What if both people in a romance are narcissists? | Are narcissists attracted to each other?

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 what if both people in a romantic relationship are narcissistic so that's kind of the overarching question but then I see some more specific questions related to this our two narcissists and we're likely to find each other and become a couple I've also seen the same question worded with the term dark triad traits instead of narcissism so are two people with dark triad traits more likely to find each other to become a couple another question here related to narcissism would be what would that relationship look like would it succeed and what about the different types of narcissism meaning grandiose versus vulnerable how do they relate to one another in terms of the success and failure of this type of relationship so on the first question here are they more likely to become a couple or two narcissists more likely to become a couple well to understand this we have to understand the idea of what's called non-random coupling also referred to as a sort of mating positive assortment is when people who are similar become couples so in short people that are like one another negative assortment is when the characteristics of each person in the couple are complementary in short opposites another way to put this as similarity versus complementarity now we know in romantic relationships there is a lot of evidence for positive assortment we see positive assortment around variables like age political preference religious beliefs education intelligence values and personality traits the most relevant of those categories to this question around narcissism of course would be the personality traits if we look at the five factor model of personality we see the strongest positive assortment around openness then agreeableness conscientiousness and neuroticism interestingly we don't see consistent findings around the trait of extraversion so what does this mean well in terms of the five factor model it means that a person hi and openness for instance we would expect them to pair with somebody who is also high in openness so with this particular trait when you have somebody who's high in openness to experience paracin is low and openness to experience both people typically end up feeling kind of lonely now in terms of extraversion this means that if a person is extroverted we don't know who they would end up with we don't know who they would be attracted to it could be an extrovert or it could be an introvert in terms of mental health we also see positive assortment for example we see positive assortment with certain disorders like major depressive disorder bipolar disorder with characteristics like psychoticism substance use and antisocial behaviors so now specifically kind of zeroing in on psychopathy which is strongly related to antisocial behavior we see that men who are high in psychopathy tend to rate highly psychopathic women as desirable mothers and women who are psychopathic have a greater attraction to men who are highly psychopathic for both short term and long term relationships so are people with dark triad traits attracted to other people with dark triad traits the answer this question is yes the strongest positive assortment is with machiavellianism then psychopathy and then narcissism but all three do see this positive assortment another question here would be what about initial assortment versus convergence so what does this mean well initial assortment means that the couple came together but the traits that they had were already present in the beginning of the relationship right so they didn't develop the traits later on convergence means that they became more similar over time so maybe one person was a little bit narcissistic and the other person was a lot narcissistic and the person with a lower level of narcissistic traits kind of moved toward a more narcissistic position in terms of personality that's convergence so which concept kind of wins out here when we talk about two people who are narcissistic well its initial assortment however being around someone who's narcissistic may make it easier to express narcissistic it can serve to normalize that behavior so in general people bring the personality constructs their personality levels into the relationship they don't change too much afterward but they may change a little bit so both initial assortment and convergence can play a role but we've put more weight on the idea of initial assortment so what would a relationship between two narcissists really be like this really also connects to that question about grandiose versus vulnerable narcissism so let's take a look at those constructs both types of narcissism are characterized by sense of entitlement self-centeredness and need for admiration and being low on the agreeableness trait so being disagreeable or antagonistic grandiose narcissism has characteristics like being high in extraversion low in neuroticism being arrogant socially bold self-confident having superficial charm being resistant to criticism callous unemotional and optimistic vulnerable narcissism has characteristics like being low in extraversion high in eroticism tending to be resentful distrusting insecure having a lot of shame being hypersensitive to criticism being socially awkward and pessimistic so essentially that really leaves us with three combinations if we look at a glance here both people in a relationship have grandiose narcissism both have vulnerable or one has grandiose and one has vulnerable now narcissistic traits though are on a continuum many narcissists would be in the middle between grandiose and vulnerable so I'll add a fourth category here where I'll talk about just general narcissism the general traits we see with narcissism now as I talk with the subject matter and talk about the two people in the relationship this can get a little confusing to kind of follow who's who so just to make this a little bit easier I'm gonna refer to one person as person a right one person this relationship will be person a and the other person will be person B it just kind of clarifies a little bit in certain situations so starting with a couple who are both grandiose narcissist we see a number of factors of grandiose narcissism that come into play here let's start with resistance to criticism in a both people in this couple are going to be immune from each other's criticism both are gonna criticize a lot but again both will be immune so in a strange way imagine being in a relationship where you only hear the good things that your partner says to you