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A Narcissist Needs Constant Drama
One of the most pronounced signs you are dealing with a narcissist is their constant need for drama.
05/11/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
Some narcissists are so histrionic that they need constant drama. Instead of simply looking for other people who enjoy having a lot of drama in their lives, they’ll use you to create that drama.
They run around as though the only people who exist are themselves, and the only thing that matters is what they want and wish for. When you don’t comply with their wishes regarding you, they’ll punish you horrifically.
Some may also be love addicts and need the constant drama of a love relationship that is on and off, with the attention always focused on them and that topic. Usually, if you’re in a true relationship, you won’t have to constantly talk about love or romance. But a narcissist may push you into constantly discussing this topic because it is what he is interested in, without allowing you to avoid being drawn into his “love drama.”
The blueprint for their idea of love has been learned from TV. Hollywood movies are a favorite of many narcissists, and they believe that the drama on TV is also what any person in real life would want. They equate “love drama” with true love, not with abuse or a distorted understanding of relationships and love. They may see that you are single and then claim that you aren’t allowed to be, constantly talking about “love” and “relationships” with you — without ever doing the work required to build a real relationship or even meeting the basic requirements to be in one.
Some also need the constant drama of being rejected by a woman. Unlike normal people, who simply leave a woman alone when she says that she’s single and not interested in taking care of a man who acts like a little boy, they continue to pursue her. They know nothing about acting like a grown-up or understanding that people have different priorities than fantasizing about an idealized image of two people being in love. Without actually being in love, they simply want you to replicate what they saw on TV — without having to do any of the work or meeting even the most basic standards you would expect from a man who wants to date you.
If you then reject them and their wrong idea of what true love or a relationship looks like (I am dealing with socially incompetent stalkers who can’t be reasoned with and who constantly turn everything upside down), they behave as though a man simply has to sit somewhere near you, and that makes him your partner. When you don’t play along, they create so much drama in your life that you constantly have to deal with their deranged emotions, emotional blackmail, and endless talk about love and relationships. Their talk is shallow and shows that they have no understanding of a true relationship, the effort it requires, or even the basic steps of dating.
They may also create a daily catastrophe — forcing you to clean up their messes because they were angry or sad about being rejected. They’ll whine about this every day, claiming that you’re bad, flawed, or too dumb to understand how attractive, sexy, and successful they are. They never provide evidence of this but simply declare it, believing you are too naive to see through them. In truth, you’ve already seen enough to know otherwise.
When a person makes claims about themselves, proof is required if it isn’t self-evident or hasn’t been shown in action. Yet there are people who simply say, “I am extremely successful,” and believe you must accept it just because they said so.
When no evidence is provided — and you didn’t even invite them to talk about themselves (because you weren’t interested, and the requirements for consensual communication weren’t fulfilled) — that person will still go on and on about how much better they are than you.
When you don’t place yourself on a lower level than the one they see themselves on (which is often far too high, especially in the case of male narcissists), they’ll degrade you horrifically. Your whole day may be spent trying to get someone who is shouting slurs at you to stop. The things you hear may be so horrific that you may even start to lose your sense of self or feel like you can’t go on — especially if the smear campaign never stops and you, the innocent victim, become the target of their false narrative.
Catastrophes — narcissists create them in all kinds of ways. They may feign an emergency to push you off your priorities. They may also create them through incompetence, being so incapable that someone always has to jump in to rescue them. They may even create catastrophes by refusing to accept your “no” — your refusal to have a relationship or any contact with them. They might go to extreme measures, such as reporting you to the police when, in fact, they were the ones stalking you. They may appear at your door, uninvited, and try to force their way into your life.
They thrive on constant drama. When things are quiet and someone is resting, they’ll make sure to disrupt the peace — often by whining about how unfairly you treated them. They won’t allow you to rest but will force you into “relationship talk,” whether or not you were ever in a relationship with them. Some try to find intimacy this way, though they are completely incapable of genuine intimacy with another person.
These kinds of narcissists don’t reveal who they truly are. They hide behind a mask. Worse, they may pressure you to wear one too, even when that’s not how you want to live. This mask represents artificiality — pretending to be perfect instead of being a naturally imperfect human being with flaws. They never share their own struggles but pretend everything in their life is fine, while convincing you that you are the one with the problem.
This can create the illusion that you need fixing — simply because you are open about your problems while they hide theirs. I’ve observed that it’s not that others don’t have problems; some just hide them behind a façade of “everything’s perfect.” Those who are honest about their struggles are often seen as the ones who need to be “fixed,” even though they are simply the ones speaking truthfully.
When you remove the mask that the narcissist keeps pushing onto you, he will begin a campaign to control your emotions. You may just want to feel naturally, but he’ll constantly manipulate you and insist that your emotions are wrong and need to change. After enduring this for a long time, you may become numb from their constant efforts to make you feel loving toward them — because they can’t accept that some people simply don’t like them. They may despise you for rejecting them, even though they’ve only treated you abusively.
Eventually, you may feel like a robot, walking through life numb, because they’ve tried to mold you into someone who loves them — instead of fixing what’s broken within themselves: their inability to accept that not everyone will love a narcissist. A narcissist is not lovable to begin with, and they are too unaware to understand that love cannot be forced by marketing themselves to a woman who clearly said she isn’t interested. When she finds them unattractive, boring, and unpleasant, instead of accepting this reality, the narcissist will claim that she is flawed or insane for rejecting him.
Instead of correcting his abusive behavior — the verbal degradation, the constant criticism, and the false accusations — he will fixate on fixing you. You become the “identified patient,” the one who is supposedly so broken that you need to be coached or repaired by him — the “superior” man who sees himself as a life coach, despite no one having asked for his help. He projects his flaws outward, trying to fix others instead of fixing himself.
Some of these men don’t even want a real relationship; they stalk and harass for unethical reasons. They claim they want love or a relationship but ignore every “no” and every boundary. They refuse to recognize that you are a person with your own free will, who has the right to choose such things for yourself.
Have you ever met a narcissist who needed constant drama?