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China Elevator Stories
Betrayal Is a Part of Any Relationship With a Narcissist
If you are in a long-term relationship with a malignant narcissist, you will almost inevitably experience betrayal at some point.
26/06/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
A relationship with a malignant narcissist may start out beautifully, but they may end cruelly or with one person dead.
How to understand if someone is a malignant narcissist and which kind of narcissist they are is a question I have answered in other posts, and my experiences with multiple malignant narcissists can be a lesson for all of those who are affected by narcissists. For those who are married to a Chinese narcissist and who are facing a similar decision as the one I once faced—mainly, if you’re supposed to leave your children with your Chinese husband and/or his mother, and believe that you’re going to see them again in a few weeks’ time—I now always caution to never do so if you can avoid it, because you won’t know the cruelty and conscienceless behavior some people are capable of until you’ve experienced them firsthand, as I have.
As we can see, stories like mine are important to share, because if it saves two more children from the fate of having to be separated from their mother for many years—not knowing if they will ever see their mother again, or be allowed to have regular contact with her—then I will have done my job. No child deserves to be separated from their mother innocently, and no mother who loves her children and treats them well deserves to never see her children again or be separated for many years.
When you have read enough books of real-life stories of people during or before the Second World War, you’ll have observed certain patterns. How the Nazis acted is usually very similar to how narcissists act, because many of them were certainly malignant narcissists. Hitler, for one, was a raging narcissist, and it is incomprehensible to people like me how anyone could think he was adept at speaking, when in reality, he was shouting at people all day long and abusive in his speeches.
Sometimes, we need to have been through an abusive relationship or experienced sadistic abuse and torture ourselves to understand how these relationships develop and how they evolve. People think that there are usually enough red flags that give away a narcissist, but believe me, only a trained eye will be able to spot one—and to recognize how dangerous they may be. Some narcissists truly seem like kind and good people, and you may not think they are bad people at all. You may think they are playing the victim a little too much, or that they need a little too much attention, but you may not be alerted to the fact that they are truly malignant, and dangerous for others—particularly those who set boundaries with them.
Any malignant narcissist I know becomes dangerous—most often, at least that’s my experience—when you set boundaries with them. No normal person would become dangerous when someone else sets healthy boundaries, but a narcissist will feel so threatened, will feel like you’re trying to dominate him or not allow him as much freedom as should be his, and they’ll react extremely to the smallest and most normal boundaries.
Usually, narcissistic relationships start out beautiful. Many of the greatest love stories people shared were that of a knight in shining armor rescuing his beautiful princess, or the like. A story like this always rings a bell now when I hear it. Some people who experience romantic love certainly aren’t with narcissistic individuals, but many of the most beautiful love stories—those where a person found “the one,” someone who swept them off their feet—are stories between a malignant narcissist and a person who happened to cross their path.
With a narcissist, these positive days are usually over sooner rather than later. They may last one year, or two years, or only three months if you’re unlucky. Many narcissists are histrionic, which is why they are into everything dramatic, including dramatic romantic gestures and such. Many have learned their ideas of what romantic love means from Hollywood movies and believe real love is always the same as it is portrayed in movies. They are into the kick more than into building a true relationship, and some may even fake being in love with you to get what they want.
With a narcissist—even an intimate partner—betrayal is common. The narcissists I have met or been in a relationship with—the most treacherous ones—were malignant narcissists who switched sides whenever it was convenient for them. They don’t seem to have the same internal intelligence other people have, nor the same steady character, where they have one opinion today and the same opinion tomorrow, as well as the year after. Now certainly, we may sometimes change our opinions, but with any normal person, such behavior is highly unusual, and any normal person will usually pick one side and stay on that side, no matter what happens. Loyalty isn’t usually something you can expect from a narcissist, and many cheat so much it will make your head spin. They also switch sides regularly—particularly when staying on your side isn’t convenient for them.
