The Five Devaluation Triggers
You will be familiar with the fact that one day you are cock of the walk and the next day you are a feather duster. You are atop the pedestal and in a flash you have been thrown from it and you are lying in the dust as we stand over you berating you. The sudden switch from hero to zero, from princess to pauper, from “good person” to “bad person” is perhaps the most confusing, bewildering and upsetting part of our behaviour. People cannot comprehend why they were being feted as the love of our life on Monday and then by Tuesday they are the devil incarnate.
It is something which causes (and of course we want this) victims of our nefarious behaviour to cling to us in order to get an answer, to receive an explanation and some kind of reasoning which will allow them to make sense of what has happened. They are unlikely to accept it, the emotional hold of the seduction and the golden period prevents acceptance of this sudden fall from grace for a very long time, but if you are able to understand why it happened, you are able to move yourself forward with greater speed than you would otherwise.
Our reasons may appear illogical to you based on your world view but at least you have some reasons and that is more than you would usually ever receive from our kind as we plough on with your devaluation offering no cogent or realistic explanation for this sudden switch. I am not explaining why we devalue you (fuel, control, reinforcement of our need for superiority and self-worth). I am explaining what is it that makes us love you then hate you in the blink of an eye.
What causes this sudden change, this 180-degree swing, this volte face, this switch? You will be given no answer or if you are they will not be anything to do with the real reason why we suddenly idealise you then devalue you. These false reasons are wheeled out to make you remain all the more, pursuing an elusive point as we continue to drain you of negative fuel until we decide you are to be disengaged from. Thus, here are the five reasons that are the triggers for the devaluation.
- Stale
The fundamental reason for seducing you is to gather your potent and positive fuel. In the beginning and for some time afterwards we are invigorated by this precious fuel that you supply to us. We are reliant on it, we want and need it and we marvel at the fuel you provide us. This may last months or it may even last years dependent on our demands and your ability to fulfil them. Your complacency however causes the fuel to become stale to us.
You may not regard yourself as having done anything wrong. We understand that according to your view of how a healthy and mature relationship should progress that after a dizzying, honeymoon period the relationship moves to a deep-seated position where that initial buzz of excitement has faded to be replaced by something long-lasting, substantial and fulfilling. Should you appreciate your relationship with us with this mind set, it results in us seeing you as complacent.
You may regard it as a natural and understandable, indeed potentially necessary progression. We do not. Your failure to admire us in the way you once did (or at least the manifestation of this admiration), your demonstration of love, adoration and such like becomes lessened. You may not think that you love us any less but it is the way that appears to us that matters. This change manifests as complacency to us and it makes your fuel become stale, less potent and this in turn threatens to weaken us. In order to defend ourselves we must immediately switch to the devaluation and extract the negative fuel from you which will power us to the extent we want and demand.
- Disobedience
Our sense of entitlement, inability to recognise and respect boundaries and huge need for control means that we have to have you do what we want. This control arises through the application of the incentive, the carrot approach, when we have seduced you and the golden period is in play. Through the application of wonderful and loving behaviour we cause you to do what we want by providing fuel and carrying out our wishes.
We have delighted you and you want to please us in return. We provide you with the love you desire and you respond by complying with our requirements. When you stop submitting to this benign control then we will switch and commence the devaluation. You may, when viewed objectively by others, be correct in not doing what we want, taking an alternative course of action and doing something else but to us that is irrelevant.
You are challenging our control and this cannot be countenanced. In order to stamp out this uprising before it gains traction and undermines our careful operation that has been constructed to control you and gain fuel from you, we must tighten our control, remove the dissent and increase our grip on you. This is when the devaluation begins. We move from benign dictator to malign tyrant.
- See Through
If we apprehend that you are working us out. If we perceive that you have been influenced by another source and you are joining the dots. If we gauge that you are beginning to realise what we are and what we are doing, then we must strike first in order to shock and awe you into submission once more and dispel your fabrications. You may well be right but we are not going to accept you being right.
