Transcription
Today we want to explain four myths about narcissists being secretly gay or secretly bisexual.
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If you guys are new here, my name is Ben Taylor. I'm a software narcissist on this channel to provide awareness, growth, healing, change, and development. I meet with people every single day on one-on-ones, and coaching, and Zoom calls, and group events to try to help them move forward and get clarity from the confusion and the crazy-making that they've been through. I'm the founder of Raw Motivations, the creator of the NarcApp, and your guide in the 45-day Clarity Challenge. You can access at claritychallenge.net.
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Well, a lot of times people are asking, and they've had this thought for a period of time, saying that narcissists are all secretly gay or they're secretly bisexual, or that there's something there, like something that doesn't add up for people. So they're normally like, "Well, it has to be this." Now, when we dive into some of this, there are some that are gay, there are some that are bisexual. So I'm not saying that doesn't exist, but we're also looking at the fact that it's not all, and it's not everybody. So I want to talk to you about four different myths that we've put together, and also just my take on it.
So four myths that people think about narcissism in regards to a narcissist being secretly gay or a narcissist being bisexual.
Okay, first one: Narcissists are more likely to be gay or bisexual. Now, sometimes you see this on social media. You'll see on different platforms of like, "All narcissists are, you know, in secretly in the closet." Like, "All narcissists are hiding this." And unfortunately, this is just a false assumption. There's an assumption that we haven't been able to find evidence to feel supported at all. Like we haven't been able to see like anything like this is a pattern, this is a repeated thing, or this is something that is a fact. But instead, oftentimes, it's people's just opinion or conjecture of what they've experienced. Maybe it's something that they've experienced specifically to them, or that they have seen it happen to them and to other people in the same way. But it doesn't always look the same. It doesn't always happen the same, even though we know a lot of narcissists are very much the same in how they process things and how they go about them. Every narcissist is also different with their personality, with what they like, with what they don't like, and of how they're showing up. Now, typically, they're still hiding different aspects of shame and guilt underneath the surface, but it doesn't always mean that they turn out the same, or that they still produce the same effect, or the same ideas, or the same outward appearance, or whatever it might be to other people out there. So narcissists are not more likely, and are not less likely, to be gay or bisexual. But a lot of times, people want to be able to put that label on that or try to be able to justify what's happened in the relationship.
The second myth that I want to bring up is that gay or bisexual people are more likely to be narcissistic. Now, with this, we end up getting into aspects of stereotyping, of saying, "Okay, this people group, this genre of people, these people out there, they're more likely to be this." Which is just completely false in regards to how a person is becomes a narcissist. And someone doesn't become a narcissist because of their orientation or because of where they are in life. They come from early on childhood development, like how they were raised, what they actually happened in their early childhood, what abuse happened, what neglect happened, what overindulgence happened, like all the different cultural influences that happen to help produce that narcissistic personality disorder in the other person. That doesn't connect with someone's sexual orientation or how that works. And oftentimes, this gives like a big aspect of prejudice against other communities, and it's not related to a personality disorder. And so gay or bisexual people being more likely to be narcissistic is just completely stereotyping, giving a lot of prejudice, and doesn't relate in the same aspect.
The third myth I want to bring up is: being gay or bisexual is the cause of narcissism. Sometimes people be like, "Oh, well, that's how they are, so it must be because of X, Y, and Z." Like, like they're they're a narcissist because they're this way. And there's a lot of different people out there that don't identify as gay or bisexual, and like it doesn't match up and like at all. Uh, there's also again, no data backing this up and nothing actually behind it saying like, "This is true." Because like I've been saying, like we noticed like NPD is developed as a trait from early childhood, from childhood experiences, from parenting, from cultural influences, all those different types of things that happen like early on developing those traits. And those traits are not the same as someone identifying a certain way. So we have to like kind of remember that.
Uh, the fourth one that we've been kind of dancing around some with all of this is: narcissists are closeted gay or bisexual. And again, this goes back to a big assumption. Now, I can see a little bit about sometimes people try to be able to get to this assumption because of the fact of it being like a secret, like they're hiding it, they're they're in the closet, they haven't like shown it to someone. So they must be producing a mess, they must be producing a false persona. And what we have to remember, well, there might be a false persona or a mask or an image that they're trying to put out there to either protect themselves or to be able to hide from where they are, that's also not the same as narcissistic personality disorder. Because you need more than just a false persona. Just a false persona isn't necessarily inherently narcissistic. There's nine characteristics that we'd have to look at of NPD to be able to see what actually matches up. So a lot of times people look at this and they make an assumption of like, "Oh, they're hiding, so they're going to develop traits." And it doesn't work like that. You don't develop traits later on in life. Like traits are early on in life, again, going back to the childhood experiences, the parenting, the culture influences, all those different things. Things about this. So an NPD starts early on.
