All About Me: Loving a narcissist. Simon Crompton

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       For example, have you felt a bit suffocated, or been left with an awkward feeling of indebtedness, by the number or expense of presents lavished on you?

      

Does he show no interest in what you really want, or really feel?

       For example, are you often accused of being selfish, when all you are actually doing is trying to convey something about where you fit in to the relationship?

      

Does he seem to think he’s intrinsically better than everyone else?

       For example, is he snooty about people who have achieved less than him, or does he get irate when other people are being served in a restaurant before him?

      

Does he sometimes make you feel like a keeper, rather than a partner?

       For example, do you find yourself running round after his smallest wish, or desperately trying to cover up for his antisocial behaviour?

      

Does his idea of truth and fiction seem very different from yours?

       For example, has he ever constructed an entirely fictitious event but insisted it is true?

      

Do you fear him or fear for him – and stay with him partly because you worry what would happen if you left?

       For example, has he ever implied he might fall apart, or even harm himself, if you weren’t around?

      

Have you ever felt your personal safety has been threatened by his thrill-seeking or addictive behaviour?

       For example, has he driven erratically and dangerously – seemingly on purpose?

      

Does he swing from idealising you to treating you as if you’re nothing, regardless of what you have done?

       For example, are you often left wondering what you have done to suddenly make him hate you so much?

      

Does he sometimes try to create a rational argument to justify his behaviour, when by any normal standards it is completely unjustifiable?

       For example, do you sometimes find yourself wondering whether you’re going mad because his idea of normality seems so different from your own?

      

Do your friends try to tell you he’s no good for you?

       If you look deep in your heart, are you hiding from what others are telling you about your relationship?

      So how did you get on? Does your partner have narcissistic traits? The answers to these questions don’t constitute proof, of course. We’re all aware of the perils of simple checklists. But they may point you towards some of the reasons why your relationship is not the bed of roses you first expected it to be. If narcissism is affecting your life, in Chapter 5 you’ll find an explanation of some of the reasons why people show narcissistic traits, which may help you to understand why your partner behaves as he does. And in Chapters 10 and 11 you’ll find advice on some of the practical strategies you might consider to try to address problems of narcissism, and stop it ruining your life.

      The examples in the checklist illustrate just how difficult it is to conduct a genuinely meaningful relationship when one of the partners is strongly narcissistic. Narcissism denies the principles of compromise and understanding that are at the base of so many strong partnerships. He needs you. He really does, because you are the means to him having any sense of self-worth. But it’s a parasitic kind of need.

      NICE NARCISSISTS

      Let’s take a step back, and look at the results of those two checklists again. Many of you will have scored, say, seven on the first checklist, and two on the second. It doesn’t mean you’re engaged in a disastrous relationship. It may mean that your partner is extremely nice, with many redeeming features, but that he or she has some narcissistic traits that make life very difficult for you.

      In fact, nice narcissists are a common breed – people who, for example, believe that they are driven by compassion, and may have been bolstered in that impression by others, but who within a relationship still expect the world to revolve around them. These types of narcissists can be tricky.

      So, in contrast to our earlier examples, which have tended to concentrate on the more extreme end of narcissism, let’s look at how it manifested itself in a relationship that showed no outward signs of being unusual or destructive.

       Andrew and Hazel have been married for eight years. Before that, they had been going out together for three. Prior to their marriage, and before the couple lived together, everything was a mad romantic whirl – impulse trips abroad (usually at Andrew’s instigation), sex on the beach (usually at Hazel’s), and nights of laughing, going to glamorous places, and gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes. When they married, things started to change. Andrew, a stockbroker, worked long hours, and Hazel noticed that when he wasn’t out ‘having a good time’ he became preoccupied with his work. She also had a high-pressure job at an advertising agency to hold down. But for all the pressures of her work, Andrew expected Hazel to take the brunt of the household chores, and started to get irate when Hazel reminded him that she was getting increasingly desperate and isolated.

       ‘It wasn’t until we started to live together that I realised there was just this expectation that his wants and needs should always come first,’ says Hazel. ‘I don’t think it was even a conscious thing on Andrew’s part. He was always very popular with people, and had this aura of personableness and of being kind. That was one of the things that drew me to him. But there was something deep inside him that just couldn’t get outside of his head and into mine, to see how hard he was making it for me when, say, he just expected to be able to be out as late as he liked with his friends after work.

       ‘Things got so much worse when we had our first son, Joe, because the pressures on me obviously got considerably worse, especially after I returned to work and Joe went to nursery. We had constant arguments. I think Andrew genuinely wanted to try to be sympathetic – because that’s the image he had of himself. But when it came down to it, he had no inner mechanisms for thinking of how I felt or reminding himself that every time he put his own wishes first – from what to watch on television, to where we went on holiday, and who picked up Joe in the evenings. It was as if he lived in a fantasy world where everything was fine, and he could do whatever he wanted, and all those messy, difficult bits of life would just get done. СКАЧАТЬ