It took me around 5 years to figure out how the Narcissist (the N) that I was married to execute a fake cry. He didn’t cry a lot to me, but when he did, it didn’t feel right to me deep down inside. I didn’t know why I felt the way I felt, so I kept carrying on, but now I know. I felt that way because it was all fake crying on his part. My body knew, but my mind couldn’t understand his behavior until the last couple of times I saw him crying.

When people cry, they use the soft pads or the sides of their fingers to wipe away the tears in order to avoid hurting their eyes. When the N feels like he needs to cry to gather sympathy or forgiveness, he would say something emotional such as “you know I love you” and then look away. At the same time when he looks away, he would jam the knuckles of his index finger into the inside corners of his eyes. The way he forcefully did it, it would hurt his eyes enough to make his eyes look red. He does all this while looking away. Now when he starts looking back, he would remove his hands, so now all you can see are his two pitiful red eyes. He would say more words to evoke an emotional response from whoever is listening to him. Then he would look away some more, more jamming the knuckles into the eyes. He would do this until he can actually make tears. I noticed that when he cried, there were no tears running down his cheeks ever. I suppose his eyes could only make so much tears with that kind of knuckles trauma and no real emotions involved. Maybe he actually can produce real tears when he feels sorry for his own self. I’ve just never seen it.

When I was dating him, there was one time he was watching a chick-flick with me. Chick-flick is my favorite kind of movies. I forgot the name of the movie but I remember it wasn’t that sad. But somehow he said the movie made him cry. And he did exactly what I described above. I thought that was weird that a guy such as him would cry over a chick-flick when I didn’t. I remember my gullible self was thinking, “I must be crazy. Who would fake crying over a chick-flick? Stop thinking that”. I didn’t know that a narcissistic person would do anything, including fake crying, to get attention, to get sympathy, to further his agenda.

I’m actually not sure if he does this fake crying on purpose. I somehow think he might be doing it instinctively. To me it is almost a knee jerk reaction for him, etc. if he needs to look pitiful to get what he wants, then he does this. It doesn’t seem like there is a clear thought process going on when he is fake crying. It’s also possible that he has practiced this his whole life so fake crying became a behavioral reflex to him…That is the nature of his narcissism.