SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’m starting to think mine is and this is a losing battle. Thoughts?

Everyone has narcissistic traits, even you or me, believe it or not. It’s a spectrum, you can have "some" narcissistic traits or you can be a full on narcissist.

Immediately after dday, when I discussed the possibility of WH being a narcissist with my IC, I was encouraged to watch how he reacts to change, is he capable to embrace it or is he twisting it all to make it about himself (victimhood, blame shifting, refusal of accountability).

Was WH hitting a lot of narcissistic traits during his affair? Yes, all affairs are driven by selfishness and disregard of everyone’s feelings and the impact it has on them.

There is no doubt in my mind that WH’s narcissistic traits are more prominent than mine. I do not think he is a narcissist though. I think the change he was capable of, his ability to recognise his narcissistic behaviour, acknowledge it, understand what tools he has available to combat it, proves that it is unlikely he is actually a narcissist.

What makes you think your WH may be a narcissist?

My XWH is, and I wish I'd read up on it more many years ago. He's a covert narc rather than a grandiose narc.

Psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists have many similar traits, with more people being psychopath or sociopath, according to Dr. Ramani. You may wish to watch some of her YouTube videos. Personality disorders are difficult to treat because the person doesn't see their behavior as maladaptive.

Narcissism is a trait, and it's possible to have narcissistic traits and not meet criteria for NPD. Cuz some people are just a-holes.

I was raised by a highly narcissistic mother, so narcissistic people are my comfort zone. While my H is very narcissistic, I think it's because he is a bit on the spectrum or neurodiverse, as they say these days. He is not a true narcissist. Two of my exes are absolutely personality disordered--one more malignantly so and the other "just" a covert narcissist. The malignantly narcissistic or psychopathic ex can and will physically harm people for his amusement, although I did not realize it at the time. He hurts people and has had quite a few problems with the law. The covert ex is much less dangerous. He just lacks any and all empathy, sees himself as the victim in all areas of his life while actually victimizing others, and is obsessed with what he deserves and what he is owed.

All of these types of people do harm in their relationships whether they mean to or not. The labels do not matter other than bringing on extremes of the same selfish behaviors. My H's selfishness is the easiest to work with because he is not evil and does have some empathy for others--when he remembers our feelings at all. It still hurts though.

I am very curious as to what traits and signs you are seeing, howcthappen. If he is too selfish and really will not or cannot consider your perspective, only his own, then reconciliation can be nearly impossible. But I promise you that all WS are somewhat self-centered, and many of them are very self-centered and always have been. We just didn't realize. While minorly self-centered types can learn and change, a certain percentage of these selfish types will probably not be capable of the type of empathy needed for R.

Worst trait of all for reconciliation: if the WS simply cannot repeatedly and frequently feel things from the BS perspective and choose accordingly. And the highly narcissistic or personality disordered can't. Cannot. Will not. They always fall back to being the victim. Reconciliation eventually dies due to this.

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 4:26 AM, Friday, February 2nd]

I thought mine was as he was treating me so horribly when he was having the affair but when my anger calmed down I realised he just had some narcissistic traits. I agree we can all have these tendencies. I even thought his mother had but she really doesn’t I was just so upset and angry and wanted to make sense of it all. He is capable of empathy and I think that is the difference to it being pathological where there is no capacity to reflect on the impact of your behaviour on others.

You have to be at a minimum in a pretty narcistic state of mind to embark on an affair and decide to risk the destruction of your family. Whether that's a temporary state of mind or something more embedded in your WS personality is what is what you need to determine. With my Ex, I wouldn't call her fully NPD but she was definitely on that end of the spectrum by her behavior throughout our relationship and interactions she had with others.

So I got into the yoke of watching you tube videos about narcissistic personality traits.

I have long felt that my husband had a troubled childhood but he rarely really discusses it. I think his mother was always miserably trying to recover from the father’s infidelity and was frequently emotionally unavailable to parent my husband. He also tells me about an event when he was little where a caregiver hit him with a trumpet but I never truly got the full story.

