It seems that the dark triad traits are now on the rise in people today: extreme manipulation known as Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sociopathy, and narcissism. Depending on how close you are to one of these types and duration, the negative aftermath can range from a mild bump in the road to life altering psychological trauma. I was once close friends with a narcissist for 6 years when I was just starting adult life and was ghosted out of the blue at its end. At the time, it felt very strange and confusing, and it left a hole in me. Now, I haven’t seen nor heard from the person in 3 years; I attempted to contact them and got no answer of course. I guess I’m not longer his narcissistic supply. And actually, I’ve regretted all those times spent with him entirely. If I could have gone back in time, knowing what I know now, I never would have entertained him at all. It was strange because I’ve been able to tell when other people have been narcissists, but for some reason wasn’t able to see he was, even though in hindsight, it was obvious. Multiple parts of his behavior indicated he had multiple slivers of narcissism in his personality.

4 types of narcissists

Different narcissist studies show that there could be anywhere from 4 to 14 types of narcissists. The 4 main types of narcissism include:

Grandiose – bravado type, likes to be the center of attention, aggressive, dominant, extreme sense of self-importance.

Vulnerable – emotional dumpers, often have victim attitudes, jealous of others, angry at the world, failure to launch types.

Communal – the virtue signaler. They like to disguise themselves as a knight in shining armor saving others or doing good deeds believing they are the only ones who can make significant positive changes, and enjoy the accolades of status and attention associated with the good deeds.

Malignant – manipulative, malicious, fake charm, intelligent, exploitative, coercive, control freak. This narcissist is the closet to a psychopath.

In this case, he turned out to be a little bit vulnerable, some malignant, a lot of grandiose, and mostly communal.

The clues of him being a narcissist

To put some famous comparable into place, he resembled closely Harvey Dent from Batman, the Dark Knight. If you’re a follower of anime, to a lesser extent he also represented, Griffith, the main antagonist from Berserk. On the outside, he seemed to be the perfect person. Motivated, smart, intelligent, witty, charismatic, charming, able to win a crowd over, natural leader, center of attention, audacious, confident, helping others out, good physical features. Many people thought he was going to be one of the more successful people in his life, as he had no trouble getting scholarships, jobs, interviews, or dates with various types of women. Naturally I also thought this too in my younger gullible easily impressionable years. Despite everyone’s attempts to presenting their best foot forward, over time everything falls through the cracks and you get to understand the people around you, for better or worse. In hindsight though, in getting to know people deeper over a longer period of time, many clues beneath the surface were not nearly as glamorous:

-he did not extend as much effort in the relationship than me; I reached out way more than he did. You could say it was closing in on a one-sided relationship. Not quite that, but close. Even when he would reach out by phone or to eat in person, he would always speak about himself completely first and then “listen” in response. Even when responding to what I was saying was monkey see, monkey do. He would just say back to me what I said, or say “uh huh”, “yeah”. It never felt as though he was actually listening. If I brought something up again after mentioning it a few weeks or definitely a few months ago, often times he’d be thinking he heard it for the first time, despite me bringing it up if not once, twice or even three times. Now I know why women are always so frustrated with men. It’s like talking to a wall pretending to listen out of obligation and appearances.

-birthdays were always gigantic celebrations and never low key; he always needed the spotlight on him. If the spotlight was on him, his behavior was the best of anyone I’ve ever seen. If the spotlight wasn’t on him, he would become disinterested, inattentive, spacing out, zoning out. One birthday even included him printing out a quiz with questions about himself for everyone with the winner receiving a “mystery” prize from him. This included questions such as: what the make and model of his car was, how many dates had he gone on, where his last vacation was, what his new upcoming job was, etc. This was the grandiose narcissist side.

-to fulfill his communal narcissist side, he would volunteer at the homeless shelter, volunteer at the church he went to, donate, and give gifts to people on their birthdays, including mine. The reason I know this is he was always very public about the things he did for others, whether mentioning it in person or on social media. I did notice that when he had given gifts, he would complain when people didn’t have an enthusiastic response to his gift. Interestingly enough, when myself and others gave him well thought gifts for his birthday, he seemed to have no response at all.

-virtue signalling on social media: although he did not frequently post on social media, the times he posted always made himself seem like the good guy, the righteous guy, the one who was right and a champion of justice. The posts were always embroiled in some kind of controversy or drama too.

-exaggerated sense of self importance; he always made himself seem really busy and intentionally would mention it, both complaining about it but also seeming happy at the same time. He also did not seem to consider and would reject the possibility of doing less as he “liked being on the go”. He was the type of person would try and get 5 things done in one day even though he knew there was only enough time for 4.

-flexing his engineering degrees iron ring wherever he went. He also made sure to talk about it wherever possible. Imagine someone who has graduated for more than 10 years and still talking about his degree that he took from 10 years ago. That’s the same as the person who was popular and the high school jock who now has nothing going on his life and has to bring up the only time, he did well in life all the time.

-the friends he had were a combination of flying monkeys or other narcissists. Those flying monkeys were people that are enablers to the extreme, always said yes. I don’t really know if they were friends or just followers of a powerful leader, doing so out of insecurity.

