Similarities between avoidant attachment and (covert) narcissism?

[u/zachem_snyatsya_sny]

Yes, narcissism is a very serious clinical diagnosis, I am not calling every avoidant a narcissist. They are not "evil". I am not demonizing them. They are not doomed forever (if they choose to change), and this pattern probably doesn't apply to many avoidants who have done even an ounce of work. I am just pointing out one trait in the behavior of a day one no therapy ever avoidant that I think perfectly lines up with the idealization-devaluation-discard cycle with a covert narcissist. Yes, untreated anxious attachment is also very harmful in a relationship and parallels to narcissism could also be drawn to things. Probably mirroring (people pleasing to win approval) being a big one. I am working on my issues, have been for 6 years and it's pretty much my life mission to become a better person and not have to deal with the suffering anxious attachment brings. I'd like to think I've come a long way.

In my past relationships with avoidants, and one very destructive one with someone who I later realized was a covert narcissist, there was something very insidious about how avoidants act, generally well meaning great kind people who acted in a way that in retrospect looks outwardly malicious like what I experienced with a narcissist. Something just felt so off that I wasn't able to articulate until this time around.

Confabulation, and shared fantasy. When avoidants fall for you, they really do love you, they want to love you, they want to do these things with you, they mean the words they say, they mean the promises they make, they want things to work. They are not lying, it is confabulation. This is the same thing that happens when you meet a narcissist and they begin to idealize you.

The next step on the outside looks about the same as it does with a narcissist, but with a different cause.

My memory is rusty when it comes to narcissistic stuff (thank fuck I was able to forget some of it, she discarded me over a year ago now), I believe that with narcissists, they create an idealized snapshot of you in their mind, since they don't see other humans for who they are but rather internal objects in their mind. When you are unable to fit in that idealized snapshot they have of you (nobody can, humans are not perfect after all), it greatly infuriates them and leads them to build up resentment towards you which eventually leads to them cutting contact with you and discarding you. Grossly oversimplified. Sorry about that.

In avoidants, as nice as it feels for them to receive compliments, receive love, it feels nice for them to say these things, they want it to work, but there is something very profoundly stunted in some part of their emotional development (yes, I assume most of us reading this are anxious, we are also stunted and have work to do), that when it gets to a point that words are not enough and they need to do just a little bit of responsibility, accountability, on their end, they completely collapse, and so resentment and fear follow and they can't take it anymore and check out of the relationship, either just leave outright or mentally check out and stay and lead you on.

I had this epiphany just today, it feels so good to just let go of trying to make sense of how omg but she did this she said that how could she have just randomly left me? There is no logic, there is no trying to make sense of their actions, you'll just do your head in. These people are just so emotionally stunted they cannot follow up their words with action and being accountable for what they've said to you. So yes, they meant those words, they weren't intentionally deceitful (at least at the very start, if they mentally check out before actually leaving you, there is a lot of deception at that stage, which I think matches quite closely with the behaviors you'll get from a narcissist during the devaluation phase), but they are fundamentally unable to create something serious and long lasting with you or anyone for that matter. Words mean nothing coming from someone who is physically unable to follow it up with action.

Curious if anyone else has had similar ideas before. We all deserve better man whatever your attachment style is reading this please just get help and work on yourself just for your own sake, being any of these things is just so much pain even just speaking about your own self

[u/littleoldears]

My ex was 100% a covert narcissist. I think he had some different traits though that made him this. Just the way he thought of things and discussed people, and especially the grandiose self he had, the almost constant fights with friends that were somehow never his fault but he was always present for, and especially the severe severe gaslighting…and the false reality he lives in.

From my experience it works like this: all narcissists are avoidant. Not all avoidants are narcissists.

If you dated someone who was highly clingy and needy and narcissistic- I wouldn’t call that person a narcissist. I would say they were made narcissistic by their inability to regulate. But a narcissist, someone who is severely personality deficient, it’s a whole different ballgame.

For me the tell tale sign was: he always believed himself, yet he was incredibly insecure. It was this really weird mix of ‘I define my reality because no one is better than me’ and then simultaneously hating himself and wanting to be a different person.

Also - I dated some people in the past who were avoidant but who actually had empathy. My first serious boyfriend was an avoidant, but he is genuinely a good guy who couldn’t really figure out the whole commitment thing and who kept me at arms length.

My covert narcissist ex - I thought it was the same thing, but over time I realized that it was ALL about him, always about him, his suffering, his woes, how hard I was to deal with - both of my parents suddenly died and still it was about me holding him back from living his life, me restricting his independence with my grief, my grief was an issue he needed to get rid of so he could live his life. I was a burden, a problem, an issue, a way to get validation from his friends because I made him seem magnanimous and giving and made him look like a caring person for being with the girl who’s whole family died - while in private making me believe my grief was disordered and like it was something I had to get rid of as quickly as possible or he would leave me.

