Do narcissists experience jealousy or is it maybe envy?
This is the topic of today's video.
Envy is when you want to imitate someone, when you want to be like someone, and try when you wish you've had what they have.
Jealousy is when you anticipate loss, for example, loss of a loved one, and then you become possessive because you want to reclaim the loved one. You're terrified of abandonment and rejection.
The narcissist experiences a sequence.
Initially, the narcissist experiences envy, then jealousy, and then the narcissist reclaims the partner via mortification and management of the relationship and behavioral rules.
We are talking about jealousy and envy in intimate relationships, but all this information applies equally to jealousy and envy in the workplace, or in the family or with other people, neighbors or what have you. Still, we're focused today on intimate romantic relationships.
When the narcissist is compared by the intimate partner to someone else, and this comparison is unfavorable to the narcissist, when the narcissist's intimate partners designate someone else as superior to the narcissists in some way, the narcissist becomes envious.
The narcissist couldn't care less if his intimate partner is cheating on him, engages in an infidelity, falls in love, has an affair, sexual relationship, one night stands, casual sex. None of this is of any interest to the narcissists.
Because the narcissist regards his intimate partner as a service provider. Would you be jealous if your service provider had other clients?
I will go into it in a minute.
But the narcissist is invested in his view of himself as superior, and when the intimate partner says, my other sexual partner is better than you in bed, or my lover is much more intelligent than you, then the narcissist envy is triggered, competitive envy.
At that point, the narcissist suddenly realizes that having found a superior person, he may lose his intimate partner altogether. And this triggers jealousy, fear of loss, and the jealousy provokes possessiveness.
The possessiveness, the attempt to reclaim the intimate partner, this leads to changes in the rules and boundaries of the relationship to relationship management issues and ultimately behavior modification or a dissolution of the relationship.
The freedom that the narcissist gives his intimate partner within the relationship is usually highly appreciated by the intimate partner. The intimate partner feels that spending time with the narcissist, being in a relationship with the narcissist is a kind of sacrifice. She feels that she needs to be compensated for this.
And one of the main compensations offered by the narcissist is his indifference. He couldn't care less.
Initially, it hurts. The intimate partner finds this very painful.
But gradually, she realizes the liberty that she has been granted and she thrives and flourishes so the narcissist attempt to reclaim her backfired in the majority of cases and leads to the disintegration of the shared fantasy itself.
And now let's delve deeper into the different ways that cerebral narcissists, somatic narcissists, and covert narcissists react to the same predicament, to the same situation when the intimate partner has found someone whom she deems to be superior to her narcissistic partner and how does the narcissist react in these cases?
Again remember envy, jealousy reclaiming possessiveness. That's the sequence.
Have fun.
Are you jealous of someone who has it all? A flashy car, a drop dead gorgeous girlfriend, money to spare, and intelligence to share.
If you're jealous of such a person, you're not actually jealous. You're confusing jealousy with envy.
What I've just described is envy. Jealousy is an entirely different emotion.
Jealousy has to do with a fear of loss. It's a kind of panic reaction.
When you're afraid that you're about to lose something or someone, you're likely to become possessive. And this experience, the experience of this possessiveness and the experience of the anxiety attached to the anticipated loss, this is what we call jealousy.
So from now on, disciples of Sam Vaknin, you will distinguish envy from jealousy.
Oh, I envy you. You have me.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism, the first book ever on narcissistic abuse. I'm also a professor of clinical psychology.
And today we're going to discuss the narcissist's three jealousies.
Now, I just started by saying that jealousy has to do with the anticipation of loss and this triggers a sense of possessiveness. I will tighten control over the object. The object could be another person, could be a possession of some kind of material possession, whatever it is.
In this particular video, I will discuss romantic jealousy. So it's another person.
The instinctive reaction when you foresee some kind of loss is to tighten your control, to monitor, to supervise, to spy, to establish rules of conduct, boundaries, to punish from his behavior, etc., to create a constricted, restrictive and constrained environment whereby it's much more difficult to betray you or to walk away or to abandon you. This is a healthy person.
As usual, the narcissist's version of jealousy is a travesty.
