Narcissists: When your partner is cold about your feelings. NO EMPATHY!

Empathy is the ability to identify with someone else’s feelings because we have felt that way ourselves.  It is, “I know the pain of loss because I, myself, have been bereft.”  It differs from sympathy in that one can be sympathetic not having known the feelings.  A nurse is sympathetic to a terminal patient.  She provides care, attention, and comfort, but she does not know what it feels like to be dying.  She does not need to know what that feels like in order to provide that care and comfort.

Narcissists do not feel empathy.

In fact, it is one of the most striking indicators of narcissism.

You cannot argue logic with a narcissist.  They cannot see beyond their own needs and desires.  In many cases, the narcissist’s need and desire is to see those around him downtrodden so that he can bask in his own feeling of superiority.  He will not and cannot respond to emotions.  Your tears will likely anger him.  If you must go head to head with your narcissistic partner, choose your battles wisely.  Lay firm boundaries that you are willing and able to enforce.  Do not expect him to win him over, because he will fight to the death to get his way.

Partners of narcissists often stay in the relationship believing that if they do stay, eventually their partner will “see the light” and will start acting appropriately, or things will go back to the way they had been in the beginning of the relationship, before the narcissist became bored.  One cannot fix a partner, particularly not a narcissist.  For someone to change their behavior, they themselves have to be able to recognize that there is something that needs changing.  

A narcissist will not admit that they are the problem, and so they will not change.  

They cannot change. They will not change.

What does often happen is the opposite.  A negative bond can form between the abuser and his victim wherein the victim begins to equate a lack of abuse as an act of kindness.  This type of behavior can sometimes be referred to as Stockholm Syndrome.  It involves a way of thinking called cognitive dissonance, in which the thinker lies to herself about the facts of the situation in order to settle the conflict that arises in her mind when the reality of a situation doesn’t match the way she wants it to be.  For example, the wife of a narcissist might tell herself that it was okay, and maybe even warranted, that her culinary abilities be insulted by her husband because, after all, she made linguine instead of angel hair, which she knows is his favorite.  .  

A narcissist will also project his own character flaws onto you.  

Another thing he would do is insist that I had lost my grip on reality.  I joke - now that he is long gone and there is no way he can hear me - that he would argue that the sky was green.  He would tell me I was naive and that I had faulty logic.  He would tell me that if I asked ten people on the street who was on the winning side of our argument, they would all choose his side, and anyone who didn’t was obviously as misguided as I was.  And he would argue about everything.  The thing was, I knew the “sky wasn’t green” and I knew people would choose my side every time, but I let him be right because it kept peace, and maybe he saw the sky as green.  Who was I to say he didn’t...

And projection can go both ways.  While our partners are berating us for whatever crime they have perceived we have committed, we are busy making excuses for them, trying to see it from their point of view, sympathizing with their pain, empathizing, always tiptoeing through eggshells devising ways to go around their sensitive areas. 

But it doesn’t matter.  Their whole surface is eggshells, so no matter where you walk, how gingerly you step, you will crack something.

Source:  FirstWivesWorld