Aren't all relationships tough? Why We Struggle to Spot Narcissistic Abuse

In celebration of the upcoming holiday, this episode features three of our listeners’ favorites.

Listen in as Tara Blair Ball and I discuss:
1. How narcissistic abuse is different from emotional abuse
2. Why covert narcissists are difficult to spot
3. If it's true that narcissists make good lovers

Listen to the full episodes here:

S2 EP 102: Were you emotionally abused or narcissistically abused? Why the differences matter

S2 EP 107: Are you trapped by a covert narcissist? The top reasons why you're not spotting covert narcissists faster!

S2 EP 99: Are all narcissists sex addicts? What goes wrong with intimacy in the bedroom

References:
Defining Narcissistic Abuse: The Case for Deception as Abuse by Dr. Kristen Milstead

Resources

• ReclaimYou: Dr. Kerry's AI-powered coaching app
• The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources
• First Steps to Leaving: Online self-paced digital course
• Toxic-Free Relationship Club: Live coaching & community support

Follow Dr. Kerry!

• Youtube
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Facebook

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism. 

As an Amazon affiliate, commission is earned from qualifying purchases.

This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or your local emergency number.

Transcript

Kerry: [00:00:00] In celebration of the 4th of July holiday, we're going to be recapping your three favorite episodes, including what is narcissistic abuse and how does it differ from other forms of abuse? How to spot a covert narcissist and what is sex like in a narcissistic relationship? And I'm hoping that you and your family is enjoying a wonderful and safe holiday.

Tara: Kerry, I got a comment actually recently on one of my videos on emotional abuse and It's saying that I was actually describing narcissistic abuse, which was interesting because when I looked at the video, it was not, it was emotional abuse. But I do think it's helpful for us to think about and help our listeners with the difference between the two.

So how would you define the difference? 

Kerry: I see narcissistic abuse as a subtype of psychological or emotional abuse. I'm not for sure I think emotional abuse is different than psychological abuse. I kind of consider them one in the same. I don't know. Do you? 

Tara: I would say different. I mean, absolutely, [00:01:00] psychological abuse can become emotional abuse, but I do see distinct differences between the two.

Kerry: So let's start out as abuse. Then let's talk about what is psychological abuse, emotional abuse, and then narcissistic abuse. Let's do that. What is abuse? 

Tara: Power and control. Okay. I agree with a big umbrella power and control over another person. Okay. And then psychological abuse targeting someone's mental, intellectual, psychological capacity.

So the causing the confusion like gaslighting and then emotional abuse. Targeting someone's emotional landscape 

Kerry: to me, psychologically and emotionally, because we're a whole self, we can't really parse out my thinking life and my thinking self from my emotional self. If there's a coercive control, I think that's another important word to define if there's like making me question my reality, making me question my feelings.

Making me feel like I'm beholden to you. You're affecting me emotionally, but you're also affecting me psychologically. That's why I [00:02:00] guess I don't separate the two. 

Tara: Yeah, I was gonna say the tactics feel and seem different because I mean, gaslighting, you can make someone question their feelings or emotions about a specific thing, right?

But is that questioning emotionally abusive? Yeah, I think 

Kerry: so. You think so? Yeah, because it's still a form of invalidation of self. Yeah, that's true. I think they're interchangeable, but I'm not for sure if everybody would agree with me, but I, I just don't see a huge difference. I mean, to me, the big difference is physical abuse versus psychological or emotional abuse.

That's easy. I touch you or I don't touch you. 

Tara: I guess with psychological versus emotional abuse, I see it as long term versus short term. I guess the way I'll pose this is when someone's gaslighting us, for example, that has a long term impact. It's making you question a whole range of experiences, moments, things like that, that then get touched on later, while emotional abuse can be really short term.

Calling someone names like that can absolutely be a short term thing, but it's still gonna have a huge impact exactly still eroding self-esteem, right? So maybe it's [00:03:00] what it erodes 

Kerry: and that's why I don't separate them because I think it's too much blurring that's going on Yeah, it may be short term, but it's gonna have also long term consequences.

Yeah, it may attack our emotional reaction to something but that's going to affect our sense of self and our perception of life and reality. So I see that as sort of like one in the same, but narcissistic abuse to me is something that's a subcategory of all of that, not physical abuse. There's usually not physical abuse, but it's definitely a subcategory of abuse and definitely a subcategory of psychological and or emotional abuse.

This is how Dr. Milstead in an article with Psych Central defined it. It's the presentation of a person to another person as a good. individual, but as a facade in order to get some gain or benefit. And the public thinks that the person is good and that there's no abuse going on. The key piece is there's a deceptive component, a false presentation of who this person is and what they're about.