We will switch to the devaluation in order to unleash all those manipulations which will confuse you, drain you and most of all make out that it is all your fault. We have done nothing wrong other than love you with a perfect love and instead you have brought this on yourself through your lies about what we are and your treachery. We cannot allow you to unmask us and therefore we will assault you with a frenzied devaluation which gives you no option other than to try and defend yourself so you lose sight of your goal of seeing through us.
We will make you feel guilty, cruel and heartless in the hope of tapping into your empathic traits so you stop what you have been doing and concentrate on putting things right between us, mending the relationship and showing that you care. The commencement of the devaluation when you are uncovering what we are is a massive distraction exercise designed to protect us and harm you.
- The Hoover Opportunity
This is not a hoover against you. Instead it is the opportunity which suddenly arises to hoover a predecessor. This person may have been discarded and moved away from our sphere of influence or they have escaped and done likewise, but now something has happened whereby they have come back into our sphere of influence. The promise of that sweet and powerful hoover fuel will outweigh the positive fuel that you are currently providing us with.
The prospect of getting this hoover fuel means that we want to focus our attention on the predecessor and hoover them. We will not get shot of you, not yet, because that will leave us in in-between primary sources of fuel. Instead, we commence the hoover to seduce again your predecessor and thus because they have appeared on the horizon they make you look like the less desirable option. This causes us to question why we are with you, to regard you as a mistake and therefore we switch to devaluing you as we begin the seduction of them once again. Should the hoover fail, expect the golden period to be reinstated for you, with another sudden switch. Should it succeed and we begin to tie the predecessor back to us once more with the hoover fuel beginning to flow, you can expect the devaluation to worsen as you hurtle towards being discarded.
A sudden switch to devaluation may indeed herald the fact that a predecessor has appeared on our radar and we are hoovering that person at your expense.
- Total Control
You are aware that we want to control you. This is fundamental to the dynamic between us. Yet, as a further example of the double standards that we engage in we want to control you and if you disobey us we will commence your devaluation but furthermore if we believe we have obtained total control over you then we will similarly commence your devaluation because we know that you will do anything that we want and we will just use you to validate ourselves in the event that other, more exciting prospects do not fuel us during the course of the day.
You become relegated to the reliable and dependable, because you are actually doing precisely what we want, but through our warped logic, this equates to you no longer being special. Thus we need to make you special to us once again and we do this through devaluation. We will not cast you aside when we have achieved total control, not at all. This state of affairs brings with it considerable benefits but they will now be channelled through the filter of devaluation and not idealisation. It is symptomatic of the bizarre (when judged from your perspective) logic we apply that when you finally do the very thing we want, we turn against you and begin your devaluation.
How do you deal with all of this? The short answer is you cannot. Any of these five reasons may suddenly apply without warning and your devaluation starts. You cannot avoid it and you could not avoid it. You did nothing wrong, but you did everything wrong from our world view. There is nothing you can do to avoid this happening, because once the trigger happens, the devaluation will follow. The thing you can draw the greatest solace from however is that in knowing this is how we are, in knowing that there was nothing you can do or you could have done to have changed the outcome, you at least now have this knowledge and through it you can attain freedom from the doubt, uncertainty and sheer bewilderment of wondering why it happened.
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“How do you deal with all of this? The short answer is you cannot. Any of these five reasons may suddenly apply without warning and your devaluation starts. You cannot avoid it and you could not avoid it. You did nothing wrong, but you did everything wrong from our world view. There is nothing you can do to avoid this happening, because once the trigger happens, the devaluation will follow. The thing you can draw the greatest solace from however is that in knowing this is how we are, in knowing that there was nothing you can do or you could have done to have changed the outcome, you at least now have this knowledge and through it you can attain freedom from the doubt, uncertainty and sheer bewilderment of wondering why it happened.”
Thank you
I wonder if this is done subconsciously to ensure the relationship will always fail. Maybe if someone stuck around too long they could hypothetically get under the narcissists skin causing the narcissist possible attachment to another person. It’s like they are emotionally dodging and weaving any real connection.
