10 Signs of a Husband with Narcissistic Traits

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel Louis is dr. Grande today's question asks if I can take a look at the characteristics of a husband who is narcissistic so in this video I'll be focused on a husband and wife relationship and theory one that is relatively stable not a new relationship or a relationship that's dissolving but rather one where there's an expectation that that couple is going to remain together now this of course could apply to any long-term partnership between a man and a woman whether or not the couple was married so answer this question by looking at the ten signs of a husband with narcissistic traits there of course a lot of signs these focus on narcissistic behaviors that would directly be observable by the wife so to get started here what is narcissism well I've covered this many times so I'm just gonna give a quick review here with narcissism we see self-centeredness we see a need for admiration a sense of entitlement and somebody who's low on agreeableness now there are two types of narcissism grandiose also called overt and vulnerable also called covert somebody can have really mostly grandiose or mostly vulnerable traits but most narcissists have some characteristics from both types with grandiose narcissism we see characteristics like being arrogant highly self-confident being resistant to criticism and being callous and with vulnerable narcissism we see characteristics like distrusting other people feeling insecure having a lot of resentment feeling a lot of shame and being hypersensitive to criticism most of the signs that I'll cover here are more related to grandiose narcissism as opposed to vulnerable narcissism as I go through these signs when I use the term husband I'm talking about the husband with narcissistic traits and when I use the term wife I'm talking about a wife who is not narcissistic so sign number one we see here we have infidelity and this is kind of wrapped up with fantasy right so to the narcissistic husband but life is really never good enough never attractive enough she's not an ideal partner he thinks he can do better he believes he deserves to have a better wife again sense of entitlement so if you combine this dissatisfaction with the fantasies of success power wealth and the ideal love that we see associated with grandiose narcissism it's a recipe for an affair now having an affair by itself is actually quite destructive but with the narcissistic husband is really beyond that he maintains a belief that he has a right to have additional romantic partners so he's really not doing anything wrong in his mind so again here we're seeing that sense of entitlement being quite pronounced at an extreme level the husband is offended that the wife could possibly believe that she's good enough to the extent where he would not have to have additional relationships signed number two the husband wants to control his wife's appearance so the husband wants attention from others and of course has the fantasy of the ideal love that I talked about before therefore he wants the wife to look a certain way to be exceptionally attractive and appealing even to other men one of the common areas where the husband can become demanding is around weight management usually criticizing an increase in weight more so than a decrease in weight we see no insight here no compassion no recognition that weight management can be very difficult rather we just see criticism guilt trips and a general attitude of disgust toward the wife interestingly if the wife suggests that the husband do something to increase his physical attractiveness like I'll work on this if you work on that type of a situation this is offensive to the husband moving the sign number three we see that emotional needs are not attended to so whenever the wife might be upset about something no matter how legitimate the feelings are my husband is not going to be supportive we see a lack of empathy which of course is very common with narcissism we also see an unwillingness to even get involved with the exploration of feelings part of this comes from a lack of depth but also this comes from of centeredness if the emotions that the wife is experiencing interfere with something the husband wants then his behavior might be even more destructive than just simply ignoring the wife and not engaging her in a conversation he might also go on the offensive he might criticize her for being weak and emotional so again here we really see no true connection the husband is callous and emotionally distant sign number four applies to a marriage or a long term relationship that involves children we see what this sign the husband encourages the children to disrespect the wife so the husband not only tries to manipulate the wife directly which we would expect from somebody who's narcissistic but he also tries to manipulate her indirectly by manipulating the children into disrespecting the wife so he's really encouraging the children to take sides with him against the wife some of this could be just plain Envy he wants the admiration the kids admire the wife so for the husband this means he's not getting as much admiration as he believes he should be getting narcissists do not like to share even if we're talking about a resource that really cannot be depleted for example children could admire both a mother and a father it's not like they use all their admiration up on one and don't have anything left over for the other side number 5 we see when choosing activities to do together the husband really only wants to do things that are enjoyable to him so the selection of television shows movies restaurants vacation destinations and even something like choosing which friends to hang out with there's no give-and-take he's always going to have a reason why the life selections don't work and why his selections make sense so in this situation the wife might find herself really going out engaging activities alone she finds herself going places alone all the time but when the husband wants to go someplace she goes with him because he demands that again this is very consistent with narcissism moving on to sign number six the narcissistic husband is extremely jealous of other men now one common behavior we see related to the sign is for the husband to scrutinize the wife's