I received a large (and at times agitated) response to my post on the difference between abusive men and narcissists. In the midst of those dialogues I promised to pursue the issues further in a Part 2.
In the mean time, I wrote a post explaining my view of narcissists, to help clarify the things I’m going to write about today. The word “narcissist” means lots of different things to different people. As I explained in that post, I’m using the term in the psychological sense where it means a person who has a shattered sense of self and who therefore is completely incapable of taking responsibility for his (or her) actions. He is likely to have a grandiose sense of self to cover how much he hates himself on a deeper level.
So now here’s Part 2 of “Narcissists vs. Abusers.”
Before I dive in, I want to address a misunderstanding. Two or three of the people who responded to Part 1 felt that I was minimizing how cruel and destructive some men are. But when I say that a man is an abuser rather than a narcissist, I’m not saying he’s a drop less bad. In many ways the abuser is even worse than the true narcissist, though they can both be extremely destructive.
Okay, first point, and this one may surprise you: It doesn’t much matter whether your partner is an abuser, a narcissist, or half way in between.
Narcissism is one of a collection of mental health conditions known as “personality disorders” (a lousy term). Personality disorders don’t respond to psychotherapy or to any other emotional healing system that’s been tried so far. (There is one exception, a very intensive program called “Dialectical Behavior Therapy”; but it’s next to impossible to get someone to do that program if they don’t admit to having a behavioral problem.)
What it comes down in the simplest terms, then, is that abusive men rarely change and narcissists never do. If you spend a lot of your precious hours reading up on how to assess narcissism, and you come to the conclusion that your partner fits the bill, all you’ve really learned is that your situation is even worse than you thought. That knowledge won’t tell you anything new about what to do now.
Second point: Despite what I just said, I recognize that people aren’t going to stop being eager to understand the difference, so here are some distinguishing points:
* The true narcissist exploits other people in his life, not just his intimate partners. If you learn his history, you’ll discover multiple other people whom he has really burned. The narcissist fools a lot of people – as the abuser does – but there are at least a few people who hate his guts because of what he’s done to them. If the only people who know the truth about what the guy is really like are his past partners, he’s a straight-up abuser.
* The abuser truly believes he’s superior to his partner. His superiority is not a cover for self-hatred. He has been socialized through his childhood to look down on women he’s involved with and see them as existing beneath him, and for his benefit.
* The abuser can have significant relationships in his life in which he isn’t abusive – as long as it’s not a partner relationship or a child in the home. (Abusers can be terrible to children because they think of them as personal possessions, the same way they view their partners.) His connections to siblings, to close friends, to employers or employees, can be pretty normal. That’s part of the hell for an abused woman; she feels like, “Why does he reserve all the terrible stuff for me?”
The true narcissist, on the other hand, will bring bad dynamics to many, if not most, of their significant relationships in life. They can’t have lasting close connections with anyone without their self-centeredness becoming apparent. Emotional intimacy triggers their issues in a big way even if it’s not with a partner and even with men.
* The true narcissist can’t face up to bad things he’s done, regardless of the context. The abuser, on the other hand, often can face up and take responsibility for bad acts – but not if he did them to a partner. (Though many domestic abusers can’t own what they’ve done to children either.)
* The true narcissist does not tend to be severely violent, believe it or not. Male violence towards women comes from abusiveness, not from narcissism. (Be wary of media reports that connect male violence to narcissism; they aren’t backed up well by research.)
* As I said in Part 1, research does not find abusers to have unusually painful childhoods, though they commonly claim that they did. Narcissists, on the other hand, tend to be survivors of serious psychological abuse as a child and sometimes physical abuse as well.
I don’t believe that parents can create a narcissist by over-catering to a child, by the way. They can create someone who is immature and who expects everything done for him, but that’s very different from narcissism. If your partner was treated like a prince, so that he grew up with all kinds of grandiosity and expectations of service, that’s an abuser not a narcissist.
Third point: In practical terms, there are major similarities between abusers and narcissists. They both can be very exploitative (but with abusers that will be restricted to their partners and children), they both insist that nothing’s ever their fault, they both do a lot of lying, they both like to turn people against you, and on and on.
The reason I consider the distinction important is because communities and governments can make huge mistakes when they don’t understand the difference. But the distinction doesn’t have huge implications for the individual abused woman who is trying to figure out what to do about her own situation. The difficult choices she faces are pretty much the same either way.
Beware, though, that statistically speaking the abuser is even more dangerous than the narcissist.
A few closing thoughts:
1) When I use the term “abuser,” I’m talking about men who abuse female partners. I’m not knowledgeable about other forms of abuse, such as parents who abuse children, so I can’t speak to that.
2) Narcissism is about deep early wounds. Abusiveness, on the other hand, is about societal training, through which a man learns that he has the right to require women to serve him, and has the right to enforce that service. He enforces his exploitation by punishing the woman verbally, physically, or sexually, or by taking her rights away in other ways when she refuses to serve him in the way he demands. (Or when she just plain can’t do what he wants even when she tries.)
