Psychology

I am not a psychologist. I cannot diagnose a mental illness or personality disorder. But when you spend a year of your life interacting daily with someone, you begin to notice repeated and consistent patterns of behavior. According to the DSM-5, there are nine such patterns that characterize Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). To be diagnosed, an individual must exhibit at least five.

L.O. meets all nine.

Above: This is the message I received that was meant to hook me into believing there would be a meeting. Note that she never mentions my name or hers, no dates other than '2024' ...This message could be sent to multiple recipients and each would think it was meant just for them. How many others may have received this message? (Voice has been altered to protect privacy)

Learning Narcissism.

Over the past year, I’ve immersed myself in the study of narcissism: watching expert lectures, reading clinical literature, consuming books, and speaking with others who’ve endured similar experiences. I’ve written nearly 200 short-form articles on narcissism, which have been read by over 700,000 people. Does that make me a psychologist? Certainly not. But I am more than familiar with the terrain.

And based on that knowledge, and direct experience, I am personally convinced that L.O. is a covert narcissist, likely with secondary psychopathy. This is not a diagnosis. In my personal opinion the fact that she has NPD is almost a certainty. I also believe she may qualify as a 'malignant' covert narcissist, due to the fact that she is still trying her utmost to destroy the life of a 60 year old pensioner who is now unemployed and is 30 years her senior. 

She herself has admitted to many of the traits. Her messages and emails reveal a deeply disturbed individual: arrogant, deceitful, entitled, and envious. When she perceives herself as slighted, she does not hesitate to retaliate in ways that are disproportionate and extreme.

Because NPD often hides behind a mask of charm and apparent vulnerability, and because much of the abuse takes place in private, it is notoriously difficult for victims to be believed, especially when the narcissist is female. Society is conditioned to believe a terrified, helpless-sounding woman when she accuses a man of abuse. I know this now firsthand. Covert narcissists exploit that belief with devastating precision.

They do something insidious: they swap places with their victims.

After they discard the person they once love-bombed, they accuse him of being the abuser and adopt the role of the wounded party. It is a role they’ve been rehearsing all their lives, and they are very, very good at it.

Police, friends, family, even courts are easily deceived. That is because the narcissist has been setting up the victim for months in advance. First comes the idealization—the too-good-to-be-true version of themselves. Then comes the steady drip of emotional and psychological abuse, followed by silent treatments, gaslighting, boundary violations, and blame-shifting. The victim, pushed beyond the breaking point, eventually reacts in distress. This is known as reactive abuse. The narcissist records, stores, and weaponizes these reactions as “evidence.”

When the discard comes, sudden, devastating, and unexplained, the victim is shattered. Desperate for answers, he tries to reconnect, reaching out, writing, calling, messaging. To the outside world, he now looks exactly like the obsessive stalker the narcissist has already painted him to be. He is acting like an abuser and she can prove he is one.

After all, she already has the “evidence.”

I’ve experienced this firsthand, and I know I’m not alone. In the aftermath, the narcissist moves on to the next target. The cycle begins again. These individuals are psychological predators. They feel no guilt. No remorse. They don’t just lie, they believe their own rewritten versions of history. They are always the victim. And every failed relationship was, of course, the fault of yet another “toxic” partner.

I include this section not out of bitterness, but to educate. To shed light on a psychological profile that is more common than most people realize and far more dangerous than it appears. As you’ll see in the pages that follow, the evidence speaks for itself.

All you have to do is look.

Below is a screenshot of the kind of abuse I was typically subjected to: insults, ageism, verbal abuse, accusations, threats and humiliation. Not the kind of victimhood writing she displays in her emails which are meant to be read by third parties as 'evidence'.