Transcription
Most people think a narcissist puts nobody above him or herself. They believe the narcissist sees him or herself as the beginning and the end. In their world, they're the creator, the preserver, the destroyer, a god figure, someone who needs nobody, answers to nobody, and bows to nobody. But what if I told you that is not the whole truth?
Hi, I am Danish, a narcissistic abuse recovery professional. Welcome to my channel. The topic for this one is the only person a male narcissist secretly puts above himself. You see, there is this one relationship in a male narcissist's life where he is shockingly submissive, where he will lower himself in ways that he would never do for anyone else. Where he won't just bend, he will break and still pretend it is his strength. This relationship is so twisted, so deep that it shapes almost every part of his life without him even realizing it. And it's not with a romantic partner. No, obviously. You know, it's not with a friend either. It's not even a boss. It is with his mother.
The male narcissist's relationship with his narcissistic mother is where his god complex quietly dies. It is where he transforms from the destroyer of worlds to the obedient child who dares not to say no. It is where his entire mask cracks, but only behind closed doors. Publicly, he will always maintain the illusion that he is powerful and untouchable, invincible. But in private, there is a completely different dynamic playing out. Now, let's break it down to understand it properly.
When you look at a male narcissist, you see someone who treats his wife, girlfriend, even his children as inferior. They exist to orbit around him. They are extensions of his false self, to make him look good, to fuel his ego. They're accessories to his image, nothing more. He discards them emotionally when they don't serve him or his narrative. He punishes them when they don't feed what he believes in. But when it comes to his mother, it is a different story, an entirely different one. He will take her to parties, introduce her proudly, sometimes even more proudly than he would introduce his own wife. He will buy her expensive gifts on occasions where he forgets or refuses to do the same for his partner. He will cater to her dietary preferences, her health anxieties. Heck, he will defend her to the nth degree. And the crazy part is he will show zero empathy for his partner while doing all of this. He will laugh at his mother's jokes that are not even funny, sit through her criticisms without blinking, and allow her to micromanage parts of his life like he is still a boy in need of some guidance. All of this makes you wonder what's going on. When he is with me, he has to control everything. He has to hate me for loving her. But when he is with her, he doesn't show any agency. He does exactly what he is told and says no to nothing. What is going on?
Well, this is enmeshment. This is what fawning of a golden child looks like. But the kicker is he secretly hates her for all of this. He feels trapped. He resents the hold she has over him because she treats him more like a partner than a child. He wants deep down to rebel against her control. But he never truly does because the bond they share isn't based on love. It is based on what I said, enmeshment, guilt, fear, and a sick kind of loyalty, that was forced onto him since childhood. He is the golden child in the narcissistic family system. He was chosen to serve, groomed, that's the key word, trained to be the mirror that reflects his mother's grandiosity. She projected onto him every feeling she could not feel with his father. In exchange for her conditional approval, he learned early on to abandon his own identity. That is how he became a narcissist. So now he doesn't see her as a separate person. She is an extension of him and he is, in a very twisted, crazy way, an extension of her ego. We call this narcissistic symbiosis where two narcissists feed off of each other's ego. Yet at the same time, there's always a tug of war. There is no true relationship, but two parasites that are just suffocating each other. She never cuts off the emotional suffocating supply because you know very well he brings her supply. He treats her how her husband was supposed to treat her. And all of this is fascinating to watch because the same narcissist who rages at anyone else trying to control him becomes eerily docile in front of his mother. He becomes the obedient soldier. The little boy desperate for a nod of approval. The grown man who has built an entire empire of lies to convince the world he does not need anyone, except he quietly needs her validation more than he needs air. Let that sink in.
Now let me give you some real-life examples to understand this phenomenon better. Imagine a male narcissist throwing a lavish birthday party. You would think the event is about him and his achievements, right? Wrong. Watch closely and you will see that it is curated to impress his mother, to make her proud, to show her that her magnificent son has done well. He will seat her in a place of honor. He will consult her about the guest list. He will parade her around like a trophy, even while ignoring his wife who is standing awkwardly in a corner. Or imagine him shopping for gifts. His wife's birthday comes around, right? He buys her a thoughtless perfume set from the mall. But for his mother's birthday, he spends weeks planning, choosing something extravagant, something sentimental, something meant to earn a gasp of approval from the queen, from the matriarch. Or when he gets into a new relationship, his mother's opinion is the real deal breaker. If she disapproves, he will subtly sabotage it. Not overtly, not openly, but subtly. The mother's whisper will outweigh the partner's scream. This is the central paradox of the male narcissist. He worships himself publicly, but worships his mother privately. She holds the leash, and even though he fantasizes about breaking free, he never cuts loose because without her approval, he does not know who he is. It's almost tragic if you think about it. But it is also very, very dangerous because the same wounds that keep him tied to her are the wounds he inflicts on everybody else. I call it taking mother revenge.
Now let's understand the golden child narcissistic mother dynamic a little bit more. The golden child is trained to believe they are special, right? But only as long as they meet the narcissistic mother's conditions. They exist to make her look good. Their achievements are her achievements. Their failures are treated like personal betrayals. So the golden child learns early on: I am loved only when I perform. This teaches the male narcissist that real love does not exist. Only transactions do. Only manipulation does. Only image management does. So when he grows up, he seeks partners not for emotional intimacy, because he does not know what that is, but for emotional usefulness. He repeats the pattern, dominates others to avoid being dominated. But the mother remains the one relationship where he willingly stays dominated, even while boiling with resentment underneath.
And here is another fascinating angle to this whole thing: the political leader phenomenon. Male narcissists often latch on to political figures who represent their own grandiosity. They idealize dictators, controversial leaders who mirror the narcissist fantasy self. They vicariously live through these figures, cheering on their cruelty, worshipping their power. It is the same dynamic. They submit to the political leader's vision the same way they submit to their mother's demands. And in this case, it's not only applicable to a male narcissist, but narcissists in general, male, female, other genders, it's all the same. They glorify the leader as the only one who can make things great again. It's the same way they glorify their mother as the only one who really loved me. They kiss the behinds of these leaders, excusing every crime, every cruelty because they see their own survival reflected in their power. They will defend that leader against all criticism just like they defend their mother's image against all internal resentment because deep down they are terrified. Terrified of abandonment. Terrified of being alone, terrified of facing the emptiness their mother once filled with conditional love. So what do they do? They serve. They bow. They growl. And while the world thinks the narcissist is an unmovable mountain, the truth is, inside their heart, they're still a trembling boy at the feet of a throne they can never leave.
This dynamic explains so much of their behavior. Their grandiosity is not real confidence. It's a cover-up for a lifetime of unseen and unhealed wounds. Their arrogance is not strength. It is the mirror they built to survive a childhood where the cost of losing approval was emotional annihilation. And the saddest part, many male narcissists never actually break free. They live their entire lives chained to a discarded version of maternal love. They destroy marriages, alienate their own children, ruin friendships, and burn bridges, all while dragging around a ghost in their heart. And unless they face the truth, unless they admit that their worship of the mother figure is not love but trauma bonding, they stay stuck forever. Always chasing the unattainable. Always hungry for validation that never really feeds him. Always powerful on the outside, but powerless on the inside. And that right there is the secret nobody tells you. The only person a male narcissist puts above himself is the one person he secretly wishes he could escape from.
With that, let's bring this episode to an end. Thank you so much for watching and listening. I will talk to you in the next one. Until then, as always, let the healing begin.