The rules are different when you’re in a relationship with a narcissist. You may walk on eggshells, question yourself, or feel like you can never do anything right in their eyes. And if they break up with you? It only leaves you with more confusion.

So what’s the right move in this situation? Should we stand up to them? Try to convince them with facts? 

In today’s new video, I give you 7 reasons why you can never expect to get true closure from a narcissist . . . and what you can do to give closure to yourself.

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Matthew Hussey

What are the seven reasons why you will never get closure from a narcissist?  

Hello, I’m Matthew Hussey. If you’re new to the channel, welcome. Today, I want to talk about the subject of narcissism and why dealing with a narcissist can be so unbelievably unrewarding. Why when we deal with people like this, there is a complete and utter lack of closure, and how, in feeling that lack of closure, in feeling that there is no sense of completion in any of the things that we deal with with them, it can be maddening.  

The reason I wanted to make this video is because I want us to get out of the cycle of going back to these people and hoping for a different result, hoping that we are this time, going to go back and finally get the closure that we’ve always wanted from them. I hope that I can make this video in some ways so dismal, so bleak in its outlook when it comes to the outcomes of these situations that you will simply resolve to get out of them instead of trying to fix them.  

There’s a moment in Oliver Berkman’s book. I wish I could figure out who said it, but he was talking about someone who said, “My job is not to get people to lighten the load. It’s to make the load so heavy that they simply put it down.” And that’s what I’d like to do with this video.  

Why can you never expect to get closure from a narcissist?  

Number one: They will never take accountability.  

This is one of the most maddening things about dealing with a person like this, is that the idea of getting a genuine “I’m sorry. I did that. That was my fault,” is a fantasy. We will tell them everything they have done wrong, we will tell them everything they’ve done that has affected us tremendously. We can literally point out the chaos that they have caused, or we can point out how black and white, how wrong they are about something, but they’re not interested in that reality. They’re only interested in the reality where they are right.  

Bringing themselves to admit fault doesn’t fall within the normal laws of how they operate. And even if you manage to drag an apology out of someone like this, it will be an incredibly unsatisfying apology.  

It’s the kind of apology where you have been begging and pleading with them to see your point of view, where you have been spelling it out, where you simply won’t let them off the hook, and through saying all of this, you maybe get them to the point of such exhaustion of finally throwing their hands up and saying something like, “All right, I’m sorry. Okay. Is that what you want to hear? Like, what do you want me to do?”

That’s the kind of apology you get, and you tell me whether that feels like a satisfying apology that gives you closure.  

The second reason you’ll never get closure is because they will never truly empathize with your situation, because it’s not about you, it’s always about them.  

So when you’re talking about how something has affected you, it’s not just that you won’t get an apology, or if you do, you’ll get an unsatisfactory apology. It’s that you won’t even feel like they’re remotely connecting with your experience.  

When you talk to them about what you’ve been through, they’ll deflect. They might put it back on you. They might say that you’re being overly sensitive. They might say that you’re being dramatic and blowing things out of proportion. They might start talking about their own pain and, well, you don’t know what this has done to me, because it’s not about you. It’s about them.  

One of the greatest gifts in human connection is empathy. Empathy is a miracle.  

It’s like that moment in Inside Out, where, you know, Joy goes over to Bing Bong, the imaginary friend, the elephant, and doesn’t really show any empathy. She just tries to get him back on his feet and say, you know, “It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be fine.” And Bing Bong doesn’t feel good hearing that, because there’s no empathy. But then Sadness comes over, and sadness says, “That really sucks, that must really hurt,” and all of a sudden Bing Bong starts to feel better, because Sadness actually sees him.  

The narcissist will never see you. They will never be able to grant you the miracle of human connection that is empathy, and empathy is the root out of loneliness.  

The thing that makes empathy a miracle is that it transmutes pain into connection. It turns it into community. It makes us feel like we’re no longer alone, which exactly explains why being with the narcissist in any kind of an intimate relationship leaves you feeling so alone.  