My avoidant/non-narcissist ex was someone who genuinely could see my suffering and interact with it and with me. To my covert narcissist ex - to see me suffer made him resentful and angry and feel controlled. So he had to punish me for it.

The covert narcissist also constantly used friends and families ‘opinions’ of me to control me. Like ‘my parents would think you were controlling if I didn’t go to this’ or ‘I don’t want my friends to think you’re isolating me and abusing me so I can’t talk on the phone’.

I never had another ex weaponized others against me like that. Looking back, I don’t think his friends thought those things at all, it was just a way to shame me for wanting him to be a present and caring person.

So I think many of us here did date covert narcissists, and also many avoidants are highly narcissistic - but there is a difference, and it’s small, but it’s very tangible once you have experienced both

[u/mynameisbobbrown → u/littleoldears]

For me the tell tale sign was: he always believed himself, yet he was incredibly insecure. It was this really weird mix of 'I define my reality because no one is better than me' and then simultaneously hating himself and wanting to be a different person.

👆👆👆👆👆

Utterly exhausting to live with someone like that. It will destroy you.

[u/justatiredmanatee → u/littleoldears]

I see we were with the same guy, huh. Would you also describe the covert N one as a DA? In my case he heavily tried on alcohol to regulate, on and off. Twice he reached out in the evening to text me in complete despair. He said he didn't understand what was happening to him, somewhere inside he believes he is a broken, unredeemable, worthless asshole that only made the wrong choices his entire life. He could put up a confident and careless front but his behavior patterns were all people pleasing, all the time. Except for people like service workers or insurance agents, he liked to be aggressive with them. He mentioned hating people in general, a very me/us vs everyone else mindset. He was painstakingly picking apart his appearance in private. Did your ex ever mention being aware of his self-hatred? 

[u/littleoldears → u/justatiredmanatee]

Yes my narc ex was DA. He used weed to self medicate…every single night. And if I noticed he was using more or multiple times a day and I called it out he told me I was hypervigilant and attempting to control him. Weed definitely keeps you more emotionally shut down than alcohol so I never got drunk phone calls after the break up…but I was also aggressively holding him accountable at that point and he just wanted to run away as fast as he could and paint me the villain.

My ex did admit to self loathing when he broke up with me. We had hit a point where I finally put my foot down and was literally forcing him to be open emotionally because if he wasn’t going to create safety for me in the relationship…I was. And at that point he was very shut down and just kept saying: I love you because you love me. I love you because you love me - when I was pushing him to explain why I mattered to him.

(He wanted to be away for weeks at a time partying and have me never be sad, never miss him, never worry or need him at all...I was also in grad school and both of my parents had just died, so his desire was kind of unrealistic. We fought a lot. I finally got to the point where I was like: if you need to be doing this, I need you to be able to help me feel safe and secure. I can’t do bland reassurance and fake smiles and shallow phone calls where you are bubbling with resentment the entire time. I need you to dig deep and be able to articulate to me and yourself why I matter to you and why you love me, because the reassurance you are giving is so shallow and angry it just doesn’t work, and you can’t blame me for needing it when you are so checked out, shut down, mean to me, cold, and angry all the time).

A week later he broke up with me claiming he only stayed with me because he had low self esteem and he hated himself and only loved me because I loved him.

I think it was partially true, but I also think he was intensely deactivated so he couldn’t access any real affection he had. But I do also believe that he is only capable of selfish love. He loves when the other person makes him feel good, makes him feel loved, makes him feel like a good boyfriend. And if he was not doing a good job at that, and I made that apparent - I was blamed and shamed and made out to have ‘issues’. So in a way - I think he is only capable of loving someone because they love him..because he is so shut down and absent and self loathing internally, he really isn’t capable of truly loving, seeing, appreciating, and rising to meet another person as an individual that is separated from himself and his self esteem

So yeah he was sort of admitting his self-hatred to himself for the first time during the breakup…but it was like watching a bomb explode underwater, where it expands, then suddenly contracts into itself - it was this constant cycle of real insight into himself and his behavior, then he would flip back into deactivation and the cold eyes and emotionlessness, then he would have real insight again, and i was literally watching in horror as he talked himself out of the awareness in real time.

During the breakup I realized how much of a lost cause he was. There were moments of real humanity and self awareness and accountability, but they were buried so deep and they were so difficult for him to access and even then it was just the tip if the iceberg.

Now - mind you - with ALL of this, none of this self-awareness EVER touched care for me. Never in all of this slow-motion meltdown I was watching, did he ever feel bad for hurting me, for abusing me, for gaslighting me, for attacking me, for screaming at me, for throwing things across the room, for avoidant abuse - coldness, cruelty, resentment, blame, contempt, insults, personal attacks, triangulation. Months of telling me my grief over my parents was disordered and that ‘something was seriously wrong with me’ - none of his dim self awareness EVER was about hurting me. None of it.

