How to Tell Whether Your Partner Really Is  A Narcissist?

This week a client asked me the time honored question: “How do I tell whether or not my husband really is a Narcissist?”

As she spoke of him two different images emerged: on the one hand, the smart, charming, graceful social operator; on the other, the irritable, petulant, irrational domestic tyrant.

But does that domestic behavior make him a Narcissist? my client wanted to know. Or did it point to her woeful inadequacies as his partner?

What would you say? 

The lived stages of a narcissistic relationship

We all know the conventional stages of a narcissistic relationship:

• Initial charm
• The odd alarming behavior
• More and more consistently unpleasant and abusive behavior.

But let’s look instead at how we live the various stages of a narcissistic relationship:

1. We meet an extraordinary person. (True we may already have known them for a while without seeing quite how amazing and exceptional they are. Then, one day, they smile at us and the scales fall from our eyes)
2. That extraordinary person extends the glamour of their extraordinariness to us.
3. We discover the joy of being loved and validated by this Soul Mate/Significant Other.
4. We mess up, disappoint that person and commit to doing better – in all areas – in the future.
5. We are so hopeless that we keep messing up and causing our beloved to punish us.
6. We realize that we are lucky to have this person who tolerates us when we are such relationship disasters.
7. We start to realize that our Beloved’s propaganda is not all true. Not everything is our fault.
8. We research our situation furiously on Google and come to the conclusion that our beloved could be a Narcissist.
9. We agonize over whether or not they are.
10. We go deeper and deeper into the fog of cognitive dissonance and fear of losing the best/worst thing in our life.
11. We sense that staying in the relationship will kill us. But can we leave? Would we be justified in leaving? What if we are making a horrible mistake that we will regret for the rest of our lives?

The timeframe

 The set time for Stages 1-3 tends to a matter of months. Or even weeks.

The set time for stages 4-11 can vary from months, to years or even decades.

Somewhere around Stages 10 – 11 we start looking for objective opinions and professional support so that we don’t completely lose our mind.

How long you stay in a narcissistic relationship varies from person to person, depending on any number of factors – including knowing that something is profoundly wrong but not being sure what that wrong thing is.

The point is, there is no right or wrong amount of time for anyone to stay in an abusive relationship.

We all stay until we can justify leaving in terms of our own upbringing, beliefs and values. We leave when, by our own process, we have reached Stage 11 – although we can still vacillate back through the earlier stages whenever “our” Narcissist shows a sign of either remorse, insight or affection.

Uninformed people will ask: “Why did you stay so long?” out of ignorance and insensitivity. If they  haven’t walked in shoes similar to yours (or like to think that they haven’t) and need to think that they would be smarter than you, they will never be able to fathom out how it was to live in your world.

You cannot stop ignorant and insensitive people from judging you. But you can see their judgement as a reflection of their limitations rather than an accurate evaluation of you.

My assessment of my client was that she sat around Stage 10 -11.

And she was doing the normal thing of vacillating and seeking a second opinion.

The vacillation zone

Like most everyone in that position, my client was well-versed in the signs of Narcissism. As she saw it, some of them seemed to fit perfectly, others not so much. So, what else could she do but get stuck in the Are They or Are They Not? vacillation zone.

When first I caught wind of the idea that my horrible husband might be a Narcissist, I I duly did the old school thing that I was trained to do: I read a book to make sense of what was going on in my life. In so doing, I encountered two road blocks:

• The book informed me that if he was a Narcissist, then there was no hope for the relationship. That was problematic, since my values meant that I was committed to staying in the relationship and making it work, dammit.)
• The book stated that Narcissists are grandiose. My then husband was convinced that he was the best in his profession for miles around. That might have been true but it wasn’t actually setting the bar terribly high. I managed to confuse “grandiose” with “utterly delusional”. My then husband didn’t think that he was The Second Coming, a prince of a realm or anything so gross. So, I gave him a free pass on that one.

Reader, I vacillated. Since I couldn’t see that he ticked every last narcissistic box, I defaulted to my own beliefs as regards the least worst option and stayed another few years.

So, when a client comes to me wondering whether their partner or other loved one is a Narcissist, I understand how likely they are to vacillate and cling to their denial.

Do you have to prove that they are a Narcissist before you can leave?

In the case of this client, I chose not to go down the conventional route of establishing whether or not his behavior seemed to fit with the DSM criteria.

Instead, I asked her: “Can you only leave him if he is a Narcissist? And if so, why?”

She replied citing a whole list of horrible, abusive behaviors that made no obvious sense.  But then, she argued, if it turned out to be the case that his horrible behaviors were indeed her fault then, obviously, she would commit to staying and transforming herself.

Didn’t we all feel like that at some point? 

 That was when I shared with her the unmistakable mark of the Narcissist: they leave you trying to make sense of a thousand hurtful, idiotic behaviors that make no sense at all – except as the modus operandi of the Narcissist.

The hallmark of the Narcissist

Only a Narcissist makes a point of sabotaging everything good.

Only a Narcissist spoils things and hurts people for the hell of it.

Only a Narcissist will pay good money for a dinner out or a holiday to make it as miserable an affair as possible.

Only a Narcissist will spoil their own children’s fun – and their own children’s chances.

Only a Narcissist would routinely treat like dirt the people that they are meant to love the most.

Nobody normal would do that.

Any way you cut it, that behavior stands as a massive billboard that reads Narcissist and a**hole.

Of course, every so often, they will likely sprinkle a little “love” dust over the relationship to keep you sweet enough not to disrupt their creature comforts.And then your life with them will be back to business as usual, with all the crazy, spoiling behaviors. Just ramped up.

So, isn’t it time that you stopped trying to authenticate your suspicions about them and instead validate your own judgement that their behavior makes no sense and does no end of – carefully calculated – harm?

You have to learn to trust your own experience.

If you don’t feel that you can do that for yourself, then go ahead and book a Breakthrough Session. You know how awful your life can be and usually is, with your partner.

What you don’t know, yet, is how good it can be without them once you start your healing journey.

 

https://recoverfromemotionalabuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/how-to-tell-if-your-partner-is-a-narcissist.png