Marriage Series: Narcissism and Marriage
Narcissism has gotten a really bad wrap. First of all, the word, narcissism, or calling someone narcissistic, has taken on a very nasty meaning. It used to be a simple psychological concept that, at the extreme, could be a disorder. Perhaps the concept moved into public awareness with the book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (2009), by Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, or perhaps through armchair mental health professionals declaring certain politicians or celebrities to have Narcissistic Personality Disorders. The Twenge and Campbell book had an almost “end of the world” feel to it because of research done on incoming freshmen and women at certain universities indicating a persistent rise in narcissism in our youthful students. In the end, narcissistic has become a dirty name to call someone.
Narcissism is normal and has numerous benefits.
First: A look at narcissism. At its root, narcissism is an expectation that people should get what they want and do what they want (i.e., entitled)- without any expectation that the person will consider the effects of his or her behavior on others. Doesn’t that describe every baby ever born? Babies cry in the middle of the night to get attention or be fed- or even if they have a little sore tummy. They do so without a smidgen of concern for their exhausted parents. Babies throw tantrums if they don’t get what they want. They bite their mother’s nipples and don’t feel an ounce of guilt. They hit their sister if she doesn’t give them something they want and then throw a tantrum if they are put in time-out. That’s right. Babies are little narcissistic personality disorders personified.
Next: A look at altruism, impulse control, planning, concern, etc. If raised well, children do not become less narcissistic. They simply develop more concern for others (i.e., altruism). Then they develop the understanding that real self-interest is to focus on how things turn out for them in the long-run, and less so in the short-run. They learn to curb their impulses, not because they have less narcissism, but because they learn that the path to real self-interest requires a concern for others and control of short-term impulses. In other words, people remain highly narcissistic, but this becomes modified by altruism, impulse control, thoughtful planning and a genuine concern for others.
Mental health requires a balance, not the elimination of narcissism.
Marriage is a second chance to grow up. This was a comment made in a classic book by Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig, titled Marriage Dead or Alive (1986). The book is about many topics related to marriage, but this concept is truly striking: that one of the functions of a marriage is to grow up again. This includes getting a much better balance of narcissism and altruism through the process of two people becoming, in a sense, one team.
Think about it. When two people like enough about one another to marry, of course, they are very different from one another. They are also both narcissistic, hopefully with a big dose of altruism too. The narcissism rears its ugly head regularly in the first years of a marriage, as each spouse tries to turn the other spouse into the kind of spouse that would make the marriage perfect. This is the control phase of a marriage. The spouses are different, and some of those differences lead to disagreements, some of which can morph into conflicts. The movie, The Stepford Wives, elegantly makes this point, at least from a man’s point of view. The men in Stepford, a small town, turn their wives into gratifying robots. This is the narccisstic dream, which is fine except one of the spouses is not a real person.
In a slightly exaggerated sense, currently men and women are falling in love with non-existent characters created by A.I. computer programs. A recent controversy in Japan was about whether a person could legally marry a robot.[1] Our point is that even in real marriages with real people, narcissism demands an effort to get the other spouse to be that ideal spouse in a narcissistic fantasy.
Don’t laugh. Historically, men have been doing this for millennia. Think about a harem, for example. Think about the phrase “the little woman at home.” Women have been subtler and have had to develop a manipulative skill in order to get the kind of husband that they want. In a Greek Play, women band together and decide to withhold sex unless their husbands do what they want. In recent times, think about the phrase, “Happy wife, happy life.”
The battle of the sexes, in marriage, is the battle of narcissism seeking balance with altruism.
In a very practical sense, spouses come to a marriage different from one another, wanting different things from a marriage. These differences lead to the disagreements that arise between them. A marriage that goes poorly is one in which those conflicts come to dominate the marriage, whether that is in the form of open warfare or a cold war. These are the spouses who have not met the challenge of growing up again. i.e., altruism, impulse control, thoughtful planning and a genuine concern for others.
Just as effective parenting relies on having rules for children and having parenting skills to teach altruism, impulse control, thoughtful planning and a genuine concern for others, a successful marriage relies on having rules for the marriage and skills for resolving disagreements in a manner that works well for both spouses.
This message is, of course, a major point of our book The Road to Marital Success is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work.[2] The book provides a list of nine rules and seven skills, along with a great deal of other information, in order for spouses to “grow up again” and reap the rewards of marital success.
In closing. Narcissism is good. It is a fine thing to try to get the most out of a marriage for yourself. It is also important to seek solutions that make your life better. There is nothing wrong with being selfish, as long as the efforts to accomplish these goals include altruism, impulse control, thoughtful planning and a genuine concern for others and an effort to accomplish the narcissistic quality of life the other spouse is seeking.
[1] Applenews.
[2] If you want to order the book, see www.marriageanddivorce.org.
