Over time, a pattern is established between a Narcissist and his victim (change pronoun if needed) that involves a gradual lowering of our boundaries and expectations in response to the lack of love and attention we became accustomed to receiving at the beginning of our relationship with a Narcissist (the love-bombing stage) and which we later only receive in sporadic amounts. Essentially, we were promised a feast and yet find ourselves begging for scraps as time goes on.
The plot twist? We see the one offering us those crumbs as our savior, the one who really cares about us, not knowing that our minds have been muddled with desperation. At that moment, it’s nearly impossible to see how we’ve been trained to lower our expectations to such a level that we are actually satisfied with those crumbs.
https://medium.com/publishous/how-we-normalize-our-own-abuse-ad63598e11a1