Let's just take you and I, for [00:04:00] example, I think that we're friends and that we have this really great business relationship, but I don't know that you're actually attempting to take something from me or steal something from me. And so you're setting up to the world that you're a good person, and I believe that, but it's actually all a deception, all a lie.

In order to gain that asset from me, that to me is narcissistic abuse. Now, I think there are a lot of relationships where the deception is subtle. I think there's a lot of relationships where it's not subtle. Like I want to have all the relationships I want on the side. I don't want you to know about it because I know you would never agree to be in a relationship with me.

And I want this relationship because either you make me look good or you look good on my arm. Or because you really satisfy my ego, or because you bring money to the table that I don't have, or there's something that you have that I don't have that I want from you. So I'm going to keep this secret from you in order to get you into the relationship because you would never agree if you knew.

But I also think there are relationships that are narcissistic abusive that isn't that [00:05:00] clear. It could be a person wants the perception of stability by having the relationship when they actually intend to be very selfish, very competitive, deliberately malicious. So the deception is I want you to think I'm really good and I want to be in on this, but I really don't intend to be that magnanimous here.

I don't intend to be that generous. I'm going to withhold myself from you. But I want you to think that I'm not and I want everybody else to think that I'm not. So I kind of see it as a whole range of level of intensity. 

Tara: So let's say you are chatting with a guy on a dating app and he says he's totally in for marriage, really interested in you, blah, blah, blah.

But then you discover that really he was just wanting sex. Is that narcissistic abuse or is that just deception? 

Kerry: I think it's both. If you wanted a hookup and you said to me, I want a hookup, then I have free ability to consent or not to. I can say, yeah, I'm game for that or no, I'm not. But [00:06:00] why are you telling me you want a long term relationship?

Because you already know I don't want a hookup, but you want to have a hookup. That's a common scenario. I know it is. That's super common. I know that. So 

Tara: there are a lot more narcissistically abusive people. 

Kerry: But are they all narcissists? That's another question, right? I think most of those people are not.

I think they're just being, I would call predatory. They're just saying, Hey, it's the only way I can get somebody to agree. And the supply is short, there's not as many women who are interested in hookups, there are men looking for hookups, so this is the only way I can get what I want. But I don't think most people stop and ask themselves, is this a good thing?

Does this have integrity? Am I taking advantage of someone? Am I harming them? But I think it's happening a lot and I, and I don't mean to be picking on men. I, I think women are doing it too. Absolutely. Absolutely. So what do you think though? Would you call that narcissistic abuse? 

Tara: Oh, I would because like you said there's a con-- wanting for something like expecting and wanting something that they could only get [00:07:00] with that specific con. I think it's also interesting, the point that you brought up from Dr.

Milstead, where everyone around them thinks that the person is good, and that whole setup too, because it's not just deceiving the partner, it is also deceiving and silencing their support community, because that's what happened for me when I was in my narcissistic and abusive relationship, is that everyone around the person just thought I was making it up.

Right. You know, they couldn't believe that he did that. He was such a good person, you know, but it does set up that very unique scenario that I don't think is as prevalent in other abuse situations. Usually that abuser is, other people have seen it, right? They'll say, 

Kerry: Oh, he's a short temper, right? Or Oh, she loses it when things don't go her way, right?

What I almost hear universally from those who are in my membership club is they feel scammed. That's the word they'll say. I feel like I was scammed or I was duped. So I think it's that piece of that bait and switch, the con, that is [00:08:00] very much unique to narcissistic abuse. In fact, I just talked to a guy who realized that his 17 year long marriage has been a con, and very tearful about feeling completely broken about that.

That's what he said. He said, I'm shocked. It's everywhere. Well, now that I can see it. I can see this is happening in lots of relationships. How come I didn't see this before? I think that's the part to me that's wild. So can we jump to what emotional abuse is? This is what I was thinking. Yeah, because I think it's so important.

I definitely agree that there's a lot of people who are emotionally abusive that are not conning anyone. They're just not nice people. 

Tara: Emotional abuse can be name calling, insults, criticism, sarcastic comments, or passive aggressive comments, like these little sort of jabs that are geared towards, you're too crazy, you're stupid, you're an idiot.

It's these jabs that sort of erode our self esteem, our sense of ourselves, our self worth, that it just cripples us. Yeah. 

Kerry: I see emotional abuse as just, instead of making it the person's difficulty with themselves or [00:09:00] their emotions or the situation or the stress, they offload it onto somebody else.

