Your Own Narcissist

March 15, 2017

I’m always analyzing the people and events in my life.  The quickest way to lose my attention is to be predictable AND boring.  (I am okay with stable and open-minded.)  Now, with President Trump, we all have a way to analyze a public narcissist and to identify those patterns.  Of course, “normal” narcissists perform on a much smaller stage – daily life.  I ran across the following article and the section on “the Narcissist in Your Bed” grabbed my attention.  It explains a lot about one of my own relationships … I’d like to note that someone with narcissistic tendencies can fly under the radar until a stressful event forces the behavior into the open.  For example, unemployment.

How to Deal with the Narcissist in Your Life by Jeffrey Kluger:

It’s very easy to fall for the charm of a narcissist; and since charm often equals sexy, and sexy often equals sex, things get messy fast. Paradoxically, narcissists are often quite faithful in the early stages of relationships, because what frequently leads people to cheat is insecurity: If you’re afraid the person you love doesn’t love you back, you begin looking for your next landing spot. Narcissists can’t conceive that they’re not adored, so they don’t go through that phase.

But they’ll cheat soon enough, because for narcissists, a relationship is all about how the partner enhances their own self-image. That means always trading up to someone who’s younger, prettier, richer—or just plain newer. Narcissists will lie about where they’ve been and what they’re doing; they’ll listen less and less when you speak (not that they ever listened much to begin with), and they’ll leave you flat if you don’t leave first.