An Experience of My Friendship with a Narcissist

I became friends with Jillian in the summer of 2016, because we both worked at our town’s Parks and Recreation day camp. We became very fast friends, largely due to our willingness and ability to express ourselves to each other, including our honest thoughts and opinions. This summer, things were different. Where our relationship had flowed freely the summer before, we ran into personality and conversational conflicts. I was initially very confused, because I thought that I understood our friendship well. However, we had spent the school year apart, only seeing each other over the occasional break, which led to us experiencing very different circumstances. She had also entered a relationship during the summer, and I largely missed how it affected her life throughout the school year.

When I returned home and we started hanging out again, there were subtle differences in her personality that I noticed; a tendency to be more irritable, a lower likelihood to question me in depth about issues I was dealing with, accompanied by a tendency to talk about herself and her relationship problems a disproportionate amount. It was a topic that began to dominate our conversations, and I eventually grew frustrated. I am the type of person that likes to discuss a problem in order to work through it and hopefully come to a solution. This was not Jillian’s intent. She just wanted somebody to vent to about her frustrations, and then hopefully validate her actions. This lead to asymmetrical communication, which “occurs when people exchange different kinds of information” (GAA 19) and can muddle the lines of communication between two people. Problems started to arise for me when we would cycle through the same behavioral patterns and both Jillian and her significant other would predictably repeat actions that would create conflict. When things became very tense between the two of them and it began to severely impact her daily life, I asked her if she might want to contemplate the overall health of the relationship. In the months since my return home I had seen her personal health and self-care declining. She began abusing prescription medications, which became a very touchy subject.

Since beginning this class, I have come to the tentative conclusion that Jillian could be diagnosed as a narcissist. Narcissism is defined in terms of “having an exaggerated sense of self-important and a focus on oneself at the expense of others” (G.A.A. 68). She is a very kind and caring person--her initial career choice was that of a nurse--but a lot of the time she did not realize how disproportionate her focus on herself was. She is beautiful, and has a history of being attracted to others who deeply admire her. She constantly seeks this admiration through her use of dating applications, work interactions, and other various means of communication. Part of her problem with Matt, her long-term boyfriend, was that he was not good at long distance communication. He was not very attentive to his phone throughout the day, which is the complete opposite of Jillian. She had a prescriptive expectancy that he would be responsive to her text messages, because most people of our generation usually are. When he did not give her the attention that she anticipated, her expectancies were violated in a negative manner; “when negative violations occur, people might become angry and dissatisfied with their relationships” (GAA 103). This is precisely what happened, and so when she could not get attention from him, she would pursue other avenues. Men would become infatuated with her, and with her entertaining their advances while feeding off of their compliments, falling in line with the idea that “narcissists are more focused on the short-term rewards they get from relationships, and therefore look for someone who provides them with immediate admiration rather than long-term mutual liking” (Emmons, 1989; Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). This was something that we discussed openly, I think because she sought validation for her behaviors. I made it a point never to shame her for her actions, because she was very sensitive to my judgement and I did not want to alienate her or make her feel bad about herself. However, I think that there were many instances of misinterpretation between us, which resulted in her feeling criticized and accused, a potential outcome of expectancy violations (GAA 105).

I will provide a sample conversation that we had a few months into the summer. I had just apologized for not always understanding her explanations of her behaviors, while explaining that I was currently going through a hard time in my life. It quickly became a heated discussion:

Me: “I need you to be there for me a little bit more. I have a hard time communicating when I am struggling, and I need you to reach out to me for.”

Jillian: “You should have told me sooner. I’m sorry for being such a shitty friend.”

Me: “It’s okay. We’re all shitty friends sometimes.”

Jillian, voice raised and with a sharper tone: “Wow, okay. Sorry I’m just an absolute piece of shit and the worst fucking friend ever. Thanks for that.”

At this point I pause, considering my next words. She interprets this as me agreeing with what she said, and is further angered.

Me: “That’s not what I said.”

As you may be able to imagine, I was a bit perplexed by this interaction. While my intention was not to upset Jillian, I also did not want to validate her behavior. She had been a rather inattentive friend to me in my time of need, and I saw this as an opportunity to have an honest discussion about how we could both be better friends to each other. I hoped that we would both leave the conversation with a better understanding of each other and our individual needs. Instead, she misinterpreted both my words and my silence, resulting in an intense backlash. I shortened the dialogue in this example, but it continued along the same pattern for about 20 minutes after. I would apologize when I misspoke try and explain my thinking, and she would become angrier as a result. I truly did not understand how to correct this negative behavioral pattern, and I felt stuck in a destructive loop of interactions between us. Clearly, I was not putting enough consideration into how Jillian would react to my words, and there were times where I regretted speaking at all.

Narcissists “have relatively low self-esteem and seek self-esteem boosts,” (GAA 68) a descriptor that falls perfectly in line with her behavior. She has admitted to me on various occasions that she suffers from low self-esteem, something that we can bond over, and that she actively seeks out self-esteem boosts to help make her feel better about herself. I brought up the idea that we want to be able to boost our own self-esteem, rather than relying on the opinions and words of others; or if we did rely on others, they should be friends and other loved ones who know us very well and place true meaning behind their words. I could only bring this up once or twice before she became very defensive. As you can probably deduce, a negative behavior pattern formed between us where she would admit to what I perceived to be behaviors non-conducive to healthily boosting her self esteem and improving her mood. Slowly but surely, a gap began to form between us. Since we mostly talked about her problems, there wasn’t as much of an opportunity to discuss my own shortcomings. This created an environment where most of our interactions were centered around her difficulties. making it seem as though I had less flaws than she did. I am also the type of person who will feel compelled to offer advice and aid, which I have come to realize is an area to work on in my own character. These factors together created an air of tension between us where she felt judged and looked down upon by me. I committed what she perceived to be as many social violations, where I “fail[ed] to act in relationally appropriate ways and instead engage[d] in rude, cold, critical, or condescending behavior” (GAA 108). As you can imagine, this put quite a wedge in our friendship and our ability to positively communicate with each other.

The path to recovering our friendship has been a slow one. We took a break from seeing each other for about a month in order to reorient ourselves. I had to develop new expectancies for how Jillian would react to my words and actions, and I imagine that she did the same for me. Our frequency of communication has slowly been increasing again, and she has made more of an effort to ask me how I’m doing. I have also tried harder to open up and share my weaknesses, to both of our benefit. I still need to take breaks from Jillian for periods at a time, but I truly consider her to be a close friend and I hope to work hard with her so that our friendship can last.