Sometimes the greatest trick the devil plays is wearing a mask of love. If you’ve been feeling drained, manipulated, invisible in your own relationship, or like your soul has been hijacked, you may not be crazy.

You may be with a narcissist. And if you’re watching this video, it’s likely not by accident. This may be your wake-up call, your divine signal to reclaim your power, your peace, and your true self.

They make you question your reality

Gaslighting you. You remember what they said. You remember the tone, the timing, and most of all how it made you feel.

But somehow when you bring it up, they look at you like you’re crazy. They’ll say things like, “I never said that,” or “You’re too sensitive,” making you doubt your own memory, your perception, even your sanity.

This isn’t simple miscommunication. It’s gaslighting, a psychological manipulation tactic often used by narcissists to destabilize and control others over time.

Their goal is to become the narrator of your story, reinterpreting facts, rewriting events, and overriding your instincts. You begin to lose faith in your ability to interpret reality, and slowly you become more dependent on their version of it.

If your thoughts feel like they no longer belong to you, if your truth constantly gets erased or rewritten, you are not being loved. You are being systematically dismantled and controlled.

It’s always about them

Every interaction, no matter how it begins, inevitably gets rerouted back to them. You might be sharing a difficult moment, a personal story, or even a triumph, and somehow they hijack the narrative. Suddenly it’s about their stress at work, their childhood trauma, their dreams, their day.

Narcissists thrive in environments where their ego is the centerpiece. They crave admiration like oxygen and see your emotional needs as distractions from their spotlight.

When you finally speak, you’re met with indifference, eye rolls, or worse. They twist your vulnerability into a weakness to exploit later.

Conversations stop feeling like exchanges and start feeling like performances where you’re just an audience to their ongoing drama.

If your voice is always diminished or redirected, if your presence feels like it only exists to elevate theirs, then you’re not in a partnership. You’re stuck in a one-person show where your role is to applaud, not to be heard.

Three: They never apologize, and if they do, it’s manipulative.

True apologies require humility, an ability to admit fault, empathize with the hurt caused, and take genuine responsibility for one’s actions. But for narcissists, apologies are a rare and dangerous admission of vulnerability.

They often refuse to apologize outright, blaming others instead or rewriting the narrative to portray themselves as the victim. And on the rare occasion that an apology does come, it’s laced with manipulation: “I’m sorry you feel that way,” or “I’m sorry, but you made me do it.” These are not apologies. They are veiled accusations.

They use apologies strategically to pull you back in, to reset your anger, or to avoid real consequences. Worse still, they may weaponize your forgiveness, using your grace against you the next time conflict arises.

If your pain is met with arrogance, and their apologies feel like traps rather than healing bridges, then you’re not dealing with remorse. You’re being emotionally puppeteered.

You feel emotionally drained, not nourished.

Love should feel like a safe harbor, a place where your heart is fed, your mind is at ease, and your soul is seen and supported. In a healthy relationship, both partners give and receive, uplift and protect, listen and respond.

But with a narcissist, emotional exchange becomes emotional extraction. You find yourself constantly giving your time, your energy, your empathy, while receiving nothing but criticism, chaos, or conditional affection in return.

Over time, this imbalance chips away at your well-being. You start to feel perpetually anxious, emotionally exhausted, and spiritually depleted. You second guess your worth, question your value, and begin shrinking just to keep the peace. This isn’t love. It’s emotional vampirism.

If your relationship leaves you drained instead of filled, silenced instead of understood, that’s a clear sign that what you’re experiencing isn’t nurturing. It’s consuming you.

They use love as a weapon.

At the beginning, it may have felt like a fairy tale. They were charming, attentive, and showered you with affection, compliments, and promises. This stage is often called love bombing, a calculated tactic narcissists use to gain your trust and devotion quickly.

But soon the affection becomes transactional. Love is offered only when you conform to their expectations, and withdrawn the moment you step out of line. In one minute, you’re their everything.

