Narcissism
The First Indicator of a Narcissist
Do you remember this moment?
I remember where I was standing when the first indicator of a narcissist made itself known. I was two years into my marriage with my college sweetheart. A guy I had dated for nearly six years. We were easing past the honeymoon stage and into our brand new townhouse.
I was standing on the stairs as he walked out the front door.
That’s when it overcame me. An indescribable feeling of confusion. I kept thinking this doesn’t make sense. It’s illogical. Something’s not right. There’s no explaining how the greatest guy in the world is randomly evil. But at this moment, I was focused less on his corruption and more on his charisma.
A confusion that favored the man I loved and rationalized the unfamiliar.
I realize this was the first indicator of a narcissist. It was the introduction of ‘confusion.’ This was the true moment of realization that something was terribly wrong with the man I married. You would think the coldness and the cruelty would have been. But they were events. They could be mistaken for a terrible argument or someone who was really angry.
This is why the first few times I disregarded them as one-offs.
It was the staircase moment. Where I watched a man walk out the door and wasn’t sure who he was. He wasn’t the guy I dated for years. He wasn’t easygoing or kind as I believed. He was incredibly difficult, controlling, and cruel.
I’m not sure why this was the moment I registered confusion. Except by now in the first several years of marriage, there had been a culmination of these encounters with a ruthlessly cold man. At that moment it was clear they weren’t the isolated occurrences I believed them to be.
The night before had been the tipping point. The one too many. I don’t remember the actual discord which surprises me. It’s hard to forget the narcissist's empathy lacking callousness.
Maybe it’s because confusion overtook the event. Or because during those newlywed years the narcissist was slowly exposing himself. The more emotionally abusive episodes came later as did my violent tears.
No one talked about narcissism back then. Even so, I’m shocked I didn’t confide in my family or my friends. I should’ve told them I never married the man I dated. I should’ve said I was struggling to understand who he was and how this unnatural persona emerged once I committed to him.
In my defense, I did leave eight years later.
I had married a covert narcissist so he wasn’t overtly controlling. He was passive-aggressively controlling. Our day-to-day wasn’t unpleasant. It’s partially because of that. And because as a people pleaser and an affable personality, I generally swayed his way. I leaned towards keeping the peace. We lived a cycle. Several times a year I would challenge him because something was important to me or I needed his help.
This is when the narcissist came out to play. I still didn’t know I was married to a man who would later be diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder. But I wouldn’t tolerate that treatment anymore.
Had he shown his narcissistic colors I would never have married him.
But that’s the status quo for a narcissist. A narcissist knows how to manipulate, win, and get what they want. It’s not uncommon to hide the empathy-lacking creature within. To fool you into falling for them.
I almost got away.
But I took him back. What I’ve learned from a decade of counseling and research on the topic of narcissistic personality disorder is it’s extremely complex.
But there are genuine simplicities too.
You shouldn’t be baffled by the person you love or marry. You shouldn’t struggle to make sense of diabolically polar opposite behavior within one individual. You shouldn’t feel like something’s not right. That it’s illogical. That the greatest person in the world is randomly evil.
You shouldn’t be confused.
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