Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 144: How To Tell If You're In A Relationship With A Narcissist...

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

It's all too common in modern dating to label someone a "narcissist". But what are the actual signs you're dating a narcissist vs. just dating a flawed person? What behaviours should you look for in the early dating stage?  Join Matt and Stephen as they discuss all things narcissism and how to heal after a relationship with someone who damages your self-esteem... --- Join us on our virtual retreat on March 18th-20th! Go to MHVirtualRetreat.com and spend a magical 3 days with us transforming your confidence and relationships... --- Follow Matt @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey

This is where you start questioning yourself and everything you know. You're not feeling good about something when something's hurt you, when something's made you feel a certain way and that person makes you feel crazy for feeling that. what's up everyone we are back with the love life podcast with me matthew hussey my brother stephen hussey hello friends and fancies welcome back stevie a couple of people slid in the dms matt do you want to hear what they had to say and it's not naughty okay i'm less interested but go on okay well i thought you know i know we read out the reviews but i wanted to read out what someone said on instagram which was very lovely this was from coconut who responded i don't know if you remember matt we talked about how I wanted a relationship with someone who reads books. You said, no, you don't.

You just want someone you can have some intellectual conversation with. And I said, I'm a reader. I want someone who reads books. She says, hello, Stephen. I just listened to the podcast with Matthew about love bombing and giggled at your bibliophile comment about dating, as well as Matthew's dating app suggestion, BookUp. Why? Because I'm a librarian and I love books, but I read less now as a librarian

due to the fact that I will give away the books to my students, or the nature of my reading is trades and I listen to audiobooks while cataloging. I would have to agree with your brother on this one. How dare you, Coconut. She she says i enjoy you both you are darling and the podcast keep me in check with my dating to life thank you to you both cheers and she signs off as courtney so thank you courtney that's very kind of you um but she's a librarian matt and she agrees with you so she thinks i'm being the monster by saying i wanted i would like to date someone who reads books well i i knew when i made

the point i was making that i was right right so well what courtney says does not come as a surprise to me brilliant well that's that. But I will say this. I'll tell you what does come as a surprise to me. How well BookUp as a name for an app for people who love books has aged since I last heard it. Right. You made it up about a day ago. No, I know I made it up.

So it's not a fine wine. It's literally been about a day since you said it. I know i made it up so it's not it's not a fine wine it's literally been about a day since you said it i know i made it up but what i'm saying is it really is quite good right okay it's a it's a it's a really good idea and and and steve i came up with that name on the fly i hadn't even prepared that yeah well brilliant matt are you gonna do that then is a book dating app which you've said is a silly criteria for people to have so i don't know you're not very aligned with the mission but if a dating app on books called book up was going to be started it should be started by a librarian so courtney if you want to evolve your career into dating apps, I feel you'd have a lot of credibility starting an app like that. Also, this is a we need to start pitching this in Hollywood about a librarian named Coconut who starts an app called Book Up, but then falls in love with a non-reader called Mango.

A librarian, a librarian who isn't as into read would rather read audiobooks than physical books steve i feel having just used that dm in your dms to talk about how wonderful i am uh in myriad ways it's probably an appropriate time to say that we're going to be talking about narcissism today hiding in plain sight are you no steven i don't believe i'm a narcissist i don't i don't think you are either people i suppose can decide for themselves who who gets to do the diagnosing you know we live in a world now where there's an awful lot of diagnosing going on people are very quick to point the narcissist label at other people they are yeah it's a very it's a fashionable uh mental disorder

yeah narcissism is very in fashion well we'll come on to this we'll come on to this. We'll come on to this. By the way, for anyone who does want to email in, email podcast at matthewhussey.com. That is the email where you can send in your stories, your thoughts on the podcast, anything you'd like us to cover on an upcoming podcast. Just something interesting to entertain Stevie and I i let me just say that's also been incredibly kind matt people have sent dms showing us on their spotify wrapped uh playlist so spotify gives you this thing at the end of the year where it shows you the music and the podcast you listen to the most and we got a few people who showed us that we were literally top of their charts. Now, Steve, I always think that this is a compliment depending on who else is on their charts.

Right. Well, I can't see all the other ones on their charts, so I'm not going to be that judgmental. But do you know what I mean? Sure. Sure. I do get what you mean. If we're there, but they have horrible taste in the other four top- top ranking podcasts they listen to, I always wonder whether we should take it as a compliment. Well, if we're top, they have excellent taste, I'm afraid.

And Hazel even got the stats that she listened to 43 episodes for a total of 13,046 minutes. So bless you, Hazel. Wow. That's like four hours. That's very kind of you. And yeah, thank you to those of you who had us top of your Spotify wrapped playlists this year. Steve, I wanted to kick off today with a little neuroscience study out of the university of colorado that talked about the placebo effect in breakups now in this study steve faulty people both male and female who had recently gone through an unexpected and unwanted breakup in the last six months were given a powerful nasal spray to reduce emotional pain now i say in quotes powerful nasal spray to reduce emotional

pain because this nasal spray in reality did fuck all oh you mean it didn't heal your broken heart they hadn't researched and found a chemical cure for a broken heart that came in the form of a nasal spray no steve but people were told that it would make them feel better um and these faulty people reported feeling better after seeing an image of their ex. Scans show that their brains responded differently too. So it wasn't just a feeling, it genuinely was a different reaction in the brain to the picture of their ex. Now it was just saline solution. The nasal spray didn't contain any chemicals, but these findings suggest that placebo treatments reduce emotional stress by altering effective representations in frontal brainstem systems. This suggests that if you believe you are being helped through the breakup, this can massively help your breakup. In other words, the act of taking action alone

can engender results. What do you think about this, Steve? I think that's a bit like self-care, isn't it? If you take some time for self-care isn't it if you take some time for self-care you are signaling to your body that this is recuperation time that you are doing something nice for yourself there's probably something going i know it's not going to heal a broken heart but like going to a spa probably tells you that you want to relax and do something positive for your body. And it makes you even feel more lifted and de-stressed because you have signaled to yourself that it's time to de-stress. And I guess if you tell yourself, I'm recovering from this by doing good things for myself,

seeing friends, a broken heart, it's probably a weird mix of psychological and physical healing. Does it ever make you wonder how many of the things we do to get any result actually do anything? And how much of what we do is literally just our intention giving us this sense that we are actually better? Yeah, I do sometimes think that even with coffee, I've drank, drunk a lot of coffee over the years and now I'm not even sure what effect coffee has on me or not. It just, I could just taste it and I feel good in the morning. You know, when you buy like a really expensive moisturizing cream for your face. Ah, yeah. And you think, this is really going to be the one. This is going to be the one that gives me great skin.

