I used to think the word was grossly overused. Actually, I still do. Women often confuse a selfish person or a jerk for a narcissist, when they are most often just a selfish jerk. There are a few great articles on the web that will give you the psychological moves of a narcissist, but I’m going to give you a list of my own. For readability, I’ve combined several dating situations into one man. Meet “Scotty.”
The façade.
1. Nice. Maybe too nice. In hindsight he seemed very charming and overly accommodating. I could tell he was very in to me at first because he was willing to drop everything to spend time with me. Scotty wiped the mud off my Prada heels with his bare hands and within the first week he asked me if I wanted him to “husband my apartment” by offering to repair every broken item, hang curtains too tall for me to reach, and change all my water filters. Swoon. Scotty had effectively planted the seed in my head that he is a nice guy who will do anything for the people he cares about.
2. He made weird promises. “If we ever get married, I’ll do every chore in the house, but you have to do the laundry. I hate doing laundry.” Any man who tells you he’ll “protect you,” talks to you about marriage that soon, or uses words like “husband” is trying to hook you in. Scotty was using trigger words, words that associated him with marriage and safety, in an effort to get me to fall for him on a deeper, more serious level.
3. He made grandiose claims. Scotty cast himself as a highly successful person, even claiming to be “WeWorker #1.” He also supposedly owns a liquor company and holds a license as an art distributor.
4. He fudged the truth. Scotty had one of those little vape things because he said he was trying to quit smoking, but by the end of our brief time together, he was leaving a pack of cigarettes at my house. He lived in a huge house by the golf course, but he was looking at this “sick” house in Silverlake. He almost bought it, but it was too far from the beach.
The Truth.
1. Scotty never had me over to his place. That’s because the $3 million house he claimed to live in was in actuality an Air BNB frat house for a bunch of 20-somethings, where Scotty basically served as house dad. He never picked me up for a date because he didn’t have a car. At first I thought this was because he moved here from New York and didn’t like to drive. I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s in such bad debt, no one would give him a loan.
2. All of his friends have status (he’s a social climber). They’re either trust fund kids, or they’ve started a successful company or their dad invented the leather jacket. I’m not sure what his friends personalities are like, I just know they’re mostly rich and successful.
3. He does it for the likes. If Scotty was helping someone, it was either recorded and posted on social media or he was building his library of anecdotes to share at his next super successful social gathering. He really loved talking about himself and all of his humble accomplishments. I believe it was rarely for the simple act of doing someone a good turn, and more to make him look good.
4. He’s the only one allowed to have feelings. If Scotty is sad, no one else can be sad because we need to talk about him being sad. If Scotty is having a tough day, no one else can have a tough day because their day would not be nearly as tough as Scotty’s. If someone is improving their lives, its nothing compared to what Scotty has accomplished. There were a few times when he would share a vulnerable story and I would relate by telling him I had been through something similar. He would either act like he didn’t hear me, or if we were in text, he would go radio silence.
5. He pulls the rug out. The moment Scotty had me under his thumb/spell/agenda he pulled the charming rug out from under my feet. Every effort of correspondence I made was met with an aggressive screenshot of his calendar – which I deciphered as him saying “I’m the busiest person that has ever existed. What I’m doing is more important than you.” Communication comes to a near halt and addressing this is typically met with a response about how everything is in chaos and he’s the only one holding it all together. Everything in work, family and home would fall apart if not for him. Oh, and it would be really cool if I wouldn’t be so upset about not hearing from him or seeing him for two weeks at a time. That’s totally normal.
6. Insults and abandonment begin. This is the part where he tells me I wouldn’t understand his drive and ambition because few “girls” in this town do, and the part where he puts me down because when I said I had published a book, I mislead him because I was self-published. And it turns out he has no problem with insulting anyone; the tailor, the grocery store manager, the barber…he loves to put them in their place and let them know where they’ve come up short. He stops calling and rarely texts.
Even though I did not ask to date a narcissist, I must take responsibility for my part in this relationship. The fact is, every time one of those red flags popped up, I decided to ignore it or make an excuse for it and keep trying to be in the relationship. (If you’re curious why I stayed in the relationship, email me.) But at a certain point, those articles fell into my lap and when I added everything up, it was clear to me what I was dealing with. After years of self-work, it was easy to immediately let him go and never look back. I also got something really amazing from the relationship. Scotty tried to make me feel like I wasn’t enough because I wasn’t working on my second book and I was just a lash artist. That was enough fuel for me hunker down, create this website and start blogging again, as well as move forward with my How To Human Coaching. Which is why I always say Keep Your Enemies Close.
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