One of the most frustrating relationships, probably even one of the more dangerous, at least from the sense of emotional well being, is having a connection or a relationship with a covert narcissist. I would love to know if you've had experience with that and how did it go? I recently have been thinking back about one of my friendships that I had.

It was a friendship that I had just prior to meeting my narcissistic ex. And as it devolved. It got really bad. I mean, this individual started to become even suicidal, threatening to harm themselves. When I suggested I might relocate to another part of the country, it was just a disaster, meltdown, threats.

Didn't I ever love this person? How could I ever think of doing this to this person? After all this person had done for me, seeing me through my late husband's battle with cancer. I mean, the guilt this person piled on to me was so [00:10:00] enormously high. And this is something I hear that a lot of our listeners reports that they've struggled with and certainly on social media is that covert narcissists seem to be one of the harder groups to identify, but also a really tough group to address and to have a relationship with.

Tara: My experience with my ex was actually a covert narcissist, and I think for me, as someone who had some knowledge of narcissism, not a lot, but some knowledge, I found it the most difficult to label him as such, because he It is not as obvious as a malignant narcissist. Absolutely not. That grandiosity is very private.

You know, my, my ex, for example, would say a lot, but he imagined he'd be walking down the street and get discovered. And, you know, be in movies and TV because he was discovered, but that was private. That was only shared with me. So that sense that the grandiosity, all of the other traits of a [00:11:00] narcissist, he absolutely have, but it was so much more quiet and it was only shared in the relationship with me.

And because it was only shared with a relationship with me, I didn't connect that dot. I was only connecting it as his sort of private or secret dreams. It was sort of easy to sort of excuse. I've never thought a lot about feeling superior to other people. That's not a 

Kerry: dream or goal of mine. That's what tricks a lot of people in about covert narcissism, though, is that very difficult to spot.

It doesn't present as the grandiose braggart who is the life of the party. Covert narcissism has all the same traits as other types of narcissists, but it presents almost as an inverse to the grandiose narcissists in the sense that instead of looking for the limelight of how great I am and how special their specialness is usually in their martyrdom, you know, in showing up and serving people and the degree that they sacrifice for other people or in the victim role.

So they're either the biggest [00:12:00] victim or they're the biggest martyr. And those two actually are quite different because the martyr doesn't necessarily isn't the victim. They're just the people who always always doing you could even say they're the perfect people pleaser. They're doing everything for everybody and then they think they should be appreciated.

They think they're special and have the ability to really show up and they don't know why people then don't see it and appreciate it and you're more likely hear all of that the negativity about the attention they deserve to get and they often don't get or they deserve to get. And then they do get it.

Here's an example of how it happened in this relationship. This friend was really showing up in an amazing way during my late husband's battle with cancer, during all of his hospital stays and his treatments and stuff, and she'd been talking to other people about it, particularly at a religious organization that we were both associated with, and they decided they wanted to do a spotlight

on the situation. You would think they would spotlight my late husband's battle, his cancer struggle, as well as maybe what it's like for me and the family. What they spotlighted was the way she [00:13:00]was the perfect friend for me. So here they did this thing that they then presented at church about how great her service was.

At the time it felt so jarring because my life had been consumed with the care of my late husband, and she had really no insight into what it was like on a day to day basis for me and what my family was suffering and the loss we were about ready to experience. And she's getting all the glory while I'm about ready to go through the most, one of the most devastating experiences of my life.

And if anybody who'd been like laying themselves out was certainly was me and my family. Yeah, she was there sometimes, but she couldn't be there all the time. She wasn't there for the really horrible hard things that I was keeping kind of private because those are things that you just don't let other people in.

It's too personal. I was thinking of leaving the area after I was widowed. She said, after all I done for you, that's one of the things she loved to repeat. I can't believe you do this to me after all things I've done for you. I'm thinking, what do you mean? I never asked you to do any of that. I thought that was a gift to me, [00:14:00] not an obligation.

So you'll notice that you'll notice that things are transactional. Just like they're transactional with the more grandiose or more overt narcissist. It's just the biggest victim or the biggest martyr. But they have all the other things. You know, they're very envious. They're very controlling. But the other big difference between them is the other types tend to be overtly aggressive.

This group tends to be really passive aggressive. So they'll tend to, like, get you on the back side, like, withhold things or threaten to pull the relationship back if you don't quite show up right. But they critique you, they're defensive, all the things that you typically expect to see you see. But what really made it hard for me to spot this individual was, and this is a thing I hear a lot, is that they seem highly empathic.

