Is my husband a narcissist?
This is the most-asked question I get from women who are struggling in their marriage.
Wives are desperate to have their partners tune into their emotional needs, only to be met with crickets much of the time. They reach out to me in desperation, asking, “Do you think couples therapy could even work for my husband? He is so shut down, and I think he is a true narcissist.”
Fast forward to the couple being in my office, where the husband is in a heap, embarrassed about it, wondering where the hell all these tears came from. The wife is so freaking pissed off because, “You mean he does have emotion?! Why haven’t I seen that?”
There are so many reasons, but I want to first set the record straight on narcissism.
Broadly speaking, narcissism is a disorder characterized by impaired personality and interpersonal functioning. Big terms, but let’s break it down.
True narcissists don’t know how to step into other’s shoes to know how they think or feel, and it causes major problems in their whole life, not just marriage.
This is a major distinction with all mental illnesses. With mental illness, the disorder shows up across all parts of life. If the impairment only shows up in one part of life (i.e., just marriage), that is not a diagnosis. That’s an unfortunate learned response to a distressing situation.
Empathy and Perspective-Taking
So, if not narcissism, what is it? Why do so many men not connect with their wives emotionally?
First, a major caveat here. The inability to connect emotionally does not fall squarely on men. Women struggle with this, too. Although I’m using gender-specific words like “husband and wife,” it is also important to know this dynamic also happens in same-sex couples.
Empathy is a feedback loop that goes like this:
- I see you behaving a certain way (ex: “I see you crying.”),
- It creates a physical and emotional response in my body (ex: “That feels painful, and I also feel sad now.”)
- I’m comfortable with the emotion (ex: “I am crying now, too.”), and
- I feed it back to you so you can see that I get you (ex: “I’m here with you.”).
The reason some people seem very self-involved is that this feedback loop is closed off. For example, “I see you crying. It causes me distress. I don’t know what to do with distress. I’m going to go play video games now.”
See what happened there?
When someone doesn’t feel comfortable with the emotion, they feel in their body. They consciously and unconsciously shut the emotion out and off:
- Sit stone faced
- Ignore
- Lash back in anger
- Storm out
- Withhold affection
- [Insert poor coping skill here]
Because we live in a world full of labels, people are quick to brand lack of emotion or quick anger as narcissism, and I see why. When someone is unresponsive or closed off, they seem very self-involved.
Like, how do you see me crying and sit there stone-faced?
It’s painful.
But the answer to that question actually is, “Because my heart is racing, I don’t trust when I have strong feelings, and I don’t really know what to do here.”
And so you might say, “How do you not know? I’ve told you a million times how to respond when I cry.”
The answer is, “Because I’m scared I’ll mess up. I don’t want to be inadequate or wrong, and I’d rather you be mad than reaching out and muddling things even more.” Most “narcissists” know how to “do” anger, right? This is why. Anger is comfortable. Everything else is not.
Emotional Regulation
When we are comfortable expressing emotion, we do. We talk about feelings. Cry it out, yell it out, sulk, stomp, and feel all the things. All the while, we are tuned into our own bodies ’ emotions.
I promise you, most of those “narcissistic” men are just scared little babies who weren’t taught what to do with their feelings. When you cry, it scares them. They don’t know what to do with those emotions because they’ve never learned what to do with them. So, they close the empathy feedback loop because that’s all they know to do.
(Shout out to all the boy moms here; Let them feel!)
What would it be like if you imagined your husband as a four-year-old little boy whom caregivers told to tough it out and “throw some dirt on it.” You’d want to bear hug him, wouldn’t you?
Frankly, a bear hug is what we all need, right? But especially those partners who have been told emotions are useless and don’t help the situation.
The first goal of getting your husband (and all people) to be comfortable with their emotions to remind them that they exist.
I don’t ask my clients to start by moving a mountain. I ask them to move a pebble at the base of the mountain. Just a pebble can feel like a boulder when you’re met with so much fear.
Narcissist No More
Just because your husband doesn’t know how to express emotions doesn’t mean they’re a narcissist. But it also doesn’t mean they aren’t.
I’d also be leery of therapists diagnosing someone they’ve never met. If your therapist has ever told you that your partner is a true narcissist, be leery. Most of the time, people just want to be held, literally and figuratively. Partners can learn how to do that with one another. It starts by just moving a pebble.
