Chapter 6: Boundaries and the Covert Narcissist

"A female narcissist’s sweetness is just as calculated as her cruelty. Both serve the same purpose: control." - Dr. Ramani Durvasula

I was reading through some ancient text messages from my late wife and covert narcissist, Anne, last night. It was sobering to read just how far the abuse had gone. No, that’s not quite true; it was sobering to see how far I’d allowed the abuse to progress.

In the space of just a few months of messages I saw example after example of how I’d been pulled into the cycle of a PHIL (Protector, Hero, Integrity, Loyal), being baited into working ever harder, saying whatever I had to say to calm her emotional state, accepting so much abuse and blame hurled my way. I was literally waiting on her hand and foot, providing food and medical care, maintaining the home, working to provide it all, and raising the kids, but I’d also given up friends, family, and any semblance of any interests of my own. All to prove that I was “worthy” and maybe get to see the “good” Anne.

But it was never enough because it was all a manipulation that I fell for. I could see the cycles and feel the abuse, but I allowed it to go on and on, escalating into horror story-level proportions.

And it was all because, starting 16 years earlier, I had FAILED, utterly, to maintain boundaries with this woman as I was sucked into the vortex of love bombing, future faking, and protector instincts that she had masterfully activated. So let’s talk about what some of those boundary breaches might look like, what healthy boundaries looks like in this context, why they’re important, and how to maintain them. As a bonus, I’ll even throw in some examples of those boundaries working correctly.

Narcissists and Boundaries

In a normal relationship, personal boundaries can be tested, negotiated, and eventually agreed upon. But if you read my previous chapter, you may recall that, early on in the relationship with a female covert narcissist, she will learn as much about you as she can. The world will test your boundaries daily, but a female covert narcissist will systematically find, assess, and attempt to break them down by any means at her disposal because she knows that once she does, once she gets you to abandon those defensive lines, she can manipulate you at will.

For narcissists, and I suspect for BPD as well, it’s not enough to have just your love, loyalty, or devotion. Deep in their core they are inherently fragile, deeply insecure people, and that means they have to feel like they OWN you, lock, stock, and barrel; nothing can be off limits to them and, what’s more, maintaining boundaries or personal autonomy with a covert narcissist will be seen as a betrayal. Meanwhile, her boundaries will be absolute; sacrosanct.

A common starting place for covert narcissists is to wear you down emotionally with drama, tantrums, emotional outbursts and the like. At the tail end of one of these, she’ll nudge a boundary with you, waiting for you to just give in and allow something.

With Anne, it started early with some serious tantrums over how I planned to dress for a dinner party one night; a literal screaming fit over my son, claiming he was constantly lying (he wasn’t); extreme jealousy and rage over me talking to my mother on the phone after a disagreement. None of these things went well for her because they were blatant and I pushed back, hard.

So the manipulations changed to more subtle things kept up in a daily, hourly, even moment to moment barrage of constant micro-complaints about just about anything I did. Hang a picture? It’s literally 2 millimeters off. I’m a pretty organized human but fold laundry? The towels are all wrong. Or the physical stuff where if I happened to be bent over doing anything she would immediately jam a finger in my rear aperture like it was the funniest thing ever, knowing it would instantly piss me off and get a reaction. Or tantrums over bringing home the “wrong” thing for dinner when the fast food restaurant was out of the thing that Anne wanted, so I ordered something else on the fly from the drive-thru line that I knew she liked but this time around it just wasn’t good enough.

This list could go on forever, but the point is this: every day Ann was wearing me down and pushing my buttons and my boundaries to make it easier to manipulate or goad me into doing or allowing something that she knew I would not normally tolerate.

Keep this up for long enough and you eventually get to where I was: walking on eggshells, abandoning my own needs, friends, and family, and acquiescing to ridiculous behavior and constant escalations over nothing.

Developing Boundaries

Whether you’ve had to live through a covert narcissist or not, setting personal boundaries is pretty much universally important; you won’t get anywhere in life if you don’t know what you will and will not tolerate. And, believe me, you will always get what you tolerate in life.