In fact, I think sometimes people, and I don't mean to step on anyone's toes, but, when people start to brag that they're a super empath, I get a little edgy because everybody is special in their own right. There's nobody like who has superpowers. So when I start to hear somebody like elevate themselves like that, I get a little uncomfortable.

Tara: I think the big thing to point [00:15:00] out just with your specific story is the action of choice. You didn't have a choice in the fact that that's what your husband was suffering and how your family had to respond to it. You didn't have a choice. You know, if you're a good, kind human, you're going to step up and take care of your loved one who's struggling, and you're going to take care of the family who's struggling, yet this person had no skin in the game, and they're going over and beyond, and then they're also wanting something in return, that obligation, the duty, the strings attached.

With my narcissistic ex, it was a little different in that, yes, there was a passive aggressiveness, definitely overt aggression. But again, it was all behind closed doors. What I saw a lot was always, he was very much a wallflower. Like a lot of people would sort of think he was mysterious or sort of apply these positive good traits to him because he just really wouldn't speak up.

They just always would say, Oh, he's such a nice guy. He's such a blah, blah, blah. But really that was all sort of part [00:16:00] of his facade is that if he just didn't say anything, then they, they could just assume whatever they wanted about him. In private, he absolutely believed that he was better than other people, would spend a lot of time judging these other people.

He often told me in our relationship together that he was better looking than me. He would say that often, and he would say it was a joke, but it really impacted my self esteem in that relationship, that when I finally did leave that relationship and realized that I was significantly better looking than him, like, I remember the first time my divorce attorney saw him, he was like, That's her.

That's him, but it was those moments that that level of cognitive dissonance that I had had in that relationship and how poor my self esteem had gotten is that I couldn't see myself realistically because I had been trying to see myself through his eyes and through his eyes, no one was as great as he was.

I think that's 

Kerry: why people struggle so hard is because we get in so far with this individual that we're very [00:17:00] immersed with them. We're definitely trauma bonded to them. And then we're surprised when we discover there's these very unhealthy components to it. I think that's what makes it hard for people.

The victim person is the whiner, doused in self pity. Nothing ever goes right. They one up you. If you're sick, they're sicker. The biggest martyr is more of a positive personality, in the sense they're not like a sad sack Eeyore type. But on the other hand, they're always the one who's giving the most, and doing the most, and sacrificing the most.

And they're gonna always win in that category.

If I get one more review that's negative, that claims the reason I stayed in the relationship was because of all the fantastic sex that I was having, I think I'll scream. Is that a common myth that you hear that sex with a narcissist because of the love bombing is fantastic? Let's break this down today.

I know this is a topic that I have not talked about and I don't know many [00:18:00] people who do. So I thought maybe we might be brave and leap in here. 

Tara: I've had multiple clients, multiple friends even, who are like, The sex was so good in the beginning and now it's not so great and they want to get back to there or they want to stay or take their ex back because the sex was so good at some point.

And usually that some point was always in the very beginning when that person was also so kind and respectful and loving. All of the qualities or traits that sort of dropped off when the relationship turned. Not healthy, pretty abusive. 

Kerry: Did you see a change in your relationship? 

Tara: That was not a thing in my unhealthy relationship.

It is a thing that I would see in some dating relationships. I dated someone shortly after my divorce. There was a really intense push to have sex really early before I was comfortable. And it was very intense, very pointed, like we were having dinner at his house and he was like, my bed's right there over and over again, [00:19:00] this like pushy pressuring, which at the time I really didn't see as as a red flag, even though I'm very aware of it now, but I just wasn't, I was in a pretty vulnerable place and just thought it was kind of cute, which is sickening to think about now, but that push to sexual intimacy too early to the fact that it was, it was very pushy, coercive, that kind of thing.

Yeah. Was a big red flag and in that relationship that sex piece was sort of held over my head like We have such good sex. You said we had such good sex. Why would you want to leave that kind of thing? 

Kerry: So I'm going to like, this is stuff that I never shared out loud. Probably anywhere. The sex was never good.

The sex was always bad and it was coercive as well. And it happened way too fast. And the first time was good. It kind of featured his best ability to show up sexually because he didn't really like have to show up. If he had to, like, fully show up, he wouldn't have been able to, and I didn't know that, but it was coercive, and it, I was in a lot of conflict with myself, and it, it felt [00:20:00] dangerous to me, and when it happened on that first date, it felt really dangerous, because it wasn't something that I wanted.