Some narcissists make themselves out to be likable people who are charitable and who help others. Certainly, we see some such cases with Nazis who were malignant narcissists who helped Jewish people, which did happen. Some narcissists, though horrible people in private, make themselves out to be the rescuer of poor victims, or an altruistic person who helps others in need, and they gain narcissistic supply from the people who approve of them and who see them as the knight in shining armor who helped the innocent escape from death. Now, this may sound weird if you think everyone who helps others is a good person, but narcissists can actually sometimes appear to be good people who help those in need—and there were narcissists who helped Jewish people during World War II.
Usually, what we can also see in such relationships—at least in many—is that at some point in time, they chose to betray those they once helped. Now, while under the threat of death, some may have chosen to do this anyway, others may simply have become traitors (to the Jewish population) because they were narcissists, and all narcissistic relationships follow a particular pattern, where in the end—particularly if you’re a scapegoat or you’re somehow otherwise inconvenient to the narcissist—you will be thrown under the bus and left to die, while they can keep on enjoying their life or not have the truth come to light, etc.
A narcissist will always hoover—devalue—discard. In the beginning, their hoovers will be plenty (at least if they are one of the better narcissists you can come across—the worse ones won’t even hoover much in the beginning). They’ll put you onto a pedestal and you’ll feel seen, heard, or otherwise special. You may be treated kindly, respectfully, and a narcissist may spend a lot of time with you.
Once the initial days of glory are over, they may devalue you. Once the devaluing begins, you’re already dependent on them in many instances, and you may have already formed an image of them in your head that they are a good, kind, caring person. When the devaluing begins, you won’t be able to trust your gut, which tells you that this behavior isn’t okay, because you’ll usually still think that the person will turn back into how they initially were when you met. They may have been so generous and kind, or so respectful, that you won’t be able to get this image out of your head. This is called cognitive dissonance—you got to know them as a kind, generous, nice person, and that’s why in your mind, this is who they are.
When you are then experiencing them devaluing you, the picture in your mind doesn’t fit the picture of what you’re now experiencing, and the dissonance between the truth—which is that they aren’t actually a good person, but that they were merely manipulating you for some reason—won’t fit with the picture you initially formed in your head about them—which was that they were a kind, caring person. You’ll usually hope for things to get better again, and that’s why many don’t leave at this stage.
Some are also in a position where it is impossible to leave due to whatever reason on the outside that makes leaving impossible. People who aren’t able to leave a narcissist don’t have to be weak people; they may simply not have any way out of their situation that is safe, or where they won’t lose everything, or not know who they are actually dealing with and that they need to leave.
The next stage is the discard stage. The narcissist will either ghost you, get an affair and ignore you as though you never existed, or throw affairs in your face. They’ll let you know how little you mean to them and they’ll throw you under the bus—either to save their own life (which they rarely actually need to do), or simply so they can pretend it was you who did some kind of evil thing to them. Usually, when you criticize a narcissist or point out the truth to them, they will immediately discard you and get rid of you, because you have become too inconvenient to have in their life. With some people, the discards are more extreme than with others.
After a discard, many narcissists hoover you again once they need something from you, and the circle starts again. This is called the circle of violence, and usually, you will be experiencing some form of violence—be it physical, psychological, or otherwise.
One singer I have written about never went back to hoovering after his final discard, but simply blamed me every day, made my life miserable every single day, never apologized for his poor behavior, and simply treated me horrifically—no less horrific than Nazis treated the Jews—like a person not valuable enough to have her right to life respected, not valuable enough to live a life of peace, to have any rights, or to get free from an abusive situation. Any rights had been stripped from me by him, and he was constantly dictating what I needed to do and when I needed to do it, shouting at me, degrading me, calling me the ugliest of names, sabotaging my work and my career, and otherwise really ruining my life. He pretended he was the victim of me, and that I was a perpetrator—an evil, unkind person who treated everyone abysmally. When I pointed out his paranoia to him, everything simply got worse. The mask was already off, and when a narcissist sees his mask slipping, there is no level too low to stoop to. He knew he’d get away with it, and kept his behavior going and going.