conversations with other men he really wants to know every detail of what was said and what was meant by what was said like being interested in the tone of the conversation the nonverbal communication hidden messages and suggestions that may be occurring in that discussion and typically how this plays out is that the husband keeps on asking until he finds something to latch on to even if the conversations are really a knock you as' so essentially he's just conducting an interrogation waiting for some sort of slip-up or looking for an opportunity to make a misinterpretation so when he finds something he can latch on to he's going to accuse the wife of being interested in another man spending too much time with another man or getting too close to another man the husband is going to provide reasons why he is a better choice as a mate then another man even though the wife isn't requesting that information sometimes this can escalate to where the husband demands that the wife not have any contact with other men which of course can be very disruptive it can mean the wife leaves the workforce or abandons other social activities so there's an isolation component with this particular sign now moving on the sign number seven the husband is envious of the wife's success so I want to clarify the difference here between envy and jealousy envy is defined as an unpleasant often painful emotion characterized by feelings of inferiority hostility and resentment produced by an awareness that another person enjoys a desired possession envy is sometimes called the only unpleasant sin many people use the word jealousy and envy interchangeably but we do see a distinction between the two jealousy involves a third party and is caused by a fear of losing a possession to a third party and typically the narcissist thinks of that possession as a person specifically his wife so this is like the behavior I mentioned inside number six so the husband is envious of the wife's success across many domains financial success even if that financial success helps the narcissistic husband social success like when the wife has friends career advancement regardless of financial rewards that are associated with it so the wife's rank or status in an organization the husband may suggest that the wife's job title is inflated so he may try to minimize her accomplishments so he might say they call you a manager who do you manage where the husband may make fun of the job titles the wife has oh you're a supervisor is that what they call the person who sits at a desk and does nothing where the husband might say you're a vice president isn't that just a glorified secretary this specific term glorified secretary is used quite a bit by narcissist I've noticed this in my clinical experience when treating victims of narcissists and when treating narcissist I've also found that the rank is more offensive to the narcissist than the earnings so if a husband who's narcissistic has a wife that earns more sometimes he can tolerate that but if she has higher rank that's gonna be a problem for him anyway also the research literature indicates that somebody with vulnerable narcissism is more likely to experience envy than somebody who has grandiose narcissism moving on the sign number eight the narcissistic husband doesn't listen but expects a lot of attention from the wife and he also expects his wife to have a perfect memory so the husband may look like he's listening but when he responds the responses are all about him he only pays attention if the conversation is about something that could benefit him interestingly the narcissistic husband frequently accuses the wife of not listening if he has to repeat something because the wife doesn't remember or because she didn't listen to it the first time the husband is offended but he lacks the insight to realize that he's not listening himself sign number nine the husband downplays the contribution of raising children and/or taking care of the household so for couples that divide up responsibilities where the wife looks after the house and the children we see that the husband doesn't recognize how much money that saves in childcare grocery shopping cleaning and all the other various activities so it really downplays that contribution quite a bit the Ben refers to his work is meaningful because he earns money again he doesn't recognize that the wife is actually saving him money and he uses this as his justification to spend money at the same time he criticizes the wife for any spending that she does so this moves us to sign number 10 the last sign here the narcissistic husband views the wife as a support person dedicated to him which is interesting given the content of sign number nine the narcissistic husband has an expectation that the wife will take care of his wants and needs he relieved used this as her job and she's supposed to do this because he's great because he's accomplished and because he's so important again this is how he thinks of it as part of the sign we see that it has an expectation of sex and has offended if the wife is not interested or if she's not feeling well no reason is good enough for the narcissistic husband typically if this happens a few times this is when the husband starts to threaten to find a physical relationship somewhere else so again we see a good deal of manipulation with this particular sign the narcissistic husband places a high priority on his wants but doesn't view the wife's needs wants our goals as important so those are 10 signs of a husband who has narcissistic traits I know whenever I talk about topics like this there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate a really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of the husband who has narcissistic traits to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

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Keywords: Narcissism, narcissist, narcissistic, narcissistic husband, husband, husband wife relationship, toxic relationship, dark triad, love, narcissistic love, narcissistic personality disorder, blame shifting manipulation, arrogance, self-centeredness, jealousy, special, unique, fantasy, entitlement, grandiosity, requires admiration, relationships, intimacy, psychopathy, Machiavellianism

Id: nIiEWKQDqO8

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 03 2019