Transcription
Welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics. If you find this video to be interesting or helpful, please like it and subscribe to my channel. Well, this is Dr. Grande. Today's question asks, "I can take a look at the characteristics of a wife who has vulnerable narcissism." So, I've had many videos that kind of cover this husband-wife dynamic, looking at narcissism, psychopathy, and other constructs. So, in this video, I'll be looking at the ten signs of a wife with vulnerable narcissistic traits. Now, in this video, I'm really focusing on the husband and wife relationship, but of course, many of these signs could apply to any long-term partnership, whether or not the couple was married.
Now, I've covered the construct of narcissism many times before, so I'll just cover it really quickly here. With narcissism, we see a sense of entitlement and need for admiration, low agreeableness, and self-centeredness. And we have two types of narcissism: grandiose and vulnerable. Grandiose, which of course I'm not really talking about here, would have characteristics like being arrogant, overconfident, being resistant to criticism, and having externalized anger. Vulnerable narcissism, the type I am talking about here, has characteristics like not trusting other people, having a lot of shame, being resentful, being hypersensitive to criticism, being unforgiving, and having internalized anger.
So, as I go through these 10 signs, when I refer to the term "wife," I'm really talking about the wife with vulnerable narcissistic traits. It's just easier to say "wife" in these circumstances. And as I go through these signs, I'm talking about a relationship where the husband does not have narcissism. Now, having one or more of these signs doesn't mean somebody definitely has vulnerable narcissism. These signs are just associated with that construct.
So, looking at sign number one, the wife is highly neurotic. Now, many people believe that agreeableness has the strongest association with vulnerable narcissism and narcissism in general. More specifically, a negative correlation: the lower the agreeableness, the higher the narcissism. Now, there is a strong association, but neuroticism is actually much more strongly associated when it comes to vulnerable narcissism. Now, with neuroticism, of course, we see a positive correlation. So, the higher the neuroticism, the higher the level of narcissism. Now, because we have this high neuroticism with this wife, we see high levels of depression, anxiety, and anger. Those go along with neuroticism.
Now, I wanted to explain kind of the size of the difference when we talk about, like, neuroticism and agreeableness and compare it to vulnerable narcissism. And the way we usually talk about this is we talk about the variance explained in a construct. So, I came up with this example to kind of illustrate how this works before I get to the actual numbers involved with neuroticism, agreeableness, and vulnerable narcissism. Say you wanted to buy a vehicle that was fuel-efficient, and you could learn only one bit of information about the vehicle, right? So, the only thing you know is just one aspect of it. You would want to look at the aspect that explains the most variance in that fuel economy, right? So, fuel economy is the goal. You'd want the variable that explains the highest amount of variance in specifically fuel economy. So, it wouldn't be something like the color of the car that would make any difference. It might be the shape of the vehicle, like drag as it goes through the air. Maybe the type of vehicle, like an SUV, for example, rarely has the same fuel economy as a car. But the most significant factor would be the weight of the vehicle, right? So, the weight explains a lot of variance in the fuel economy figures, in the fuel efficiency. Well, something like the engine type would be important, but it wouldn't explain as much variance. So, if you had a pickup truck that was offered with a four-cylinder and a six-cylinder, most of the time we would think, of course, the four-cylinder would be more fuel-efficient. So that explains some variance, but again, the weight is the bigger factor.
So, when we look back here at vulnerable narcissism, neuroticism is the weight, and agreeableness is the engine type. Neuroticism explains 65% of the variance in vulnerable narcissism, and that's quite a bit when talking about mental health concepts. Agreeableness explains 19%. So, if you look at the relative importance, you see that neuroticism is much more prominent when we talk about vulnerable narcissism than even agreeableness, which, again, we know has a fairly strong association with narcissism in general.
So, moving on to sign number two, we see here that the wife had a history of inconsistent discipline when she was a child, but not necessarily poor monitoring and supervision. So, what is this mean? Well, we look to see what explains vulnerable narcissism. We often look to somebody's childhood because we know that narcissism starts early. And we see that if there's a parent who, for some infraction, ignores that infraction some of the time, but then other times gives a really severe penalty, we call that inconsistent discipline, and that has a very strong association with vulnerable narcissism. So, say when the wife was just a child, she comes home late. She's supposed to be home by nine o'clock. She comes home at nine-ten. The parents don't do anything. She does the same thing the next night, and they ground her for a week, right? So, that's inconsistent discipline.
