Narcissists are capable of terrible things. They can lie, cheat, be financially abusive, emotionally abusive, controlling, and more. And make no mistake, it’s intentional.
It’s their world and everyone else is disrupting it.
But there’s a confusing element to narcissism. It’s one of the reasons we feel crazy once we attach ourselves to them. It is nearly impossible to conceive, or believe but here it is…
The narcissist does not believe they’re lying.
It’s shocking but true.
Especially when their behavior is so deliberate.
The cruelty, control, and manipulation are well orchestrated. The narcissist knows what they are doing. However, in their worldview, they are not lying.
My husband’s behavior was calculated.
He intentionally hid money, and became financially abusive. He spent years siphoning money from our business. He did this while coming home each night to me.
The woman lying next to him in bed trying desperately to save her marriage. The same woman who had told him she felt lonely being married to him.
And thus, might leave him.
I was shocked.
A man I thought was honest, and law-abiding was capable of tremendous deceit. He was unscrupulous. It was hard to wrap my head around.
He knew what he was doing. This wasn’t a temporary lapse in judgment. He’d been doing it for years, and became worse throughout the divorce process.
It was nearly impossible for me to believe he wasn’t lying to me.
In the mind of a narcissist, he was not.
He didn’t believe he was taking, or withholding money, nor being emotionally abusive withholding food, school supplies, or other monies.
In the world of a narcissist, I’d wronged him.
I’d chosen to leave him. He would go to any lengths to protect his assets. He would prove what would happen when I didn’t have access to what belonged to him.
A narcissist has intense self-protective instincts.
They’re so intense, to a narcissist they justify their means.
A narcissist will convince themselves they’re doing the right thing.
For themselves, of course.
What’s most frightening is the narcissist truly believes this.
It’s a part of the personality disorder. A narcissist convinces themselves they were not only wronged…but the one they’re retaliating against is the ungrateful, and difficult one
In short, we were the problem.
In their own warped perception…a narcissist can never be the problem.
Hence, as difficult as it might be to comprehend…
A narcissist does not believe they’re lying.
Regardless of the bad behavior, a narcissist may have chosen.
A narcissist who has an affair doesn’t think they’re lying, or cheating. They believe they’ve been pushed to the brink by their spouse. They believe they had no other choice. Who could live with, and tolerate this individual? The narcissist is the victim.
My children called my husband out during his badly behaving drinking years.
I’ll never forget his response.
“Boys, I know I’m behaving badly but your mother drives me to it,” he said.
We were in marriage counseling, we’d learned about narcissism.
We’d received my husband’s diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. I still couldn’t comprehend all of the disturbing intricacies. I ping-ponged between the pretty person, and the abuser.
A land of emotional confusion.
My husband ‘honestly’ and I use this word intentionally, believed I was responsible for his drinking, and bad behavior. Even worse, he told them he couldn’t help it.
He wasn’t going to stop.
A narcissist wholeheartedly believes their own truth.
Therefore, those who know them will believe it as well.
They will believe a narcissist because the narcissist is convincing. And the reason they are convincing is they don’t believe they are lying. They believe what they are saying.
One almost has to read these words more than once, to take them in.
It’s that troubling for anyone who has experienced this disorder. It’s again, one of the many reasons we feel crazy by allowing ourselves to be sucked into the narcissistic hemisphere.
In reality, the ‘truth’ (again I use this word intentionally), lies in the disorder itself.
To a healthy individual, these are lies.
We understand this.
We understand right, and wrong. We understand accountability. We understand good versus bad. We understand a world outside of ourselves.
We understand reality.
A narcissist doesn’t live in reality.
A narcissist lives in their ‘own version’ of reality.
Thus, to the unhealthy narcissist, this is not deception. A narcissist will never understand this because their illness prevents them from doing so.
The narcissist…
Does not believe they are lying.
Shocking but true.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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