3) The solution to narcissism is to fight child abuse. The solution to abusiveness is to:
demand full and equal rights for women
demand that communities actually hold men accountable for their abuse of women
demand that boys be raised to be responsible and respectful members of society
As my favorite bumpersticker says, Boys Will Be Men. If we raise boys to feel that they have special license to behave badly (“boys will be boys”) and to consider themselves superior to girls, those are the men we’re going to get.
Photo by Tanya Layko on Unsplash (guy with sort of a crown)
Photo by Hưng Nguyễn on Unsplash (contemplating at the railing)
Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas on Unsplash (hiker and waterfall)
Photo by Clement Efe on Unsplash (man in thin wire mask)
Photo by Antonio Gimenez on Unsplash (northern lights)
Lundy’s new suspense novel, IN CUSTODY, takes on the anti-mother bias and corruption driving the family courts today. A young journalist sets out to investigate the disappearance of a mother and her daughter, and she stumbles into a dark world of intimidation, profiteering, and legal abuse — and finds herself in danger.
These articles you wrote strike a cord with me. It seems to be a trend in a lot of groups I’m in, calling their abusers narcissists. Unfortunately, I didn’t get involved with a narcissistic abuser. I found myself a psychopathic abuser (diagnosed). Quietly, scary people.
Now it is my turn to rant. I don’t know what my husband specifically has — whether it’s NPD, sociopathy, or psychopathy — he ticks the box for every single thing you said in your books and also in each of these posts in regard to this — I just read those posts, just now; they are excellent and I agree with you, BUT: My husband’s behaviors and abuse go beyond just misogyny/attitude problems. To say that most or none of these men are narcissists, implies to me that none are sociopaths or psychopaths. Use whatever words you want — if you don’t like the terms “narcissist” or “personality disorder” — but sociopaths and psychopaths are dangerous in a way that adds an extra factor if the victim or victims are not aware of it. I don’t know what my husband is going to do next. I feel it’s important to recognize if someone is not playing with a full deck. Delusional people are dangerous, possibly in ways that misogynists aren’t. I won’t go into detail here to explain his behaviors. People don’t even believe me when I tell them. I realize also that my parents both had/have (my father is still living) NPD. My father worshipped the ground that my mother walked on. He is not a misogynist. But he is dangerous nonetheless. I’m not ranting at you so much as the women commenting in response, minimizing whatever it is that victims of delusional people, are going through. If they are not going through it and so cannot understand it, then they should take a clue from the book of Job and refrain from commenting. Aaarrrghhh!
I typed that out quickly and can see how someone might think that a lot of what I wrote here is contradictory. But I am ready to back up or further explain if necessary.
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is the closest thing to NPD that I can think of — except that the reason behind the two disorders is different. People with NPD get off on your terror and/or discomfort, especially if they caused it. Munch Syndrome by Proxy, by contrast, may be done for the attention the abuser receives. Or I wonder if it may be a form of NPD, because they do also witness the suffering they cause.
But with NPD, it’s not about receiving attention per se. NPD is about witnessing your reaction to what they did to you. And at other times, it’s about simply seeing the outcome of their actions. Your suffering, and their witnessing of it or the evidence of it — knowing that they caused it or had a hand in causing it — is the end game for them. Some take this to an extreme and actually murder someone just to see the story on the news (even if their name is not mentioned).
I agree with everything you said in your posts. My husband ticks the boxes for all of those things; and yet I’m certain he is also a narc. If he screws in a new light bulb outside on the porch, he keeps peeking out the window to admire his work. It’s like there was no light coming from the bulb, and now there is — as a result of his actions. He will get me sick on purpose when he is sick with a bad cold, and now I understand why. And for the narc who goes so far as to commit murder to get the story on the news: A person is dead as a result of his/her actions. They see no difference in value between a light bulb and a person. And some narcs hope they can drive you to commit suicide. I think my husband may have been trying to do that to me (he was almost successful, but then I was Saved/Found). There were also some instances involving other people, where he showed a complete lack of concern for their welfare.
In a nutshell, that is my take on narcissism. Are all abusers narcs? No. Should we be throwing the term around like the latest slang? No. But some of these men do have NPD or sociopathy. Some do. (I’ll shut up now).
I do hope you’re safe
Thank you. I came on here just now to say more about my situation (even though I said at the end of my comment that I wouldn’t), because I was already anticipating responses that I might receive — responses that would try to refute what I said. And so I came on here to respond to things that no one has said yet. I came on here to defend my position. And then I saw your reply, thank you.
I truly believe that my husband sought me out as narc supply — that he has no (or very, very limited) capacity for love or empathy, and that the entire thing has been one big lie from the beginning (his part of it; I thought I was entering into a real relationship). In looking back on everything, I think he sort of stalked me right from the beginning — I was perfect narc supply for so many reasons.
But one of the scariest things was finding out that people I thought were my friends, and my family — are not who I thought they were. Typing and deleting… I could fill an entire book with that (but I won’t).
I appreciate your concern for me. Thank you for your comment.