How much of it is, is it really a better formula? Or could you slap a bunch of burger grease on your face and tell yourself that it was miracle cream and your spots would clear up? I do wonder about the entire moisturizing industry i have to say i probably i probably have a 50 skepticism about the whole thing but it does feel nice putting that cream on your face well i think that the the what's interesting about this is that you really can in the wake of a i think in a way the empowering thing about this is that there are so many ways to feel better.

And we often, if you take a breakup, it's an intense, dramatic event in one's life. It produces this avalanche of pain that we're left just spinning and going how am i going to deal with this what can i possibly do to make myself feel better and in any situation where there's a ton of pain we can often find ourselves searching for the perfect solution to that saline solution in this case very good the we look for this precise way to overcome our pain in a way you could say the same is true even in situations where there's not pain you could say uh the same is true when we're trying to to get fitter or healthier or there are so many ways to do it the intention of just doing something that's going to help matters more than anything else that i am going into this breakup with the intention that I am going to feel better.

I don't need the perfect situation to get over it. I don't need the perfect remedy. I don't need the perfect therapist. What I need is a ton of intention that I'm going to do what it takes to feel better. Because there are so many ways you could feel better. You could feel better doing jujitsu. You could feel better going to the gym. You could feel better going and meditating. You could feel better spending more time with friends and connecting in your relationships in your life. You could feel better taking on a new purpose.

There are so many different ways that you could feel better. But just the intention of I'm going to do something to move on is half the battle. And the brain is so ridiculously powerful. I mean, if the placebo effect proves nothing else, it's how creepily scary and powerful the brain is in being able to reorganize itself based on what it thinks is happening. Yeah. Rather than what is actually in any chemical form or structural form happening from the outside in to the story you say about that breakup as well it's not that there is no you're in trauma there's nothing that's going to suddenly make it better it's you're going to have to go through this repeated waves of pain but even if the story in your head is either this is going to defeat me and i am broken and i will never

have someone wonderful love me again or your story is i'm a survivor i'm able to rebuild i am a loving person i have loving people around me i'm gonna you know i'm gonna move forward with my life totally different story totally different meaning in the way you approach everything from that point did i mention on the podcast the rat the the rat on the wheel experiment it sounds familiar but i don't remember it there was a an experiment that they did with rats where one rat was put on a wheel, a running wheel, and it could just run at its own pace whenever it chose to. And there was another rat that was hooked up to a wheel that, or that was on a wheel that was hooked up to the other wheel. So whenever the first rat ran

of its own volition, the second rat had to run on the wheel. So they were both doing the exact same amount of exercise, the exact same amount of exertion, except the results were completely different. The rat that was on the wheel that chose to run had all the positive markers associated with exercise. The rat that had to run, albeit at exactly the same pace and distance as the first rat, had all of the markers associated with stress. The result of the experiment was linked to what you're saying right now, that someone can, if you're choosing your struggle, it can be a wonderfully empowering growth experience for you that has a lot of positive meaning and does a lot for your mindset, for all of the good things that you, all of those markers of having achieved and overcome something

that we get when we do something difficult. If we believe that just some stress has been imposed on us and that we're just reacting to it, then it's going to have a lot of negative effects on our life. There's going to be resentment. There's going to be frustration. There's going to be all the cortisol associated with stress. There's going to be a sense of helplessness. So in a breakup, if we believe,

if our story is this was done to me, I did not choose this. I do not want this. And all I want is for this pain to go away. And I am going to be in every sense of the word, a victim of this time in my life. That is going to be something that is going to produce an extraordinary amount of stress and helplessness and, and depression and a whole world of, of increased pain, pain on, you know, the pain of a breakup turns into a genuine kind of suffering that can now last a lot longer or can just produce much more devastating effects. If we can look at the story of our breakup and see it differently, we actually have a shot at an incredibly cathartic growth- driven time in our life that we associate with a ton of achievement and pride

and confidence and even control if you can take ownership of your pain in that moment now that could be in the form of saying okay okay, I may not have chosen this, but this truly is an opportunity for me to become a bigger person. This truly is an opportunity for me to show what I'm made of. You know, people choose to climb mountains in life. This is the interesting thing. We're all going to have to climb mountains, whether we choose to or not. Some people climb mountains in their free time. Some people just decide to as an activity. Sometimes in life, we get given a mountain that we have to climb in the form of a breakup,

in the form of a lost job, in the form of a lost loved one. But if we can remember that there are people in life that choose to climb mountains, that's what they do for fun. They go out and they climb a mountain. Then we realize that there is a type of suffering that we actually choose. Well, what if the suffering that's been imposed on me is suffering I decide to choose? I'm going to treat this like suffering I've chosen. Because at some point I was going to choose suffering anyway if I wanted to grow. Well, this just gave me it in a form I didn't see coming. But okay, here we go.

This is my suffering. I was going to choose suffering anyway. If you run a marathon, anyone who's listening to this, who's ever run a marathon, you chose suffering. Anyone who listens to this, who went to the gym in the last week, you chose suffering. Or what if the suffering that was imposed on you becomes the suffering you choose and there's that stoic concept that stoic concept we've talked about before amor fati love your fate what happens to you can you embrace it with both arms and say i'm gonna embrace the challenge the pain of this moment right now and take it on. Yeah. Or maybe go a step further and say,

it's, I'm not just dealing with something I would never have chosen to deal with. I'm in a way, I'm just substituting. I was going to choose that really difficult thing to do this year, but now that this has come along, I can switch that out. I found my difficult thing this year. You know, I can substitute this for that thing I was going to do this year. That's a powerful way of looking at it. And by the way, for a lot of people who go through breakups, one of the things I say is maybe you chose it even more than you thought you did. If, for example, your breakup happened because you had a conversation with someone about something that you needed more of, maybe more commitment, maybe you needed to be respected more, maybe you needed them to try harder, maybe you didn't feel they were communicating with you enough. Essentially, you spoke up about your needs and that precipitated the breakup. Because you spoke up, that person decided, oh God, this is all too much. I can't do this.