-multiple people who knew him commented on the fact that he had no ability to be monogamous and would struggle with monogamy his whole life. I didn’t think too much of this at first as I knew the psychology that no person is naturally monogamous. But it gets strange when you consider that some of the people who made this comment was both of his parents. That’s really weird. When multiple unrelated people in different domains who you have known for a while start to say the same thing about you, typically some truth is evident. This would make sense as a narcissist is always needing a constant source of narcissistic supply, so monogamy would not be ideal for that.

-he really felt beyond confident in his own abilities. This confidence turned out to be misplaced delusion. This ranged from:

starting a business with no prior experience: the statistics say that for non-ventured backed businesses, 9 out of 10 will fail after 10 years time. With less experience, the less likely someone is able to succeed. The part that gets me isn’t starting a business with no experience, but the outrageous overconfidence that he had with it. I’d wager that the majority of people would not have that sense of confidence with no experience at all. In my line of work, I’ve been able to meet a lot of leaders at the top of the corporate hierarchy; none of them have exuded this same level of confidence. Hence the description of overconfidence. I guess Dunning Kruger was happening to the extreme here, where stupid people think they are smart and smart people know they are not that smart.

partnering with someone in business who he knew for two months as a friend from church, claiming they had great chemistry and were very similar: most successful business people say to not do business with family or friends, and to only partner with someone in business that you’ve known for a long time that you have opposing strengths to compliment each other. One should be selecting a business partner based on business skill, not whether you like them or not.

doing home renovations on 3 properties at the same time despite having never done it at all. This also included paying a contractor 100k ahead of time to do said renovations without knowing who they were. Apparently, all it took was a couple of compliments “you are so smart and ambitious for your age group” and out came the 100k. This led to having the money being taken and scammed with no work done at all; the contractor ended up taking the money and going on vacation in the Caribbeans.

going off very high professional level ski jumps while having no prior training doing those. These are the jumps that you see the professionals go off of during competitions and the Olympics. I’ve been a semi regular black diamond skier all my life, and I’ve never attempted and will never attempt that kind of a jump. Any improper landing on that is at minimum going to break bone(s).

How are narcissists formed

The research seems to imply narcissists are formed from one of two ways: a very bad childhood or overly spoiled/”good” childhood. As dependent children we take on patterns of behavior in order to ensure our survival in the environment we grew up with, both the good and the bad. A bad childhood with no attention, emotion, care or consideration given can lead one to become narcissistic to try and overcompensate for the insecurity and lack of love. On the other hand, a childhood where one is pedestalized by the parents can lead to narcissism, with the child believing they are better than everyone and thus entitled to everything. This was what made me not suspect or realize he was a narcissist, as he had that good childhood. What I didn’t realize was he was spoiled beyond belief, always given positive reinforcement and never once being criticized or called out for any negative behavior. If I grew up that way, I would end up thinking I’m destined to be the next big thing too.

Why people are attracted to narcissists

There are a lot of different reasons why people are attracted to narcissists. For me, these included:

-lack of confidence; I didn’t exactly grow up with a super positive family environment; positive reinforcement wasn’t a thing in the household home. This tends to lead to being attracted to those who don’t provide that positivity to you, seeking what is familiar instead of what is healthy.

-self-preservation techniques learned during childhood; I had learned to develop a sense of empathy via love through service for others, which is exactly what a narcissist is looking for.

-lack of purpose: when you see someone inspired and so motivated, I end up being curious as to why they are that way, given the nihilistic age we live in. That drove me towards a narcissist, to try and develop that sense of drive too.

-similar goals: being inspired in greed to become rich as so often strived for by this society, and having peers with a similar mindset certainly helped to establish commonality.

The aftermath of a narcissist leaving your life

After being ghosted, I put the pieces of the puzzle together as to why that occurred. I had reached the end life of usefulness as his narcissistic, so he had moved on to other sources. I had gotten much better at things, in fact far better than he had, and he could not even hide his envy. For instance, I had gotten a new job with a substantial pay raise, and all he said was “oh ok”. He had sacrificed his health for money and had gotten some high blood pressure issues over the years. When he asked my health state and I said I basically had no issues, his response was “oh, I’m disappointed to hear that”. When I asked why, he said “I thought you were going to have health issues too”. Wouldn’t a real friend be happy to hear you have no health issues?  We liked to discuss various public stock market equities of various companies during our friendship. As I got older, the Dunning Kruger effect left me and I started to realize I am not as smart as I thought I was. Hence, instead of having an opinion on every stock, I started saying to his stock suggestions more and more “I don’t know”. This also applied to dating too, as I realized how little of human nature and female nature that I actually knew. He seemed to get angry at this, saying I was withholding information intentionally. I tried to explain that I kept saying I don’t know more and more because I literally did not feel qualified to have an educated opinion anymore.

I ended up self-reflecting on myself on how I ended up being close friends with a narcissist, and also started reading into psychology into the world of personality disorders that I had never cared about or even considered prior to this experience.

Now when I meet new people, it’s almost like the anger toward narcissists never disappeared, but instead resurfaces when I meet people who seem or behave as narcissists. In a way, the friendship was a blessing in disguise as I seem to react with anger to new narcissists, each and every time. Unconfident people see narcissists as confident. Confident people see narcissists as unconfident. I guess I just see fake overconfidence on display now and it annoys me to see someone pretending to be something they are not.

I pray to those who think or are currently having narcissistic friendships or romantic relationships to get themselves out of those. You can enjoy narcissists from a distance, just not when you are close to them.