My son is having trouble with one of his business partners. He was telling me about his personality, how he acts, how he’s pissed off customers with his nonsense, etc… I thought to myself that the guy sounds just like my father-in-law. And then my son says "he acts just like grandpa! Just like him! Even the tantrums when he doesn’t get his own way! They should start a business together!’
My fathead in law is a textbook narcissist. And he exhibits every symptom to the nth degree. And I do mean textbook. When I first met him back in 1979 I thought I was being set up for a bad joke. Nobody could really be like that, right? Unfortunately, wrong!
I advised my son that the only way to deal with such a person is to not deal with them and cut them out of your life completely. Which is what my wife and I have done with her dad, and it’s what my kid plans to do with this guy: he and his other partner are going to try to buy out the guys share in the business.
But getting back to his comment about my fadda in law and this guy starting a business together. What happens when 2 narcissists have to deal with each other every day, such as in a business partnership? Do they see eye to eye? Do they have contests to see who can be the biggest spoiled 6 year old? or do they each view the other as the biggest asshole they ever met not realizing they’re looking in the mirror?
Hee hee, the narcissist that I know recently had a lengthy visit from a client who is very high-maintenance and talks constantly.
Later, she bitched to me about how he requires SOOOO much attention and wants to suck up her time when she has other stuff to do by going on and on about his minor personal issues and he’s so self-centered etc. etc.----
----and she never got the irony. Not for a second. heh heh heh!
A true narcissist doesn’t pay attention to other people enough to recognize another narcissist. To each of them, the only people he notices are the people who serve his ego, so they pretty much don’t recognize each other.
At the risk of steering this to Cafe Society, isn’t this the premise behind Celebrity Apprentice? I haven’t watched, but from the commercials I’ve seen this seems to be your question in action.
What the two first responders said, I imagine, but hopefully we’ll get responses from one of the local psychology/psychiatry professionals.
I do know that very few things irk my mother more than someone else monopolizing the conversation; I don’t know whether she’s narcissistic, but in Littlebro’s words, “if self-centeredness was gravity she’d be a black hole”.
After pondering my response a little further, I must add that the opposite may also be true. He may recognize the other person’s narcissism, but not his own. I’m wondering whether most narcissists would even think of themselves that way, since to them it would be “normal.”
Not at all. My F.I.L. has no empathy for anyone, and strongly believes it’s the rest of the world that has a problem.
When anyone calls him out on whatever bullshit he’s doing at that time they are automatically “crazy”. To him the world is full of crazy people.
I could give almost 32 years of stories here, but here is the most recent my sister in-law told me: They were having a birthday party for my 3 year old great niece and about a dozen adults were singing happy birthday to her with the candles lit on a cake.
It so infuriated him that the attention was not on him that he stood in the back of the room and began singing some other ridiculous song as loud as he could to try to drown out happy birthday. He was actually jealous of a 3 year old! When someone told him to knock it off he got pissed and left. (Which was a good thing!:))
