Chapter 8: Practical Exercise

A practical exercise in detecting a covert narcissist.

I had not planned on this topic, but a few days after I published my last essay I ran across this YouTube short. I was hardly listening as it was merely background noise while I worked the day job and yet my mind kept on coming back to it through the day. Something there just didn’t sit right with me and so I tracked it back down in my history and watched again. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up the second time around because it was such a shocking encapsulation of behaviors that fit a female covert narcissist. Nearly every sentence out of her mouth points to covert narcissist behavior in a marriage. Thus, I HAD to write this addendum to the original Chapter 8: Early Warnings.

Go ahead and give the first 45 seconds of the video a watch, then take a minute to sit and digest. It should leave you feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Disclaimer:

I’m not a shrink and I can’t diagnose anyone with anything. I can, however, point out the obvious red flags from the standpoint of experience, of which I have plenty.

Also, I acknowledge that there is the possibility that the husband of this chick is genuinely bad at being a husband. But probably no worse than any of the rest of us.

I’ll put the words of the original video in bold below with my comments in normal text.

Fisking the Wife [1]

“My husband’s toxic trait is that anytime I have a problem, instead of him just taking accountability he will flip it.” Wow. Right out of the box we have a couple of red flags going up on this play. First, take note that she’s placing the responsibility for her emotions and reactions on him. When she has a problem, he’s expected to make it better. As I’ve pointed out before, female covert narcissists want someone else to regulate their emotions and nervous system for them. Secondarily, it’s a form of gaslighting while marginalizing him - no matter what happens, no matter his concerns, only her feelings matter and it’s his job to protect her fragile ego.

“I have started to talk to him like a therapist.” Weaponizing clinical language is super common among the Dark Triad types. It is a favorite tool of manipulation of narcissists to use against other people by setting up an abusive framing of the language, often outwardly characterized as self-care. And because therapeutic language has become so common, the abuse blends into the background very effectively.

“Yesterday it happened. He said ‘Well you do this and this and this.’ Okay? I literally walked away.” Narcissists of course live for validation, so social media has wet-nursed whole generations now into this sort of behavior of discussing private discussions very publicly. But this tiny bit shows even more than that. I’m sure you noted the mocking child-like lisp voice intended to both infantilize and humiliate her husband. But think about it deeper - she’s triangulating him with her audience to be able to point back and say “See?! They all agree with me!” and if he persists she will turn it into a betrayal on his part. Maybe the most damaging thing of all comes from her shaming him, publicly, as a form of manipulation. The message is “agree with me; think/say/do what I want or I’ll drag you in front of all my followers”.

One more thing. Genuinely, the husband could be trying to misdirect from something he did but when you live with a covert narcissist and don’t understand what’s happening, after a long enough time you do start to see the hypocrisy and point it out. Which they will then use against you, couched in clinical language to hide their own faults. As Billy Butcher would say - Diabolical.

“He’s like ‘What you don’t wanna talk about it?’ I said hmmm, no you’re showing a lack of emotional intelligence.” Ah. There’s that clinical language again. And the mocking, infantilizing voice. He shows up, at least attempting to be in the mix to work out the issue but because he called out some issues he’s seen she shuts it down. Narcissists like to avoid discussions where their fragile ego and self-image may be damaged.

“This morning he sat right next to me right there and said (in a mocking lisp voice again) I’m sorry I just wanted to say I’m sorry you’re right. I wasn’t being fair to you and that’s not nice and I apologize and I’m taking accountability.’” So now that she’s punished him and made it very clear that her behaviors are not to be discussed, he’s self-abnegating to try to right the ship and get back the “good” version of his wife. The manipulation has worked.

“And what’s crazy is all that I had a problem with is how late he’s been going to bed lately and it’s been due to work.” The sense of entitlement that one must have to complain about their spouse building their career and providing for the family is insane. My own covert narcissist, Anne, took it as a terrible slight that I would have to work 48 hour days sometimes early in our marriage. Those long days later turned out to be career-making ones, but at the time she couldn’t get past her own solipsism to see that I was putting in the work to better support her and our kids.

“But I’m also like you have a great work life balance. You are just doing this late at night because you choose to do that.” Again, it’s all about her and what she wants, but she fails to see the bigger picture beyond “I want…” Now, her husband really should be explaining to her just WHY it is he’s working those late hours, and perhaps he has but I would bet money she was not able to translate that into why she’s not getting what she wants.

Working late at night has led to some of my greatest achievements but Anne could never wrap her head around why that should possibly inconvenience her even as she enjoyed spending the fruits of my hard work. (That’s a story for another article.)

Final Thoughts

Had I the ability to speak to this woman’s husband I would tell him without hesitation to RUN. NOW. Because, even as she enjoys the results of his hard work, she’s also slowly destroying him in ways he doesn’t even comprehend yet.

Looking back at the key early warnings from Chapter 8, I can say immediately that the woman in the original video is showing aspects of the Pity Me flag (telling her tale of woe on social media), Hard to Please flag (her whole complaint comes from him working late hours? Really??), and Criticism is Kryptonite flag (shutting down the conversation when he brings up issues). But because they’ve been together for some time, she’s moved into publicly humiliating him as a manipulation, along with perverting clinical language to the same ends.

Watch for this sort of behavior in your own interactions with others and if you see it, RUN.

— Fritz

[1] H/T to Larry Corriea for the term “fisking”. Fantastic author and all round solid guy who has some of the greatest examples of internet takedowns I’ve ever seen. Give his stuff a read.