I was raised by a covert narc. Dealing with a covert is like dealing with someone who looks like Jesus who is also a sleeper agent. Their manipulation is so savant-like that it's like rain man counting matchsticks.
One of my breakthroughs came from someone else. I was assaulted by another narcissist and was trying to understand years later how I got caught in his web. I started to go further back to past relationships and noticed a pattern that everyone I was close to in each phase of my life was toxic, few times I was the only one close to these people. One was an overt narc and the rest were not as bad but still had similar traits, dark triad perhaps? Eventually following it all the way back to 7 years old, I was finally able to see it led back to my parent.
Recently I was hanging out with a friend. Possibly the only close friend that I never attached such things to, which was strange. They were the closest of the people yet they weren't toxic? That always seemed hard to accept. They had minor things but it's nothing severe to being a narc imo but I digress. When I was hanging out with them recently, they mentioned that when they hang out with their colleagues and other people, they don't care about these people's life. Whatever story they told him, he just didn't care. When he said that, an alarm went off in my brain, "I'm in danger".
Honestly even before that, I was always afraid of meeting new people. What I've come to realize about my own pattern of being in toxic relationships, is that, I'm the moth to the flame. So it's not really on that toxic person. If you keep walking into a dark alley and getting robbed, you can't really keep blaming the thieves.
I was wondering if anyone else feels that way and how did you deal with it? I think I can recognise some signs now but unless they're a textbook overt narc, it's gonna be hard to identify quickly.