4 Ways Vulnerable Narcissism Can Destroy a Relationship

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 hello this is dr. grande today's question asks why can look at ways that vulnerable narcissism can damage a romantic relationship so I'm gonna answer this question by looking at four ways gulnur about narcissism damages relationships and what I'll do here is I'll alternate between a man being the narcissist and a woman being narcissist so I'm going to use the example of husband wife although these different ways could apply to other types of romantic relationships as well so I'll use the example of a husband as a narcissist for one and three and a wife as a narcissist for two and four so starting with the first wave ulnar ball narcissism damages relationships this is revenge so here the husband is vindictive and wants to get revenge on the wife it could be for something that she actually did or something she didn't do that's not really important to the husband the emotion really takes over the decision to get revenge was never about justice it's about making the wife suffer as the husband has suffered as the husband plots his revenge this plot really is disproportionate to the perceived damage that was caused to him even when the husband gets revenge by yelling physical aggression toward the wife destroying property whatever it is he is still not satisfied there's no such thing as enough punishment from his perspective if the husband starts to experience shame because of his desire for revenge or the damage caused by pursuing retribution his feeling of shame justifies further retaliation right so it makes him angrier and more determined to cause harm to the wife he does not recognize that the shame set in because of his behavior rather he attributes the shame to his wife the sense of shame the sense of feeling that one is bad or unworthy based on one's behavior that is really lost on the narcissist they experience the shame but they don't understand why they experience it whenever the narcissist has that feeling or really any negative feeling they blame somebody else it's never their fault even in their internal dialogue that cannot fully accept responsibility they may experience that negative emotion for a short time and believe that they caused it but after that they'll go back to blaming somebody else moving to the second item this is active distrust but in this example the wife would be the narcissist one of the key aspects of normal distrust is a failure to communicate distrust for another person part of distrusting somebody is keeping that information obscured as to facilitate an investigation so if someone distrust another person they don't want to tell that person about it they want to explore that a little more and see if that distrust is warranted if the wife lets the husband know that she does not trust him he might change his behavior to appear more trustworthy or he might cover up his bad acts boss'll distrusting the husband whether justified or not can be hurtful to him so again with normal behavior distrust is something that's a little bit concealed now the narcissistic wife on the other hand wants to communicate how much she distrust the husband she wants him to know how she feels to her that his trust as a weapon she can hurt him through her lack of confidence in him through her challenge to his integrity even though the wife's distrust is unwarranted she will not accept anything but perfect trust from the husband he's not allowed to distrust her rather the wife expects him to accept that he is as terrible as she believes him to be there is no peace in the relationship without this acceptance this is like when the criminal justice system pressures people who are wrongly convicted to admit guilt for their crimes so they can be released on parole sometimes innocent people admit guilt just to stop being punished over time the husband starts to feel lonely being the object of contempt and distrust destroys his desire to be close to his wife item number 3 I call this no safe place to fall here the husband is the narcissist one of the reasons that people enter into a marriage is to gain stability throughout daily life by having an ally someone they can depend on someone on whom they can depend healthy relationships involve reciprocity in order for reciprocity to happen in a marriage each spouse has to look upon the other as an actual person they have to view their spouse is having ambitions preferences and desires the vulnerable narcissistic husband does not view his wife as someone who has value but rather he views his wife as an object who is there to provide for him who should feel honored to provide for him so it's not just about utility it's about a feeling as well so the narcissist expects service for the smile so with the two parts of reciprocity depending on somebody else and having someone depend on you the husband has only mastered the former he's an expert on how to depend on the wife certain agreements between the couple may be for a long duration for example the wife working full-time so the husband can complete college with these types of long term arrangements the lack of reciprocity can go unnoticed for years because the relationship began was designed to be one way for a while so these can be kind of dangerous situations when dealing with the vulnerable narcissists because a lot of time can go by and then the awareness comes that there is no reciprocity in the relationship in the situation the wife has no safe place to fall she doesn't have somebody she can count on to support her just like the distrust example we see that loneliness is the result now moving to item 4 and moving back to the wife as the narcissist this would be accusations of being emotionally unavailable the vulnerable narcissistic wife creates a sense of tension and hostility in the marriage yet criticizes the husband for not being vulnerable and available with feelings when the couple does sit down and they try to talk about something deep like talk about their feelings the wife talks a lot without actually explaining anything the empty explanations and descriptions of feelings can go on for hours with no progress essentially just wearing the husband down the wife is trying to mimic somebody who is deep and sensitive when the husband understandably does not comprehend the wife's feelings because she didn't explain them well he is now the villain he wasn't paying attention right so not only is he confused but again he's taking the blame the repetition of the cycle creates a sense of despair in the husband at some point he realizes there never will be a connection initially he believed the lack of depth that he perceived in the wife was because he could not see past some sort of barrier he blamed himself which was very congruent with the wife's position she blamed him too perhaps the only thing they agreed upon in their marriage but then he starts to realize when he looks at the wall that his wife has put up it is not opaque it is transparent and there's nothing behind it it's like if somebody was looking at a photograph that appears to be of a group of bears standing in father woods something is a little off in the photo but the person looking at it can't put their finger on what's wrong they start to believe that their initial assessment of the image was incorrect that everything must be okay in that image then some time later they realized that instead of a group of bears in front of the woods it's actually a group of mice standing in front of weeks it seems crystal clear now they can't believe they ever thought that there were bears in that photo in the same way once the husband realizes that from an authentic city perspective the wife is Hollow he can never go back to seeing the false image that she projected for so long the vulnerable narcissist does have more insight than the grandiose narcissist but there's not necessarily enough insight there to lead to change vulnerable narcissism is still narcissism and it can limit the capacity for a meaningful interpersonal development I know whenever I talk about topics like narcissism there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 106,053

Keywords: Vulnerable narcissist, narcissistic husband, narcissistic wife, narcissism exposure, narcissistic personality disorder, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, covert narcissism, shame, anger, aggression, hypersensitivity, introverted, defensive, avoidant, anxious, depressed, socially awkward, neurotic, manipulative, blame-shifting, gaslighting, self-esteem, manipulation, arrogance, self-centeredness, jealousy, special, unique, fantasy, entitlement, grandiosity, requires admiration, lack of empathy

Id: u3y9JdHmL28

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020