Son in the Shadows: "Navigating Life as the Black Sheep of Narcissistic Parents"

Similar to their male counterparts, they are extremely superficial and overbearing, yet they have certain characteristics they want a man to possess. Since they have a vain outlook, they would want a man who can provide for them in every way, a man with status, amongst other things. It is not that other women do not do this; they surely do, albeit these women tend to be more grounded and realistic. However, I have noticed that they still want them to function in a very feminine way. It is a huge contradiction because it is like they want two very different things. But within the context of female narcissists, this makes sense. For instance, they have a very complicated relationship with male figures and authority. This is because a lot of them had a very difficult relationship earlier in life with their father or equivalent and male siblings. In other circumstances, they had a complete lack of this. This explains the paradox. Some female narcissists would have lofty and unrealistic expectations of men to compensate for what they lacked. On the other hand, wanting men to cater to their idea of a ‘man’ due to negative early interactions.

I find that a lot of female narcissists tend to take on a masculine demeanor as a way to dominate men, so having a man or even raising a young boy who has the exact same demeanor would cause huge conflicts. So instead, they would want the men in their lives to yield to them, always agreeable to their whims, and to have their main interactions with them. This is why they become very jealous and paranoid of other women and other outside influences that a romantic partner has. They act similarly to sons by being jealous of friends and their own romantic partners.

But since we’re humans, we adhere to our natural tendencies, so a female narcissist may try to instil feminine traits in men in their lives but also act more condescending and disrespectful to them. The ironic thing is that the same things that female narcissists want are the same things they mock. They would laugh behind a romantic partner’s back or patronize their son. In reality, they despise and are ashamed of a lot of these characteristics in themselves, so they resort to projection.

I can definitely say that male narcissists do the same and for similar reasons to their female counterparts. Stay tuned for the next blog this Friday, where I discuss this.