I love your description. The patterns seem to be fairly consistent w/N's. I was w/mine for 7 yrs, realized there was something wrong w/him w/in the 1st, but never found this diagnosis that explained everything until almost 2 yrs after splitting up.
I found mine especially confusing & he does vary from the typical N slightly. He IS actually a very intelligent human being. He's a computer programmer (I've read NPD runs ramped in this line of work), he plays guitar, sings, understands music theory and quantim physics. He's aspired to be a really good pool player (it brings him the narcissistic supply he doesn't get from his computer programming skills, cause only his boss gives him kudos there), he also plays poker well, and pretty much can learn anything he sets his mind to. But has a strange tendency to do things sloppily and half ass & claim that his way works just as good as doing it right & it's not worth the time or effort to do it any other way.
As characteristic of an N he somehow thinks his talents and intelligence make him better than everyone else in the universe, somehow entirely blind to the fact that other people in this world have talents and intelligence in areas where he is lacking them & other qualities that earn them at least the same respect that he thinks he deserves.
My first impression of him was that he was kind of nerdy ~ I had no interest in him at all. Once I did start getting to know him, I could see he was a little bit sensitive & insecure & kind of felt like if I treated him w/respect he would feel better about himself. Little did I realize this is just food that inflates his ego to a level beyond the imagination. Nor did I realize that he would never return this level of respect to me.
His varying on the typical N I think may lay in that he was sort of abandoned by his mother (according to him) & was raised by different families all being positive Christian people that taught him at least how to go through the motions of being a good moral person, and in that he has abandonment issues & has learned to go through the motions of being a kind, caring friend in order to keep his friends & to satisfy a deep longing of having the same deep connected relationships that normal people have w/each other. To this day, I'd have to say he at least comes across as a gentle & kind person w/a good heart ~ except his actions don't quite back it all up that he genuinely cares about other people's well being, he's incredibly inconsiderate for such a nice guy. He basically just cares that people stay in his life, accept him, & if they do that then he likes to believe that they think he's the greatest thing ever & they become important to him.
All of the narcissistic games, gaslighting, etc. are very mild & subtle. He's almost always happy and nice ~ if not happy, at least always calm. He would never scream obscenities at someone that crossed him, or ever really lose control of his emotions ~ at least not in front of anyone. He's extremely in control of himself ~ which made his behavior even more confusing to me. He truly seems to believe all of the reasons, justifications, & excuses & he is an artist at arguing & using "logic" to back himself up. Even though I knew he was wrong, I would find myself unable to argue w/him why he was wrong & I was right, because he would set the rules of the argument & what was necessary to prove the point & he would make it impossible for me to win.
The only things I can think of that he may have done that match what you described (doing it just because you can) would have to be simply leaving messes for other people to clean up. Like he just wanted to see if he could make you do it. I wouldn't & he never made an issue of it, he pretended that he just didn't care about the mess & if I didn't either, it could just sit there forever. It would usually sit there til he paid his daughter to clean it up. But my problems w/him were mainly generated by the fact that I would confront him about the little things and the big things he did/didn't do that really bothered me. He didn't like any one insinuating that he EVER did anything wrong & would go to great lengths to prove that there was something wrong w/you for thinking that of him.
So this very intelligent person, is he stupid? I'd have to say that I always thought that he was a complete moron. The stupidity comes in at the basis or the core of his nature of thinking. That they truly believe they are better than everyone else and that there is nothing wrong w/them or their behavior. He had the gall to argue w/someone over a subject they were very familiar & he knew basically nothing as if his guesses held more weight then their knowledge ~ boy is that the most irritating thing!
They're not good at hearing or learning if it means confronting their own shortcomings & growing into better people.
Really sad. After 2 yrs I'm still working on letting go of resentment toward my N & understanding the nature of his disorder is helping me. I'm still a little confused, but I'm learning to walk away from it & not look back. He's made a couple of gestures to be friends again. I used to reject him just to get back & to hurt him the way he hurt me, but I'm getting over that now & am now rejecting his friendship because even though I believe that he really wants to be a good person & a good friend, he is incapable of it & I don't need to give any more time or energy to someone who will just suck it from me like a vampire. |
Prev Message
