The Narcissistic Codependent Marriage – Learn the Signs

The Narcissist

• You feel pressure to earn fame and/or recognition.
• You are often shocked at what life expects of you and consider yourself a victim.

You idolise people/teams/groups you see as confident and successful. You have often faced a feeling of inner desolation/anger when your idols are conquered or you discover they are vulnerable or flawed.

Many people have disappointed you in life. You believe most people are stupid and not worthy of your compassion or respect. You long for a worthy opponent who can match you. Someone strong and intelligent who sees how special you are.

Despite any success you have achieved in life, your self-esteem swings between feeling superior, all-powerful and misunderstood, on the one hand, and fake and unworthy on the other. This imbalance is underpinned by a feeling of emptiness, negativity, hopelessness and inner-poverty that nothing will relieve.

• When something goes wrong:

even when you caused it, you immediately think of someone—or something—you can blame.

• When someone is critical of you:

you justify yourself by pointing out other people who behave the same or worse.

Despite the name-calling and sheer volume of misinformation online, narcissism is a very common way of thinking and behaving.

In its most simple description, narcissism is about being self-centred, this is something we must obviously look at if we expect our marriage to ever improve.

Narcissism, however, is not about loving ourselves.

Unhealthy narcissism is instead about loving a fantasy idea of ourselves. A fantasy that won’t allow us to accept our mistakes and grow as a real person. Hanging onto this fantasy will never allow us to be loved for who we truly are.

Do you crave love admiration and respect, even from strangers? Are you trying to fill a bottomless well?

Narcissism is much easier to spot in others than it is to spot in ourselves.

The Codependent

• You feel expected to keep everyone happy and keep the peace.
• You give your marriage your best—but even though your partner makes little effort—your best is never enough.

You long for a hero to rescue you, and to care for your deep unmet emotional needs.

You crave understanding and support, from people who have shown you clearly that they only truly care about themselves.

You have often found yourself in a place where selfish uncaring people end up dominating your life.

You believe you are genuinely loving and caring, but feel unappreciated and sometimes angry that no one cares about you or your needs. This lack of support holds you back in many ways.

You experience severe and prolonged episodes of self-doubt, alongside a nagging unassailable sense of shame that perhaps you are not the good person you believe that you are.

• When something goes wrong:

no matter who or what caused the problem, you feel guilty and often blame yourself.

• If someone is critical of you:

you become emotional and cannot relax until the critical person is happy with you again.

Codependency is based on the dangerous myth that romantic love will heal all of our insecurity and fear.

While it describes a person who spends a large part of their life trying to keep people happy, codependency is not about truly loving someone else. It is loving in the hope of getting your own immature emotional needs met in return. Codependency works subconsciously to create an emotional debt.

 Just as common as narcissism, codependency can, likewise, cause serious damage to your marriage.

A codependent’s thoughts and plans are centred on their partner. 

To create a happy marriage; alongside the needs of the people around us, we must be centred on our own needs. Being other-centred in this way can be just as difficult to live with as being self-centred.