Transcription
10 tactics a narcissist uses to win an argument. And by “win an argument,” I mean to get their way, because that is what they want. They don’t want to understand you. They don’t want to come to a compromise. They don’t want to come to any kind of mutual agreement. They want to get their way, and they’re not bothered or deterred by logic, the truth, the facts, or anything like that.
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Number one: deflection. And that is deflecting anything—anything that prevents them from getting their way and winning the argument.
Number two: blame-shifting and avoiding accountability.
Number three: circular conversations that go round and round and round, where the same thing gets repeated ad nauseum and nothing gets resolved. And this generally continues, no matter what you say, until you get emotionally exhausted and give in.
Number four: triangulation. Their friends agree with them; your friends agree with them; their family agrees with them; your family agrees with them; their therapist agrees with them—according to them, everyone is on their side, not yours.
Number five: aggressive, illogical accusations of things that haven’t happened, would never happen, and aren’t even possible.
Number six: pity-playing (PL), which is literally anything that makes you feel sorry for them; e.g., “You should just do what they want.”
Number seven: something called narcissistic word salad. This is where they throw a whole lot of illogical statements, stories, or anecdotes at you that literally have nothing to do with anything that you guys were originally talking about. For example, you ask them to take out the garbage, and suddenly they’re telling you that their dog died when they were seven, they didn’t get their license until they were 25, and one time they missed their flight the day before Christmas. I mean, what?
Number eight: continually shifting the goalpost within the argument and jumping from topic to topic to topic when nothing gets resolved.
Number nine: generally confusing you into compliance.
Number ten: stonewalling, silent treatment, storming out, and temporary discards.
Narcissists win their arguments and get their way through confusion, fatigue, and emotionally exhausting you. They also love to continually start and perpetuate arguments, all the while telling you that they just want peace and they hate arguing. Make that make sense? I would. What they mean when they say that is that they want you to shut up and put up, to go along with what they want, to give into their demands, and for you to let them get their way.
Let me know in the comments section how many of these you’ve experienced and anything I’ve missed out.