The Overt Narcissist Has One Dead Giveaway in The Bedroom
Here’s what makes it their most damaging red flag and the pathology behind it.
One of the most traumatic experiences I’ve had this year involves an overt narcissist I was sleeping with, named Justin. Justin was a guy I’d slept with seven years ago and resumed sleeping with again this past April.
(I wasn’t aware of narcissism back in 2016, so the signs were only clear to me what I was dealing with this go-round.)
I’ve finally started talking about Justin’s method of abuse, for the first time, in the following article:
Up until that article, I’ve stayed far away from discussing him because he has been the most dangerous narcissist I’ve encountered since Dwayne, the malignant narcissist I discuss in the following article:
The only difference between the two is that Dwayne was a direct threat to my physical safety; he used to beat, sodomize, and rape me.
Justin’s abuse was subtle because it involved the defining characteristic of all overt narcissists.
Humor.
Justin had a “unique” sense of humor.
This “unique” sense of humor involved him constantly making me the butt of every one of his jokes.
Initially, I allowed us both to blame my hurt feelings on me being “too sensitive” until his sense of humor took a dark turn and started being used to introduce me to a new form of sexual abuse.
Verbal sexual abuse.
Yes — Sexual Abuse Can Be Verbal
adjective
- includes sexual threats, sexual comments about your body, lewd or suggestive comments, and inappropriate sexual conversations with children.
I never knew sexual abuse had a verbal component to it outside of being solicited for sex and crude remarks made about all the things different men have told me they wanted to do to my body.
It wasn’t until I came across this article, that I knew verbal sexual abuse also included:
sexual jokes, teasing about physical characteristics, graphic sexual descriptions, name calling, comments on physical development, solicitation, unwanted romantic advances, sexting, and stalking with phone calls or other messages, etc.
I never knew this included jokes being made about my body, as a means to cause me harm. My first experience of this happened in mid-April, during a yoga session when I decided to send Justin a nude.
While I was holding a very specific position, I snapped a shot and sent it to Justin. I was topless in the photo. I had continued with my workout when his response came in.
I don’t recall what he said verbatim, just that it involved laughing emojis and him saying that that position was funny to him — along with a “lol”.
It was at this moment I had been abused but didn’t realize it because I didn’t know this fell into a category.
However, I would learn:
In the case of crude joking, many times, we will laugh as well or continue the joke. But it’s important to understand that this is a form of a violation and can be serious. Teasing about anything, like body parts, the size of men or women, poking fun at how tight or how loose the clothes are, making jokes about how somebody looks, and graphic sexual descriptions in conversations can be unwelcomed and uncomfortable. Just because we choose to laugh it off does not mean it is acceptable. People often laugh to manage discomfort in moments where they are feeling helpless.
Although I didn’t laugh along, I remember going silent.
I felt humiliated, embarrassed, and small.
It was the first time I had ever had a man do that to me; laugh at me when I was being so intimately vulnerable.
I was traumatized to the point I actually stopped my workout and put a shirt on, even though he couldn’t see me. And I didn’t speak up for myself.
I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t know how, all I could do was freeze and go into shock. It felt so cruel that I couldn’t believe it had actually happened… so I didn’t believe that it had actually happened.
And, yes, I still slept with him that night.
Verbal Sexual Abuse becomes normalized when we do not say anything.
I watered down my feelings and chose to reason that his sense of humor was just different than mine and that maybe he really didn’t mean any harm by it. It wouldn't take long for my denial to be challenged.
As this form of abuse became normalized.
He Body-Shamed Me Directly After Sex
We had just finished having sex and I was lying on my bed naked as he got dressed when we struck up a brief convo.
(I’m going to be honest with you, my brain has not been the same after the traumatic experiences that have occurred this year. As a result, it’s now blocking memories and all I’m being left with are the actual points of trauma instead of the minute details leading up to — and following — them.)
All this to say, I don’t remember what this conversation was about but it was brief because Justin randomly looked over at me and, in response to whatever I had asked him, said —
Like usual. Malnourished.
I remember everything going silent, in my head at least, and feeling so insulted… in a way that I hadn’t in a very long time. Again, I froze and went into shock. And I also said nothing.
Not right away.
Every person needs to think through what their boundary is and how they want to be respected in the communication.
I needed time to get my thoughts together but I refused to make the same mistake I made during the last incident by not advocating for myself. So, I took a moment and then hit him up.
I made it clear that what he said was fucked up and that I really didn’t appreciate the comments he made about my body because not only was it unnecessary but it made me feel weird sleeping with him if he was secretly viewing me in that light.
His response?
Do you really think I’d sleep with you if I thought you were malnourished?
Do you really think I’d be fucking you if I thought you weren’t attractive?
I said, no.
He said, alright.
I still pushed the topic because something about this just felt so unnecessarily cruel. It felt like overkill, on his part.
In return, Justin gave me a lazy apology and said it was a joke and that I “took it too serious”.