You broke up with them. It may feel like they broke up with you, but it could be just as accurate to say you broke up with them because finally you decided to voice your needs. Because why did you break up today? Well, because I made a fuss of something today. Right. Maybe you didn't make a fuss about it last month or over the last six months. Maybe you didn't tell that person how you've been feeling for years. So in that time, you were choosing not to break up with them. You were choosing not to have a conversation that you know could lead somewhere bad. But today you chose to have the conversation. Why?

Because on some level, on some level, some part of you was ready to risk something. So if that resulted in a breakup, take some ownership of that breakup. Don't be the victim of that breakup. Take some ownership. Oh, we broke up because I stated my needs. So in a sense, I broke up with them. I was the one who started the breakup. They just pulled the natural trigger. They did what I pushed them to do because they couldn't give me more. And I asked them to give me more, thereby precipitating this breakup. Then you can really take ownership of it.

And say, I'm here because I played a part in this, albeit for all the right reasons. I'm suffering right now because I made an important decision for myself to speak up and that led to a breakup. And now I'm on my own and it's excruciatingly painful. It's so difficult. There's a lot of pain ahead in this process, i'm gonna take some i'm gonna take some ownership of that pain and in doing so this becomes a kind of suffering that i have chosen and thereby i can embrace it as a growth exercise as opposed to simply something that i have to grit my teeth and try to white knuckle my way through and hope I survive. No, we don't go to the gym and hope we survive. We go to the gym in anticipation of growth, demanding growth as the reward for our time and energy. Go into your breakup demanding growth.

The same way that when you do a bicep curl, you demand that your bicep grow. I'm doing this so that you grow. Well, go into the breakup demanding the growth. I'm demanding I'm going to get growth out of this. I'm not hanging on for survival. I'm demanding those muscles to grow right now so that I can be a bigger person when this is done. Wow. I love that. And if you want to, by the way, if you want to do this with us, come become a member of the love life club, because we're literally, I cannot tell you how many people we're helping through breakups right now as part of this club. This is not just a club for people who are going through breakup. We have people here who are single and they want to find a relationship. We have people who are seeing someone and they want more commitment. We have people who are just trying to improve their

confidence. They don't feel like they're as confident as they want to be at this stage in their life. And they feel like they're always going to bring that lack of confidence to their love life or to a long-term relationship if they don't fix it. We're working with all sorts of different people, but one of the primary types of people that we find come to us for that, for that membership are people who are in some kind of pain right now and want to get through it and want to come out the other side stronger. And they want a blueprint for doing that. If you're one of them come and become a member of the Love Life Club. Graduate from the podcast, which we love having you on. But there is a step beyond this where we actually coach you.

And that's in the Love Life Club. If you go to askmh.com right now, that's A-S-K-M-H, askmh.com, you can sign up for a 14-day free trial to that membership. And you also have the opportunity to ask me your most burning question when you get to that web page. So that's askmh.com. Go check that out. Grab your free introductory membership and try it on for size. I promise you, you do this, two weeks from now, you're going to be feeling a whole lot better than you do today.

All right, Stephen, shall we talk about this very, very popular subject in today's dating world? The subject of narcissists. Now, you found an article on this subject. Do you want to just kick us off with the article that you found? And maybe we can shed some light on narcissists. The difference perhaps between diagnosable narcissists. People with narcissistic personality disorder, and those with narcissistic tendencies that can have a terrible effect on our lives, even though they're not fully fledged narcissists.

Let's get into it. Well, there was an article about a self-confessed narcissist who apparently gives uh gives advice on social media for how people can basically avoid dating a narcissist or find out if they are dating one uh so he's sort of turning to public service and he's on his name his name according to this is ben taylor and on tiktok he has more than 30 000 followers so So a narcissist on TikTok, what could possibly go wrong? And before you jump into this, Steve, send us an email. If you are someone who has suffered at the hand of a narcissist, podcast atthewhussy.com what's been your experience of being with or dating a narcissist how has it affected you what did it cost you are you still in a situation where you're entertaining someone that you believe to be a narcissist tell us all about it podcast at matthewhussy.com um by the way i'm

i'm only joking i'm sure i'm sure he's a nice chap he's he's doing his best to help people now so so fair play um i uh he's using his powers for good his powers for good um so uh yeah he basically talked about how throughout his life he always felt different and that he handled emotions in an unusual way. Ways he connected with people and the lack of empathy he felt. And said that when he got married, he would gaslight her manipulate lie and cheat all while maintaining a good and prestigious image at work and so his relationship crumbled his lies started unraveling and he was questioning who he was and why he was acting this way and upon sort of scouring online he found that a lot of the symptoms he found were synonymous with being a narcissist, which he says he initially denied.

So he gaslit his wife and denied it, according to his own words, insisting he was not a narcissist, but eventually accepted it. And he gives some sort of signs you're dating a narcissist. And some of these are backed by a therapist in the article as well. But just to sort of zoom out on this, Matt, I mean, do you think, I feel like a lot of people now come to us and say they've had experience with dating a narcissist. What does that mean about the times we're living in? Are people just aware of people's social disorders now or is there is there something in the air well i think it always something always seems more prevalent once you have a name for it so i think that there's a lot of people saying well

i i have a greater sense of what this is and therefore I'm able to, I'm, you know, now that we have ADHD as a label, it's much easier to point at a kid in class who can't focus and say, that's ADHD. Um, so I think that there's,

there is a sense in which having a widely, perhaps not fully understood, but at least a widely um hmm a wide awareness of narcissism as a label allows us to look at something that someone we're dating or with or even a family member or a friend is doing that's hurting us or affecting us and say that's that's narcissism um and that that is why i think it's important to make a distinction between what a clinical psychologist would say is narcissistic personality disorder and what is someone displaying narcissistic tendencies because i i mean i think it wouldn't be an easy task for any of us to say that we've never done a single narcissistic thing in our lives. Every single one of us has at some point,

