Liv, thank you so much for posting this article. This really hit home with me:
Quote: Narcissistically defended people frequently find tacit ways to get others to resolve ambiguities, to protect themselves from the possibility of turning out to be wrong. For example, when a married couple in which the husband operates narcissistically reaches a fork in the road on a trip to a new destination, and is unsure which way to go, the husband will find a way to let his wife pick which road to take. If she turns out to be right, his superior position is protected because he can take credit for letting her choose the way; if she is wrong, he can resent her choice and imply (often nonverbally) that he, had he exercised his own preference, would have gone the other route.
As did this:
Quote: There seem to be at least two bases for the criticism that narcissistically defended people repeatedly direct toward those with whom they live. The object may be seen as a narcissistic extension; hence, any imperfection in the object reflects in an unseemly way upon the self. Or the object disappoints by not being the counterpart to the grandiose self; i.e., the omniscient, all-empathic Other, who effortlessly divines one's needs and meets them, without the narcissistic person having to ask for anything, thereby admitting to an insufficiency in the self. Bursten (1973) has given us an unforgettable example of this second dynamic, in a patient who took his disappointments out on his long-suffering lover:
Increasingly, he expected his girl-friend to anticipate his needs in some empathic way. For example, he would lie on his bed hoping the girl would perform fellatio. Seeing his unhappiness, she would ask what she could do for him. This made him furious. He felt she should know without him having to tell her.
