Couple Therapy – Narcissistic Partnerships
Sometimes it can be very easy to detect narcissists. Within the first 10 minutes of meeting them, for instance, they might immediately bring to your attention the many astounding qualities they have.
They might also put their sense of grandiosity on full display by mentioning that sports car which they own, all the important people they know, their exciting hobbies, their prestigious job and the expensive vacations they’ve been on.
If they do happen to focus on you during a conversation, then it becomes suddenly clear that they aren’t really interested in you per se but rather they are trying to make you feel that you don’t quite measure up to their own exceptionality.
There are, of course, also narcissists who go about doing this in a more subtle manner. However, the feeling of being devalued remains pretty much the same.
The central issue in narcissistic partnerships is whether the non-narcissistic partner can be appreciated “in his/ or her own autonomy or is rather treated merely as an expansion of the own self of the narcissistic partner” (Willi, 2019[197]: 87).
Often narcissists suffer from a sense of emotional emptiness. They are easily emotionally drained, are highly suspicious and do not trust anyone. They lack a sense of meaning in their life, feel easily attacked, are very sensitive to criticism and experience feelings of melancholy from time to time whenever their sense of grandiosity is not being sufficiently validated by others. This is the reason why most of them lead quite vivacious lives, full of interesting events and exciting things to do precisely in order to fight against this sense of emptiness and the negative feelings within. Most narcissists are also very fragile in their inner self and are deeply insecure, which is why they tend to show off since this kind of behavior acts a means of self-defense.
For narcissists, being in a partnership is quite a challenge because, as the psychologist Jörg Willi has noted, it’s not really imaginable for them to have fights and confrontations, without also fearing that they might end up losing their partner’s love. Furthermore, they do not treat their partner as a separate entity but rather as an expansion of themselves and they do not tolerate disagreements or even diverging opinions. More often than not, their need for a partnership or additional sexual encounters is resolved as soon as the other person has been conquered, which Willi has termed “Don Juanism.”
In the long run, partners of narcissists tend to develop a rather low sense of self-esteem and often they end up compulsively repeating the experiences of their childhood when their autonomy was also not well respected and when they got used to being devalued by their primary caregiver(s). Most of the time, though, it’s very hard for them to break out of this cycle of behavior and yet this is a necessary step to take in order for their partnership to be healthy, fulfilling and long-lasting.
Bibliography: Willi, Jörg (2019[1975]). Die Zweierbeziehung. Reinbek bei Hamburg, Rowohlt Verlag.
Photo: Charles Deluvio (unsplash)
09/2020