It is an interesting proposition. Remember, the relationship may endure when devaluation is taking place. Devaluation does not equate to ensuring that the relationship will fail because :-
1. The victim does not always seek to escape,
2. The victim tries to escape but fails , or
3. The narcissist does not disengage since there is no disengagement trigger.
Even though the victim is viewed as having failed the narcissist, the relationship can endure because it still serves a purpose to the narcissist regarding the Prime Aims. That is a major distinction compared to a non-narcissist relationship.
It is very plausible to me. You might say the relationship fails in terms of becoming deeper and forging an intimate connection on an emotional level, so you have an enduring but, from our perspective, an ultimately failing relationship. Devaluation ensures that any chance of true connection is destroyed and the narcissist does not run the risk of attachment to the other person, so even if there never is an official end to the relationship, the narcissist never allows it to become a successful one in the classical sense.
Exactly, we’ll said. That’s what I was thinking.
AP,
You summed that up very nicely!
“Devaluation ensures that any chance of true connection is destroyed.” – It sure does!
I know there was more to that statement but I’ve never quite looked at it that way before. That was powerful to read. Thank you for that!
Leigh and GP,
You’re very welcome. I’m glad you found it useful!
I guess I figured when the relationship goes to devaluation the narcissist has deemed it over. It’s usually at this time they start looking for a replacement. I thought they could possibly be self sabotaging the relationship since the devaluation triggers could be anything really.
Hello GP,
In my view, it’s not exactly as you have described. It might be applicable to a greater narcissist, who knows what he is doing. But not unaware.
One of my ex husband was MMR type A, Elite narcissist, aka “overwhelming angel”. When he switched to a devaluation of me (slowly) he didn’t deem our relationship is over. Not at all. He considers himself (and not only him, almost everyone in our inner and outer circle) to be a very good person, helping, caring, loving. He still thinks he loves me and blaming me for a breaking his heart by leaving him. It’s all my fault that relationship has failed in his view. He did everything for me, and I betrayed him – his words. To make him see my perspective was impossible. I’ve tried hundred times. He would twist my words, and at the end I would either actually adopt his view and blame myself, or give up. I was losing my mind and sanity over time during our marriage. He suggested several times to check me in into mental hospital.
And he didn’t cheat, not all narcissists cheat, and try to find a replacement. A narcissist tries to find a replacement, not when devaluation starts, but when a partner stops “performing” to narc’s standards (if it occurs, it might never happen) or a victim escapes.
Unaware narcissist doesn’t know he devalues, he doesn’t know that he gaslights, projects, blameshifts etc. Or as you said sabotaging. He thinks he is a victim, and a real victim is the one who is failing relationship, not him.
I think you’ll find the pity play (mid rangers) video useful Arya.
One of my ex-narcissist’s versions of why everything went the way it did: “You got too close.”
That’s just the explanation the narcissism gave him to say to you to achieve the Prime Aims.
Yes H.G., that’s why there were so many versions ((and they changed(
Hi Josephina,
LMRSNarc told me, “You weren’t bad enough” as the reason he gave me….his was as buffling as the comment your narc gave you…sometimes they don’t make sense to confuse you and get more emotions from you…with this comment you became more confused, more angry, more hurt and it was all directed to him, all that yumny emotion for the narc to feast on…from one comment….they really know how to get it flowing to them…xx
I meant baffling…🙄xx
Dear HG,
I hope you don’t mind I expanded on your answer about the prime aims as I understand them to be. Xx
Rebecca
Thanks for sharing, Rebecca. Yes, they can’t learn lessons.
I told mine, “You’re like a game with a predetermined ending. No matter which path I choose, the end of this game is predetermined and inevitably the same. No options.”
Rebecca, how long were you in a relationship with your LMRSNarc? If it’s not a secret, were you married to him?
I wrote to you earlier about how I felt with my narcissist. But here’s something I was thinking about. Perhaps I felt what he felt. That is, he felt powerful with me (and he personally told me this: “I truly feel superhuman with you. If only you were always with me.”). Based on this, I can conclude that I was mind-blowing fuel 😊
Rebecca, I’m wondering: is this just me, or did you feel this way with your narcissist too?