I think narcissism is somehow, it somehow runs through the veins of humans in one way or another. The, the, our, our belief about our own importance in, you know, even, I mean, dare i say our importance in relation to

nature and the way that we separate ourselves as human beings from nature uh and give ourselves a god-like status in the world um as the as the trees that outlive us by many hundreds of years just watch on us coming and going we believe that we have this special right to dominion we believe that we have a specialness that we are separated from animals that we are separated from nature that we have this godlike status above it all you know we we behave as we behave in this way in the way that we live out our lives and so you could say that there is this streak of narcissism that is just, it's inherent in the human condition, but that in some people that goes way too far to the point where some of the traits

that we're going to discuss today become a real problem for other people. But it certainly is something that the women who come to us and the the men we speak to as well these days of course it's not just women that that come to us for help anymore it has become a very very rife uh issue for so many people. You know, my boyfriend is a narcissist. My husband is a narcissist. My ex is a narcissist. How do I avoid a narcissist when I'm out there dating? And I think that it comes from two things. I think there are the people that are just generally find it easier to, that it's more at their fingertips, what they think a narcissist might be. So it's

very easy to call out someone based on one behavior and say they're a narcissist. But I also think that some people have had genuinely terrible, terrible experiences with an ex or or with someone they're with right now life altering experiences from someone who has who for a long time truly turned their world upside down and and narcissists can not only turn your external world upside down in the effect that they have on your life, your relationships, in some cases, your finances, your ability to live your life in a normal way, your ability to have autonomy, they can take away your control, but they also can turn your internal world upside down because you begin to question yourself and everything you believe to be true it can they can dismantle your confidence and

have you reach a point where you don't know which way is up anymore um because they have so they have so constructed a narrative that you have bought into about who you are what you're capable of and what you deserve and how right they are about everything and how wrong you are about everything so you know i don't want when i when i kind of joke about the idea that you know everyone's a narcissist these days by today's standards and today's buzzfeed list the call diagnosis of who is a narcissist i don't want people to to misunderstand me in my acknowledgement of people who have genuinely uh suffered at the hands of someone like this and have had their lives all but destroyed by a person like that um so you know i want us to kind of take this opportunity to cover both in this episode but

steve why don't you tell us some of the things that came up in this article as signs that someone is a narcissist so one of the things this guy mentioned was narcissists do not like having rules or limits imposed on them if you're communicating your comfortable limits and they keep pushing those beware and i think the idea is just that being told no or thinking that there are specific rules that apply to you a narcissist will immediately assume yeah but that's nice but i don't actually have to keep to them i can do what i want really yeah i suppose does this get linked with just a problem with authority in general uh an issue following rules in general in life yeah i think it's like lack of social social grace

or cohesion it's just a sense that whatever i feel is right is right or whatever works for me is the thing i should do right yeah i can see that i always i it's funny the whole i don't you know the rules are stifling always seems to me i mean look they're for sure there are rules in life and sometimes with other people that we think are just silly. That's always going to be true. There always are going to be silly rules in life. But when someone is a blanket approach, just disregards other people's rules about how they want to be treated or rules in society, that always seems to me to be a true lack of empathy. That this role, although it may not be perfect, has been created in some form for us all to coexist better. It's been created in some form

to try to improve life. Because without this role at all, you wouldn't want to know what life looks like. It's not even being able to make that leap or it's saying everyone else should follow this rule, but I shouldn't. In a relationship, when someone's telling you that they have a rule, it's for the purposes of them feeling better. So if we don't, if we have no regard for their boundaries or their rules, it's the same thing as saying, I don't care how you feel. What I care about is how much freedom I have to live exactly the way I want to live within this relationship or as the case may be without. So, um, very good. What's the next? Um, he said you, he's, this is the one from one of his TikTok videos.

He said a narcissist will often degrade or humiliate someone to humble them and to almost break down their self-esteem so that they only come to you for validation or to kind of, you know, see if they're doing the right things. So you'll find ways to subtly poke at the things they do their identity you know who they are what they've accomplished and kind of break them down so that they think they have to win your approval that's dark that's that's dark isn't it? That, to me, if you were... Look, firstly, I won't speak to whether these are the...

Stephen, maybe on this article it says whether there are clinical psychologists that back these up as genuine signs of narcissism or not. But intuitively, that makes sense to me, because if narcissism can be associated with a kind of obsession with control that i i want to be in control i want to have a kind of godlike status and the way that i can do that practically, is if I can dismantle your ego, if I can dismantle your confidence, because your confidence is a threat to my control. Right.

The more autonomous and confident you are, the more agency you have over your own actions and opinions, the less I am needed and the less malleable you are. And if I'm a narcissist, I want you to be malleable so that I can control you. Or how do I make you more malleable? It's not by making you stronger, right? Then I have a relationship of equals. Well, I don't want you to be my equal. I want to be the best. So I have to make you malleable to stay number one and to stay in control. And I can make you more malleable by dismantling your confidence. And if I'm the one who's dismantled it, if I'm the one who has knocked you down and you're the kind of person that I can get away with this with, because let's not forget, it takes two to tango right you need you need someone who is

proportionately unsure of themselves or insecure or or carries trauma in proportion to the level of let's say in this case narcissism that someone is showing yeah so i need to find someone this will work on but if i can find someone who this will work on and then i can withdraw my approval of them then it's my approval they need again in order to feel good yeah so now they're coming back to me to feel good i become the source of your happiness and if i am in the narcissistic category that's just how i like it that i don't want you to experience happiness outside of me yeah and there's almost that thing that they say that they say that cults do this when they're brainwashing people but they'll often they break you down but unpredictably they'll come and like

be really loving and build you back up you know i mean like it's unpredictability and it's like oh they're being really loving today and i'm doing everything right but then it'll be like no you you put a foot wrong you did something wrong like you're you're a fool you're an idiot you're broken and it's that that unpredictability can make you desperate for someone's approval. I think also it's hard sometimes when someone's making us work like that, it takes up a lot of bandwidth. So, you know, if you're just trying to win someone's approval again, you sometimes don't even stop to think about why you're doing this or what.