He works a highly stressful job where he has to remain calm under an enormous amount of pressure and he tells me he becomes someone else to do his job. He also was very reluctant to "share" me with his work community because he feels ‘I make him human’ and that they try to figure him out through me.

When we initially started talking about his betrayal and deception he would rage and never ever did that to me before the affair. There is a cold detachment to him.

I also think the AP was just used to make him feel
Superior. He has always been attractive but when he was approaching 50 he had his midlife crisis affair with a person who was an affair down also 50 but didn’t look good.

The way he spoke about how he treated her is scary. And also the way he beats himself up about what happened and what he did.

I can’t tell if now, the work he’s doing is so he can look in the mirror and like himself again or if it’s about his love for me——however I don’t think the latter is unusual.

He definitely has several personalities that emerge are all gashlighters narcissistic? He did a lot of that in the beginning.

He admits the affair was horrible and does not make excuses and has been consistently trying to make things right. Doing the work.

However after watching the videos it seems to me that he likes to run down the list of all the things he’s doing and is willing to do. Seems kinda victimy-

It’s strange because he takes ownership but also plays victim at the same time.

Agree all of us display narcissistic traits, some have more and some are the real deal NPD. My ex was diagnosed by a therapist I had him see after D-Day. I always knew things were off in our M but didn't know there was a name for this or what it was. I still didn't want to believe the diagnosis. After False R hit I started researching it and low and behold my xWS checked every box.

I think most WS are narcissistic during and sometimes after the A is discovered. What appears as no empathy can be conflict avoidance.

My ex was not remorseful, had no empathy, blamed me for the A, gave me the silent treatment if I brought the A up, stonewalled me in conversations. I could go on and on, the word salad he threw at me during conversations made my head spin. He has even blamed me for leaving him citing that I destroyed the family and M and that I am so much worse than anything he did because i left. He has smeared me to friends pre-A, Post A and during D.

It’s strange because he takes ownership but also plays victim at the same time.

Playing the victim is definitely a trait. You would have to have a professional diagnose. Or if you repeatedly see the patterns of a narcissist he may be or just be high on the spectrum.

From reading your comments I think my husband scores high on these traits, as he often blames me for the affair. He does apologise occasionally and I think really means it ,but is now full of self pity and blame as he has had to change offices as I caught him still talking to the AP that he works for with.
My husband also struggles to maintain relationships with others, he is not very good at keeping friends and regularly falls out with people. He goes from being full of self loathing to quite full of himself. Telling me how good looking he is etc. I think I get sucked into it, as I feel sorry for him. Although I do think he is capable of empathy which stops me from thinking he is a full blown one, and doesn’t intentionally want to hurt people.

However, some of his behaviour towards me was awful. He even told me after the affair came out that the huge fall out was my fault and I should have just ignored it until it ended. It is hard to know how much this is driven by him feeling shame though and I think is quite common from what I read in people having affairs.
Howcthappen- how long did it take your partner to take responsibility? Did he try and blame you? Did he show any signs preaffair?

My SIL is NPD. It’s almost unbearable.

She has to dominate every conversation, and conversations must be about her. When she goes to the bathroom, she literally yells from the bathroom the entire time so that nobody can talk even when she is out of the room.

She refuses to wait at restaurants, and demands to be seated first, making a scene about it. If she has to wait even a few minutes, she will get up and go get a waiter and tell them nobody has brought her a menu. It’s embarrassing to go out to dinner with her.

When we go shopping, she has to buy more than other people, and has to make it known.

When I introduced her to my granddaughter, she demanded the granddaughter call her "grandma", even though she is not her grandmother. I had to explain this to my granddaughter, and told her to call her "Auntie" out of respect.

NPD is very difficult when untreated. I could never live with someone with this disorder. I would lose my hair.

My husband does not really have any signs of NPD. I mean, if you look at the list I can see a few signs that he exhibited during his affair, but I occasionally exhibit a sign or two as well. Overall though, unless I’m deceiving myself, both of us are pretty low on the scale.