You will never get closure, because they will never give you empathy.  

Now, the third reason that you’ll never get closure particularly applies to the more malignant types, the more antagonistic narcissists, but that is that by standing up to them, we’re just giving them more of what they want.  

We might have this fantasy of one day standing up to someone and finally telling them how we feel, and that that’s going to be so rewarding and that maybe we’ll stop them in their tracks when we finally stand up to them. But the truth is, in many cases, by standing up to them, we’re just giving them the thing that they want, which is our engagement.  

They want you to engage. They’re hoping that you will engage. That’s why people like this will often say anything they can to bait you. They will try to push your buttons. What’s the one thing they know they can say to get under your skin?  

You giving them that energy isn’t received as a standard. It’s received as energy. And I want you to connect to that point that what you may be speaking as a standard, what they’re experiencing is energy, and they’re going to do whatever they can to get more of your energy, because as long as they’ve got your energy, they’ve still got you. As long as they can get a reaction out of you, it’s like they’re still controlling you, right? This is about control. If I know I can say something and that’s going to get under your skin and that’s going to make you shout, I own you. I’ve got you.  

So we have to be very careful about what we think of as standing up to them, because standing up to them doesn’t work. It only gives them more of what they want.  

If you follow my dear friend Dr. Ramani’s work, you will hear her say over and over again, “Do not engage.” Very powerful phrase: “Do not engage,” because when we engage, we give them the power they are looking for, because that’s what they’re looking for—control and power.  

If I can get a reaction out of you, I’ve got power over you. If I can say something mean and get a rise out of you, I own you. I control you. We cannot give them that power.  

What do they say about colds and fevers? Feed a cold, starve a fever. Feed a friend, starve a narcissist.  

The fourth reason you’ll never get closure is because you will never teach them a lesson. “I have to stand up to this person. Someone’s got to teach them a lesson.” There is no teaching a person like this a lesson. They’re not operating in a world where they’re trying to learn a lesson like we’re applying our set of laws about how we live to someone who does not operate by those laws.  

We might think to ourselves, I like going through life learning lessons, or maybe I don’t like it, but when I learn a lesson, well, there it is, a lesson. I did something wrong. Someone called me out on it. I think, wow, I really learned my lesson. I gossiped about someone. It got back to them, and it hurt their feelings or and I’m like, “Oh God, I don’t want to do that again.” Oh, a lesson. I don’t want to do that again.  

We learn lessons because we’re the kinds of people who learn lessons, but with a narcissist, you’re dealing with someone who’s not trying to learn lessons. One of the signature features of many narcissists is incompetence. Why? Because it’s really hard to become competent when you can’t learn. When you think you’re right all the time.  

This is a person who’s not trying to learn like you or I are trying to learn. They are trying to do what’s best for them at all times. They are trying to do what’s going to give them supply at all times, whether it’s in the form of attention, money, adoration, success. This is what is driving them. What is not driving them is learning lessons.  

The fifth reason you’ll never get closure is because it will often appear when you finally leave someone or they leave you that they are then giving to the next person what they never gave to you. Many people have had that experience of going on Instagram, looking on Facebook, or hearing through the grapevine that they are now in this blissfully happy relationship with somebody else.  

Now first, let’s not forget that social media is never a good place to judge the inside of someone’s relationship, any more than it was a good place for other people to judge the inside of our relationship with this person.  

But let’s grant them that they actually are doing all of these lovely things right now for this new person. That doesn’t mean it’s sustainable. When a narcissist is in pursuit of something, they are a very different individual than they are when they have something.  

So let’s be clear, they may be showing a different side of themselves right now, but that does not mean that they won’t revert to type at some point and begin the cycle all over again. Remember, the greatest predictor of the future is the past, and that is especially true of these individuals.  