Does this make sense that I'm trying to get this person's approval what am i doing here they're occupying you with a lot to think about yeah a lot to have to deal with i'm taking away your confidence now you're having to work to get it back um i do want to also point out though because i think it's important in in wherever possible during these signs to point out the mass market version of this so that we can all look for it in ourselves and say, well, look, I may not be a narcissist, but I've in some way in my own modest way I've demonstrated this so when we talk about that concept of if you're you know that one of the hallmarks of narcissism is I want to be responsible for you for your happiness and I don't want you to derive any happiness outside of me well most of us at one point or another have been in a situation where our partner has gone to do something that we feel jealous of. You know, they're going to do something really fun with their friends. And it's something that we have this feeling of like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm jealous that you're going to do this really exciting thing without me.

That I don't get to experience it with you. Well, in a way, that's just a mild form of the same thing, isn't it? That rather than put my partner's happiness first and say, oh, this is wonderful. They get to go and do this really great thing that they're going to enjoy. And because I love them, I'm going to make my peace with the fact that this happiness isn't coming from me. That I'm not responsible for this and that it's happening without me there. I am just going to love them enough to say I'm just really happy that they get to experience it. That's a form of generosity that isn't present in an awful lot of relationships. And it's not because there's a narcissist in that relationship. It's just because that person has made it about them instead of making it about

their partner's happiness. Yeah. And that's more like immaturity, like it's immature to feel threatened by someone else every time they have a success. Every time your friend has a success, like, oh, I'm like, oh, that threatens me. What does that say about me? That's not necessarily you're a narcissist. It's like immature. It's like you haven't grown up. You haven't. Yeah. Or yeah. Or insecurity or selfishness because you're putting, you know, you're not putting how your partner feels, um, first or, or on a level with how you feel. It's less important. It's more important that I feel successful, more successful all the time, or is more important that all of your happiness comes from the time you spend with me and not something you do outside of us. Okay. What's the next one? There's one here that is ignoring your needs. I think this was

one he mentioned in a video. Now that that's one like your needs are just annoying to them and it's like oh god like you you want this thing or this is important to you the only thing with that one and obviously a narcissist would do that but i reckon a lot of people would say that about bad relationships they had where someone he was bad at meeting their needs or it's like i really needed this much uh quality time with them or i wanted them to uh whatever it might be i wanted them to spend more time together with my family or i wanted to do this and they ignored that that may again have been signs of someone's immaturity stages of their life where they are particularly selfish maybe they just were very badly incompatible with you and i feel like

that's one where someone could easily just go yeah my ex was a narcissist could they ignore my needs well i look sometimes it's let's also be. It's easier to say someone's a narcissist than to come to terms with the fact that someone just wasn't that interested in you. Right. You know, there are people, albeit still a selfish act, there are people that aren't really serious about us, that aren't as interested as we would hope

and therefore don't really weren't they weren't trying the relationship worked so long as you were catering to their every need but when you have a need you become an inconvenience you just become a burden because i i just oh god you know you're reminded i this i don't like this person that much anyway and now they're asking something of me yeah i and now you resent them for it. But that's not necessarily to do with narcissism. It can be a kind of selfishness that you're disregarding the seems better than nothing at the time, but you're not as interested as they are. Um, so that's a, that's a distinction. Sometimes you can ask for something and they suddenly act aloof or give you the silent treatment or start to break away and you go well that's they're a narcissist because they they were took all this from me but now they can't give anything in return well it

might be because they're not willing to and it might be that at some other point with somebody else they might give more that's a hard truth to accept but it it doesn't change our reality which is just that we want to meet someone who's willing to contribute to the relationship in the at least at the level that we are even if they're not going to you know relationships people contribute in different ways but they're at least willing to give on the level that we're willing to give yeah to the relationship yeah so last one in this piece is a narcissist will never admit they did anything wrong it's almost impossible for them the only way they'll say sorry for their actions is if they know they can manipulate something out of that apology yeah that's an important distinction i truly believe one of the most destructive traits of a relationship is someone

that cannot apologize. And you know, there's, there's a distinction to be made here. You know, sometimes we're with someone, I mean, a lot of the time, human nature is if you criticize someone on something, they get defensive. Most people are like that as a reflex response. For sure. Most people don't reflex apologize a lot of people their ego kicks in scorpion tail comes up and they're like i don't i don't do that or they just get mad because they know they do that and they're annoyed that they've you've realized it but there's a difference between someone who can come back an hour later a day day later, a week later and say, hey, I thought about what you said and you're right. You know, I want to work on that. And someone who absolutely categorically

thinks they're right about everything and will use any amount of logic to persuade you that you are the crazy one in this scenario. And that is a very, very insidious trait. When you're with someone who, this is where you start questioning yourself and everything you know. When you're not feeling good about something, when something's hurt you, when something's made you feel a certain way and that person makes you feel crazy for feeling that that person makes you feel like this is just representative of you being completely insecure of you imagining things the person who cannot apologize yeah you cannot really you can't work with a person like that you can't work with a person like that. You can't build with a person like that. So if you're with someone that cannot apologize, cannot acknowledge the validity of what you're feeling on some level, that is a major, major problem. Yeah. And I feel this is where these

behaviors that really damage you over time they are the distinction you're looking for because like we say about the over diagnosis of narcissism i think some people just confuse people who are have huge egos and they're attention seeking and you see them showing off on instagram and stuff it's like i don't think every one of them is a narcissist some of them might be very well capable of saying sorry or they might feel guilt when they do something wrong they don't manipulate but they're people who love attention have huge egos and you know think they're think they're the shit or whatever and love adulation they might have a whole host of ego issues but i think then people

just look at someone like that and go oh that's a narcissist and it's like but that person may not actually be like this you know manipulative or person who lies and you know makes you feel crazy yes actively seeks to control your thoughts thoughts and ensure that you question yourself in the process. To throw a couple more in, one narcissistic tendency is, you know, a lot of people go on a date and they're like, I had the best time. It was amazing. We did this. We did that. And they don't actually ever think to themselves, well, hang on,