right so in a way that can actually be positive you're not hearing any criticism you're only hearing what you want to hear so the relationship may tend to be a little bit more successful or at least that's how it may appear another key characteristic here is the optimism both people are going to think that the future is bright and that's going to contribute to success we also see high extraversion this is associated with positive emotions so both people will tend to have positive feelings now how about the lack of empathy this actually works a little bit differently this works against the couple because even though person a would not have empathy for person B they would expect person B to have empathy for them right so this kind of leads to disappointment the narcissist expects from other people with the narcissus cannot give to other people now another interesting factor here is grandiosity person a's grandiosity can actually help person B it can make person B feel confident in their choice they chose a winner they chose somebody who is very important so during times when person B may feel challenged about their own worth they can always lean on the belief that they are great because they chose a great person in the person of person a so they are great by association so in a sense the relationship between two grandiose narcissist is their relationship without sensitivity depth or complete love because it lacks true intimacy the two people live with one another they represent themselves as a couple but the relationship is shallow and in many ways they really function as individuals and not as a couple even still this couple could actually stay together for quite a while and consider the relationship to be healthy in a number of ways so what about the relationship that has two volatile narcissist well here we see two people who criticize each other a lot and they're very hurt by each other's criticisms so this is not good this is not conducive to a positive relationship both people here are insecure in a relationship they never forgive each other they're pessimistic and neither are good in social situations so in this type of relationship the couple really doesn't have a lot going for them these relationships are at a moderate risk of failure interestingly though I've seen exceptions to this right sometimes people are so insecure even when they're unhappy they stay together there's a dependent quality to vulnerable narcissism if both people are afraid to be alone who is going to have the courage to leave the relationship again even if both people are really miserable so these relationships can really go either way in terms of whether or not the couple stays together so what about a situation where one person's grandiose and the other person's vulnerable in terms of narcissism so let's say that person a has grandiose traits and person B has vulnerable traits well here we see that person B suffers they bring chaos to the relationship they are emotionally unstable and generally speaking person a is oblivious to all this it's more like a nuisance as opposed to a real concern for person a person B delivers a lot of criticism but person a is resistant to criticism so this couple will argue and fight a lot but they may stay together even though they consider themselves to be in a dysfunctional relationship so what about a couple that simply has general narcissistic traits right so just looking at this question without looking specifically at grandiose or vulnerable well one of the factors here that would stand out would be the fantasies of success and power the fantasies can actually help a couple to meet each other's goals because the fantasies may align and this can actually be a little bit dangerous if the fantasies have a criminal or otherwise harmful component to them if the fantasies don't align person A's fantasy may still help person B because person B may invest in the fantasy of person a person B could on two-person ace fantasy so that fantasy could still reinforce the idea that person B is special it could give them a sense of power it could satisfy their need for admiration so in a sense person B can live vicariously through person ACE fantasy in the event that person B does not believe or invest in person ACE fantasy person a still benefits because at least person B values the idea of having a fantasy in general because person B has their own fantasy so they can appreciate that someone would have those types of fantasies of power success and brilliance and all that so the last item here under narcissistic traits would be the low agreeableness being disagreeable and antagonistic all other things being equal if two people are disagreeable they're going to argue a lot they will have trouble coming to a consensus on important decisions and the constant fighting will take a toll on the relationship so overall when two narcissists are together in romantic relationship the relationship success or failure depends on which characteristics we see in each person and how strongly those characteristics manifest whether the couple stays together for a long time or they don't these relationships would not generally be thought of as healthy in a traditional sense sometimes referred to as toxic and typically they do represent a significant challenge for counselors trying to treat the couple among the many things that make this challenging would be this idea that each person in this couple would only present goals that help them so like in a counseling situation personality is saying I want this and that and everything else that helps me and person B is really saying the same thing right all their goals point back to them so again you have two people in a relationship in front of you but the people seem separated right everything in their life is really separate separate goals separate ambitions separate sets of motivation nothing is really joined together so again they represent themselves as a couple but a lot of ways to people who are narcissistic aren't really a couple at all so I know whenever I talk about topics like romance and narcissism there'll be a variety of opinions people who agree with me and disagree with me and have other thoughts on the subject please put those opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of the narcissistic couple to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 157,878

Keywords: Narcissism, narcissistic, narcissistic couple, narcissistic romance, toxic relationship, dark triad, narcissist, 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: IQy7Lofj2Pg

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 23 2019