So putting these out there, a big aspect is there's no data to be able to back up these assumptions. And and you, we sometimes see like small trends or small pieces of this, but we don't actually see it on a consistent basis, and we don't see it in the aspect that it's actually backed up or certifiable or whatever you want to call it. Like there's no data to actually be able to support it.
Okay, now it's true that a lot of narcissists cheat. If you've been on my platform, you've seen either stuff that I've written down or you've heard me say that narcissists cheat, period. Which I believe is 100% true. A narcissist cheats you out of your time, your money, your attention, out of love, out of your goals, out of your dreams. They cheat on you physically, emotionally, time, attention, hobbies, whatever you want to call it, however you want to label it. They still put something above you in order to get what they want. They still put you down to be able to get what they want out of the relationship or not be held accountable for something in the relationship. So you have to remember, just across the board, narcissists cheat.
Now, now, oftentimes, they're also prone to addictions. Now, not just the regular addictions you could say of like alcohol or drugs, but then also a lot of times pornography and sexual addictions and different pieces that go into that, different kinks, different things like that. When we see that, what I normally see is like when the sex addiction continues to rise and continues to get more and more, they try to get bigger and bigger highs. So it's like that first hit of something, it's like, "I want this to be better than the last time. I want this to be more than last time." And then you get people that are in sexual addiction and have been in a sexual addiction or for a long period of time, where we're talking like hundreds and thousands of people that they've been with, like true sexual addiction. That's where you start to see it become more on the lines of more experimentation or more switching to gay, bisexual, something like that.
Okay, because a lot of times what we'll see is they'll get to a point and they'll be like, "Okay, well, this isn't satisfying anymore. I'm not getting the high. I'm not getting that hit that I normally would get off of this person or these types of people. So I'm going to switch or I'm going to start dabbling in other areas." And that's where we start to also see people be like, "Wait a second, maybe they were actually getting start off with, maybe they were bisexual." Like all this stuff, and there's whole this whole identity piece that we're not really sure of what's going on there.
Okay, so sometimes an addict will often experiment. They'll go after other people. They'll continue to try to up the ante, if you want to say, of like, "Okay, let me try something different." Again, we're not talking all narcissists. Mainly I'm talking ones that have like high sex addiction. Like that's what I've seen as a trend, but not as a quantifiable data-driven evidence-related report or anything like that. Just saying, "Hey, if this is if this is how we get to that conclusion, sometimes this is what I've normally see leading up to it of them being addicted to sex or they're having like some type of sexual sexual addiction."
Um, sometimes I think that people want to, um, people want to believe that the other person is gay or bisexual. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. But sometimes I want them to. They want to believe that to be able to feel better about the situation of like, "Well, they didn't choose me because they don't actually like me. They like someone else, say like some other type, like whatever it might be." And we have to be careful of that because sometimes we want to justify something based on, "Wait a second, it didn't have anything to do with who you were or who you identify as. All it had to do with was the other person and what they wanted in the moment."
You see, narcissism isn't really focused on a a gender or an identity or a type of person. It's focused on themselves. And so as a narcissist, the whole idea is like, "It has to be all about me, not about you, not about anyone else, not about your needs, not about what you care about. It's all about me." And it all focuses back on me every single time. And so you have to remember, like that dynamic is all put back on themselves, on the narcissist, never about you in the first place.
The more you, the more you're able to understand that, and the sooner you're able to understand that, the sooner you can start that radical acceptance process to get free of the story that you're telling yourself. If you want to be able to talk sometime one-on-one about working through through the aspects of narcissism, be able to break the trauma bond of like, "I feel stuck and I just want to keep going back to this person. You're not sure how to fix that, or you're not sure how to be able to break free from the rumination." Would love to have you reach out. You can go to realmotivations.com, click on one-on-ones. We can set up a time to be able to chat, to be able to work through some of the things that you're thinking and that you're struggling with, to get to the place of establishing clarity and understanding what has actually been happening in the relationship, and getting to a place of clarity from the confusion and the crazy-making that you've been put through.