did that person actually ever ask me anything on the date? Did they take any pains to get to know me at all on that date? Did they make my opinions seem interesting or important? Were they even interested in my opinions? Did they come out of that date knowing far more about me than when we went in? Or did I just have an amazing time because of how exciting this person was? Because we did something really amazing on the date? Because they made me feel really special? And some, let's not forget, it's not like a stretch that someone with narcissistic tendencies could understand that asking you questions and being curious about you would be something that would impress you. so the key here is to recognize that early on a narcissist doesn't ultimately care about your feelings but they do care about the way they make you feel as a reflection of how great they are yeah if i can make you fall in love with me by the end of this date then i'm gonna feel really special it's gonna remind me how great i am yeah they care about their status a lot and how they're

perceived yeah that you go home and tell all your friends how wonderful they were and it's one of the reasons that in the beginning people make, I can understand by the way, someone hearing that and going, well, that's great, Matt. So what you're saying is if I go and have an amazing time on a date and they ask me lots of questions and they show interest in my life and they, uh, and they make me feel really special, then those are all warning signs. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the truth is the only way you really know if this is part of the show they're putting on to make you fall in love with them so that they can get that good feeling or whether this is a genuine desire to know you, to see you and for you to be happy with them.

The only way to know that is over time. The only way to know that is to watch and see if that curiosity about you is consistent. To see what happens when you start actually expressing needs. To see what happens when you ask for something, or when you talk about something that you're struggling with or when you bring up something that they did that you didn't appreciate how do they react to those things that's when you start to get a picture of whether all those things you saw in the beginning were a beautiful thing because they were just a reflection of all of these things they've continued to be or whether those were actually a sign of something more insidious which is that it was all about them they gave you the greatest day ever and made you feel unbelievable so that they could feel like they were valuable and in

demand. It's why you can never judge. It's why you should never grieve a great date if it doesn't go anywhere. You should never get off of an amazing date and grieve it is most people the more amazing the date was the harder they grieve it was i don't don't get it we had the best time well that's not a reflection of anything some people are really really really great at making you have a good time this is no reflection of whether someone's a good partner or not this is just a reflection of someone's ability to put on a great show and putting on a great show isn't a relationship so if the next time you have an amazing date or an amazing couple of dates with someone that suddenly falls off a cliff and doesn't go anywhere, tell yourself, oh,

they're great at putting on a show. They have a great act. And don't get me wrong. It's a great act and don't get me wrong it's a great act but it's an act it's not real it's not about what we have because if it was about what we have then it would have become something i had this point written down everything is personal to a narcissist you know everything is about them you know those people in life who you you do something and someone says that's totally disrespectful to me right but it had nothing it absolutely had nothing to do with them at all it's the same as someone you know cutting you off in traffic and you get so mad because you think it's like this person just, they disrespected me. Not this person was late. This person's in a rush to go somewhere, which is much more likely by the way, because are we really saying they can have any real intention toward you as a faceless

person in a car that they don't even know. The far greater likelihood is this is about everything except you, but we get mad because it's about me, right? Now, again, this is one of those interesting areas where I would say that there's a narcissism inherent in being human because we're all guilty of this. Every single one of us. We go to the coffee counter and someone's kind of rude. And we go away and go, they were rude to me. That was about me. And now you hate that person. But what's more likely that they had some problem with you?

Or that this person is going through something in their life that's making them this way, or that this person has been living their life this way the entire time. So I think it, you know, there can be a, a trait in a true narcissist that everything is about me. But it's also a trait about us humans in general that we also have a tendency to think everything is about us. Right? I mean, my God, what are, dare I say, star signs that the feeling that somehow it's the, everything I see out there is all about me,

you know, or, or the feeling that the universe somehow is adhering to my goals is listening to my desires. You know, the whole cosmos is arranging itself in order that I can get a promotion. This is a kind of narcissism inherent in human beings. And now we could say that that's just, no, that's more generously.

We could say it's just a desire for meaning or a desire for things to somehow be controllable. A desire for stability, for safety, to know that there is some order in life, that there isn't just chaos, because chaos is too scary. But there is this streak in us as human beings that I'm having an effect on the universe, this solipsistic nature

that perhaps is a little bit present in all of us. Now, if we can bring this back down to earth and relationships, we might say that one of the ugly sides of all of us in a relationship is making everything our partner does about us. That you do this thing and immediately I imagine how it affects me. Whether it's you having a good time, whether it's, you know, me not hearing about from you for an hour, I'm jealous you're doing something. This is about me. All of the ways that we, in an unjustified way, make our partner's life more difficult because we make something about us is our own hint of narcissism that we have to check ourselves on at fairly regular intervals the other thing which we've certainly touched on is this idea that a narcissist fundamentally lacks a kind of, I'm scared to say empathy because I think it's

possible to have a sense of what someone else may be experiencing. But the act of caring about what someone else is experiencing is a different thing altogether. So I may on some level have the emotional intelligence of knowing that the person that I'm dating is suffering, is having a hard time with something. But I'm not able to bring myself to truly care about that or act on that yeah because there is nothing more important to me than my feelings yeah there is nothing more important to me than my favorite i need my favorite whatever that is regardless of how it impacts someone else i may understand how it impacts someone else in my quieter moments. I may acknowledge it,

but ultimately it's not nearly as important to me as me. Yeah, and you think, oh, I know that really hurts them, but I do want to do this anyway. I want to go and get ice cream. I want to go and get ice cream now. So I know they're upset, but I want ice cream. What am I not going to have an affair? What am I not going to do my favorite?

