Kyle: This idea of having a relationship with a friend who is a narcissist is really confusing to me. Because why be friends with a narcissist?
Dr. Ramani: Many times you didn’t set out that way. So you gotta remember, friendships are one of the most understood, understudied, interesting, impactful human relationships we have; they don’t ascribe to any of the usual rules.
These are people we choose. We can have more than one of them. They can cycle in and out of our lives. We can go two years without speaking to them and pick up where we left off. An intimate partnership wouldn’t work like that. Typically, a family member wouldn’t work like that.
There’s a resilience and a durability to friendships that we don’t see in other human relationships. They’re often the healthiest space a lot of people find themselves in because people often have more clarity of judgment with their friends than they do with intimate partners. Because sometimes those bad choices come from like intergenerational family of origin issues.
Friendships tend to be cleaner, but friendships are also interesting in that, you didn’t meet your husband or girlfriend or boyfriend when you were six. You might have friends around since childhood. You might have gone to high school together.
You may have friends you meet…last week. You have friends you meet when you’re 70. So they can insert into your lives in many different places and in different ways. You meet friends in school, college, job, military because they’re parents to your kids’ friends, your partner’s friends.
So there’s a lot of different ways they come into our life too. And what’s tricky with friendships is that we often, again, are a bit more forgiving and easygoing because it’s not as high stakes. So if your friend is being a jerk, you might be like, “You’re being a jerk.”
And then you may not have to see them again. It doesn’t have the high stakes impact of an intimate partner.
Kyle: It’s almost like their narcissistic level is tolerable in the increments that you’re seeing your friend.
Dr. Ramani: Yeah. Where a lot of narcissistic friendships get unearthed is if they become your roommate or you travel with them.
Kyle: Oh yeah.
Dr. Ramani: Those are two really revelatory kinds of moments because it’s one thing where you are out for drinks and they’re being a bit mean and judgy, right? That’s one thing.
It’s quite another when it’s day in and day out or you’re like on a trip and there’s lots of decisions to be made and it’s unfamiliar, there’s a lot of stress around. That’s often where the test happens.
Also, life isn’t uniform. Our lives evolve and develop. One person may get married, one may not, one may move to another country, one may stay put, one may get a high paying job, one person may get stuck.
Really healthy friendships can tolerate all those ebbs and flows, but we do leave people along the way once we perhaps…have kids…we may not feel as much affinity maybe with childless friends. I don’t agree with that. My friends without kids, I feel as connected to them as others, but not everyone feels that way.
All of that said, I think that there’s a different tolerance for it, but until the pressure gets on and then people will say, this is terrible.
The other place friendships get tested and the narcissism may emerge is when you really need something significant from the friendship.
Kyle: Oh man.
Dr. Ramani: You’re going through something hard. Maybe someone dies. Maybe you’re going through a difficult divorce, or your partner cheats on you or your child becomes sick.
You need someone who’s just something more than a drinking buddy. And it’s not unusual then for a narcissistic friend to say, “Too much information” and you’ll say, “What are you saying? I watched you through your stuff and I’m asking you to please listen to me.” And they’ll say, “Yeah, I don’t do the listening thing.”
And all their superficial fun over the years, you start to see it for what it was.
Kyle: It comes to light. This just happened to a friend of mine.
He decided to get sober and one of his friends he goes just to his face, “I don’t think we can be friends anymore.” And he goes, “Why? He goes, “Ah, drinking’s a big part of my life.” And then hasn’t talked to him since.
Dr. Ramani: That’s it. There you go. So now to me, was it NPD? Who the heck knows? But that to me, the lack of empathy, right? The entitlement, the superficiality, the lack of self-awareness, that’s off. That’s definitely narcissistic and veering into something darker that’s not a friendship.
Kyle: So how would my friend have seen his true colors without not going through that? He might not have. We all could be friends with a narcissist and not even know it.
Dr. Ramani: He may not have. We all are.
Kyle: We all are?
Dr. Ramani: I can think about my group of friends. There’s friends I’ve left. Under pressure, something happened. We had an interchange. I was like, damn. I do not keep folks like that around. And that was the end of it. I was done. It doesn’t need to be some big dramatic breakup conversation.
