Once you are discarded by a narcissist or, conversely, once you leave the narcissist and go no-contact, the narcissist has to act quickly to save face and get their fix from the new supply.
Like an addict craving drugs, the narcissist craves supply. At record-breaking speed, they will be in a new relationship, and their new supply will be strategically picked.
In my case, after months of trying to see if my marriage could be salvaged after my narcissist went to jail for the second time for assault and harassment, I decided to file for divorce. He knew I was going to leave him, so he pretended like it was his idea to file for divorce and tried to bully me into filing paperwork quickly without consulting my lawyer. I still have text messages explaining to him that every aspect of my life with him had been rushed and dictated by him and that I would file in my own time. He didn’t like that and wanted me to file immediately.
I waited a few days, consulted with my lawyer, filed the divorce paperwork, and waited the obligatory 90 days for the judge to sign off. Within two days of me filing the paperwork, my narcissist carefully picked out his new supply, and, a week later, he moved his new supply into his house to share his garage/ basement bedroom with him (yes, he is a 47-year-old professor who has made such poor decisions in his life that his bedroom is a garage/ basement).
Mind you, at the time, my narcissist had a middle schooler and a high schooler, yet he had zero qualms about introducing a new woman into their home and lives immediately, again showing how his concern was for himself and not his children. Typical narcissist behavior.
So who did he pick as a new supply? I happen to know a lot about his new supply because he shared so much with me from the beginning. First, he sent me her dating profile on Tinder. From the pictures, I could tell that she is a plain woman, who wears jeans, t-shirts, and sandals. She seems comfortable with very little material possessions, which I find admirable, but it is important to note her austerity. Her pictures were in front of an old camper, which apparently was her home at the time. Her profile indicated that she was ‘sober’ which told me that, at some point, she was not sober - this designation on dating profiles is typically used by recovering addicts. She might be described as not conventionally attractive. I say this not as a negative, but to paint the picture of who he targeted.
In addition to sending me her dating profile, my narcissist told me key elements about her.
As her profile indicated, she is a recovering addict who deals with addiction and mental health issues. The camper she was pictured in front of was borrowed from a relative and served as her home. She is uneducated and, per my narcissist, feels inferior to him and his friends who have PhDs. He also shared that she has never been in a relationship with a man who treated her well and is used to being treated poorly.
What does all of this mean - well, it means that my heart breaks for her. My narcissist picked a woman who is a recovering addict, financially unstable, uneducated, low self-esteem, insecure, and vulnerable. He picked someone who has past trauma and is used to being treated like dirt. He quickly moved her into his garage/ basement bedroom (his house is a two-bedroom, and each of his sons has their own room). From what I can tell from what others share me with, he throws her a bone from time to time. Per my narcissist, his new supply thinks that he “hung the moon". In fact, besides telling me all of her weaknesses, insecurities, and fears, the only other bit of information he told me was that she perceives him to be a god. He even went so far as to tell me about her undies being ‘wet’ and ‘needing to be changed’ after their first meeting, and how he had sex with her under a bridge, suggesting that she was obsessed with him. He proudly proclaimed that they had so much sex she got a UTI and, after going to the doctor for treatment, he still coerced her into having sex with him that night.
I asked my online community about their narcissist’s rebound partners, and I received eerily similar responses.
They all said that their narcissist was in a serious relationship within days/weeks, and engaged/married quite quickly too.
One person noted, “She was remarried in less than a year.”
Another person explained, “He took in a homeless woman, got engaged using my old engagement ring that I gave back to him when we broke up, in six months.”
This made me chuckle. I was told by a few friends whom my narcissist is still friends with on Facebook that he is engaged and the ring is, literally, a piece of dried tumbleweed. I wouldn’t have believed it, but two people sent me the picture.
In sum, the narcissist never moves on to someone better than you - rather, they move on to someone easier to manipulate and with less agency than you. They settle for whoever confronts them the least and tolerates the most.
We, who got away, are the winners.
And we should feel empathy and compassion for their new supply - who are being love-bombed and breadcrumbed - but will soon realize their lives are getting worse and worse and the person they fell in love with does not exist.