Yeah, I know this hurts. Obviously, I'm going to have the affair, but I know this hurts them. But that's what I want right now. There's a great book called Against Empathy by Paul Bloom. And his argument is that empathy is actually kind of a baser emotion so he has this whole argument where he argues for rational compassion instead but one example he uses is that bullies are actually there people say that psychopaths are bad at empathy and

bullies don't have any empathy but bullies are quite good at empathy. They know exactly the pressure points to make people suffer. And so, yeah, I do think that's an important point, Matt, where it's like, it's not that a narcissist might not experience, they don't have no experience of empathy. They might just put themselves first so much that it doesn't matter. Yeah. Which is really disorienting when you have someone like that in your life because you can have conversations with them where they seem to get it, where they show understanding of how you're feeling. They sometimes can even show contrition

but it doesn't change the fact that they always put themselves first in other words when the rubber hits the road their actions remain the same because regardless of how much they may seem to understand your pain, you're right, you're right, I can't believe I've done that, I'll never do that again, you're right. They cannot change what they do because what they want, their own selfish desires, or for them, avoiding their own pain, avoiding their own discomfort is the most important thing in the world to them. The concept of truly putting somebody else first

is something that is alien to them. But that's a very hard thing because it's one thing to be with someone who doesn't even get it, who just makes you feel crazy. It's one thing to be with someone who doesn't even get it, who just makes you feel crazy. It's another thing to be with someone who seems to get it, but still doesn't do anything about it. And that's a very, very painful thing because you have to then, because with someone like that, you can genuinely connect. You can actually connect with them. You can feel like they understand you.

You can feel like you're both on the same page. But that's where you have to look at, well, is anything actually changing? Is this person actually starting to put me at least on the same level of importance? You know, are they actually taking account of my needs? Are they actually changing? Are they actually doing what they say they're going to do?

And then we have to look at their actions. And if the answer is no, then the fact that they get it ceases to be important. You know, if you keep torturing me and telling me that I get it, I know this is really hard, but you just keep torturing me anyway. Does it matter that you get it? Because my reality is no different.'m still being tortured so at that point you have to say i can't have a relationship with you because you're still doing this thing even though you get it which actually in some ways just makes it that much more egregious doesn't it yeah and that's why you've got to listen to that instinct because people so often just want to analyze like

do you think this person is a narcissist? Why do they do this? What reason would they have? They sound understanding. Eventually, it's like it doesn't really matter. I see people get so lost in the web of trying to crack the code of someone's thoughts and mind read. And they said this though but eventually it's like what's the actual difference to you if it doesn't manifest in any actual different actions if they treat you like they don't care but they make all the right noises about it it makes no difference and this is why we have to be present with the way that our life actually is.

Not how we would like it to be and not what someone has for the 10th time promised us it will be. But it's not actually showing itself to be true. We have to look at our life the way it is. And we have to check in with ourselves and our feelings and say, what is my experience of this? The person I'm with keeps telling me what my experience is, or how good I have it, or that I'm making too much of things, or that I'm crazy, or that they'll change. But what is my actual experience of this? And come to think of it you know a good barometer sometimes can be other people in your life and how they make you feel and hopefully you know if if you have the skill of putting good people in your life. Some people, you know, they make awful mistakes when it comes to

their relationships, right? We're all capable of that. And we also often make awful mistakes when it comes to family, because family are the, you know, friends, that saying friends are the family we choose, right? Well, family are the people we got and the people that a lot of people feel obliged to and feel a lot of guilt around and also have a lot of very complex connections with, historical connections with. But even when we make mistakes in the way that we handle family or our romantic life, which is an area we can uniquely make mistakes in, many of us have put certain other people in our lives that are far better. Certain friendships or acquaintances or people we choose to spend time with

outside of those two very emotionally charged domains. And one of the barometers we can use is do the other people I've chosen in my life make me feel this way? I was reading De profundis uh the letter that oscar wilde wrote when in jail to bozzi yeah yeah for those of you that don't know oscar wilde was a well i'm sure most of you know who oscar wilde was but he was a very very famous writer um academic thinker yeah raconteur famous famous in society who by all accounts was a kind of genius who ended up in a very difficult relationship with a much younger man

um is it lord is it lord alfred douglas or lord henry yeah yeah lord lord alfred um alfred yeah he was known as bozzy but yeah lord alfred bozzy was was uh what Oscar Wilde called him but essentially um as the one of the crimes of the time was uh homosexuality for which there wasn't a word at that point um he was thrown in jail but But when he was in jail, he wrote an impassioned letter to Bozy, who he felt had spent much of their, well, all of their relationship, spending all his money,

caring not for what Oscar Wilde felt or what his experience was, was completely self-involved and just wanted to be seen out and about and lunching and dining fancy dinners and ruined Wilde financially wild financially and also ultimately landed him in jail and there's a moment in this unbelievably beautifully written an impassioned essay or letter that he writes to bosey where he talks about the other young male friends that he hung out with for whom wild felt this incredible affection and he would say he wrote steve i don't know if you remember from the letter but he wrote about his other friend who was around the same age as bosie who he could go to lunch with and come away feeling alive and intellectually stimulated and like they'd had this really productive lunch that wild could go away from and write and be productive

and then in his scorn to bosey he says when when I was with you, I got nothing done. I had no creativity. I, I didn't, you know, he said, I wrote more in the three days I had away from you than in the months that I was with you. And he talks about how wonderful he felt in the company of his other friends. That itself should become a kind of barometer for us. That if we know when we're around certain friends, we come away nourished. And yet when we're around this person that apparently we have so much love for, and this person who we cling on to because apparently they're so important to our lives whenever we leave them we come away depleted and anxious and questioning ourselves and with a

nauseating griping feeling in our stomach that stays with us the rest of the day. That is the reality of the relationship. Not what it could be, not what they're telling you it is. That's what it is. And when we feel truly lost and the narcissistic tendency is to gaslight you, is to make you feel crazy for what you're feeling, for what your needs are, for the ways that you're upset with them. If you're with someone like that, it really can give you a lack of confidence in yourself and in your own opinions you you no longer know who's right who's wrong i don't know i thought you know i came to you because these things were upsetting me and i came away feeling like i'm the problem i don't know what's going on i don't know where i am it's very disorienting but if you can find stability in other people in life who remind you, oh, this is what it is to be with someone or around someone who doesn't make me feel awful for feeling something.

Who doesn't make me feel like I'm being difficult because I have a need. Who doesn't lie. Who does what they say they're going to do. Who makes good on their word. Who shows a genuine interest in me. Who cares about my feelings instead of just caring about how highly I think of them. When I'm around someone like that, I get to return to sanity. When you get that feeling, it's extremely important that you compare that, you contrast that with what you feel around that person who makes you feel so terrible. Because in that lies a truth.

