In my blog yesterday I asked how I managed to get this late in life before encountering a narcissist. The answer, which my therapist helped me find, is twofold.
First, I most likely did encounter them when I was younger but didn’t know how to recognize them or they weren’t fully developed yet. This makes sense and I was ok learning this.
The second part is harder to digest because it exposes a flaw in me. When I am in a relationship my world shrinks to the other person. I was 22 years old when I got married to my best friend. He was smart and kind and safe. And he was my whole world until my son come along and my world expanded to three.
My friends were my husband’s friends, my activities revolved him or my son. Eventually a co-worker entered my bubble and has been my best friend for over 20 years. I also reconnected with my childhood bestie and only these 2 friends (neither one a narcissist) survived the implosion of my marriage, and the years of self-discovery before I came out and started dating.
During the self-discovery I became a Buddhist and was surrounded by people who were very self-aware and working on being the best, most honest versions of themselves. Not a narcissist in sight.
Then I started dating and found my first long term girlfriend and along comes covid so once again my world shrunk down to her world, with only my bestie, who lives in another state, still managing to be a part of it. That relationship ended in part because she felt smothered by me.
Things are different now. I have reconnected or deepened some friendships and developed many new ones, some of which overlap, some which don’t. And because my girlfriend doesn’t live here, I am getting to know her without shrinking my world to just her, which is way healthier.
All this is to say that the reason I am encountering narcissists now is because I’m out doing things with my friends and making new friends and acquaintances. There are actually people in my life which ups the odds of meeting narcissists. Lucky me.
Now I just need to learn how to better recognize them, a skill I’m way behind on learning and at this age they’ve gotten very good at hiding who they are. Thankfully my circle of friends helped protect me before, I trust they’ll help again. Lucky me.
Be well my friends.
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I think one tricky part of narcissists is they are SO GOOD at reading people that they can claim to be empaths. Empaths can PHYSICALLY feel the emotions change in a room and all “ok what just happened who died” but a narcissist will notice someone’s eyes go tight and be like “the energy just changed, what happened” when in fact they can’t feel the energy shift but they are matters at reading body language. That always makes it a little harder to tell who is ACTUALLY a narcissist but here’s a hint:
Do they respect your boundaries?
An empath will respect your boundaries, a narcissist will guilt you into breaking them down.
Yes, we will continue to look out for you.
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