How to avoid Dating a Narcissist

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Autistic individuals are especially vulnerable to falling prey to the wrong type of narcissistic partner.

Some narcissistic behaviors include:

- Sense of entitlement (e.g. 'What about me?' or 'I set the rules, not you' or 'Women/men should not drive'
- Love-bombing (e.g. Constantly telling you 'I love you' 10x per day, telling you charming promises that are too good to be true, or wanting to move into your house or appartment 2 weeks after you meet them
- Constantly admiring themselves, their success, their bodies, or looking at themselves in the mirror often
- Making excuses that don't add up
- Constantly putting you down
- Aggressive, violent, or quick-tempered

In contrast, autistic individuals are on the extremely opposite:

- Gullible, naive, or easily tricked
- Too nice in order to 'make the dating work' (e.g. will buy a cell phone plan for a partner he/she just met)
- Moves too fast or shows desparation
- Trusts strangers too easily

For those tips and other dating tips, I recommend the video '4 Dating Tips that WORK for ASD Individuals' on YouTube

Last edited by Cornflake on 30 Jul 2022, 4:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.: Added the YouTube link

I was in an abusive relationship with a narcissist. He had all of the traits listed above.

He would gradually behave worse and worse until he did something especially awful. Then he would apologize for it and act like he loved me afterwards, and the cycle would continue. I’d believe that he’d really change this time. Of course, that never happened. He was just trying to manipulate me, and I was easy to manipulate.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 30 Jul 2022, 3:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.

This was my experience as well. It's not always easy to spot early on, because they can hide bad behavior until they know you are hooked.

The NPD individual who I dated didn't love himself, though, he was horribly insecure.

NPD folks may share a lot of personal information early on to create a false sense of intimacy.

They may also speak poorly about people from their past and lose contact with many past friends.

Yep, I can relate to a lot of that. Things didn't start to get bad until I was six months into the relationship, but it went from 0 to 100. There were signs before then, but I didn't really see them. I was at a really low point of my life.

Luckily I've never gotten into an intimate relationship with a highly narcissistic person.

I attribute my good fortune in this regard to the fact that I regard shared interests and deep philosophical conversation as a sine qua non. For me, it's important to be able to have in-depth conversations about shared interests -- whereas, if I understand correctly, narcissists tend to form relationships based on mutual flattery. For me, too much flattery or "love-bombing," in the absence of any focus on shared interests or shared intellectual exploration, has always been a turnoff.

Yes, unfortunately, and met loads since then too.

Don't feed their ego in the manner they crave. Works every time.

^ Excellent advice. They'll reveal their nasty side pretty soon after that, so be prepared to run!

It's important to distinguish between the naive sort of narcissism that autists sometimes are accused of (and demonstrate) and narcissistic personality disorder. The one is a trait, the other is a personality disorder.

Needing more effort to shift beyond one's own perspective and behaviours and coping mechanisms that result from it often get misread as indicators of the other type. That said, possessing that trait and not having any insight that one possesses it might contribute to the development of the personality disorder.

Some of the traits you describe of autistic romantic patterns are also typical of people engaging in love-bombing (too fast, too trusting, too intense, desperate). One of the bigger differences between ADHD/autistic love-bombing and the manipulative type is intent.

The former is more a reflection of being unable to inhibit fixation, the latter is done intentionally to imitate the former and works especially well on people prone to the sincere form, after all, it resembles authentic attachment in the way they'd like it to be expressed.

That said, it's not as though the circles don't touch if you were to Venn diagram them. Knowing someone has autism isn't a guarantee they won't have a personality disorder, or that they won't be be manipulative, abusive, etc

Not always even that, sometimes they can be adequate as work friends or other arms-length relationships. Ideally they should never read you as suitable for fulfilling what they're after (ego-wise) so that you're never useful enough for them to see as worth trying to use.

Part of how people like that operate is they make emotional transactions always serve their interests so maintaining boundaries to ensure that can't happen tends to keep them from feeding on you, so to speak.

I don't see how I could date a narcissist. Everything about the personality-type is repellant to me.

It’s more difficult for people who aren’t familiar with the signs. Also, some narcissists can be highly manipulative and can mask their behavior well.

oh I get that, its not their actual personality I was talking about. Its the fake behaviors they use to attract people (love-bombing, etc) that repel me. The weird thing I have observed it it seems to shake their bravado when rather that making themselves attractive, its repellant. The either get angry really quick or write me off and find another target.

Last edited by DanielW on 11 Aug 2022, 9:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Many people don’t know that the love-bombing is fake. They interpret it as genuine interest.

I'd like it less if it were genuine. I'm probably not making sense, but If Narcissistic Wooing behaviors were genuine, that would be a turn off for me I don't like being the focal point or in that person's spotlight. The best way to say it is that the things people find attractive about narcissists...I find repellent

The traits these people have make it difficult for me to tolerate them (even at arms length), and I manage to easily offend them with my bluntness. I repel them as much as they repel me. It all works out for the best!