4. Not every narcissist is a manipulator
Now, this is important: not every narcissist is a manipulator; and not every manipulator is a narcissist. In fact, your partner could be a narcissist and not manipulate you. There is no flawless human being and we all came to this world with a different mix of personality traits, characters, features, superpowers, and weaknesses. Nurturing and how a person was raised go a long way in recognizing their own blind spots and how to correct them.
So, someone who was born with narcissistic traits but had the luck to be born into parents with emotional intelligence tools to channel that trait will learn to control it over time. They will never stop being narcissists, but they will understand, rationalize that they will not get very far in relationships being like that.
On the other hand, there are people that are born without narcissistic traits, and if they’re born into a toxic family, they will develop manipulative strategies just to cope with those situations. Sadly, that will leak into their profession, their relationships, etc. This does not mean, in any situation that you can “change” or “fix” someone. This is extremely important. If you take one thing from this article, it should be this: That question pops up all the time. Can I fix my husband? Can I heal my girlfriend?
Even if your intentions are good, it’s not your duty. It’s theirs. Because no matter what you do, if they haven’t realized their nature and what they cause to those around them, and make the decision to change, any action on your part will be fruitless and what’s more, even sink you further into their manipulation.
And when we talk about a manipulator’s weapon of choice, it’s always going to be gaslighting. Gaslighting is the tactic of making you doubt your own sanity, and there are a lot of ways that it can be manifested. The easiest and most common is that today they say something, and tomorrow they will swear to God that they never said that. Or, if they said that, they didn’t mean that. Or it was you who didn’t understand them.
Recommended: Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited– by Sam Vaknin.
In any case, the attack will not be physical but psychological. They could even say that with a smile, and in a charming way. “Aw sweetie, I’m already used to you forgetting things, but… never mind”. Another gaslighting tactic that is used a lot at workplaces is a passive-aggressive attack when the manipulator asks you for something and gives you some instructions. “You should do this, and this, and this”… but the instructions are deliberately vague so you’re going to mess up.
That way they’ll have another opportunity to say, “Hey, you messed up, now I have to fix this, thank you”, and make you feel really bad about yourself. And if you feel bad about yourself today, and it happens again next week, and the next and the next, you not only will develop serious doubts about your own skills and sanity but also will depend more and more on the manipulator.
And narcissistic manipulators love this because it means that they are the center. You’re just the satellite that depends on their gravity pull.
6. It will never be their fault.
Now, if you mess up, they will be condescending. But what if they mess up? In that case, they will do absolutely anything just to confirm and to be clear that it was not their fault. That it was someone else’s fault. That it was the weather, or a colleague at work, or the neighbors, or their ex, or their family, or, especially, you. You’ll be amazed at their ability and skills to craft the perfect alibi or explanation about what just happened that had nothing to do with them, because they are, essentially, flawless. Perfect.
And this is a real red flag and one that combines body language, attitude, and the words they use. They will be angry, they will be emphatic, they will be driven, they will spend a huge amount of energy in making sure the world understands that they had nothing to do with what went wrong. Of course; they will spend all this energy on proving their ‘innocence’, not on solving the problem itself. Consider yourself lucky if they don’t blame YOU for the problem.
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