Covert narcissism

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

A couple points of clarification- 1) I am going to therapy myself. I have asked multiple times to go together because I know I don't have all the parenting answers and because we have such different approaches (mine is nurturing, positive affirmation and the other person's is authoritarian and strict adherence to rules), I think an expert, unbiased third party would be so beneficial and help alleviate the confusion we're sowing on our young children. The response is "I have all the answers. I am the expert." So no place for compromise or concern about my feelings. 2) Children are young and I would never project my feelings of my spouse onto them. 100%. That is a terrible, awful idea and even if this goes south I will never speak poorly of that person in front of the kids. 3) NBP is diagnosable, but it's rare to actually get diagnosed with it. I get that. The term covert narcissism is a convenient term for someone who knows what I'm dealing with. For someone in therapy, I know it won't ever get diagnosed and I know there are issues around a label. But I drop it for sake of discussion. People fluctuate on a narcissistic spectrum- and arguably everyone is narcissistic to a degree for self preservation- but there is a spectrum. I know you can critique me here for armchair psychology but I'm trying to understand my situation. 4) This individual cannot take any level of criticism and will have fits frequently that are unprovoked. It's detrimental to have my children witness it. I agree there are likely anger issues, but when I say no empathy, for example, my child might fall and hurt his knee and the response will be "told ya you'd fall."

My gut feeling is that nothing will change and that even if I can get therapy for both of us, it'll be a long and tough process. I wanted to reach out to see if there is anyone who has gone through this or could share their experience. This has been a relatively new 'aha' moment and I'm trying to just hear more experiences if they exist or people feel comfortable sharing.

I’m sorry that you are going through this, but some people are just jerks. Personality disorders are real but need to be diagnosed by a doctor not the internet. It sounds like your husband is a jerk who is also insecure, defensive, and has anger issues. Being an @ssh0le is not always due to a personality disorder. Why are people so quick to absolve others of the jerk behavior by blaming it on a “personality disorder”? You husband’s actions are 100% within his control and he treats you and your child this way because he gets away with it and it helps him to feel better about himself. Are you going to continue to raise your child with him?

NP here, I don't think it's about absolution. I think it's about whether to look at it as behaviors the person can choose to change, or an inherent aspect of who they are that will never change, which shifts how you weigh "give them opportunity to do better" vs "just leave." I have never heard of covert narcissism before this thread, but I do interpret a lot of internet diagnoses of others with narcissism as a way to justify the questioner exiting the relationship, not a way to justify the bad behavior itself.

I think OP has to think about why she's framing it this way ("gut feeling is that nothing will change") and what that means about what she feels inside and what she wants to do next.