Having a narcissistic parent impacts us for life, until we do the work of detaching from their internalized harm. The first step is often learning about narcissism, so we can start to not take their behavior personally. Narcissism is all about them, not us.
Narcissistic parents don’t all look the same. They are often arrogant and entitled, and they can also be constantly critical and always in the role of martyr or victim. Narcissists have an inflated understanding of themselves. They believe that they have a unique position in the world, knowing better than everyone else about everything. They tend to be critical, controlling, and manipulative. Notably, narcissists also lack empathy; they can’t see or validate any perspective that differs from theirs. None of this is great for their kids.
In the narcissist’s mind, there is no possibility that they could be wrong, or that a different view could also be valid. Everyone in the narcissist’s orbit must support the narcissist’s worldview or pay the price. The “price” might be being guilted, shamed, corrected, criticized, demeaned, disregarded, ignored, and/or physically abused. A narcissist will not tolerate anything that threatens their perspective.
Children of narcissists learn that they must prioritize the narcissist, not themselves. We learn to focus on the narcissist’s needs, not our own. Because our narcissistic parent never prioritizes our needs (without motive), we learn that our needs don’t matter, and same for our feelings and opinions and beliefs and boundaries. Because we’re always told how wrong we are, we learn that we can’t trust ourselves (but we also can’t trust our parent) and that our acceptability lies in other people’s hands. Understandably, children of narcissists tend to have low self-esteem and self-worth.
The messages we received about ourselves from our narcissistic parent will color how we see ourselves until we learn that those messages were never about us and do the work of unhooking from them. Similarly, the lessons we learned from them about how relationships work will color our relationships until we learn better lessons.
Having a narcissist parent tends to make romantic relationships especially challenging. Here are eight ways our past relationship with our parent can impact our current relationship with our partner:
It’s Hard to Trust Our Partners
Narcissistic parents are not trying to keep their word; they are only trying to be right and be in control. Because they don’t care about being trustworthy, but we naturally want to trust them, we grow up having our trust broken over and over. We eventually learn either that our parent can’t be trusted or that we don’t deserve trust, or both. Because we don’t have much positive experience with trusting important people in our lives, it can take a long time to believe that some people are trustworthy.
Additionally, we often fear our partner will turn out to be like our narcissistic parent. We always feel suspicious, always vigilant for similarities, regardless of who our partner is. When we find a similarity, it immediately feels very threatening and we may have an automatic reaction based on our parent, not our partner.
We Fear Abandonment
The narcissistic parent is never as attached to us as we are to them. Their love or attachment to us is dependent upon our performance or their mood; it is conditional. Therefore, there is always the possibility that it will go away. We are used to being disregarded if conditions aren’t perfect.
Our parent has no problem leaving us, emotionally or physically. Even if they don’t physically leave us, they are emotionally neglectful, not seeing or validating their children’s experiences. Narcissists will do what serves them best, regardless of the impact on us (they don’t generally notice their impact on us).
When we fear or expect to be left, we tend to resist any true commitment, sometimes even doing things to “deserve” to be left. We act like we don’t believe in someone sticking around because our parent has taught us that no one will love us unconditionally forever.
Intimacy is Challenging
Being intimate – physically, emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually – means openly sharing your authentic selves. Being willing to be seen. Children of narcissists weren’t allowed to be our authentic selves growing up; we weren’t allowed to be open about how we felt or what we needed. We needed to be who our parent demanded us to be.
Because our parent wasn’t interested in our authentic selves, we learned that our authentic selves didn’t matter. Additionally, our parent’s criticisms and controlling nature makes it very scary to believe that we could show our authentic selves and be loved and accepted, not judged. We tend to people please instead; it feels safer and very familiar. Unfortunately, people pleasing is an obstacle to intimacy.
Can’t Set Appropriate Boundaries
We’ve learned to put our parent’s happiness first, always. That means we didn’t assert our needs or our boundaries. Or if we did, they got ignored as invalid or irrelevant. Narcissists don’t allow us to have any space that they don’t have control over.
Therefore, we now have to do the work to know that we are allowed to have any boundary that makes us feel safe and respected. We will need to learn how to assert our boundaries; we don’t have experience being listened to, so we don’t generally speak our truth. If we don’t do this work, we are at risk for choosing partners who are comfortable ignoring our boundaries. We are attracted to what is familiar.
Difficulty with Communication
As I’ve established, children of narcissists have little understanding of our own needs because we’ve been trained to focus so hard on our parent’s needs. If we don’t know what we need, what we like, what we don’t like and don’t allow (back to boundaries), we will not be able to communicate the important stuff. And even if we know about ourselves, we may not be willing to communicate about any of it because we’ve been shown so many times that nothing about us matters.
We have been trained to not be assertive, about anything. Narcissists do not invite (and often invalidate) attempts at communication; they are just not interested in what we have to say. As adults, we don’t know how to say what we need, and we don’t expect to be heard. Most often we don’t say anything, but if we do, we tend to say it defensively.
The Role of Guilt and Shame
We are primed to feel guilty and ashamed. We are used to being criticized and being told we are wrong; this is a narcissist’s bread and butter. They need to be right, so they will guilt trip us, tell us how we constantly need to be better or need to be perfect, or tell us straight up that we are wrong. There are thousands of explicit and implicit ways that a narcissist will make a kid feel ashamed and guilty.
This leads to low self-esteem, self-acceptance, and self-worth. Our parents didn’t have a high view of us or respect us, so we don’t either. That often influences the type of people we bring into our lives. We are more likely to choose critical, demeaning and/or abusive partners because we are so ready to believe that we deserve it, are at fault, are wrong, or don’t know what the smart people know.
Being Easily Bored
If you have a healthy relationship where you don’t need to actively seek attention and validation from your partner, it may feel boring. Children of narcissists are used to having to metaphorically sing and dance to get any resemblance of appreciation or even being noticed; when we don’t have
to do that, we might seek that kind of “excitement” elsewhere. This feeling of boredom can lead to infidelity or prematurely ending a relationship.
Current Parental Intrusiveness
Narcissistic parents often need to be the center of attention and admiration; they do not like to share the spotlight. They may get jealous of our partner to the point of only speaking critically of them or being mean to them. They may demean us (more than usual) or be incessantly critical of us for being in the relationship. They may also be jealous of our ability to have a healthy relationship and demean us or our relationship to try
to diminish their pain.
This is an example of classic narcissistic abuse. The attempts at control and manipulation often feel like grenades being lobbed at us, by this person who is supposed to love us the most. And even when we see it for what it is, it can still impact our romantic relationship. We may feel like we have to pick our parent over our partner, or risk losing our parent. We may not be able to tolerate the criticism and abuse. Or it may just cause inordinate amounts of stress.
The first seven points were true for me, until I did enough work to (mostly) unhook from the messages I received
about myself from my narcissistic mom. It’s been really hard work. Narcissism – especially when it’s in our parent – can be devastating to those around it. It has impacts that last lifetimes.
The good news is that once you see the impacts, you can start to detach from the narcissist and attach to yourself. That’s when your relationships will start supporting you in ways your parent never could.
For more on life with narcissists:
7 Telltale Signs You were Raised by a Narcissist
Communicating with a Narcissist: What you need to know to do it better
Exchanging Gifts with a Narcissist: Prepare Yourself!
The One Driving Need that Makes Narcissists Toxic