1. Love you (or their children). All love is transactional and conditional for a narcissist. No matter how much you love them. No matter how many hoops you jump through to try to please them. No matter how much you give and give. It’s not your deficiency - it’s theirs.
2. Cherish you (whether they vowed to or not). Find me a victim of narcissistic abuse who felt cherished after the initial lovebombing stage and I will eat my metaphorical hat.
3. Respect your boundaries. You’ll say no, they’ll do it anyway. Boundaries are just things to be trampled over to a narcissist.
4. Say sorry and actually mean it. Narcissist’s cannot be wrong, ever. It goes against the point of their narcissism, which is to protect them from shame and low self esteem. Being wrong isn’t an option, and so nor is saying sorry.
5. Put the other person first. The world revolves around the narcissist, period. They simply cannot put anyone ahead of themselves, including their own children.
6. Cheerlead you and encourage you in your hopes and dreams. After all, if you succeed you won’t need them as much (in their minds), and they might lose you (and your narcissistic supply).
7. Listen to you (unless they are trying to get you to reveal your vulnerabilities to them, for them to weaponise and use against you later, or unless you are in the lovebombing stage).
8. Be consistent. You’ll be idolised one day, and devalued the next. Prepare to be emotionally exhausted - its all part of the cycle of narcissistic abuse.
9. Care about you. You are simply an appliance, like a toaster or kettle. Your function is merely to provide narcissistic supply. No matter how much they profess love whilst staring deeply into your eyes, to keep you in play. You are replaceable. You are nothing but a toaster. Remember that.
10. Make you feel secure. You’ll be on edge all the way through the relationship. It’s all part of the game plan.
11. Accept you as you are - warts and all. You are either ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’ to a narcissist. Hero or zero. You’d better lose that weight/gain that muscle/stop being so talkative/ be funnier/be more sympathetic/want to do the same hobbies as them/go blonde. Remember - you will never be enough as you are. Try harder. After all, the narcissist deserves the best version of you.
12. Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Prepare to be lied to and gaslighted - with impressive conviction. The narcissist’s false persona is a lie - the person they pretend to be every single day, so it’s no wonder they are pretty practised when to comes to fibbing. You will be fooled at some point - because everybody is.
13. Let go of you easily. You, my friend, once in a relationship with a narcissist, are their property. They will never let you go, not completely, and certainly not without a massive fuss, the likes of which you won’t believe. Expect to be stalked, harassed, hoovered, badmouthed, threatened, stolen from and blackmailed. They will keep on coming back to you even for years after your split, because they need the narcissistic supply that they get from your fear, from the drama and from the conflict. If you can’t change identity and disappear then expect them to come back at some point.

Dr Supriya McKenna (aka The Life Doctor) is co-author of ‘Divorcing a narcissist - the lure, the loss and the law’ and ‘Narcissism in family law - A practitioner’s guide’. She also co-hosts a hugely popular podcast - ‘Narcissists in divorce - the lure, the loss and the law’ and trains lawyers in Narcissistic Personality Disorder.