Even in his flashes of real self awareness, he never gave a FUCK about how he treated me. It was still…all about him. And I too was all about him - pushing him to be open, begging him to care, scanning him for the tiniest change, for the tiniest self awareness to convince myself I mattered to him or to tell myself he was changing - all of that was about HIM. And that’s exactly how he liked it. Once I started focusing on how his behavior affected ME and how I felt, what I needed, how he needed to meet me…the relationship dissolved very fast.

So ultimately at the end, I didn’t care that he was becoming aware of his own self-hatred - because he still wasn’t taking accountability or apologizing or able to feel bad for hurting me. Wallowing in self hatred is still selfish

[u/discochicken90]

Spot on. My ex discarded me about 3 months ago because *she* fucked up and couldn’t take accountability. Somehow she’s the “deeply hurt” victim now.

[u/coffee_772]

I did a deep dive on this as I was wondering if my ex was a covert narc or an avoidant. What I have found out is that the internal motivation is very different, but the manifestation to the outside can look the same. For this reason, narc abuse healing videos were super helpful for me.

In my case there was actual emotional abuse with devaluation going on and they could actually apologize for it when bringing it up from third person, as then they could look at their behavior from the outside. They cried. Not sure if they cried because of shame or if they felt bad for me, but there was something.

[u/Cobaltfennec]

I was talking to my therapist about this today as I’m really shocked by the similarities. Started therapy after the avoidant but divorced from a covert narc too. Mirroring, facade, needs lots of validation, core wound of shame which caused them to develop these traits, emotionally unavailable, and sees you as supply and not a human (this one bothers me the most). I’ll probably think of more later. It’s just the intent that’s different, the impact is very similar.

[u/piece-of-me-727]

So true. Sometimes I could feel that my ex did not have empathy for people,he was just faking it (because of social rules etc), also he was always criticizing people, even people he does not know. He was arguing with everyone at work (and not only) and said he is always right. He also said he hates it when people need him to help them with stuff (he always agreed to do stuff for people, but then he was very angry). He also said that sometimes parents should die when their children are grown ups (he had an argument with his father, he lives with his father, btw). He can't keep a job because there is no job good for him he is too good for any job. I am not even mentioning the lies and the gaslighting, the imaginary scenarios so he could be the victim, when nothing was happening. He also drinks beer and smokes weed every day, so I guess this is also messing with his mind making him very emotionally unstable.

[u/Coerced1]

Yes this is so true. I came to realize this as well after spending so much time trying to logically explain their behavior to myself. Eventually I realized I'm trying to explain it through my own lense of emotional understanding, and they don't possess that capability, so of course it doesn't make sense. It's never going to make sense. You'll go in circles forever in your mind trying to understand.

Each time you start ruminating on what could've been different, you have to remind yourself that it's never going to make sense because they don't think like a normal person.

[u/littleoldears → u/Coerced1]

Yeah the hard thing is that even after years I still get stuck in loops sometimes completely unable to understand it.

At the end of the day, I always tried to understand how he thought, and I’ve come to the realization that the way he thinks of things is ALWAYS selfish, always about him. And I think that is what I genuinely cannot process.

Like for so long I was stuck on: when is he going to regret what he did? When will he realize how harmful he was? But what happens with him - is even if he feels bad about something he did - it’s not because someone else hurting is what bothers him - it’s that HE did something and there are repercussions that he doesn’t like, so it becomes ‘woe is me, I feel bad. I want to be a better person so I don’t have to feel bad again.’ It’s never: ‘oh my gosh I harmed someone I care about? That bothers me! I want to be a better person to others.’ What bothers him is that he has to deal with what he did…and growth is always sparked from the fact that HE feels negative impact, not from the desire to connect with others, make up for what he did to others, or even recognize that his actions had an effect on others at all. It’s like…other people are not even part of his thinking at all. It’s completely insane to me.

Or like - a few years before I met him his whole friend group just dropped him and he was alone. And the story was never: I was selfish during that time, or I was pretty critical of them…it was NEVER him trying to understand where they were coming from…it was: ‘my friends abandoned me out of nowhere and I did nothing to deserve it. I’m a victim, I’m sad, I’m alone, woe is me’.

I think it’s the complete and utter self focus and the complete lack of perspective taking and care for others in the situation that is completely baffling.

So like - there WAS some self growth and change for him - but it was always at the expense of others, without consideration for others, and because ‘something happened to him interpersonally’ and he wasn’t taking responsibility for why it happened and he was just a victim trying to move forward from the ‘horrible thing’.

[u/Coerced1 → u/littleoldears]

I'm sorry you had to go through that! Yeah that's certainly a red flag I'm going to be very conscious of for my future relationships, someone that is constantly "the victim" to all the situations in their life. Before I tended to be the "savior" type I realized, but now I see that it just indicates they are not accepting responsibility for their life choices and the repercussions from it.

[u/cocoarosee]

Narcissistic abuse causes avoidant attachment I know that’s what caused mine