Studies show that narcissists are more likely to get divorced than people who do not have a narcissistic personality disorder. However, if you can handle the challenges of being married to a narcissist and can find ways to make your relationship work, you may have a very happy marriage.
Effects of Being Married to a Narcissist
Being married to a narcissist can affect your life in a variety of ways. It can impact your relationships, self-esteem, finances, and ability to be independent. Moreover, it can lead to negative effects on your mental and physical health.
Narcissistic partners act as if they are always right, that they know better and that their partner is wrong or incompetent. This often leaves the other person in the relationship either angry and trying to defend themselves or identifying with this negative self-image and feeling badly about themselves.
You can use strategies to make life easier, such as practicing self-care, setting healthy boundaries, and reminding yourself that you aren't to blame for any of these narcissistic husband traits. Ultimately, your partner will likely need to seek counseling to make any lasting changes to his behavior.
Here's when to break up with a narcissist: You're being physically abused. You're being sexual abused or coerced. Your partner is constantly monitoring you.
A narcissist will expect to get special treatment and to be able to control everything in the divorce, even the judge. They also don't like to lose, so they will file motions and fight hard to win, even over trivial matters that aren't worth the attorney fees.
Here are some of the most common divorce tactics that people with narcissistic personality disorder use: Steering the conversation to irrelevant, insignificant details while pushing core problems aside. Delaying hearings, not showing up, trying you to give in prematurely. Verbal abusive scar tactics.
Summary: For most people, narcissism wanes as they age. A new study reports the magnitude of the decline of narcissistic traits is tied to specific career and personal relationship choices. However, this is not true for everyone.
Can a narcissist have a happy marriage? Unfortunately, the answer is almost always “no.” The photos and the couple's public behavior show one thing, while something much less appealing is going on behind the scenes.
Narcissists can and do love, but their love tends to be superficial and fleeting. They can develop intense emotional attachments—even appearing to "fall in love"—and yet still maintain a complete lack of empathy for the object of their affection.
The narcissist views their spouse as an extension of themselves. If the narcissist wants to present themselves to the world in a certain way, they will pick a spouse who can help them with that image. This can be based on looks, wealth, or other qualities the narcissist wants to use to their advantage.
In fact, research has shown that nearly 60% of all marriages to narcissists – male or female – end in divorce. So, what's the reason for this high rate of divorce involving this one personality type?
A Marriage with a Narcissist or with a Person with Borderline Personality Disorder is Lonely. You will never feel as lonely as when you are married to someone with narcissism or borderline personality disorder. This is because their psychopathology and personality disorder make it impossible for him to be there for you ...
Narcissistic relationships can last anywhere from a few days or weeks to many years. There are anecdotal observations suggesting that the average length of a narcissistic relationship is around six months, but no empirical evidence supports this claim.
At the end of a relationship, narcissists may become combative, passive-aggressive, hostile, and even more controlling. People with NPD often fail to understand other people's needs and values. They are hyper focused on their egos, but do not account for how their actions affect others.
Narcissistic parents are often emotionally abusive to their children, holding them to impossible and constantly changing expectations. Those with narcissistic personality disorder are highly sensitive and defensive. They tend to lack self-awareness and empathy for other people, including their own children.
Narcissists 'can never really love anyone'
"Narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths do not have a sense of empathy," she told Business Insider. "They do not and will not develop a sense of empathy, so they can never really love anyone." This doesn't change when they have children.
The narcissist often engages in self-defeating and self-destructive behaviours.
According to Thomaes & Brummelman, the development of narcissism begins at around the ages of 7 or 8. This is the time when children begin to evaluate themselves according to how they perceive others.
The narcissist offers your pet a treat and then takes it back. The narcissist gets a payoff from seeing people and pets suffer under their control. By teasing your pet, the narcissist is also pushing your pet into snapping at them as a way to tell the narcissist to stop.
Once affirmed, they begin the attack on their spouse. Verbal berating, name calling, threats of divorce, gaslighting, guilt-tripping, and bullying are common first line attacks. This tactic almost always works in the beginning as the spouse dejectedly returns back to the narcissist to try the relationships again.
Narcissists are notoriously difficult to divorce. They often use their partner's emotional needs against them, dragging out the process for as long as possible. This is because they are dependent on the “narcissistic supply” to feel good about themselves.
Your narcissistic spouse has control and ownership over everything. They have made sure that you can't support yourself or have access to means to leave the relationship. They have stripped you of your power, and you doubt that you are capable of making it in life without their support.