Narcissistic Friends: People Who Don’t Care About You
Narcissistic friends are those who spend hours telling us about their problems and experiences without even asking how our day went. It is that person who is always late, who always faces the most unlikely unforeseen events when we need them… She is, essentially, a figure that, sooner or later, we will wonder if she is worth having in our lives.
Why did we come to establish a friendship with this type of profile? Maybe that’s the first question that comes to mind. Now a simple point must be highlighted. For many (especially those who look at the matter from the outside), it may seem simple to think: “if I have a narcissistic friend, I will just get rid of him”.
However, things are not always so simple when it comes to human relationships. First, there is the bond of affection. Sometimes we keep a bond for decades simply out of custom, because there are many years and many shared experiences. Other times, we are not fully aware that that person has a narcissistic profile until the damage has accumulated and until the erosion suffered by this bond is already deep.
There is also another aspect. As psychologists Dufner, M., Rauthmann, JF, Czarna, AZ, and Denissen, J (2013) explain in an interesting study: Narcissists are, at first, very attractive personalities. They know how to connect, are enthusiastic, and transmit a very positive energy early in the relationship, when they are looking to connect with someone at all costs.
So it’s easy to “fall” into this kind of friendship that first attracts us and then holds us back. When we are fully aware of its side effects and damage, we don’t quite know how to act. We will see more information below.
What are narcissistic friends like and why do they act like that?
We are not going to use the terminology “toxicity”. This word of popular use and metaphorical sense lacks clinical entity and, in this case, when we refer to a narcissistic personality, we enter into much more complex, deeper and unique aspects that deserve to be understood.
For starters, narcissism is part of a spectrum. There are people with mild narcissistic traits and profiles that would already represent a narcissistic personality disorder. A study by Dr. Elizabeth L. Kacel, from the University of Florida (United States), indicates that the origin of this behavior generally depends on three dimensions: genetics, neurobiology and environmental factors.
One aspect that often explains most of these behaviors in narcissistic friends is the effect of an unfavorable family environment. They look for validation they didn’t have in childhood, they want the recognition they didn’t have in the past, and they often tend to repeat these abuses and repeat the behaviors their parents probably did to them.
Understanding this can explain many things to us. However, it is also essential to recognize what patterns and behaviors characterize narcissistic friends.
monothematic conversations
The fulcrum on which the whole conversation revolves is related to themselves. It doesn’t matter if the dialogue starts with something casual, something that happened to us, or highly current news. The narcissistic friend will eventually take matters into his own hands.
Unexpected things always happen to them
If they’re late, it’s because they’ve had an accident. If they can’t be with you when you need them, it’s because something unexpected and often serious has happened; something that far exceeds anything that might have happened to you.
It’s those people that it’s hard to trust because you know they won’t be there; those who are always caught by the unexpected and the most unusual things we could imagine. With this, they always achieve what they most want: to be the center of attention.
They minimize your problems and magnify theirs
It doesn’t matter what happened to you at work, your partner or your family. All your worries will be meaningless when you try to explain them to a narcissistic friend. In addition to minimizing what happened, he will also underestimate it. Everything you tell him will have already been lived by him (and if he has not lived, he will invent that he lived).
With that, he shifts his attention from his person… to focus on himself. He’ll boycott you and, with that, he’ll be able to be the protagonist again in the theater of life.
They won’t rejoice in your successes, they won’t share your happiness
Narcissistic friends generally have low self-esteem and low self-concept. This implies something that, in the long run, can be very destructive: they always prefer us at their height or below. In other words, they will tune in more to us if we are unhappy, if our capacity for success is minimal, if we are insecure, if we are permanent tenants of our comfort zone.
Now, when successes arise in our lives, when we reach goals and feel happy, they will once again minimize all of our achievements. And they will do it for a very simple reason: envy. They are unable to control this feeling, this harmful and dangerous emotion with which they can do us much harm if we don’t put up containment barriers.
What can we do with narcissistic friends?
Narcissistic friends are not good traveling companions in the adventure of life. They slow us down, cloud the landscape, don’t let us see and even take us the wrong way. Therefore, we could say that the best thing to do is, without a doubt, leave them at the nearest station and thus travel lighter, freer and in better health.
However, as we pointed out at the beginning, narcissism is within a continuum. There are people and friends who deserve a second chance. Therefore, it is essential that they understand the effects (and consequences) of their actions and behaviors. However, on the contrary, there are also profiles that will not respond to our suggestions and warnings.
In cases where there is no desire to change and there is a clear refusal to seek specialized help, the most reasonable thing is, without a doubt, to take more drastic measures in accordance with the most important thing: maintaining our own health and well-being.
