Last week I wrote about adult relationships with narcissists. It’s important to know what red flags to look for because, statistically, an estimated 0.5% to 6.2% of the population has clinical Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), while broader narcissistic traits appear in roughly 16% to 30% of people. That’s a lot of people. Since narcissism is on a continuum, even you may have some such tendencies. But the further along the continuum someone is, the more harmful they will be to those around them.
There seems to be a particular interest in the vulnerable(covert) narcissists who are especially good at pretending to care and are frequently taken for nice, sweet, positive, and genuinely caring. It’s only after establishing a relationship with a person that they begin to show their true colors. Yet, they are the hardest to leave because they are extra confusing - showing you care when you are down but tearing you down whenever you feel a little stronger. I will address them in a separate post.
Next week I will talk about what it takes to leave a relationship with a highly narcissistic person. On average, it takes 7 attempts to do so before a victim of narcissistic abuse finally does it. So this isn’t simply a pack-your-bags decision.
While adults may be able to avoid these relationships, children born into them are not so lucky. They grow up with narcissistic parents as their first role models, their first blueprint for relationships, and most importantly, their first self-concept. It turns out that it matters who is the narcissist in the family - the mother or the father. Furthermore, boys and girls have different relationships with their mothers and fathers.