Hello, this is my first comment on a blog – ever. I’m quite frankly scared to death to comment anywhere on the internet, because I’m fresh out of a relationship with a severely disturbed individual who nearly destroyed me as a person and impacted my entire family. To use my real name I guess is a step in the right direction. Emotions are still very raw and to be honest, I am beating myself up for having been such an easy target for manipulation. The question I have for you is – I am having trouble finding information on recovering from a narcissistic friendship – female/female. Any resources you can point me to would be greatly appreciated. I’m not ready to tell my full story yet….still reeling from it all and trying to make sense of it. Thanks so much.
Dear Toni: I don’t know of specific articles written regarding female/female N friendship. I was “frieNds” with the N – a male? LOL! He was not somatic, but fancied himself quite brilliant,(cerebral) which was ironic since he had actually been a “special education” student in school.
I think anything that you read here or on the web, you can substitute male for a female. The narcissistic behaviors are the same whether the N has boy parts or girl parts.
You choose the time and place to tell your full story, and frankly, on the web, it would be best to speak in generalities.
I will look for female friend N information, but I am guessing that you have already searched for this and not found any specifically devoted to female.
Stay with No Contact and you will keep healing.
ES
I found this on Sam Vankin’s page – he’s a narcissist in case you didn’t know, and he gets his Supply by educating people about narcissists. Go Figure.
Suite 101
Frequently Asked Question # 34
The psychodynamics of male and female narcissists are the same.
Women narcissists differ only in the choice of sources of narcissistic supply which often conforms to traditional gender roles and in the willingness to attend therapy
Question:
Are female narcissists any different? You seem to talk only about male narcissists!
Answer:
I keep using the male third person singular because most narcissists (75%) are males and more so because there is little difference between the male and female narcissists.
In the manifestation of their narcissism, female and male narcissists, inevitably, do tend to differ. They emphasise different things. They transform different elements of their personalities and of their lives into the cornerstones of their disorder.
Women concentrate on their body (many also suffer from eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa). They flaunt and exploit their physical charms, their sexuality, their socially and culturally determined “femininity”. They secure their Narcissistic Supply through their more traditional gender role: the home, children, suitable careers, their husbands (“the wife of…”), their feminine traits, their role in society, etc.
It is no wonder than narcissists – both men and women – are chauvinistic and conservative. They depend to such an extent on the opinions of people around them – that, with time, they are transformed into ultra-sensitive seismographs of public opinion, barometers of prevailing social fashions, and guardians of conformity. The narcissist cannot afford to seriously alienate his “constituency”, those people who reflect his False Self back to him. The very proper and on-going functioning of the narcissist’s Ego depends on the goodwill and the collaboration of his human environment.
True, besieged and consumed by pernicious guilt feelings – many a narcissist finally seek to be punished. The self-destructive narcissist then plays the role of the “bad guy” (or “bad girl”). But even then it is within the traditional socially allocated roles. To ensure social opprobrium (read: attention), the narcissist exaggerates these roles to a caricature.
A woman is likely to label herself a “whore” and a male narcissist to self-style himself a “vicious, unrepentant criminal”. Yet, these again are traditional social roles. Men are likely to emphasise intellect, power, aggression, money, or social status. Women are likely to emphasise body, looks, charm, sexuality, feminine “traits”, homemaking, children and childrearing – even as they seek their masochistic punishment.
Another difference is in the way the genders react to treatment. Women are more likely to resort to therapy because they are more likely to admit to psychological problems. But while men may be less inclined to DISCLOSE or to expose their problems to others (the macho-man factor) – it does not necessarily imply that they are less prone to admit it to themselves. Women are also more likely to ask for help than men.
Yet, the prime rule of narcissism must never be forgotten: the narcissist uses everything around him or her to obtain his (or her) Narcissistic Supply. Children happen to be more attached to the female narcissist due to the way our society is still structured and to the fact that women are the ones to give birth. It is easier for a woman to think of her children as her extensions because they once indeed were her physical extensions and because her on-going interaction with them is both more intensive and more extensive.
This means that the male narcissist is more likely to regard his children as a nuisance than as a source of rewarding Narcissist Supply – especially as they grow older and become autonomous. Devoid of the diversity of alternatives available to men – the narcissistic woman fights to maintain her most reliable Source of Supply: her children. Through insidious indoctrination, guilt formation, emotional sanctions, deprivation and other psychological mechanisms, she tries to induce in them a dependence, which cannot be easily unravelled
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But, there is no psychodynamic difference between children, money, or intellect, as Sources of Narcissistic Supply. So, there is no psychodynamic difference between male and female narcissist. The only difference is in their choices of Sources of Narcissistic Supply.
There are mental disorders, which afflict a specific sex more often. This has to do with hormonal or other physiological dispositions, with social and cultural conditioning through the socialisation process, and with role assignment through the gender differentiation process. None of these seem to be strongly correlated to the formation of malignant narcissism. The Narcissistic Personality Disorder (as opposed, for instance, to the Borderline or the Histrionic Personality Disorders, which afflict women more than men) seems to conform to social mores and to the prevailing ethos of capitalism. Social thinkers like Lasch speculated that modern American culture – a narcissistic, self-centred one – increases the rate of incidence of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. As Kernberg observed:
“The most I would be willing to say is that society can make serious psychological abnormalities, which already exist in some percentage of the population, seem to be at least superficially appropriate.”