That's where we can start to call home. Now, the danger is that when you find yourself with someone like the person we're talking about, that person will try to separate you from that. And here's the crazy part, Steve. We will help them. We will help them separate us from all of that sanity. Now, why will we help them because we start to feel ashamed and silly anytime we start talking about our relationship to those people who represent sanity

because when we talk about what we're not happy with or what's upsetting us, at first, our friends will come to our aid and they'll say, that's crazy. You shouldn't be putting up with that. That's not okay. But when we return to that person, having told our friends these things, we feel shame because I'm still putting up with this thing. But now I know that it's my fault because my friends have already told me that it's not okay.

So now I'm the one staying. So now I don't want to go back to my friends and tell them all of this stuff again because that's going to make me feel more shame. So instead, I either stop telling them things or I begin distancing myself from the people who remind me of what I'm putting up with. Yeah, we know deep down we're making excuses and we can see how they react when we make up with. Yeah. We know deep down we're making excuses and we can see how they react

when we make those excuses. Yes. And so rather than face the shame of what we're putting up with, because the shame might force us to ask ourselves whether we should stay. And we don't want to ask that because we're too afraid to leave. So rather than do that, we get closer and closer to the poison in our lives. And we separate ourselves from the sanity. We hop in the little boat with them, row away from the island of sanity and thrust ourselves into the foamy black waves of a narcissistic relationship and the really really scary part about that is when we do push off from everything else that reminds us of our sanity we now have nothing to compare this situation to anymore.

We are just alone on that boat with that toxicity, with that poison. And we become more and more divorced from how wrong it is. And that is how people can get into a relationship over time. And something gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And the people who love you think, how on earth is this person I know to be so wonderful putting up with this? How has it got to this point but it's because it's been a long time since you've been exposed to any real sanity in that area since you've been on stable ground and there are a lot of people listening to this right now who will have had the experience of returning to the world after a relationship like that and suddenly being treated normally by somebody

and not knowing how to deal with it. Because it's been such a long time since they've been treated nice. It's been such a long time since they've been treated nice. It's been such a long time since they've been treated with respect, since their feelings or their opinions mattered. And that's the hard part about being single again after dating a narcissist

or someone with those tendencies is that you're having to relearn what it is to be comfortable with good behavior. You're having to relearn what common human decency and respect looks like. And learning to trust that and to go with that. And that is an intensely scary and emotional experience for people. And it's why, you know,

how do people go back to yet another terrible person after they just dated one? We gravitate towards what we know, what not, not what makes us happy. We don't gravitate to what makes us happy. We gravitate towards what we know, what we're comfortable with. Yeah. And that's, well, one of the truths of seeking happiness is seeking happiness is often not comfortable. Because it means seeking the unknown. Because what's known to us is simultaneously what's making us unhappy and what's comfortable. And what we don't know is what's uncomfortable, but what has the potential to make us happy.

Yeah. And in order to do that, we have to start edging our way into what's uncomfortable in order to have a shot at real happiness. I would love if you feel like we've missed anything, all of you out there listening in this episode, if you feel like there's something you want to add to this, or if you have a story, or maybe just you want to tell us how this affected you.

There's one of two ways you can do it. You could either send us an email, podcast at matthewhussey.com, or leave us a comment on iTunes. And it's really nice when you do that because it helps other people find the podcast. If someone sees a recent review from you on the podcast and how it's affected you, and they're trying to decide whether to listen to this podcast and whether it could help them, your comment, your review might be the reason that they choose to give it a listen. And our hope, Stephen and I, and my whole team here, our hope is that more people will listen who can actually be helped by the kind of conversations that are happening here. And if listening to this, you feel that you are ready to step into the uncomfortable unknown that could make you so much happier than what you're doing right now that is comfortable but ultimately destructive

for your life. We have a virtual retreat coming up from March the 18th to the 20th, 2022. And it is a program that is a three-day immersive coaching program that I have worked on for the better part of 15 years. It revolutionizes your confidence. It shows you how to manage your emotions, how to take control future you want and start actually moving towards it and trusting that you can move towards it instead of fearing that you'll self-sabotage again and it shows you how to be much much more at peace in the present while you're moving toward that future. And this month until December the 23rd, we have a very special holiday exclusive on tickets to the virtual retreat, which includes a whole bunch of exciting bonuses from a hundred dollars off

your ticket to a live Q and A with me in an intimate online coaching environment. And that's happening before the virtual retreat in March. And an invitation to Momentum Week, which is a week that I am running in January where for an entire week, we are going to get a handle on the resolutions you have. I'm going to give you my structure for how I run every day of my life. So that if you want a structure for having an amazing day every day, you have my structure and you can take from it what you want.

And every day that week, we're going to be working together for an hour on our goals collectively on Zoom, on a video call. So all of this is happening in Momentum Week. Momentum Week isn't something you can buy. It literally is an invite-only week in January for anyone who grabs a virtual retreat ticket in December, before December 23rd. So to get your ticket for that, go to mhvirtualretreat.com and I will see you over there. That link is mhvirtualretreat.com. Give yourself the greatest holiday gift you could ever give yourself, which is the gift of confidence in yourself and a blueprint for creating the life you want. I want to just finish by reading an email from Cindy that was sent in to podcast at matthewhussey.com.

Hi, Matthew. A few years ago, I listened to one of your podcasts. It changed my life forever. Your podcasts are so encouraging as they focus on personal growth and not only relationships. I'm a very shy person and through your podcast, I was able to step out of my comfort zone and work in China for two years. It was life changing. I'm now back in my home country. Thank you very much, Cindy. Well, thank you so much, Cindy. We so appreciate you sending in that email. Thank you, Cindy. And thank you to all of you listening. Thank you, Stephen, for an amazing contribution today on a subject that i think is gonna

touch a lot of people yeah i think this was super will be super helpful for people and good luck out there if you need to get yourself out of that situation now um yeah we're with you every step of the way friends we love you guys you guys. Have an amazing day. Have an amazing week. Until next time, this is goodbye from me and Stephen. We'll be with you in the next episode of Love Life. Thank you.