The Loneliness of Being in Love with a Narcissist |
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Romantic relationships with narcissists result in feelings of loneliness.
“One up, one down” relationships are common with partners who have a narcissistic personality.
The need to be the best pushes some individuals to perform highly in order to feel good about themselves.
Invisible qualities such as steadiness, kindness, and curiosity inspire true love.
If you’re in love with a narcissist, you’re most likely lonely, feeling like you're somehow not in sync with your partner. You may bounce from moments of delight to periods of desolation. The relationship can feel good at times but is not always satisfying. There is a reason for this. It is built into the structure of the relationship.
The one-up, one-down relationship
The “divide and conquer” approach to household management is common in modern relationships. This means that one partner does the bills while the other does the gardening, and everyone lives in harmony (or hopes to). The approach, such as divvying up household tasks, works well if the division is based on talents and interests and a mutually agreed-upon distribution of work. But what happens if one partner takes on a specific role because they believe their partner is incompetent or undeserving?
I once counseled a surgeon having trouble in his marriage who told me that he’d never met anyone smarter than himself. He reported frustration at home, stemming from his wife’s inability to show him the same deference that the nurses did in the operating room. Since the advice he gave was clearly the “right” advice, why didn’t she accept his direction without........