The next, you’re met with cold silence or passive-aggressive punishment. This erratic behavior keeps you walking on eggshells, desperately trying to win back the warmth that once felt unconditional. But that love was never real. It was bait.

Real love is not a tool for compliance or a reward for obedience. It doesn’t disappear when you assert your needs or express your truth. If love is being used to manipulate, silence, or punish you, then it’s not love at all. It’s control dressed as affection.

They isolate you from friends and family.

Narcissists thrive in environments where they hold all the influence, and nothing threatens their control more than people who can see through their facade. That’s why they often isolate you from your support systems.

Though it rarely starts as an obvious demand, instead it comes cloaked in concern: your friend is jealous of you, or your family doesn’t really support us. Slowly the distance grows. Phone calls become fewer, visits get cancelled, and soon you find yourself increasingly alone—emotionally, socially, even physically.

By cutting you off from those who genuinely care about you, the narcissist ensures that they become your only source of connection, validation, and reality. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a strategy. Isolation makes it harder for you to get help, to see clearly, or to leave.

If you find yourself abandoned by your circle—not by choice, but by gradual manipulation—understand that this isn’t love. It’s imprisonment with velvet ropes.

Their actions never match their words.

One of the most confusing and painful aspects of being with a narcissist is the glaring gap between what they say and what they do. They might speak of love, loyalty, and change, but their behavior tells a different story. They dismiss your feelings even after promising to care.

They repeat the same patterns after swearing they’d never hurt you again. This creates a painful cycle of hope and betrayal, where their words pull you back in, but their actions keep cutting you down.

Narcissists are often masterful communicators. They know how to sound sincere, how to say the right things at the right moment, and how to spin narratives that paint them in a flattering light. But words are easy.

What truly matters is consistency—the ability to follow through, to honor promises, and to behave in alignment with their declarations.

If their words feel like beautiful lies and their actions bring only confusion or pain, it’s time to stop listening to their promises and start believing their patterns.

You’ve lost your identity.

You used to be vibrant, full of joy, expression, and a sense of self that radiated from within. You laughed without permission, spoke your truth with ease, and walked through life with a confidence that came from knowing who you were. But now something has changed. You find yourself constantly second-guessing your words, your choices, your emotions. You hesitate before speaking, fearing judgment. You dim your light to keep the peace.

The laughter that once came so freely now feels forced or absent. Slowly, subtly, you’ve been conditioned to seek their approval before making even the smallest decisions. What you’re experiencing is not just insecurity. It’s the systematic erosion of your identity, a common result of prolonged exposure to narcissistic influence.

Over time, they shape you into a version that serves them—quieter, smaller, compliant. But who you were isn’t gone, just buried. If you look within, you’ll find that spark still alive, waiting to be rekindled. If you’ve started to forget your essence, your dreams, your voice, it’s time to remember. Reclaim your name. Reclaim your joy. Reclaim the light they tried to extinguish.

You feel like you’re meant for more, but you’re trapped.

There’s a whisper inside you, a quiet, persistent voice that says you were made for more. More peace. More purpose. More love, depth, creativity, and freedom.

Deep down, you know you weren’t born to merely survive in the shadows of someone else’s ego. You were born to expand, to love freely, to express your soul without fear.

And yet here you are, feeling stuck, confined in a relationship that clips your wings while convincing you it’s a cage built out of love. You stay because of fear—fear of starting over, fear of being alone, fear that maybe you’re the problem.

You stay because of guilt, because they blame you, and you’ve begun to believe it. And you stay because of hope—hope that someday they’ll change, that things will get better, that love will finally feel like love. But chosen one, this is not your destiny.

This is your lesson. It is the fire that will either consume you or forge you into something stronger. The moment you realize your worth, the moment you choose yourself over their approval, is the moment you begin your rebirth. You’re not trapped. You’re just one decision away from your freedom.

Dear chosen one, your power was never gone. It was just buried under lies, manipulation, and trauma. You are not broken. You are waking up. And healing begins when you walk away from what’s draining you and toward what’s destined for you.