I also realized I had a weak spot—codependency. I was prone to it even without him, but with him it reached its limits. He was dependent on me and made me need him just as much. All my attempts at autonomy were brutally suppressed. It felt like you’d put one step up, then a second, a third, higher and higher, until you were almost there, and then he’d knock them all out from under you, and you’d have to climb back up again. He created this situation for me in my study group, isolating me and ruining all my relationships…
(Fun fact: I really like the way H.G. pronounces the word “codependent.” I’ve tried to pronounce it that way, with the same intonation… English lessons with H.G.))))))
I remember once telling him after the devaluation, “I can’t forgive you, not for what you did to me. All those horrible things. Not for that. Because no matter what you did, I only liked you more. I can’t forgive you for leaving me.” To which he replied, “I never left you” (and from the perspective of his narcissism, that’s true).
I remember when he started a relationship with his future wife in his senior year, I tried to build a relationship with another guy (unfortunately, it didn’t work out). It seemed like our paths were slowly diverging… but there was still a connection, those text messages.
He said, “At first, I just wanted to try it with a girl of my own nationality. And then I somehow switched.” And I thought, “Who asked you to switch?”
I never once in those six years told him I loved him. But this moment happened: I think we were doing research together, and we started talking about the future, and I told him, “I love you.” He said, “You love me? Me? Are you serious?” He wanted to laugh it off at first, but then he changed his tune:
“Yes, I always have,” I said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he replied.
“Didn’t you realize?”
Then he said, “What a jerk I really am.”
Then there’s a scene: we’re standing in the middle of the hospital, and I’m telling him (I was carried away, I’d been putting up with it all these years): “Remember, no one will ever love you, care for you, understand you the way I do. You’ll remember my words again.” My wall crumbled when he belonged to someone else.
“Your girlfriends always got flowers, candy, kisses, but I got nothing but crap. You treated me the worst.” He said, “Not true. The best.” I couldn’t resist and just started hugging him (I allowed myself to do that). He just stood there motionless and let me do it. I snuggled into him, resting my head on his shoulder. The doctors passing by… I wonder what they were thinking.
Then I hugged him on the bus on the way home. He was like, “If she (name of future wife) finds out, she’ll kill me.” I said, “I don’t care. You didn’t give me that, and we’re saying goodbye.” I also said, “Damn. So good. You should be given to autistic people.” He laughed, I think so sincerely.
There it is—my downfall.
P.S. I’m currently in a difficult situation at work. My narcissistic colleague, with whom I was friends (a girl), devalued me. She was my shield from the head doctor. We kept our distance for a year, with varying degrees of success. I think it was a two-way effort, moving away from each other. But now… he’s on the verge of divorce from his wife, and another co-worker he included in the fuel matrix is out of action due to health reasons. I’m left. I have no strength to fight. I just let it go as it goes. I feel his high, I feel the drug in my veins. But after my main narcissist-psychopath, this door (it was very small to begin with) in my heart feels like it’s sealed shut. I can’t love anymore… I’ve had so many of them in my head. They’re all so smart, talented, interesting, beautiful, and so on and so forth. Oh, I don’t have feelings for them. I can’t feel anything for narcissists anymore, and sometimes it seems like I can’t feel anything for anyone at all. With the main doctor, I tell myself: “He just has an illness. It goes through certain cycles.” I go through these cycles with them, but without feelings. It means nothing to him/them, and for me too. I’m going through this mechanically. I’m just an observer. I’m just under the influence of a drug. I’ll never be able to trust someone like that again, and I just know I can’t survive all this pain.
And most importantly: even if, in the 0.000000001% chance, my ex-narcissist ever tried to rekindle the relationship with me, it wouldn’t help. Everything is dead, completely destroyed. There’s nothing there. Sometimes it seems to me that all the narcissists who react to me see “fragments of the past light,” see what used to be me. That me is no longer there. A broken device. A dead device?
