How to detect Narcissists (common partner for AS/Asperger's)

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This thread has such an informative, well thought out first post that I'm actually going to take time to fully process it before saying anything.

Some of this sounds sadly familiar with a few people I have met.

A family member and a neighbour comes to mind.

I tend to ignore it now, as I know when feelings are fake.

Most of those describe my first husband. I certainly knew there was something wrong with him, and learned for myself that he was a dangerous person (I probably haven't said five sentences to him since I left seven years ago - best decision I ever made) but I didn't know what it was. Too bad he still successfully manipulates most of the people around him.

I have an easier way to detect narcissists:

Anyone who gives themselves any praise or draws attention to themselves without any real cause.

I had a 'friend' who was a narcisst, not that hardcore a one, but one anyway. He was very verbose and would condemn those who weren't 'like him'. OP makes perfect sense. Good post.

[quote="ToadOfSteel"]I have an easier way to detect narcissists:

Anyone who gives themselves any praise or draws attention to themselves without any real cause.[/quote]


That chilled me. Because that was one of the first things that troubled me about my ex.

I have just got over the first week after the relationship ended. He broke up with me for the third time in six weeks just at this time last week. He'd been doing this since the first day we were together - over and over again. The game was: He hurt my feelings. I got upset. He walked out. I made contact and tried to get him back. Obviously this has escalated to the point where it can't go on - our last conversation wasn't calm, but it must be as clear to him as it is to me.

The self-praise, though. The stories he used to tell! or rather, the same few stories, over and over, of how people had praised him, been astonished by his psychic powers, of how wonderfully he'd done jobs, the kindnesses he'd shown people...

As for the "superior to everyone" bit - he tans quite a dark, and he thinks he is part Native American. Well, reasonable - if we weren't living in England. (Native Americans are viewed as sacred and mystical here).

Also he used to make very little eye contact. Now there are surface, co-incidental similarities between autism and NPD, which made me start to think, Maybe he's autistic too. But that was yet another mistake I made.

A few days before we split, I jokingly put my face very close to his while we were in bed. Later, he said, "When you did that, I had the instinct to hit you."

It both heartens and horrifies me to read that so many of us have ad relationships with Narcissists. At least I'm not alone, as an autistic, in this. But it's still horrible. Even if he never hit me (and there were a few accidental things) the danger to us psychologically is immense.

I'll be obsessing about this for a while. Another autistic trait...

I can spot one a mile away now,I was married to one for twenty some odd years.

Why would all the scaremongering attention go to "narcissists" when you've got sociopaths and psychopaths?

Thank you for your fantastic post. I wish I had read it before my last relationship.

I've never known someone enough to think of them as a narcissist, not before or after reading the OP. That was a very informative post.

I do think I knew someone who had BPD, (bi-polar personality disorder.) She did things for attention constantly, it was pretty blatant, and she did put me down a couple times. I suppose she knew how to get under my skin even though she hardly knew me. Hardly anyone I knew liked her, men and women both, she was quite hard to get along with most of the time. She didn't seem to like herself overly much though either. She didn't strike me as an evil person, even if I didn't like her. When I think about it, I feel bad for her. Of course I wasn't in a close personal relationship with her, I only hung around her back in the day because she was a friend of a friend. She's married with kids now, seems much calmer than she was in her teenage years, and I wish her the best.

Since the topic's brought up, I also think I've had a roommate who was a psychopath or sociopath (I still mess those things up.) I have a hard time giving a description of who he was, but it just seemed that he only did things for himself yet he was very good at being friendly and close to people. He wasn't attention-seeking, but he's the only person I've known to actually steal a significant amount of money, (not for a drug addiction or something either.) I don't wish him the best, because best for him would probably be him duping someone out of money.

I guess either of these people may in fact be narcissists instead, but I never formed any sort of meaningful connection with either of them for me to really know.

As to NT's thinking aspies are sociopaths, I've had an aspie or HFA tell me he's a sociopath because of his lack of empathy. And then there's also the difference between cognitive and affective empathy. If you really want NT's to not think of autistics as sociopaths, there needs to be a differentiation of the lack of empathy that a psychopath has compared to the lack of empathy a autistic has, because as it stands 'lack of empathy' is a strong characteristic of both disorders.

As to people confusing narcissists with bi-polar personality disorder, I find it interesting the claim that narcissists aren't happy people either. If you have BPD and you say that you fear abandonment as key, and that you act up out of fear. That's fine, but how do you know how a narcissist is feeling? Because if you cite your emotions as different from theirs, you have to know what theirs are too.