In fact, I didn't want to be in his hotel room. I wanted to be waiting down in the lobby. He even pushed that, for me to come wait for him to finish packing in this hotel room, and then he pushed sex onto me, and, you know, I went along with it, but, Do I think that narcissistic or other pathological personalities could be good at sex?

Absolutely. But I think sex is used as a weapon, certainly as a tool in these toxic relationships. And I think that it's such a vulnerable place for so many of us that we find it difficult to share with the world what happens in the inside of these relationships, how messed up this area In our relationship is the good news was I had 31 years of a good marriage, decent marriage, and sex was good and was normal.

It was a give and take. It was a safe space for the two of us to be. And we were vulnerable in that space. And I had that history. And I think that helped me to know that something was really [00:21:00]wrong. In the second relationship, because the sex was so odd, it was really odd. 

Tara: The sex in my first marriage, it was never good.

It never felt fulfilling. It never felt satisfying. It was really shame based. That was something that I remember from the very beginning. But I, in that relationship, waited a while to have sex. And I had already developed feelings, and I felt by that point that it didn't matter to me as much that the sex wasn't a satisfying place.

I thought that was something that we could both work to improve in the relationship, but the sex remained very shame based, and I definitely, experience it as a tool of control. Like if I did something wrong, sex would be withheld. Sex was not very connective. I heard a lot of comments that were very judgmental about my body.

There was judgment if I was too wet, things like that, that made it this very fraught experience. I always thought it would change though. [00:22:00] I'm like, we'll come together. This will be a good experience for us as a couple. We can learn, we can grow, we can experiment. But it was never allowed to be that way. It really was just used as, I felt, like a tool of control in that relationship, especially at the end.

Kerry: When you say shame based, what do you mean? Can you kind of unpack that a little bit? 

Tara: There was definitely a lot of discomfort. It was not allowed for us to talk about or discuss. I was met with silence or stonewalling if I tried to bring up issues about our sex life or things I wanted to try or experience.

If there were issues in the bedroom, which there were often, like erectile dysfunction, issues like that, it was not to be anything that we were allowed to talk about or discuss. It wasn't okay, and yet we couldn't admit or talk about why it wasn't okay or come to solutions. We're supposed to pretend that there weren't problems and definitely not call them problems.

Kerry: Yeah, you're making another really good point. Here's another thing that I have not ever said out [00:23:00] loud, but I'm going to go ahead and say it here, is that he had a sadistic nature, and that part of his sadism was showing up sexually. So that sex hurt. He made sure sex hurt. Every time he made sure sex hurt.

And I think that a lot of us don't want to say, you know what, I think my partner's doing this on purpose. If it happens every single time, and if he even said, you know, when that happens, that hurts. And then it continues to happen. There's something else going on here, but I wasn't making this person being hurtful.

That's not my responsibility. My responsibility was to see that and to protect myself better. But if we can't see it, we can't take steps to protect ourselves better. And yeah, it probably would have forced me into this position of, Okay, now what I'm going to do, Kerry, you're owning the fact that this person is hurting you.

That's not good. So, where is that going to take you? Yeah, probably early on, I wasn't ready to have that conversation, but I think it's an important conversation to be having.

Tara: I agree. 

Kerry: Dr. David Schnarch wrote the book, The Passionate Marriage, and he uses sex [00:24:00] and intimacy as a way to examine what's happening psychologically, interpersonally between couples.

It's a perfect metaphor. It's a perfect breeding ground for whatever's going on there. You're also having problems in the same way, but it's in a different way, but with the same issues in the other parts of your arena. If you're not talking in the bedroom, you're not talking in your relationship. If you're not showing up and mutually blessing each other, pleasuring each other, knowing how to benefit each other there, you're not doing it elsewhere either.

It's just a perfect mirror. For what's happening in the relationship because sex is something that narcissistic people introduce super early as a way to bond, but then it also just becomes fraught with all their difficulties because they have lots of difficulties. That means we're going to have a lot of difficulties in this arena, and I just think it's something we should be more open about.

We shouldn't be so much fear or shame or hesitation. I guess I would hope anybody listening today is get outside of the picture. And look in so that you can ask yourself these critical questions because you may [00:25:00] be being injured in ways that you haven't fully admitted that you're being injured.

I certainly was being injured in that relationship that I couldn't look at head on because I was too ashamed. Yet, because I was involved, I somehow thought that I was responsible. Well that's a wrap for this week's episode. Are you following me on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube? Find me at Kerry McAvoy, PhD and whether you're in consider leaving or have left a narcissistic relationship Find community support at my toxic free relationship club You can learn about this resource as well as others at kerrymcavoyphd.com and I'll see you back here next week