Dear Suomilaninen:

You’ve been in a “very long term marriage”, and have been separated from your husband in the last four months. You live with your Autistic Spectrum Disordered (ASD) son in Canada. You met a man on an online video game, a man who lives in the U.S., and you are having an online/ long-distance relationship with him. You never met him in person. He is perhaps in his late forties and he lives in the same house with his elderly parents, his mother suffering from dementia, and with two or three siblings. “They are poor”,  you wrote. He is a “vehement Trump supporter” who is “extremely passionate about politics”.

This man told you many, many things, and you doubt the truth of what he told you: “I am having doubts if this is true, or even anything that he says is true… There are a lot of things that don’t add up with his stories. There are many more”.

I will now continue to tell your story without a single thing that he told you:

You feel that you are “too available/ clingy” with him, and that he is losing interest in you.  You told him that you “love him so much”, that you “always wanted a man like him”, and that you will “take care of him”. You have “some serious trust issues” exacerbated by your “constant doubt of him cheating/ playing around… (being) a possible player… (I) doubt his fidelity”. You “confronted him many times”, and you experienced meltdowns with him: “I always seem to be apologizing for my meltdowns and I’m always saying I am going to fix myself”.

You do not trust him and fear that “he may have ulterior motives for being with (you)”. You sent him intimate pictures of yourself and you are afraid that he will use them against you. You told him about your financial situation and you are afraid that he will use that information against you, taking advantage of you financially: “He knows a little too much about my financial situation. I overshare… He knows my financial situation and knows my ex’s and son’s names… I’ve done a background check and found nothing. I’ve become a little paranoid and called the police once to inquire about sexploitation because I’m afraid he may leak the intimate photos etc.”.

He briefly introduced you online, to his mother, to his father, and to his two brothers, and most briefly, to his sister, and you sent them Christmas gifts.

You shared that you “never really had a healthy relationship”, that your husband was an “abusive/ narcissistic husband”, and you asked: “Is he a narcissist? Am I?…I would love to know if I am a narcissist or dating one… Am I narcissistic for sending him these pics despite having trust issues?… Am I crazy? Am I a narcissist?”

And now, some research and my input: casually used, narcissistic people are thought of as people who  exaggerate their achievements, have a deep need for lots of attention and admiration, lack empathy for others, and looks down on others as inferior, but behind their mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem and that’s why they can not tolerate any criticism.

Psychology today. com/ myths about narcissism, reads: “By using the term ‘narcissist,’ we equate the person with the condition. However, psychologists who study both personality and psychopathology urge that we not refer to a person by the condition we think that person might have.. People can have narcissism in different degrees, and they also can have other personality features that counter their narcissistic tendencies… Even though people may meet the criteria for this diagnosis.. they show the symptoms in differing degrees… on a continuum.. clinicians recognize that there are important individual variations”-

– this means that it really doesn’t matter if you label him or yourself or anyone as a narcissist because first, you are not a professional qualified to diagnose anyone with a personality disorder, which is what narcissism is (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). Second, even if 100 people in your life fit the criteria of the diagnosis, you still have 100 different people in your life. So, look at and evaluate people’s specific behaviors without throwing a label at them and identifying them as that label.

If he indeed lies to you a lot, that’s a behavior that makes it impossible to have an honest relationship with him. Do you agree?

anita