Now, poor monitoring and supervision seems like something that would also cause vulnerable narcissism, right? So, if a parent is just disengaged, right? That means they're just not paying attention or not supervising the child. But interestingly, that relationship is fairly weak. So, another thing in this one sign is that it wouldn't be unusual for the wife to also demonstrate inconsistent discipline toward the children from that couple, right? So, this really supports this theory that narcissism, in one sense or another, seems to cause more narcissism. It's transmitted, in effect, from a parent to a child. Now, that doesn't explain all of it, of course. There's genetic factors and other environmental factors, but that's a part of it.
Sign number three, the wife is highly manipulative. Now, many people think this is a trait of grandiose narcissism, and it is, yes, but it's actually just as strong with vulnerable narcissism. Many of the manipulative tactics are really identical: like gaslighting, blame-shifting, and guilt trips. One difference, though, I've seen, is that with the wife with vulnerable narcissistic traits, there's more of a tendency to kind of play the victim, to adopt the victim role. So, no matter what's wrong, someone else is to blame, and often that person is the husband, right? He spends a lot of time with the wife. He's simply there. He's available, and that makes him a target. There's some other reasons the husband was a target, and they're kind of covered a little bit in some of these other signs.
So, moving to sign number four, we see that the wife's self-esteem is contingent upon others, including the husband. So, this seems a little unusual. The wife belittles and manipulates the husband. At the same time, she needs the husband to admire her. And sometimes, if it's convenient in terms of boosting her self-esteem, she'll tell others how great the husband is, right? So, again, when his positive attributes or accomplishments tend to amplify her perceived greatness, right? So, it's kind of an unusual relationship to have disdain for somebody, but yet require their admiration and say good things about them, right? That causes kind of an unusual circumstance that's hard to reconcile for the husband. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense at first glance.
Sign number five, the wife is emotionally distant. Now, this may sound similar to grandiose narcissism, but it's a bit different. With vulnerable narcissism, the wife continually says that she wants to be closer, and it's the husband's fault that the couple is not close, that they are not connected. With grandiose narcissism, the wife would actively avoid emotional topics, right? There's no depth there, and the wife wouldn't claim to have depth. But with vulnerable narcissism, the wife says that she is emotionally complex. The husband just doesn't get it. He doesn't understand. She says she wants a relationship that's deep and meaningful, and she blames the husband for not providing that relationship. So, kind of missing the idea that it takes two people to form a positive relationship.
Now, it's interesting here because even though the wife is saying this, she's also demonstrating a tendency to devalue the need to have close relationships with other people. So, her behavior points in one direction, and her words point in another. This isn't uncommon with vulnerable narcissism. One can make the argument here at sign number five, this emotionally distant sign, that this is essentially one version of an avoidant attachment style. And the research actually supports this fairly strongly. Some theorize that the wife cannot have a real relationship. We see this too in the research. The goal of some counseling is to develop an actual relationship free of toxicity, distortions, deception, and shallowness. So, in a way, the counselor is struggling again to have a real, meaningful relationship with that client. Ironically, the wife with vulnerable narcissism will not let herself be vulnerable.
Sign number six, the wife appears to be shaken to her core when criticized by the husband. Sometimes this is a manipulation tactic, but often with vulnerable narcissism, the pain is real. Criticism or failure leads to shame and disappointment, and the wife to the point where she will question her own worth as a human being. Now, this often has kind of a rebound effect, like a rubber band is at work here. So, I'll explain this. So, the wife will question her self-worth, be despondent, full of shame. And from that dark and painful place, it's also kind of a lonely place, rage starts to build. The shame and self-doubt are converted into anger directed at the husband. The wife wants to make the husband suffer as she suffers. The husband doesn't suffer because he made a criticism; he suffers because of the wife's emotional reaction to criticism. So, from the husband's perspective, the reaction is disproportionate, way over the top compared to his criticism. So, the wife has difficulty regulating emotions. Vulnerable narcissism is associated with regulatory deficits. These deficits lead to maladaptive strategies like arguing, yelling, manipulating, and aggression.
