How to detect Narcissists (common partner for AS/Asperger's)

Post Reply New Topic

I have an easier way to detect narcissists:

Anyone who gives themselves any praise or draws attention to themselves without any real cause.

He/she could be a playa instead of a narcissist

And those two are different... how?

Narcissists are people who are obsessed with themselves & believe they are the only important person. Playas are obsessed with the game & they don't necessarily believe they are important; it's more of an act

I had a 'friend' who was a narcisst, not that hardcore a one, but one anyway. He was very verbose and would condemn those who weren't 'like him'. OP makes perfect sense. Good post.

You mean attention seekers? Ugh....I hate those types.

Narcissists are those who are willing to hurt others to get to their goal...Attention Seekers are harmless but stupid.

[quote="ToadOfSteel"]I have an easier way to detect narcissists:

Anyone who gives themselves any praise or draws attention to themselves without any real cause.[/quote]


That chilled me. Because that was one of the first things that troubled me about my ex.

I have just got over the first week after the relationship ended. He broke up with me for the third time in six weeks just at this time last week. He'd been doing this since the first day we were together - over and over again. The game was: He hurt my feelings. I got upset. He walked out. I made contact and tried to get him back. Obviously this has escalated to the point where it can't go on - our last conversation wasn't calm, but it must be as clear to him as it is to me.

The self-praise, though. The stories he used to tell! or rather, the same few stories, over and over, of how people had praised him, been astonished by his psychic powers, of how wonderfully he'd done jobs, the kindnesses he'd shown people...

As for the "superior to everyone" bit - he tans quite a dark, and he thinks he is part Native American. Well, reasonable - if we weren't living in England. (Native Americans are viewed as sacred and mystical here).

Also he used to make very little eye contact. Now there are surface, co-incidental similarities between autism and NPD, which made me start to think, Maybe he's autistic too. But that was yet another mistake I made.

A few days before we split, I jokingly put my face very close to his while we were in bed. Later, he said, "When you did that, I had the instinct to hit you."

It both heartens and horrifies me to read that so many of us have ad relationships with Narcissists. At least I'm not alone, as an autistic, in this. But it's still horrible. Even if he never hit me (and there were a few accidental things) the danger to us psychologically is immense.

I'll be obsessing about this for a while. Another autistic trait...

I can spot one a mile away now,I was married to one for twenty some odd years.

Why would all the scaremongering attention go to "narcissists" when you've got sociopaths and psychopaths?

Thank you for your fantastic post. I wish I had read it before my last relationship.

I've never known someone enough to think of them as a narcissist, not before or after reading the OP. That was a very informative post.

I do think I knew someone who had BPD, (bi-polar personality disorder.) She did things for attention constantly, it was pretty blatant, and she did put me down a couple times. I suppose she knew how to get under my skin even though she hardly knew me. Hardly anyone I knew liked her, men and women both, she was quite hard to get along with most of the time. She didn't seem to like herself overly much though either. She didn't strike me as an evil person, even if I didn't like her. When I think about it, I feel bad for her. Of course I wasn't in a close personal relationship with her, I only hung around her back in the day because she was a friend of a friend. She's married with kids now, seems much calmer than she was in her teenage years, and I wish her the best.

Since the topic's brought up, I also think I've had a roommate who was a psychopath or sociopath (I still mess those things up.) I have a hard time giving a description of who he was, but it just seemed that he only did things for himself yet he was very good at being friendly and close to people. He wasn't attention-seeking, but he's the only person I've known to actually steal a significant amount of money, (not for a drug addiction or something either.) I don't wish him the best, because best for him would probably be him duping someone out of money.

I guess either of these people may in fact be narcissists instead, but I never formed any sort of meaningful connection with either of them for me to really know.

As to NT's thinking aspies are sociopaths, I've had an aspie or HFA tell me he's a sociopath because of his lack of empathy. And then there's also the difference between cognitive and affective empathy. If you really want NT's to not think of autistics as sociopaths, there needs to be a differentiation of the lack of empathy that a psychopath has compared to the lack of empathy a autistic has, because as it stands 'lack of empathy' is a strong characteristic of both disorders.

As to people confusing narcissists with bi-polar personality disorder, I find it interesting the claim that narcissists aren't happy people either. If you have BPD and you say that you fear abandonment as key, and that you act up out of fear. That's fine, but how do you know how a narcissist is feeling? Because if you cite your emotions as different from theirs, you have to know what theirs are too.

Because a psychopath doesn't care if they hurt you or not, while a narcissist seemingly thrives on it.

BPD is Borderline Personality Disorder. Completely different from Bipolar Disorder.

I wonder if it is mostly the ladies who have narcissistic husbands, rather than the gents here?

here? most gents don't have wives or even girlfriends from what I gather.

Out there, apparently it is more common in men as are all cognitive disorders it seems, but you mostly hear of children whose mother's had NPD although I have read a few husband accounts as well - it's not that different in terms of how things pan out.

Its because of their lack of ability to "simply" be happy and sufficient with themselves. They always need themselves to point out, that they are good and one way to approve yourself, that you must be a superior, is by comparing you with others, that are worse then you. If you are married with someone like that, you can approve yourself all day long how great you are, because of you being better then the stupid morons around you. "I am so great, because I can do, what you cannot!"

Both mine as my sister therapists, agreed independently from each other, that our father has most likely narcissist personality disorder. And pointing down on my mums "failures" (She is the one that inherited me her traits.) was one of the things he did all day. Because by pointing on how sh***y everyone else was, he could feel himself better by assuring him, that he must be superior, because of him not being that dumb and sh***y as the others.

On the other side, by doing so, he took away her self esteem and so made her afraid to leave him, because of him assuring her, that she was too stupid to live on her own without him. With me he tried the same, and even forced me to do a "skills- and ability" test, when I wanted to move out and be on my own. So he expected it to proof his opinion, that I was stupid and disabled, and so were unable to live independently and should not be allowed to move out. When the test showed, that he was wrong he insisted on repeating it and enhancing it on another institute, because he was assured, that they must have done something wrong. Because otherwise HE would be wrong, which was unbearable for him.

It was similar with my normal NT sister, who always tried to please him, for what she needed to fulfill highest expectations. Because only the best of her was acceptable for him, only being perfect became acceptable for her, because otherwise she could get no appreciation from him and only got told about her failures. That leaded to her being a very good student, always trying to get the best possible marks, but also leaded to her having the same kind of expectation on her body image, when she became a teenager. So in the end she had anorexia and bulimia.

When she broke down, out of underweight, and were in hospital for treatment, therapist tried to explain to my father about her illness, but he replied and insisted, that they were wrong, because he was knew that the cause for her low bodyweight, was that she ate no flesh. A friend of my sister, who visited her in hospital, pointed out that she was vegetarin too (she was really overweight, so around 250 pounds) at which he shouted aggressively at her for lying to him. I think that was the moment when the therapists understood, that there was no sense in convincing him, because of him not being the typical parent in denial, but simply one of the causes of the problems.

I most likely know about the reason, why he became like that and it is understandable to me, and I can forgive him for becoming the way he was. But I will never forgive him for him, rather damaging seriously everyone around him for their whole life, then simply seeking himself therapeutically help.