The Survival Guide for Living With a Narcissist

Narcissistic monkey 🙈 

I am often asked some version of this question: “I am living with a narcissist and I don’t know what to do? What do I need to know to make this relationship as good as possible?” Most of the people who ask me these questions already know that the standard advice is leave but… you can have a parent who is a narcissist.

I have written this post for those of you who do not want to leave until you have tried everything possible. Here are the basics of what you need to know about being in a relationship with someone who has narcissistic personality disorder.

Note: I am using the term “narcissist” here to describe people who have made a narcissistic behaviour to a situation. No disrespect is intended. The word narcissism describes a pattern of thinking and behaving.

If you are in a relationship with a narcissist, things will go smoother if you know three basic things:

1. What being with a narcissist really means reading a book called difficult people by dr Rebecca Ray 
2. What is realistically possible and what is not
3. Where your boundaries are

1. What being with a narcissist really means

Narcissists are focused on self-esteem enhancement.

The main goal in life for most people with narcissistic personality disorder (or adaptations, as I prefer to call them) is self-esteem enhancement. Narcissism can be conceptualized as a self-esteem regulation disorder in which narcissists are perpetually insecure about their status. They may appear highly confident to you, but there is always a lurking doubt about their self-worth underneath the confident façade.

In essence, this means that self-esteem enhancement is ultimately more important to them than you can ever be. When their self-esteem dips, narcissists only have two choices:

1. Go into a shame-based, self-hating depression.
2. Become grandiose and insist that they are special, perfect, and omnipotent—while devaluing other people as inferior to them.

Naturally, they choose the latter. As the closest person to them, they are likely to devalue you in order to feel more important again. A wise woman once told me, “When they feel fat, they complain about your weight.”

Narcissists lack emotional empathy.

A lack of emotional empathy means that narcissists do not feel bad when they hurt you. They may not even notice your reaction. If they do, they are highly unlikely to care. If you complain, they will deny responsibility—“You are too sensitive.” Or they will blame you—“If you weren’t so stupid, I wouldn’t have to correct you so often.”

This means that it is highly likely that during the relationship, they will repeatedly hurt your feelings, both accidentally and on purpose. You need to be prepared for this as it is an inevitable and inescapable part of being in a relationship with a narcissist.

Narcissists lack the capacity to see themselves and other people realistically.

Narcissists do not apologize.

Because narcissists find it too humiliating to accept blame, they are unlikely to ever be willing to apologize—even when they clearly know that they were wrong. It is therefore highly unrealistic to expect a narcissistic mate to apologize.

The reparative gesture: Narcissists will often later make sweet little gestures that are their equivalent to an apology, like buying you a present or letting you pick where to go out to dinner. If you want the relationship to continue on a better note, accept their reparative gesture without demanding an apology.

Pick your battles.

You need to be prepared to let minor, unintended insults go. It is best to carefully pick your battles. If you tell your narcissistic mate every single time he or she hurts your feelings, the relationship will sour, you will find yourself in a continuous state of war, and nothing will be gained. Save those fights for serious and intentional insults that cross certain boundaries that you are prepared to defend by leaving the relationship. And, you must be prepared to leave the relationship, if your narcissist refuses to respect those boundaries. Most narcissists will say and do anything that they feel like if you let them.

Narcissists are unwilling to process past fights.

After a fight with your mate, you may want to go back and discuss what went wrong and how to do it better next time. Narcissists will usually refuse to do this because it feels as if you are rubbing their nose in their past mistakes.

Use “we” language: It will work better if you use “we” language and talk about how the two of you want things to go forward in the future.

Example: “I know we both love each other and want things to go well. I think that we can both agree that in the future we both need to be extra kind to each other and a bit more mindful about how we phrase things.”

3. Decide where your boundaries are and defend them 

Narcissists do not respect (or even notice) other people's boundaries.

This means that you need to be clear about what sort of narcissistic bad behaviour is tolerable and which is intolerable. Left to their own devices, narcissists will cross most lines that other people automatically respect.

For example, many narcissists think nothing about criticizing your taste in clothes, your relatives, or your most dearly held beliefs. Many will hit below the belt (what belt?) in a fight and say ugly and disgusting things to you and afterward act as if nothing happened.

Some narcissists do not mind creating humiliating public scenes.

This can range from them angrily insisting that the two of you get up and leave a restaurant because they feel the service is insultingly slow, even though you are perfectly happy staying, to them yelling at you on the street and walking away from you.

You need to decide if this is something you can live with at all and, if so, where the line is for you. Any narcissist who does this once is likely to do this repeatedly. It is part of how they cope with what they perceive to be insulting to their self-esteem.

Verbal abuse may escalate to physical abuse.

If you do not draw any boundaries around verbal abuse, your mate may escalate to abusing you physically. Unless you are a masochist and enjoy being beaten, I suggest you stop them right at the beginning. It may start somewhat innocuously, but then it will quickly escalate if you allow any form of physical abuse to continue.

Punchline: It is never easy to be in a relationship with a narcissist. It will, however, go smoother if you educate yourself about what you can realistically expect, learn a few “tips” about how to deal with narcissistic bad behaviour, and clearly decide where your boundaries are and are prepared to defend them.