant state of anxiety. You always fear that they’re gonna leave you again. You’re always walking on eggshells. But the screwed up thing is, in a day or three, they’ll come back. Because they never really intended to break up with you. This was a fake breakup—a fake discard. And the purpose for this was not to leave you or leave the relationship. It was literally just to get you back under control and stop bringing up the things they’re doing to you.
Trauma bond and the villain-hero complex.
Any normal person standing outside of this situation would see this as manipulation. But because you’re living in this shared space with the narcissist, you believe it every time, and you think they really are gone. You’ve been through this cycle so many times that in the back of your mind, you know it’s fake. You know they’re gonna come back. But they’ve done it to you so many times that you’re just living in a constant state of anxiety, fearful that they’re not gonna come back this time.
You’re gonna be sitting there every minute of the day, checking the messages on your phone, watching every piece of social media, hoping that they’re gonna reach out to you—just fearful and full of anxiety. So when they finally do actually message you back, you get that oxytocin rush and relief, like, “Okay, they’re not gone.”
What a lot of people don’t understand is this is the villain-hero complex. They caused all this pain and anxiety that you’re going through. But guess what? They’re also the only ones who can fix it by coming back to you. It just reinforces the trauma bond. And if you have codependency or abandonment issues, the narcissist knows that.
