The Narcissist Inside Your Head: It's Not You It's Them — How to Identify and Deal With a Narcissist - a Practical Guide by H. K. Wilym

Author:H. K. Wilym
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Sand Ripple Books
Published: 2023-07-03T05:00:00+00:00

Friends

One way of spotting a narcissist would be to look at their friendship group. In fact, I always look at the company a person keeps even if I know they aren’t a narcissist because I believe you can get a good measure of the person by seeing who they associate with.

With narcissists, in particular, they tend to associate with people that elevate them or people who serve them in some way, and I would expect them to have friends that fully support them.

There might be times when it’s hard to judge who the narcissist’s friends really are. It might appear that they have many friends, but when you dig deeper you might find that these so-called friendships are really rather superficial. I would not expect a narcissist to have deeply meaningful friendships unless they found the perfect narcissistic partner in crime so-to-speak.

There might be times when you might determine that yes, actually, this narcissist has a really deep friendship with someone but if you look closer you might find that it is or can be quite one-sided or the narcissist has picked a particularly soft-hearted and forgiving individual to call their friend, or they’re both narcissists.

There might be newcomers to a friendship group who are not as susceptible to a narcissist’s advances and who might very well hover around a little while until they figure out who and what they are dealing with. I’ve noticed that some people instinctively know that something is wrong and correctly walk away or keep their distance, somehow knowing that that’s the safest thing to do. If you investigate a narcissist’s friendship track record you will find a trail of burned bridges type of friendships left in the wake of a narcissist who simply does not understand that friendships are supposed to be a two-way street. Unlike relatives and partners, friends don’t have to stick around and frequently don’t when they’ve reached the end of their tether with a self-serving narcissistic friend.

I remember the spouse of an ex-narcissistic friend of mine commenting that they’d lost yet another friend, then noting that there seemed to be a pattern over the years. And indeed there was! The narcissist in question seemed to have this amazing ability to not introspect at all on any of the friends that eventually ran out of patience with her. It was bizarre how she could rewrite the narrative and assume that her ex-friends were jealous of her which is why they parted ways when it clearly was because they couldn’t take any more of her self-serving, rampant controlling behaviour! I think if I and all the other ex-friends started a therapy group together, we’d all come up with similar survival stories: started out great, lovely generous kind person. Asked lots of favours. Wanted to be in charge. Chose what we could do, where we could go, and what we could eat. Talked about people behind their backs. Derogatory manner about anyone succeeding in life. Jealous. More controlling. Disrespectful. Bullying. The end!

We’d probably all agree that it started out well and ended with us all being bullied and controlled until we quit.

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