Sign number seven is that the wife has difficulty maintaining a positive self-image. So, she can create a positive self-image sometimes, but has trouble keeping it there. And she compensates by developing and maintaining an inner attitude of specialness and entitlement. So, this is where we get that sense of entitlement we see with narcissism. She places herself above and beyond the typical conventions of society. So, failures are turned into successes, and big failures are turned into big successes. Now, often I've heard that people are kind of frustrated or perplexed by this type of dynamic. How can a larger failure lead to a larger success? Why does the narcissist do this? Well, what happens here is there's no room for the wife to have a low positive self-image for too long. Again, it creates kind of that rebound effect, right? Like a rubber band gets stretched, and it contains more energy that gets released. So, small failures only need to be converted into small successes, but big failures really need to move all the way across to the other extreme and be regarded as, for some reason, the wife is really truly incredible or great.
One example I've seen a few times is the wife will be fired from a job, and it's clearly devastating: the lost money, the damaged self-esteem, the embarrassment of having to tell people or try to cover it up. So, the wife will take this process of being fired and say that it proves that she was too good to work for that company. So, maybe she'll even try to make it look like she was doubting her worth a little bit, and that employer proved how valuable she was by firing her. So, again, usually being fired would be considered a failure at some level, and the wife converts it into like a major turning point in her life. You might say, "Well, if I hadn't been fired, I never would have been successful." Right? Now, sometimes that's true. People get fired, and it leads to success. But with the wife with vulnerable narcissistic traits, we would to see this every time there's a major failure.
Sign number eight is that the wife's insight is compromised. So, when the wife is talking about her own motivations, she'll say that it's hard to explain, right? The wife will have trouble explaining her own motivations and also her own feelings when, actually, it's hard to understand. So, the theory here is that there's a secret, fragile core that the wife protects, right? She keeps it out of her conscious awareness. So, the wife really doesn't understand that she's narcissistic, which of course precludes understanding why she's narcissistic, right? So, there are many levels to understanding, and the wife isn't really even moving into that first level. A pronounced lack of insight. Interestingly, however, the wife does have more insight than an individual with grandiose narcissism. So, one could argue that vulnerable narcissism is where there is actually some insight starting to form, not enough that somebody could refer to that person as having a lot of insight, but more than we see with grandiose.
Sign number nine, the wife puts the phrase "taking something personally" into an entirely new perspective, right? The wife is unable to separate opinions, ideas, thoughts, facial expressions, and many other activities from herself as a person. For the vulnerable narcissist, everything is taken personally because there's no other way to process stimuli. The self-centeredness and the hypervigilance to insults route everything through the wife's ego. So, she internalizes disagreement from others. For example, if anyone has a different opinion than what the wife has, that person is automatically labeled as foolish or bad. The wife doesn't criticize ideas; she criticizes people, and she attacks with such passion because, from her point of view, she is defending herself, right? So, when somebody's defending their ego, that's kind of a major deal to them, right? The ego has to be protected. Those defenses have to be maintained. It's not something the person can just let go. It takes a lot of work and the development of insight.
Sign number 10, envy, which is common with narcissism in general, is converted into schadenfreude. So, schadenfreude is when somebody takes joy in others' pain. So, the way it's thought of here is that schadenfreude is a way for the wife to manage her envy, a way to eliminate the need to be envious. So, she converts an object, typically a person, for which she has envy, into someone that can be laughed at and ridiculed. So, the schadenfreude, kind of again, just washes away any need or really understanding of envy. Envy is a painful experience for the wife. So, when she has that initially, she's looking for other ways to deal with that, to convert that into something else. And again, that's where we end up with the schadenfreude.
So, those are the ten signs of a wife with vulnerable narcissistic traits. I know whenever I talk about vulnerable narcissism, there will be a variety of opinions. Please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section. They always generate a really interesting dialogue. As always, I hope you found this description of vulnerable narcissism to be interesting. Thanks for watching.