Don't Ignore the Red Flags!

In a relationship, a narcissist automatically sees themself as the better of the two. To enforce this false belief, they must degrade their partner, and puff themselves up. This presents itself as:
• Discrediting your ideas, advice, and opinions to make themselves feel superior
• Condescending and thinking they always know best, so as to discredit their partner's ability to think for themselves
• Controlling your behavior, even with little things, like which route to take while driving
• Not showing pride in their partner's accomplishments, and wanting to be the center of attention instead
• Being jealous & envious of their partner's traits or accomplishments because it makes them look less good in their mind in comparison
• Not wanting their partner to be their best self, succeed, or dream big because this would outshine the narcissist
• Lying about themselves to make them seem bigger, more important, smarter, or more successful
• Expecting/demanding that their partner spend all their time, energy, and focus on the narcissist and their life's problems & responsibilities
• Extreme insecurity & the complete inability to handle criticism properly, often resulting in anger, backlash, reflection, or quitting the relationship
• A need for constant praise, validation, and attention due to insecurity
• The need to be the center of attention, usually resulting in the narcissist making a scene or causing drama
• Using manipulative tactics to control their partner
• Inability to empathize, since they think they are the most important, and their partner's feelings don't matter. This, more than anything, will cause you the most pain.
• Inability to trust due to insecurity, but they will expect you to trust them
• A one-way street of respecting boundaries. You must respect the narcissist's boundaries, anxieties, and quarks, but they will not respect yours.
• Possessiveness and fear of abandonment. Since they struggle to maintain relationships due to their behavior, when they have someone accustomed to their tactics, they don't want to lose them and start over training someone new to deal with them as they prefer.
• Lack of internal reflection. The narcissist will always look outward for new sources of happiness, or for others to blame for their unhappiness. They are incapable of looking inward and recognizing that their unhappiness and failures are a result of their own behavior. This prevents positive growth, and will result in a downward spiral instead.
• Cannot take responsibility or accountability for their mistakes, and will always blame you, others, or the world for their shortcomings and failures

The emotional manipulator in a relationship sees themself as the perpetual victim, who must be saved at all costs, at all times, by their partner. The tactics of an emotional manipulator are:
• Constant judgement, which makes you feel like you can never do anything right in their view
• Guilt-tripping. An emotional manipulator's primary weapon is to make you feel bad for them, and want to help them. They will cry wolf, create fake crises, or always seem to have something bad happening to them. This creates an urge for you to try to make them feel better, or to help them, or make them happy. This is how they get you to do things for them.
• Gaslighting. They will twist the facts, deny history, and rearrange reality to present themselves as the victim, and most likely, you as the bad guy. If caught red-handed, or called out, they will panic and you will start to notice they present paradoxes, and hypocrisies as their stories start to unravel.
• Love-bombing. In the early stages of a relationship, an emotional manipulator will constantly praise and compliment a potential victim. This is to make you feel special, and make them seem highly interested in you, and a nice person. This behavior will continue throughout the relationship anytime they want someone from you.
• Also early on in relationships, an emotional manipulator will feign interest in whatever you talk about, and may even pretend to have the same interests. This is to form a fake connection with you, which can later be used to extract favors, money, services, and assistance from you.
• Creating drama. An emotional manipulator will create artificial drama, chaos, crises, and fires, expecting you to put them out. This is to get attention, but also to keep you in the constant habit of "saving" them.
• Using your positive traits against you. Emotional manipulators target good, honest, generous people, and use these traits against them for their own benefit. It's hard to say no if you're usually the type of person to help others.
• They try to maintain control over every situation, and over you. Emotional manipulators are master schemers, who are always thinking about how to get and keep the upper hand over their partner, friends, and colleagues.
• Keeping you on the defensive. Emotional manipulators will make it seem like you're always having to defend yourself from their accusations of insulting them, or being disloyal, or not giving them enough effort. By doing this, they are trapping you in a perpetual cycle of false guilt, which makes it easier to manipulate you.
• An emotional manipulator will make their happiness your responsibility, and their unhappiness your fault. If something is wrong in their life, it's your fault, and your responsibility to fix it.
• Moving the goal-posts of their happiness. An emotional manipulator will always want more fuel for their behavior. They will expect, request, or demand certain behavior, actions, things, or favors from you. But if you do what they ask to make them happy, it only enables them to keep doing it. So they ask for more and more and more. Nothing you do will ever be enough for them.
• Diminishing your problems. The emotional manipulator, as well as the narcissist, always need to be the center of attention. Due to this, they will diminish the size of your problems, and exaggerate the size of their own. This will lead you to gradually shift your effort and focus from yourself, your life, your needs, and your problems, to theirs. Don't lose yourself trying to fill their emptiness.