Dear Seaturtle,

I’ve been following some of the conversation on this thread, and have read some of the accounts of N, not all of it.

You are now starting to question if you are a narcissist, and worrying about it, and my impression is that no, you are not. You said on page 2 “I feel that same impulse to let people know they have been heard, it also hurts me deeply when I am the cause of someone else being on the “unseen” end of an interaction with me“.

If you care about other people being seen and heard, and also if you care about how other people feel and if they were hurt by your words/actions, then you are definitely not a narcissist.

There is a good youtube video by a psychologist Kati Morton “Are you a narcissist? 8 common traits of narcissism“, answering this question. Towards the end of the video, she gives a list of questions to ask yourself to determine if you have narcissistic traits:

• Are you concerned about how others feel? Would it bother you if you knew that you upset someone?
• Are you quick to apologize when you’ve hurt someone else’s feelings?
• Does too much attention make you nervous and anxious?
• Do you often think that other people aren’t good enough to associate with you?
• Do you often struggle to apologize or think that every disagreement is someone else’s fault?
• Do you struggle to see things from someone else’s perspective?

From what I could gather, you did care about N’s feelings, but he didn’t care much about yours, e.g. when he would be regularly late for dates, or when he would spend hours in the evening talking to your common roommate, while you were waiting for him in bed. Just to mention a few examples.

You talked about being controlling, but it actually referred to not wanting to engage in some dangerous, adrenaline boosting activities. That’s not control – that’s self-protection. You had every right to refuse the things you were scared of doing.

N is an addict, unfortunately, who is numbing his feelings by smoking weed. That’s probably why nothing seems to bother him (his Teflon approach to problems). However, this also means he isn’t sensitive to either his own pain, neither your pain and your legitimate needs (e.g. to not be late, not disregard you when you are waiting for him, etc).

It seems he was blaming you for having those legitimate needs, telling you are too demanding, or too sensitive. In the meanwhile, he was numbing himself and making himself artificially insensitive.

That’s why I believe it’s a good idea you left him, and that you don’t try to go back and “save” him and make him more sensitive, specially until he is addicted. He might have many good qualities, but his emotional numbness and the pain he is causing you with it isn’t something you should live with.