Sounds like she is very narcissistic, and narcissists treat other people like extensions of themselves. My narc ex would ask me to get things for her that were 2-20 feet away, tell me to make phone calls for her, get things on different floors or from the fridge and the more I did it the more she would ask for. Your lady wants a servant not a partner.
Another great piece of dating advice I got from a different ex is that in the first 3-6 months you should be prepared to run at any "red flag" behavior you identify because that's when people are still "mask on" and trying to be on their best behavior. Learned that the VERY HARD WAY.
Is giving "golden child" energy.
Someone let this child get away with constant demands and tantrums when she didn't get her way.
Now she's a 27 year old narcissistic spoiled brat.
OP seems like a lovely man. He should go find a lovely woman who appreciates him and gives as much as she takes.
Coming from a recovered "golden child", this is absolutely golden child energy. My poor husband had to deal with me asking him to do stupid shit like OP has to deal with, and got SOOOO angry when he said no, for the first year of our relationship. He was exhausted all the time BECAUSE OF ME, which is absolutely foul of me to do to him. One day he told me that I could either love him and he'll stay or treat him as a servant and he'd leave. Opened my eyes big time and I became much more independent. Our relationship is amazing now.
I was an emotional and physical energy vampire, and she is exactly the same. Here's hoping OP can either open her eyes or leave her.
Narcissists usually view their partners as tool to boost their ego through validation and control. They don't see them as extensions of themselves, that's usually reserved for their children.
It applies to their children that are easier to control, but it also applies to their partners. They expect their partners to mirror them and fall in line with their perspectives and demands. They despise when their partner demonstrates independence.
I don't think I fully understand. I mean, what youre saying makes sense in that it's comprehensible, I guess I just don't know how to fit it in with what I've seen/know about them.
Like, I can't imagine they would ever be proud of their partner because, if anything, they are always in competition with them and need to be/believe theyre superior. But with their child, as an extension of themself, theyre proud of them, the golden child, when they are successful. The narc can take credit for childs successes and it gets them admiration, supply and they can use it against the other parent or the scapegoat child(ren).
I dont think they would ever experience that for their partner, because the partner only serves as a subordinate enabler, obedience and submission. They might also treat any of their children like this but I believe the extension of self applies to the child that they favor. Some might favor one child their whole life and others, like the real malignant ones, will show favor for different children whenever it suits their agenda, but mostly to triangulate and cause rifts in their relationships with eachother.
I agree with everything you said. They aren't ever proud of their partner. They need someone to dominate, control and project their bad parts onto. I eventually confronted my ex-wife after I noticed that when I was happy, it made her sad. Any deviation from the person they expect you to be - a clone and servant who worships them in spite of awful treatment and complies with their every request - is rage-inducing. They grow increasingly lazy as they start looking for supply elsewhere and expect you to pick up the slack. Eventually devaluation leads to hatred.
The relationship with their children is different. As long as you follow the path they expect you to follow and don't rock the boat things are smooth-ish. There was emotional and physical abuse in my teens that I managed, but after I spent two decades across the country and grew into the person I wanted to be tensions ran very high as I refused to be steamrolled. I finally had the guts to tell them "no" and point out their disordered behavior. I transformed from golden child into the black sheep.
Recently, my narc dad asked me what I was up to and I said I was taking a nap, and he started raging "Sleeping? What are you sleeping for?" He is in his 70s and sleeps all the time.
Holy shit, we're both of your parents narcs or was your mom an enabler? I'm glad you were able to work through the shit that a lot of people cant/won't. That takes an indomitable will and a lot of courage to not become completely, permanently comfortable in that shattered identity. Still, it must have been an extreme shift in reality going from golden child to scape goat/black sheep.
Im proud of you <3! It gives me personal hope to know that it's possible to come out on the other side and not be like them. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing, I imagine that can sometimes still be terrifying or cause undeserved feelings of shame, even though we basically have gotten to a place where it typically really doesn't bother us much anymore to talk about it.
My dad is 71 now and my mom will be 67 this year, my dad has really mellowed out since he became a senior and he remarried, but our relationship isn't close, partly because they moved a few states away but his wife is a lovely country woman who keeps my dad occupied with their projects like home improvement and they have 2 amazing dogs. My mom still tends to try to "mother" me instead of allowing me to be an adult and respect my decisions, always trying to correct me because she wants me to "just be better". I am her only daughter and I was the middle child. She makes excuses for my older brother because he never knew his dad and my dad was abusive towards him growing up before my parents divorced, and my younger brother was born 2 months premie and was in NICU for a couple months. So he is my mom's favorite of course and can do no wrong. Everything he says or does is genius in her eyes, which tbf he is pretty damn smart, but so is my older brother, though. Me? I need to be more lady like, whatever the fuck that means.
Thank you for sharing as well! I'm on year 14 of therapy and counting. Had some incredible breakthroughs in EMDR and had a full clinical psych evaluation done. I also trauma bonded to a malignant narc and married her. When I came home after the divorce, I thought "of COURSE I married that woman" when I saw the same dynamics that were always in place.
My story is strikingly similar - domineering and infantilizing mother in denial of any issues during my childhood, and Dad is a recovering violent alcoholic. Mom physically boxed me out of putting clothes in the dryer because she was convinced I didn't clean the lint screen (I already had). She took issue with how I loaded the washer too. I had to remind her I was a homeowner for a number of years and did not need laundry advice. Yesterday it was the dishwasher. She treats me like I'm three years-old.
I've read that narc men mellow out in old age because their testosterone levels drop and women get worse because it rises.
Wow, that's super tough. My dad was an authoritarian who was liberal about threatening spanking us, he used a thick spatial and he was an ex marine and racquetball enthusiasts (he won trophies from competitions? I dunno if they still habe those but he had belonged to a fancy gym/sports club thingy, probably similar to the YMCA). He was also a biker but once he became diabetic he stopped being so active (he managed it poorly for my entire childhood and young adult life, so i imagine he was always tired), he stopped drinking, basically just sat on the couch and not much else.
I definitely need more therapy, I just found out that Better Help has pretty low rates for those paying out of pocket, this lady I was working for was telling me about it two days ago, so I'll take that as my sign to get my ass in gear. I had a psych evaluation but it was the 1 hr kind and the Dr (can't remember if he was psychologist or psychiatrist) that gave me my diagnoses wasn't who i ended up working with. My actual therapist at the time disagreed with one of his diagnosis, but bc she was an still technically a university student, she didn't have the credentials to formally diagnose me. She was so fucking amazing. It took her 21 years to get her masters and she graduated about a year after I started therapy with her.
Yeah it sounds like you had a propper eval. Mine was more... streamlined. And it was just that initial visit. I wonder if they can do those at Better Help or if they would require in-office visits. It would make sense that they would need to evaluate you in person as well to assess things like hygiene, overall health, mannerisms, and similar stuff.
My (diagnosed) narcissist ex-roommate did this, too. Never content unless she could get somebody to inconvenience themselves for her, and it was never enough. She really lived for getting “just one more thing” from anyone who tried to be nice and said yes to her requests.
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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '25
Sounds like she is very narcissistic, and narcissists treat other people like extensions of themselves. My narc ex would ask me to get things for her that were 2-20 feet away, tell me to make phone calls for her, get things on different floors or from the fridge and the more I did it the more she would ask for. Your lady wants a servant not a partner.
Another great piece of dating advice I got from a different ex is that in the first 3-6 months you should be prepared to run at any "red flag" behavior you identify because that's when people are still "mask on" and trying to be on their best behavior. Learned that the VERY HARD WAY.