I’ve stopped believing in myself, in love, in people.
How disappointment in one person can lead to disappointment in the entire world.
I speak only to silence.
Hi Josephina,
I was entangled for 10 months and we weren’t married. It was an emotional-ship and he was like a drug to me. I felt so happy, light on my feet, like the world was sunshine and my heart felt like the sun.
He told me, I made him feel like a teenager in love again. I felt so damn happy with him. My brain was buzzed and my head was in the clouds…I was high on his “love”
He claimed to be equally as happy and in love with me. It was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I really fell hard for him.
When he left, it almost destroyed me. I went dark in my mind and had suicidal thoughts.
What was once sunshine and laughter, turned dark and adrift. I was just existing and, pain, grief and anger was all I felt. It was hell and I wanted to end it. I felt suffocated by my emotions. I cried so much, I couldn’t cry anymore.
The best time, became the worse time. Grief, how it sucked the life out of me.
The codependency was a real b#@$%, I hated it, at that point, hated parts of me that loved someone who threw me away so easily. I felt really dumb and useless.
I’m glad I don’t feel like shit anymore and that he’s out of my life, out of the State I live in too! I don’t have to see his face, hear his voice or deal with him again. Relief, happiness and the middle finger salute to him! Xx
Hi, Rebecca. Yes, I agree. They know how to do it. ((
I told my narcissist myself: “Just admit that I was pretty good in our battle. I held my own.”
He: “I agree.”
Me: “You tried to break me… While I did everything for you.”
He: “Me? No. Okay, though, I tried… I tried… to whittle me down. But it’s like trying to use a cleaver against a copper bar—ineffective.”
Then there was this thing about: “I helped you. Yes, I helped you in many ways.” Oh, a whole bunch of stuff (this was when I spoke to him six months later, after his apology, and broke the “vow of silence”).
And then I also asked: “Is there anything that can replace what you do to all those girls?”
He said: “No.” But then he turned it into a joke (because the moment, in my mind, was tragic, such a mournful dialogue between us) and said, “Only when I’m fighting in the ring.”
Actually, if you think about it, I simply couldn’t imagine a romantic relationship between us. It’s a utopia, by God. Because I know a lot about him… I don’t know how anyone could allow it… I once told him, when we were having a good time, “It’s so hard, (his name), to realize that even if everything is fine between us now, somewhere out there, someone, some girl, is suffering.”
I simply perceived him as a close person, as a part of me.
In this regard, I really like what Hayao Miyazaki said about his cartoon characters:
“I stopped believing in the unwritten rule that if a boy and a girl appear together in a film or book, a romantic connection must develop between them. Instead, I want to show a slightly different kind of relationship, where each person inspires the other to live—and if I succeed, then I think I’m getting closer to showing true love.”
I thought that was us.
It’s hard to realize that I fell in love with a sadist, but the heart doesn’t choose. I thank fate that our paths diverged. I guess I’m grateful.
Hi Josephine,
The last time I talked to LMRSNarc from work was Oct of 2021 and he apologized to me, claimed he didn’t intend on hurting me and that he’s sorry he hurt me, and then he said, I was a lesson learned….but, I wasn’t a lesson learned for him because he’s still abusing other people, so he didn’t learn anything. He can’t change , so no learning his lesson there.
That phone call was my closure, I needed it and I intended to confront him and let him have it.
I told him, I thought he was a narcissist. He asked me, why I thought that?
I told him, lovebombing. You texted me a lot and told me you loved me a lot, and made me feel special. You played games with my head, made me think you cared when you didn’t. You lied. I was just a game to you.
No, you weren’t a game. He told me.
Yeah, I said, I was a game because you got mean and said things to upset me. You got off on upsetting me. I saw you smirking when you hurt me.
He said, I didn’t mean to hurt you.
You were smirking, when I was crying. I saw you, I told him.
He denied it, as their first line of defense is denial. The conversation went nowhere and I soon realized he wouldn’t admit to anything, his facade of the “nice guy” , as he called himself, was back on his face..
