While that may be true, there's something to be said for continued growth and learning throughout life.

If a person is unwilling to reflect on how their actions affect others, it's going to be almost impossible for them to move forward.

As a victim of narcissistic abuse for almost twenty years, I had lots to account for as the codependent partner. I realized that I was not blameless. I didn't take that on because I wanted to appear different or 'better than', I had (and have) to walk that path daily to heal. He would have you believe I do it for the former, because that's how he understands a world where he can't do wrong. That's his world of conditional love.

My narcissistic ex still shirks accountability to this day. Luckily for me, local law enforcement finally saw his game and stopped harrassing me and our kids. Of course, that was after an officer called me in the waiting room of the hospital where my mom was having open heart surgery to threaten my son with a bogus foster-care consequence. BTW, my mom never recovered from that surgery and passed away a week later. I could not be with her in her last lucid moments on this earth.

So I say, spare me the sob story about "picking on people with almost zero self worth". Covert or not, narcissists leave destruction in their wake and every victim is forced to grow and learn and seek out the hard work of healing to recover any self-worth at all.

Those articles that you think are cheap? What if what you are seeing is a healing process and a response to pain? If nothing else, they shine a spotlight on how low self-worth manifests. Sometimes people get stuck there, I'm sure.

Hurting someone once may be an accident, but continuing to do so- even to fulfill the deficits of childhood- is unacceptable.

Had I not enforced a boundary here, I'd still think the way you do- that maybe I should give the narcissist some slack and I could help them get better if I only I loved them more or the right way. I'd still be under his thumb, in his control, a person in relation to him but not an individual in my own right.

Narcissists rarely get better. They mostly don't want to- because why fix something that isn't broken? They can't see that they break stuff, they refuse to see that they might be wrong.

Whether or not it's based in shame, I won't accept poor treatment from full-blown adults who are capable of change but unwilling to go there. That's not my job, it's not my responsibility. I used to think it was.

Let's stop victim shaming and instead keep applauding those who have escaped narcissistic relationships and who have started the long, often yucky and heartwrenching journey toward healing.

Because you're right- as children, no one ever picked that for themselves. To be a victim or to be a perpetrator. But as you grow, you lose that excuse. You do pick (choose) what kind of person you grow to be.