The narcissist's jealousy is reactive to threats to his locus of grandiosity.
Let me explain this.
A typically healthy person would anticipate the loss of, shall we say, his wife, because she is flirting with someone. And then he would become possessive and jealous. He would set terms and conditions and boundaries, and if she does not comply, you know, there would be consequences. That's typically a healthy response.
The narcissist couldn't care less about other people because the narcissist is incapable of perceiving the externality and separateness of other people.
The narcissist becomes jealous when his grandiosity is challenged, when his grandiosity is threatened, when his inflated, fantastic self-conception, self-images, self-perception are undermined or doubted or mocked or ridiculed or criticized.
Narcissus is emotionally invested in two things in his view of himself, which is a protective, compensatory view, and with a fantasy, especially the shared fantasy. He's protective of these two things. He's attached to these two things. He is what we call cathected, emotionally invested in these two things.
And when these two things are somehow threatened, when they are no longer certain, when there is a sense of impending doom and looming loss regarding these two things, the narcissist image as godlike and perfect, and the narcissist's fantasy within which he is godlike and perfect.
When these are threatened, it is then that the narcissist reacts with jealousy.
However, we have different types of narcissists, and we have different types of grandiose narratives.
Some narcissists are proud of being hyper-intelligence. Other narcissists are proud of being super famous. Other narcissists are proud of their collections and possessions. Some narcissists are proud of their trophy wives. Others are proud of, you know, so there's an endless number of possible grandiosities.
Narcissists can even be grandiose of loss, defeat, failure and victimhood.
The grandiosity is not about being the best, the most. It's about being unique.
So narcissists can go around and say, what, my bankruptcy was the greatest in the history of my state.
So that's reason for boasting and bragging and swaggering and, you know.
So grandiosity is everything that endows the narcissist with a sense of uniqueness, of standing out, of being sui generis, one of a kind.
And when this is threatened, when this is challenged when this is undermined, narcissists react with jealousy.
So let's take for example the cerebral narcissists.
The cerebral narcissist is utterly indifferent to infidelity especially sexual infidelity but also emotional infidelity and emotional affair. They couldn't care less.
The cerebral narcissist regards his intimate partner as a service provider.
Would you be jealous of your service provider, internet service provider, because it has multiple clients? Of course it wouldn't be. Why would you be jealous of your service provider, internet service provider, because it has multiple clients? Of course it wouldn't be. Why would you be jealous of your provider for having additional clients except you? It's normal, it goes without saying.
Similarly, the cerebral regards as intimate partneras a kind of service provider. The partner provides the four S's supply, services, safety, and in the case of the somatic narcissists, sex, but as long as she keeps providing this, he couldn't care less if she has additional clients, a lover, a sexual partner. He couldn't care less if she has additional clients a lover a sexual partner he couldn't care less honestly he couldn't care less he's not faking it he just couldn't care less there's no hint or shred or spark of jealousy in him when it comes to these issues i say him him, her, half of all narcissists are women.
But the cerebral narcissists does become jealous.
If his partner admires someone else's intellect, if the partner were to come to a cerebral narcissist, the intimate partner, the wife, come to a cerebral narcissist and said, the other day, I slept with someone else. His response would be, and what's for breakfast?
If on the other hand, she were to come to the cerebral narcissist and say, I just met the most amazing, amazing intellect, super intelligent. What a brain! This would provoke the cerebral narcissist jealousy, and he would become instantly possessive of the intimate partner.
Why?
Because the locus of grandiosity, the seat of grandiosity of the cerebral narcissist is his intellect, his self-imputed genius and intelligence. And when these are challenged, when there is competition around, he becomes highly agitated jealous possessive reactive and even aggressive
So this is how cerebral narcissists become jealous you could sleep around with anyone you wish you could do whatever you could fall in, you could fall in love, you could have an affair over four years or five years with someone, you can spend time with them, travel with them, live in their apartments, no problem whatsoever.
But the minute you hint that this other person is not only sexually endowed, but also has intellectual prowess and is intellectually superior. At that point, the cerebral puts his foot down, sets boundaries, and cuts off the affair. This is the jealous reaction of the cerebral.
Okay, what about the somatic?