I basically told him, he was a jerk, I didn’t want to hear from him again and bye , was the last word I said to him.
I gave myself my own closure with regards to him. I felt a little better and I cried for a while after the call because part of me didn’t want to say good bye and wanted to pick up the phone and aplogize to him. But, I didn’t. I grieved him instead and felt lost and adrift.
It sucked for a while, but I blocked him on social media and erased his number from my phone. I went NC on him.
He’s now no longer in the same State as me, which I’m mostly happy about. I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t have a face to face confrontation with him, but it most likely would have been as pointless and a waste of time as the phone call was. Xx
From
“I told him, lovebombing. You texted me a lot and told me you loved me a lot …….”
All the way to
“…..You were smirking, when I was crying. I saw you, I told him.”
Big respect to you for this whole exchange, Rebecca. ✊
That was so well played Rebecca. 👏 Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Annaamel,
LMRSNarc had really pissed me off and the urge to tell him off overwhelmed me and I gave into my temper, and called him.
When LMRSnarc kept putting up the “nice guy” excuse of, “I didn’t intend on hurting you”, that really made me mad because he was trying to glass things over and I wasn’t going to accept his BS. I wasn’t going to let him think I didn’t catch on to his BS.
I told him that he lied, that I know he lied and because he smirked when I was upset, I let him have it with another shot of truth. And I think I shocked him with how mad I was and he went silent, for a minute.
He said, I need to call you back, I’ll talk to you later.
I told him, “No, you won’t” and then I said, “bye” and hung up on him.
It made it final for me and I blocked him.
Annaamel,
It was the best thing I did the whole time I knew him. I met him in October the year before and I said, bye to him the following October. Odd, isn’t it? Both happened in the month of October, the beginning and the end. Xx
Hello Rebecca 🌹
Thank you for sharing.
Did you tell him: ” Fuck you!” as well? That’s what I usually say to narcs.
“You were smirking, when I was crying. I saw you, I told him.” If I may ask, did you do something about that or you just continue to cry?
When I see them smirking or totally indifferent while I’m hurt and crying, I instantly explode. Unfortunately, I cannot control it. Then I would want to kill them, we fight, have sex, and I would forgive them again, hating myself for that. Rollercoaster continues till you want out.
Thanks Jade,
I needed to have that final phone call. Xx
Hi Arya,
No, I didn’t curse at him. I told him something, while I was pissed off, and it was something I wouldn’t have normally said to him, or anyone. I basically bit him back with what I told him. Part of me felt bad about it, another part of me felt he deserved it. It’s a personal thing, so I won’t go into it.
What did I do, while he was smirking, you asked me?
I turned away from him and walked away from him. He gave me a silent treatment for almost 2 weeks after that.
I was so mad at him that I didn’t even try to contact him either. I was used to silent treatments from my LMRVNarc mother, but with him, at that time…I was pissed off and ignored him right back.
I was still hurt by him not talking to me, but I was more angry, than hurt, and my anger helped keep a lot of the pain at bay. I think it’s how I got through it at that time.
I held onto my anger, because the pain was too much to bare at that time. My anger was like my shield and it allowed me to function at work. I was on autopiolet. Xx
Hello HG,
Thank you very much for explaining such complicated dynamics in such a brilliant way. It’s a no-win situation. There is no narcissist other than you to thank. I have struggled for many years and I am finally becoming myself again. Thank you very much for putting the pieces of the puzzle together so neatly. A sigh of relief in my heart and soul, yet a huge mountain to climb…so it seems at times for now. However, I am not willing to give up. As confused as I can get and battling emotional thinking, seeing logic unfold before me is astonishing. Peeling the layers back of myself has also been incredibly helpful.
Thank you HG!
You are welcome.
Hi HG, are narcs more likely to go through relationships quicker when in their teens and twenties, like non narcs? I guess the devaluation might just happen quicker…
There is no discernible evidence that supports a higher turnover of relationships when younger compared to older. I can think of some factors which may create greater longevity when older, but not to the degree where one can say confidently that narcissists as a whole slow down relationship turnover as they get older.