I couldn’t get the taste of disrespect out of my mouth this time because even though it was supposed to be a “joke” it felt very targeted for one very specific reason.
I’m petite.
I’m 5 ft. 3 inches and 108 pounds on a good day.
(Me and Ariana Grande are around the same size.)
The same comments people have been making about her body are the same comments I’ve been hearing my whole life.
This joke was personal, especially because of all the things he could’ve called me he chose the word ‘malnourished’. He wouldn’t have said this if I was bigger… or thicker.
He was trying to devalue me and make me feel bad about my body, in general, and in the bedroom. This was undeniable because he literally said this to my face:
- directly after we had sex
- while I was still naked
This is when I started to allow myself to believe that this man was actually trying to wound me.
But it was his response to me speaking up for myself that made me realize why I didn’t speak up the first time. Somewhere inside me, subconsciously, I knew that it wouldn’t matter — to anyone but me.
Abusers like him don’t give a shit when you speak up for yourself because they don’t respect you. But I wouldn’t learn this lesson until the final blow came, later on that very same night.
He Laughed at the Way I Moan During Sex
After Justin got home, we were texting and exchanging voice notes through Telegram when he randomly sent me a text saying how I sounded “mad funny” earlier that night.
I was typing my question, asking him what he meant by that when the voice note came in. In the audio message, Justin was moaning (imitating me) before bursting out laughing.
He was making fun of the way I sounded when I came during sex earlier that night. I froze as the audio played. In fact, I didn’t do anything but sit there for quite a few minutes.
Something in my chest went cold and I dissociated as silence filled up everything. I was disgusted with him at this point.
Justin had been making jokes about the sound of my voice. I have a raspier and slightly deeper voice. I don’t speak as high and as soft as many girls I know and because of that he often compared my voice to that of a man’s.
In fact, he’s actually compared my voice to that of:
- Morgan Freeman’s
- Barry White
- Isaac Hayes
Even though my voice isn’t deep enough to be confused with that of a man’s it didn’t stop Justin from trying to use his “jokes” to make me believe that it was.
However, Justin’s remarks about my bedroom voice became a new wound I was going to have to heal from. Not because it succeeded at making me feel self-conscious but because now it was finally hitting home…
Justin was trying to hurt me.
It wasn’t the action taken — it was the intention behind it
This left such a bad taste in my mouth that I actually went off on him. I remember telling him that “that shit wasn’t funny” along with telling him,
“Yo, you really need to grow up”.
His initial response?
“🙄🙄”
Before letting me know it was a “joke” and that he said it because I sounded “mad theatrical” in bed as if I was “acting”.
I told him he was basically degrading me for simply displaying how much I was enjoying the sex we were having by how vocal I was being in the bedroom. Then I told him I didn’t have anything to say to him at the moment and he said “alright”.
It was clear he didn’t care at all about my feelings or the way his fucked up sense of humor was making me feel. It was more than clear that the impact it was having on me was the point. Justin wanted to destroy me.
Only this time, he had taken it too far and didn’t make the impact that he thought he was going to make because instead of me feeling self-conscious about my voice, I felt disgusted with him.
My attraction quickly waned and my respect for him was now lost. This was just too cruel, too uncalled for, and genuinely too immature.
He was a 32-year-old man using sandbox antics to express himself to a woman he claimed he “cared” about.
No.
He was an overt narcissist who was using his sense of humor as a dangerous weapon to destroy a woman who made the grave mistake of opening herself up to him (and even worse, loving him).
Justin only ever used his sense of humor to devalue me.
I discarded Justin soon after this incident.
Comedy Is in the Overt Narcissist’s Pathology
I took too long to leave Justin because he was passing his cruelty as his “sense of humor”. According to him, these were all “just jokes” and I was “too sensitive” and “too emotional” each time I got offended and spoke up for myself.
This is how I came to understand that when it comes to the overt narcissist, standing up for yourself is pointless for the simple fact that when you do it they will wave you off.
The fear of social isolation or consequence that leads to silence, is a negative consequence itself because we suffer alone with our boundaries continuing to be violated
This is also when I came to terms that something inside me intuitively picked up on this but I spoke up anyway to prove a point to myself. In hindsight, the only available solution is to walk away.
It’s all you can do with any type of narcissist you are dealing with but with an overt narcissist, it may seem a bit harder because their sense of humor is what tends to attract people (initially).
It’s them we are unknowingly referring to when we say that narcissistic personalities tend to be funny. These are the comedians of the archetypes.
It’s that same sense of humor that makes overt narcissists so damn dangerous because it’s in their pathology to weaponize their jokes as a means to devalue and minimize their victims,
Primarily, by targeting victim’s:
- triggers
- traumas
- insecurities
- flaws
- and sensitivities
in order to destroy them.
Anything, for a good laugh.
© Linda Sharp 2023. All Rights Reserved.