It’s not easy. It took me years to sort out what was going on in my marriage and home. Oh, I knew there were issues and even addressed them directly with Anne, but invariably one of several things would happen: I’d get gaslighted while being accused of gaslighting; I’d get justifications for her bad behavior; but most of all I’d get the DARVO strategy - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

Even though I had no idea what a covert narcissist was at the time, I did learn the hard way to start doing a few things right.

Early Lessons

* Don’t engage emotionally. A covert narcissists greatest power of manipulation lies in getting your emotions spun up and dragging you down the emotional roller coaster ride. To the extent you are able, keep your emotions in check but also realize in so doing your covert narcissist will push even harder to get you to lash out so she can play the victim.

* Be willing to calmly stand your ground when necessary. When Anne had a screaming fit at me one day very early in the marriage about my son’s behavior (typical 8 year old stuff) it was like a slap in the face. Rather than get upset, I simply reminded her of what he’d been through in the last year and that I wasn’t about to give up any more time with him that I already had. Anne never stopped trying to manipulate me on that point but she did, eventually, give up the “frontal assault”.

Late Stage Examples

Over the next 15 years or so, Anne refined her approach to manipulation away from the bombastic to slow erosion through constant micro-criticism, subtle devaluation, emotional manipulation, and gaslighting. Not to mention barely having a space I could call my own within my own home. None of those things was significant in any single instance to really rock the boat, but collectively they were enough to keep me off balance and slowly sinking into the approval-seeking trap. And yet I could see and feel the subtle shift and recognized the gaslighting for what it was. The difference was like a subtle crack in a mirror that you can see when movement shifts over it, but you can’t really follow it with your eye.

There eventually came a point at which I could no longer stand looking at that subtle crack in my reality and I had to do something, anything, to repair it. So I started doing a few things that recognizably helped my own mental state.

* Find or make some alone time. In those days I had one quiet time in the day where I would take the family dog out for her last potty trip and sit quietly on the back porch with my own thoughts. This gave me some time to “see” the day’s events and quietly regain my mental footing.

* Create a way to securely record your thoughts. While I was out with the dog every night I would often record voice memos on my phone to talk through the day’s gaslighting or other issues with Anne. This helped me to create islands of sanity that I could “stand” on to objectively see where I was being manipulated. You don’t necessarily need to hang on to these forever, but beware: your covert narcissist will likely be running a surveillance state and looking for such things so take care to keep them to yourself.

* Validate your own reality. With some quiet time to think and a means to back up your own thoughts, you’re in a place to validate your own reality and emotions, and to examine the often subtle manipulative behaviors of your covert narcissist, which in turn allows you to more easily step outside of yourself and examine interactions with your narcissist dispassionately.

*Warning* Doing these things will allow you to recognize and become less manipulable, but a covert narcissist will recognize that something dangerous to their control over you is happening and they will very often turn up the tantrums, gaslighting, and emotional ploys to keep you under their thumb. Be prepared for the escalation and keep your equanimity. Anne was a classic, if extreme example of this.

Setting New Boundaries

In the fateful days just before Anne’s suicide, before I’d even left the house, I told myself that women, dating, and especially marriage, were off the table going forward. I was just done. And yet as part of the process of figuring out where I’d gone wrong I eventually went back to dating to test my own understanding. When I went back into the dating market I had two zero tolerance rules:

1. Absolutely ZERO physical abuse.

2. Absolutely ZERO emotional manipulation.

These two basic rules cover a great deal of territory when you take them seriously and watch closely subtle attempts to break them. But over time I added some additional rules that have stood me in good stead in the years since I walked away from Anne.

3. Always defend your autonomy - nobody gets to tell you how to feel or think.

4. Always validate your own reality - you don’t get to make up your own facts, but you can push back against someone trying to change the facts as they are.

5. Your emotions are always valid - even if someone else tells you they aren’t.

Closing Thoughts

Even if you don’t live with a covert narcissist, take some time to develop and write down your own basic boundaries. It will take time, and you will likely revise them a few times. But those boundaries, if you pay attention to defending them, will grant you a clearer picture of what you will and, more importantly, will not tolerate in your life and improve it accordingly.