The somatic narcissist is sexually jealous, but is not possessive.
So the somatic narcissist would gladly share his intimate partner sexually with other people in group sex or swinging.
Actually the somatic narcissists finds it very arousing to watch his partner having sex with others.
So he is sexually jealous, but he is not possessive. He is into swapping and sharing and so forth and of course there are many psychological reasons for this.
First of all the somatic narcissist himself is prone to infidelity so he wants to legitimize his own infidelity by allowing his partner to cheat in a legitimized way within group sex, for example. Legitimize structured cheating.
That's one reason.
The other reason is that the somatic narcissist regards his intimate partner the same way the cerebral narcissist does as an internal object and a source of provision, a source of services.
So one of the services in the case of the somatic narcissist is sex.
And the somatic narcissist is sexually jealous, not in the sense that you think.
What I mean is that the somatic narcissist is sexually envious.
In other words, if the intimate partner of the somatic narcissist were to sleep with another person, the somatic narcissist couldn't care care less but if she were to compare sexual performance and sexual endowments and sexual assets between the somatic narcissists and her lover this would trigger sexual envy.
So the somatic narcissist is reactive to any comparison which casts in doubt his sexual prowess, his irresistibility, his attractiveness, his drop dead gorgeousness, and so on.
The partner is allowed to have sex with others, is allowed to, of course, have love affairs with others and have a life of her own, but she is not allowed to consider any other person superior to the somatic narcissists in terms of sexuality, body, musculature, looks, appearance, sexual performance, and so on.
Again, you see the locus of grandiosity is crucial.
The cerebral favors his intellect and his intelligence as the tools to obtain narcissistic supply. He is invested in the belief, or shall I say the delusion, that he is a genius, and therefore deserving of accolades and special treatment.
So when the cerebral narcissist is challenged on this front when his intimate partner says I've met someone who is more clever than you more intelligent than you smarter than you more insightful than you more analytical than you he reacts with intense jealousy. He becomes possessive and he reclaims his intimate partner.
The somatic narcissist is emotionally invested in his view of himself as kind of an Apollo, kind of an irresistible, gorgeous hunk and so on. And then when his intimate partner implies that there's someone who is better looking, someone who is more muscular, someone who is better in bed, and so on so forth. The somatic narcissists reacts with envy and again becomes possessive, reclaims his partner, sets boundaries, and so.
Finally, the covert narcissist.
Covert narcissist is insecure. Covert narcissist fears loss because the self-image of the covert narcissist is compromised.
There is an internalized bad object within the covert narcissist. There is what Adler called the inferiority complex.
The covert narcissist feels simultaneously, inferior externally and superior internally. In other words, the covert narcissists says, I am, for example, a genius or I am a sexy person, but no one sees it. I cannot translate this into behavior. I cannot communicate this to other people. I cannot convince them that I'm superior.
And it is this tension that creates the covert solution. Covert solution is essentially a form of self-supply.
At any rate, the covert narcissist is insecure. Because of this discrepancy between implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem, the covert narcissist is insecure.
He always teeters on the verge of being abandoned or being rejected. He is never surprised when something bad happens to him.
So he anticipates loss. He fears it and he realizes that there's very little he can do about it because he is not a very appetizing or attractive proposition.
So his jealousy is ever present and possessive.
Ironically, the covert narcissist's form of jealousy, the fear of loss, possessiveness, is very similar to the jealousy that is very common among healthy people.
So the covert narcissistic jealousy is healthy. The somatic narcissistic jealousy is actually a form of competitive envy. And the cerebral narcissistic jealousy is also a form of competitive envy.
They couldn't care less if their intimate partners betray them, cheat on them, have other people as lovers or as sex partners. They couldn't care less about any of this.
But they care a lot about their image, their brand, their self-perception, and other people's admiration and adulation or statistic supply. So they are invested in this.
And when the intimate partner hints that she has found someone superior in any way, intellectually with the cerebral, with the somatic they wake up they try to reclaim the partner they set boundaries they're strict they enforce rules they monitor they spy and they become highly unstable and one could say even emotionally violent.
These are the three types of jealousies or envies of the narcissist.