My ex-husband also never went back to wanting to be with me again after his last discard. This is normal for a narcissist. Once the last discard has happened, they may want you out of their life forever—though some are also a bit unclear as to whether they want to keep you imprisoned as their possession or dead so nobody else can ever claim you as their woman.
During World War II, some Jewish accounts of how others had helped them hide in a flat or get food for them tell us that not everyone who was officially on the side of the Nazis (since officially, mostly anyone who wasn’t Jewish had to pretend they were on their side not to be killed—and some Jews may have collaborated with and been on the side of Nazis as well to save their own lives) was treating Jewish people in a cruel or unkind manner.
Some people helped them, and my grandmother was one of the people who had her family help Jewish people hide at their farm in the countryside. Now, it has been many years since my grandmother told me this story and I don’t remember every detail. It was also a story she had kept secret over many years, probably because she was still afraid of people getting to know about it, since this time was still alive in her head and she was sometimes still afraid of negative repercussions. Her family helped hide Jews in their home at the end of the war and provided food for them daily so they could survive. They did survive, as she told me, and it may have been, I believe, because they were living in the countryside, where it may have been a bit easier to hide people than in the cities. In this case, this is not a story of betrayal, but of help.
But in the case of many other Jews, they were reported to the Nazis in the end by the very person who had helped them hide or get food. Anne Frank and her family were one of the families where a person became a traitor and reported them to the Nazis after two years of hiding in a flat located near the canal in Amsterdam. This was the reason they were later deported and died in a concentration camp.
Sometimes, the people helping may have been on the side of the Nazis, or Nazis themselves—such as Schindler, another well-known figure. In his case, he helped Jews after he had observed that they were treated unfairly, which was a case a bit different from others where Jews were betrayed after they had accepted help.
Accepting help from a narcissist is always a dangerous endeavor, since not all relationships with them last forever, and these relationships always tend to follow the same pattern—particularly if you are a scapegoat and not a golden child. But even if you are initially treated as a golden child, you may later end up in the scapegoat role and be discarded brutally. Narcissists are selfish, arrogant, and cruel, and narcissists from the past and those of today didn’t behave differently when it came to these patterns, but these patterns persist across time. While certainly we aren’t in a situation where we are currently experiencing war in Austria and in Germany, certain patterns can still be observed and are very much like what happened during the 1930s or later in Europe. This is what I have observed by comparing these patterns to individual accounts of the events before the Second World War started in Austria and in Germany, and the similarities are truly striking—though you may not realize it when you’re in them.
It is usually always easier to see the whole forest when you aren’t in it, or when you can mentally put yourself in a position where you aren’t in the forest (such as how many trees there are, how big it actually is), when you’re outside of it.
If you’re in the forest, you may not get a good overview of how huge the forest actually is, because you may not be able to see all the trees. But then, people who are in the forest may be able to see a rabbit or a mouse or another animal you aren’t able to spot when you’re not in the forest, and a tree is blocking your view. Anyways, both views may sometimes be necessary, but a combination of both may probably be the best choice.
I liken having experienced something to being in the forest—you are the one in the forest, and you saw the rabbit others didn’t see because it was blocked by a tree. No person telling you there was no rabbit will sound legitimate to you, or as though they know what they are talking about, or as though they have had that same experience. Likewise, they may even claim there are no rabbits in this forest, or that rabbits don’t exist, because they weren’t in the forest to see it existed.
If you have had both views—that from outside and inside the forest—you may be able to see patterns for what they are, and you may be able to write about what is going on in a way where you aren’t just an observer on the outside, but also a person who is inside the forest—a person who has truly experienced what certain others haven’t. Only then will you be knowledgeable enough to know what is going on, and with many others having experienced the same, have the wisdom to share your knowledge, to know that what you have experienced is the truth, and that you aren’t making things up. When a rabbit was clearly in the forest, no person telling you it wasn’t in the forest because they didn’t see it from the outside will sound legit enough for you to trust them to be a good observer.
Have you ever experienced such a relationship?