I Was Married To A Narcissist Who Played Well In Reality
It’s one of a narcissist’s most frightening attributes
dfrolovXIII / Shutterstock “It would be easier if he was falling down wasted,” says someone close to my husband.
“I know,” I say.
“Everyone could see it then,” they say.
My husband still fools the world. But he no longer fools those closest to him. This reveal began even before he was diagnosed as lacking empathy and having a narcissistic personality disorder. What is more shocking is that he’s on the severe end of the narcissistic spectrum.
Yet my husband goes largely undetected by society.
Sadly, narcissists play well in reality.
It’s one of the things that makes a narcissist so difficult to detect.
Likewise, this is what makes those who love a narcissist and fall prey to them feel crazy.
My husband, the narcissist appears normal.
He navigates day-to-day life with narcissistic finesse. He talks like a normal person. He walks like a normal person. He interacts socially like a normal person. He holds a job as a normal person. The outside world is none the wiser to the narcissist that lurks within.
I fully understand what this person is trying to tell me.
It would be easier if my husband was falling down wasted.
No one would miss that. The societal alarms would go off. The “Danger, Will Robinson,” cries would sound. The public would realize something is off. Something is not healthy or right about this individual.
It would be painful but it would be easier to understand.
There are clear and distinguishably two sides to this person.
No one would be fooled.
No one would be charmed out of believing otherwise. No one would think you were crazy. No one would insist you were wrong. No one would doubt you. No one would question why there was a danger in staying in a relationship with this person.
They would believe you.
They would see the damage and the danger.
They would tell you this isn’t healthy.
The individual who is continually falling down and wasted doesn’t play well in reality. They can’t hide for long. Someone in the outside world will see them or suspect them.
A narcissist is a contradiction.
A narcissist doesn’t live in reality but they play well in it.
It’s one of their most frightening attributes.
There are several reasons the average person can’t detect a narcissist.
A narcissist lives in only one world. The narcissist's world. It creates a warped perception of reality because narcissists can’t see out of their world or into the world of another. A narcissist survives with their surface charm. They ask about your world but they don’t care about it.
It’s narcissistic coffee and cocktail chatter.
The people a narcissist attaches themselves to are there to make their world go round.
This is why those closest to the narcissist see their abusive disorder.
These are the people who can more easily provoke a narcissist to anger because while they believe they are sharing the narcissist’s world, they are only inhabiting it. Anything they could potentially do that a narcissist disagrees with or believes wrongs them will expose a narcissist's anger.
And anger is what brings a narcissist out of hiding.
Hence, why the narcissist is invisible to the average person.
Even now, after all of the narcissistic abuse and elongated and extreme divorce, I marvel at the seemingly normal narcissist. I continue to be baffled and troubled by this paradox. The abnormality is masked as normality.
I am reminded of it when I see my now ex-husband, though I am no longer fooled by it.
He navigates day-to-day life with narcissistic finesse. He talks like a normal person. He walks like a normal person. He interacts socially like a normal person. He holds a job as a normal person. The outside world is none the wiser to the narcissist that lurks within.
A narcissist plays well in reality.
It’s one of their most frightening attributes.
Colleen Sheehy Orme is a national relationship columnist, journalist, and former business columnist. She writes bout love, life, relationships, family, parenting, divorce, and narcissism.