Narcissists and Relationships
By: Kari Harrison, LCPC
Healthy relationships are paramount to our overall life satisfaction as human beings. When relationships are healthy, they can enhance our resiliency, our physical health, mitigate anxiety, ease loneliness, and even increase our life expectancy. The key here though is healthy relationships.
Living in a city like Chicago, where the hustle and bustle can increase our stress levels, a healthy relationship can feel like a soft place to land.
Unhealthy relationships, however, take a real toll on our physical, emotional, and psychological health, and unfortunately, there is no way to have a healthy relationship with a covert narcissist. These folks aren’t “bad” people, but their relationships will be manipulative and destructive without a great deal of counseling support.
The problem is that these individuals rarely have the self-awareness that would facilitate seeking this support. If you’re finding yourself in a relationship with a covert narcissist that has grown toxic in nature, your best bet is to leave the relationship, because a relationship with these individuals will continue to be destructive, often for the following reasons…
1. They have an empathy deficit
Empathy is a necessary and vital component of successful relationships. Empathy is being able to feel someone else’s hurt by putting yourself in their shoes. Empathy is like a muscle, if you work on building it, it can become stronger, but if you don’t utilize the muscle, it will atrophy.
The problem with covert narcissists is they often lack the ability to facilitate empathy on an emotional level. They may understand that they are hurting you, but will be less inclined to care, because they have a deficit that blocks them from being able to feel your pain.
Because of this, a covert narcissist is less inclined to avoid hurting their partner, as covert narcissists cannot feel the pain of the person they are hurting, the way that emotionally healthy adults most often can.
2. They engage in black and white thinking
To the covert narcissist, you are either “all good or all bad.” You are the best person in the entire world, or you are terrible. When you are meeting their needs you are an angel on earth, when you are letting them down you are the devil’s spawn.
Covert narcissists cannot see people as complex, flawed human beings, with both good and bad traits.
A healthy adult can see their partner as exhibiting both positive and negative qualities but continue to recognize their value as a partner for the positive qualities they carry. A healthy adult in a relationship can feel angry with their partner, but still love and respect them.
This is very difficult for the covert narcissists, who usually engage in thinking along the lines of “You angered me and made me feel bad, therefore you are bad.” It is difficult for covert narcissists to engage in more emotionally intelligent thinking, which allows for recognition that you can love someone and be disappointed in them at the same time.
This type of integrative, holistic thinking is important in relationships, and covert narcissists have a very difficult time with it.
3. They lack self-awareness
Self-awareness is so important in healthy relationships. The ability to take accountability for yourself, to understand your role in arguments, to own the ways in which you are contributing to any unhealthy dynamics in your relationship and do some personal work to overcome your part in them.
Self-awareness is the ability to see the ways in which we might have been able to do better/react differently, especially in a moment of increased emotionality and heightened conflict. It’s the ability to come back to our partner and apologize for our role in an argument.
Covert narcissists cannot and will not do this. They do not understand their role…they simply cannot see it. As a result, they will likely blame your feelings/ reactions entirely on you, even when they are justified.
Their keen lack of self awareness causes you to bear the emotional burden of every conflict, argument, and difficulty you face as a couple. A partner who has no self-awareness cannot facilitate/ maintain a healthy partnership.
4. They are passive-aggressive
Covert narcissists are often passive aggressive. Passive aggression, on its own, can be enough to ruin a relationship. Engaging in passive aggressive behaviors indicates a difficulty in expressing anger in a healthy way, and an inability to resolve conflicts constructively.
Signs of passive aggression include saying cruel things under the guise of humor and writing it off as “just a joke”, the silent treatment, victimizing oneself in order to avoid taking personal accountability, pushing buttons, and engaging in patronizing language/ put downs.
5. They gaslight
“Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality” Covert narcissists are often gas lighters. Beware especially of any partner who denies your reality in a relationship, and especially beware of a partner who consistently calls you “crazy”, has you often questioning your perception of things, continually tells you that you are “too sensitive,” and makes you frequently feel on edge.
If you find your partner exhibits a combination of these characteristics, you very well might be a victim of gaslighting. Gaslighting is a severe manipulation strategy and is psychological abuse.
It can have long-standing emotional consequences, and if you believe you are a victim of gaslighting, please consider seeking support now.
Your best bet in saving a relationship with a covert narcissist is to save yourself. Remove yourself from the web of toxicity and reach out for support. One resource to consider is a book called Psychopath Free by Berkley (See Amazon). Inside, you’ll find lots of information on this topic, including tools for identifying narcissists and pathways to recovery.
Consider seeking counseling to help you begin to heal, and re-orient yourself towards sustainable relationships. Your health and livelihood depends on it.