The sixth reason why you will never get closure from someone like this is because you will never win. If you do stand up for yourself, if you do take away their power in some way, if you suddenly feel in charge instead of feeling like you won, they will simply shape-shift. Narcissists are often master shape-shifters. When they’re in power, they’re a tyrant, they’re a dictator. When they’re not in power, they’re a victim, and they know how to switch like that, so they’re just playing a different strategy now.  

And what they know, because remember, these people want your energy, they know that they can simply convert energy. So they can take your anger at them being in control or being a menace in your life, and they can turn it into guilt by suddenly playing the victim when they’re not a powerful person anymore, or when they’re no longer in control. And weaponizing your guilt and your pity is narcissism 101.  

You have no business being a narcissist if you’re not weaponizing people’s guilt. You shouldn’t be in the narcissism business. What happens is someone knows that I can play on your ability to very easily feel like you’re a bad person. And why do you feel like a bad person? Because you have a really high standard for being a good person.  

So if you’ve in any way said something that could be hurtful to them, if you’ve in any way been cold or callous or merciless with them, in the way that you’ve parted ways, or in the way that you’ve put your foot down, they will find an in to turn that into you being a bad person. You being someone who should feel guilt, you being someone who should now feel sorry for them.  

And even if you don’t feel all of those things, even if you feel absolutely righteous in what you’re doing, when they become a victim, at the very least, they can become a kind of pitiful and sad figure. And that’s what happens to a lot of people who have aging parents who are narcissists. Is that over time, once those people almost become a bit defanged, when they’re no longer capable of quite the damage they used to do, they can end up representing quite sad and sorry figures, and that is why these relationships are so unsatisfying, even when we feel like we finally got to a point in our life where we took our power back.  

The seventh reason you’ll never get closure with a person like this is because they will never make sense to you. This is always going to be one of those maddening situations where the more you try to understand it, the more you’re applying the wrong kind of thinking to the problem in the first place.  

This person is a different animal to you. This person does not operate the way that you do. It’s like trying to use a ruler to measure sound. It doesn’t work. We will never fully understand these people. They will never fully make sense to us, because they do not operate the way that we do.  

And the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can give ourselves the freedom to not have to understand it, to simply accept that they operate in the way that they do. And that is not the kind of person that we can engage with in our life. And by the way, when we disengage from people like this, when we walk away from people like this, and I know you can’t always walk away, there are situations where we have to continue to engage on some level, but when we do, we will still feel a sense of injustice.  

That after all the pain someone has caused us, after all the damage they’ve done, after the utter lack of acknowledgement of all of those things, we’re the one that has to be the bigger person. We’re the one that has to radically accept the situation. We’re the one who has to grow. We’re the one who has to be higher frequency and not fight with them, but simply disengage or walk away or make peace with it.  

That can feel like the ultimate kick in the teeth. Is that “My reward for all of your bad behavior is that I have to grow? I have to be the bigger person, and that you get to never grow?” That can feel so unjust and unsatisfying. But the real closure is not any of the things that we might hope for if they weren’t all of these ways that I’ve just suggested.  

The real closure is the peace we have found or will find by disengaging with this person, the peace we find in the space between us and them, the peace we find in finally, no longer having expectations that this person will never fulfill, and if we’re lucky enough, the peace that we will find in walking away from someone like this so that we never have to deal with them again.  

Remember, peace is closure.  

I hope you enjoyed this video. If you want to continue the conversation with me, if you want to ask me a question about what you’ve learned today, there is a place that you can do that right now. Go on over to AskMH.com and try Matthew AI. You’ll literally be able to text or call me. You’ll hear my voice answering your question, and you can try it out completely free.  

And if you enjoy it, take advantage of our Black Friday offering, where it is 50% off your first month of unlimited Matthew AI. So make sure you take advantage of that while it’s available, you can literally have me coaching you any time you want as much as you want.  

The link again is AskMH.com.  

Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll see you soon.