So your best friend ends up being a narcissist…
It happens very fast and it happens slowly at the same time I guess. I found myself thinking all the time, ‘Am I the narcissist?’ and believed at many times maybe I was the problem. I was the jealous and selfish one that wanted everything to myself. I was unwilling to share.
Everyone has a best friend, don’t they? And every single one makes mistakes, they are your “ride or die” after all. All the scoldings that you receive, all the reminders on how to conduct yourself are tolerated because this person is who you have, this person is your bestie or your BFF. This is the person that you have to stick through thick and thin. Maybe that thinking is the problem, because before you know it, you are a prisoner to someone that ultimately has no empathy for you.
How do you know if it is me or them that is the problem? I just kept asking myself that over and over again. I feel like my problems are important, my growth is important, and of course we should always put ourselves first, but when is it too much? I just did not know how to tell if I was being selfish or how much more grace was appropriate to provide to someone that was ‘my person.’ It is what you are supposed do for a friend. You help each other out even when it is hard, so why did it feel like I was losing so much of myself and at the end I was the only one making sacrifices. Everyone has best friends so what made our relationship that different.
Jenny and I
My sister and I at ages 7 and 8.
I have never had a long time best friend through grade school, high school, or college. I have definitely had close friends, but no one that I would have the clique sleepovers or adventures outside of school. The closest I can say to having one is my sister. Is that a real best friend? We don’t have anything in common, we don’t talk regularly, but we have always been together and each have helped each other in different ways. We are close in age, so I always discarded the idea that we could be friends and have always wanted to fill that void.
My partner has lots of friends, childhood best friends that he is close with and has been with for years and years. That is what I have been expecting and wishing for, which is why I believe I was willing to overlook so many things and tolerate so much of the behaviors that I knew to be wrong and why I was thinking I needed to find someone to call my best friend, even if I already had a best friend all along. It made me feel a lot less lonely.
Back to the self-doubt, how do you even know you are dealing with a narcissist? How do you get the confidence to know you are not the problem?
There are nine key traits that a person must possess to be considered a narcissist. According to the DSM-5, a person needs to possess five out of the nine traits to be diagnosed with the disorder, the traits are as followed:
Grandiose Sense of Self-Importance
Preoccupation with Fantasies of Unlimited Success or Power
Need for Excessive Admiration
Sense of Entitlement
Exploitative Behavior
Lack of Empathy
Envy of others or Belief that Others are Envious of Them
Arrogant and Haughty Behaviors
Belief that They are Special and Unique
So let’s break that down and list the examples that I personally experienced.
Grandiose Sense of Self-Importance: This is usually an exaggerated belief in their own importance with a sense of superiority and the belief that they deserve special treatment.
We literally have the same occupation, and yet I deserve less and I have had to listen to countless of complaints about how they don’t have enough or how others have it easier, better, or just don’t deserve what they have.
Preoccupation with Fantasies of Unlimited Success or Power: Those with narcissistic personality disorder are consumed with unlimited material goods, success, power, and instant glorification.
Always needed the latest Tesla model despite the constant talk of bankruptcy, or the latest iPhone. Power over a significantly younger partner. Hermes watch band with thousands of credit card debt.
Need for Excessive Admiration: A constant craving for attention and praise, always looking for validation from others and monopolizing the conversation.
Every group achievement is met with singular idealization that it was their own efforts that brought upon the success not a combination of ours. I constantly let myself get cut-off mid-sentence and just let them dominate every conversation because I felt not interesting enough or what I was saying was upsetting them.
Sense of Entitlement: An unreasonable expectation of favorable treatment and privileges with automatic compliance.
Any success that their siblings have, they were just as easily entitled to and should be entitled to. We never enter any bar other than one they feel comfortable at, or go to any event that I would express an interest in that they did not want to go to.
Exploitative Behavior: Uses others to meet their needs without any regard for their feelings or well-being.
Stealing commissions for the work I have done. Inviting me to an event only with the expectation that I pay for everything. Asking me to come to a show so that they don’t go alone, but once there are more ‘interesting’ people, I am forgotten.
Lack of Empathy: Difficulty sharing or experiencing in the emotions and feelings of others.
I asked myself, “Can they put themselves in your shoes and truly feel the pain you feel and still act the way they do? Could you do that? Could you treat someone the way they treat you?”