We don’t break up with friends, do we? There’s not like – we need to talk. Could you meet me at that coffee shop on the corner? No.
There’s a very ghosty feel to ending friendships. You just one day stop texting them, calling them.
Kyle: It’s the original ghosting.
Dr. Ramani: Yes, but unless they live near you and you have a rhythm, that’s harder.
It’s when you say, “I’m too busy. I can’t get together, I can’t get together, I can’t get together.” Maybe the friend will notice, maybe they won’t. And then it can die on the vine sort of thing.
But I do think friendships are often quite superficial. The friend you do just occasionally go out to dinner with, or they’re your rock climbing buddy, right? Or they’re your, I like to see horror films with you friend. Or it may be that kind of thing, right?
So when the rubber meets the road and you might think they are a friend because we’ve done all this stuff together and then you open up or you make a significant lifestyle change, like your friend becoming sober, you decide that you’re no longer gonna stay out till three in the morning lifestyle anymore.
You decide to get a nine to five job. Those people who likely viewed you as a convenience and that’s why they were your friend – I don’t do nine to five friends kind of thing – it can percolate at a certain point in time.
And listen, you can always keep a few narcissistic friends up on the top shelf there. They’re fun to have at parties, like they definitely keep the conversation lively and grandiose. You just gotta remember to put them back in the cupboard when you’re done,
Kyle: Right. And you shouldn’t be surprised when you go to them with a real issue and they dismiss it.
Dr. Ramani: Yeah. Understand their limitations. And that’s why I’m saying that in fact, friendships may be the one form of relationship where you might actually be able to weather the narcissism storm. You just have to be aware this person is gonna be a go-to for nothing more than happy hour.
Kyle: Right. Which is okay?
Dr. Ramani: Which is fine.
Kyle: I love that actually. And the reason I say I love that is because it really brings that radical acceptance in a very practiced way. I’m going to go have drinks with this person, but if I get really sick or something terrible happens, I know I’m not gonna go there.
Dr. Ramani: The only exception to this though is if we’re dealing with a friend who’s more of a malignant narcissist.
So now this is somebody who’s trying to hustle you for money.
Kyle: Explain what a malignant narcissist is.
Dr. Ramani: So a malignant narcissist is the usual, classical narcissism. With the lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, all the usual stuff, but we add a more manipulative, exploitative, coercive, controlling overlay to that.
To me, the malignant narcissist is the last stop on the train before we get to psychopathy. So there’s something a bit more menacing.
They may bring you into a bad investment. They may try to take money, borrow more money from you than you should be really giving out. They may be telling lies about you. They may use you for something, for a connection, and that might burn a bridge for you. They may take advantage of you in a way that is not healthy or may even put you at risk.
It’s darker. That friendship is never healthy, happy hour or not. So those friendships really you’d do good to get out of because I can’t tell you how many people I’ve been told about who got billed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars by a friend who’s trying to bring them in on a deal and they fell for it.
Kyle: These are like the Bernie Madoffs of the world?
Dr. Ramani: Yeah, but you know small time. Small time. Tiny Bernies. But definitely like people who have no problem hustling a friend. You would’ve probably been much more guarded if someone brought this to you, but because it was your friend, you actually listened to the pitch.
Kyle: Ooh, that’s good.
Dr. Ramani: Yeah.
Kyle: So while you’re saying this, in my head, I’m divvying up my friends into real friends and other friends. And those other friends are the ones that…maybe they’re a narcissist, maybe I’ll never know, but they serve that role and it’s not detrimental to my life.
Dr. Ramani: Yes.
Kyle: Okay.
Dr. Ramani: Yeah and it’s also the kind of thing where you may only have limited tolerance for it. When your time becomes more precious, you may be less willing to spend time with these, maybe more benign narcissistic, but nonetheless narcissistic friends.
You might feel like, you know what? I get one night out a month, I’ve got kids. I’m not sure that this is the person I wanna give it to. But if you have a party, a big barbecue, where there’s a hundred people coming, yeah…a few narcissists around…who cares?