Envy of Others/ Belief that Others are Envious of Them: A strong sense of jealously and belief that others are envious of their abilities and accomplishments.
Anything I can do, they can do better. Anyone who approaches me for help is going to the wrong person because they know better than me. My achievements are easily accomplishable. The success I have hurts them, when they are supposed to love me.
Arrogant and Haughty Behaviors: An inflated sense of self-importance and distainful attitude of others.
They can drink as much as they want, drive as fast as they want, but they are never affected. They will never crash or make a mistake. Even if I ask them to stop or slow down, they are invincible so why would they?
Belief that They are Special and Unique: A belief that they belong in high authority cliques and only want to associate with those in prestigious positions.
They don’t want to be friends with the support staff, they only want to be friends with the physicians. The divas are always more worthy of their time.
How could I let this happen? I know now that I am not going to be lonely without them. I know I am worthy of better. I know that I am good person. People with Narcissist Personality Disorder use several different tactics to break down your defenses. For one, they are usually more drawn to people who are kind, very empathetic and easily guilted in to feeling for them.
In the beginning there is a lot of love-bombing, showering you with excessive compliments. You receive so much attention. I was told I was so talented and it was such a honor and privilege to learn under them. We were always texting and talking to each other. I was always invited to fancy concerts and shows. I was a celebrated guest. Experiences are gifted to you. They couldn’t have done it without you. And you believe it.
I became more isolated from our common peers. It was becoming harder to be friendly with the others around us because it would mean that my best friend wasn’t getting all the attention they needed. As I started to excel and grow, the achievements I made didn’t matter as much, because they always had done more. Me doing well just infuriated them more by taking away the attention. When things weren’t going great for them, how well I was doing couldn’t be celebrated. This guilted me more and more. A narcissist won’t allow you to celebrate when they are doing poorly. Actually those with narcissistic personality disorder will not let you celebrate anything about you. because this immediately removes the attention off of them so you find yourself shrinking smaller and smaller.
Could I just let this friend of mine down? This was someone that I had been so close with for so long. How did I allow myself to be so close with someone who had such divergent views than my own. One of the biggest components of the love bombing is mirroring. My best friend knows me so well. They made it an effort to try running with me for a while during the initial part of our friendship and listening to my music. They knew everything that made me happy and that would make me laugh. We would go to my favorite restaurant and I would be the center of attention. If I wanted to go to the movies, we would sit where I wanted, if I was going to a double feature they would see double feature movies as well. This is what I always wanted. I wanted to have a best friend. I wanted to have someone that I had on my phone’s favorite list.
Those with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are experts of masking their emotions and mirroring. Mirroring is defined in psychology as the natural process of which one individual unconsciously mimics the behaviors of others in social interactions in order to gain trust or establish a rapport. They will use with with negative intentions to make it easier to manipulate their victim and create a false sense of security.
Narcissists can’t have best friends. Everything that they do is transactional. They will always lease the car they can’t afford. They will want to be with a younger partner so that they can appear younger. They want to latest technology they cannot afford. They want to live in the hippest neighborhood and eat at the best restaurants and bar.
A narcissist allows you to hide your achievements and use what little success you have to bolster themselves up to maintain their lifestyle and position. Like most parasitic relationships in nature, this is not sustainable. If you cannot feel for anyone, someone with narcissistic traits will eventually do anything to try toget what they need. Including gaslighting, pitting their victim against the people who want to help them. A cycle of attention and silent treatment will provide intermittent reciprocity that conditions someone to feel like they deserve the situation that they find themselves in. A human can only take so much hurt and manipulation, most times victims end up experiencing intense emotions of anxiety, depression, or worthlessness. I don’t know the moment I finally realized there was no mutualism in the relationship. I do know however when I started to realized I no longer wanted to be a part of that cycle.
I started to look at me first. I started to want to improve who I was and by doing so I realized how much of myself I gave up. How many times I let myself do what someone else wanted to do simply due to loyalty. This was for a symbiotic relationship where I was not benefiting from at all, not even the companionship that I sought out for in the first place. I see the woman that I have become and I feel bittersweet, proud of who I have become, but also sad for the girl who continued to live with all this insecurity through the years. So how do you deal with it? I’ll let you know when I find out, what I do know now is how free it feels to be allowed to deal with it on my own terms.
You can’t have a true best friend unless you can call yourself your own best friend. This isn’t narcissism, this is love.
