Signs Of A Narcissistic Husband | From A Psychologist

Today’s question asks if I can take a look at the characteristics or signs of a narcissistic husband.

In this article, I’ll be focused on a husband and wife relationship, and theory one that is relatively stable. Not a new relationship or a relationship that’s dissolving, but rather one where there’s an expectation that the couple is going to remain together.

Now, this, of course, could apply to any long-term partnership between a man and a woman, whether or not the couple was married. There, of course, a lot of signs that focus on narcissistic behaviors that would directly be observable by the wife.

So to get started, here what is narcissism.

Well, I’ve covered this many times, I’m just gonna give a quick review here. With narcissism, we see self-centeredness, we see a need for admiration, and a sense of entitlement. And somebody who’s low on agreeableness.

There are two types of narcissism: Grandiose also called overt, and vulnerable also called covert. Somebody can have really mostly grandiose or most vulnerable traits. But most narcissists have some characteristics from both types.

With grandiose narcissism, we see characteristics like being arrogant, highly self-confident, being resistant to criticism, and being callous. And with vulnerable narcissism, we see characteristics like distrusting other people feeling insecure, having a lot of resentment, feeling a lot of shame, and being hypersensitive to criticism.

Most of the signs that I’ll cover here are more related to grandiose narcissism as opposed to vulnerable narcissism.

As I go through these signs, when I use the term husband, I’m talking about the husband with narcissistic traits. And when I use the term wife, I’m talking about a wife who is not narcissistic.

The top Signs Of A Narcissistic Husband

1. Infidelity- a sense of entitlement to something better

And this is kind of wrapped up with fantasy. To the narcissistic husband, the wife is really never good enough and never attractive enough. She’s not an ideal partner. He thinks he can do better. He believes he deserves to have a better wife. This is called” A sense of entitlement.”

If you combine this dissatisfaction with the fantasies of success, power wealth, and the ideal love that we see associated with grandiose narcissism, it’s a recipe for an affair.

Now having an affair by itself is actually quite destructive. But with the narcissistic husband is really beyond that. He maintains a belief that he has a right to have additional romantic partners. So he’s really not doing anything wrong in his mind.

So again, we’re seeing that sense of entitlement. Being quite pronounced at an extreme level. The husband is offended that the wife could possibly believe that she’s good enough to the extent where he would not have to have additional relationships.

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2. Controls her appearance

The husband wants attention from others, and, of course, has the fantasy of the ideal love that I talked about before. Therefore, he wants the wife to look a certain way to be exceptionally attractive and appealing, even to other men.

One of the common areas where the husband can become demanding is weight management. Usually, criticizing an increase in weight more than a decrease in weight. We see no insight here, no compassion, no recognition that weight management can be very difficult. Rather, we just see criticism, guilt trips, and a general attitude of disgust toward the wife.

Interestingly, if the wife suggests that the narcissistic husband do something to increase his physical attractiveness, like, I’ll work on this if you work on that type of a situation, this is offensive to the husband.

3. Her emotional needs are neglected – no true connection

Whenever the wife might be upset about something, no matter how legitimate the feelings are, the husband is not going to be supportive. We see a lack of empathy, which, of course, is very common with narcissism.

We also see an unwillingness to even get involved with the exploration of feelings. Part of this comes from a lack of depth, but also this comes from centeredness. If the emotions that the wife is experiencing interfere with something the narcissistic husband wants, then his behavior might be even more destructive than just simply ignoring the wife and not engaging her in a conversation.

He might also go on the offensive. He might criticize her for being weak and emotional. So again, we really see no true connection. The husband is callous and emotionally distant.

4. Encourages children to disrespect her

So he is not only trying to manipulate the wife directly, which we would expect from somebody who’s narcissistic, but he also tries to manipulate her indirectly by manipulating the children into disrespecting the wife.

He’s really encouraging the children to take sides with him against the wife. Some of this could be just plain Envy. He wants the admiration. The kids admire the wife, so for the narcissistic husband, this means, he’s not getting as much admiration as he believes he should be getting.

Narcissists do not like to share, even if we’re talking about a resource that really cannot be depleted. For example, children could admire both a mother and a father. It’s not like they use all their admiration up on one and don’t have anything left over for the other.

5. Only his choices matter – no give and take

When choosing activities to do together, the narcissistic husband really only wants to do things that are enjoyable to him. The selection of television shows, movies, restaurants, vacation destinations, and even something like choosing which friends to hang out with. There’s no give-and-take. He’s always going to have a reason why the life selections don’t work and why his selections make sense.

In this situation, the wife might find herself really going out engaging in activities alone. She finds herself going places alone all the time. But when the husband wants to go someplace, she goes with him because he demands that. Again, this is very consistent with narcissism.

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6. Jealous of other men

One common behavior we see related to the sign is for the narcissistic husband to scrutinize the wife’s conversations with other men. He really wants to know every detail of what was said and what was meant by what was said. Like, being interested in the tone of the conversation, the nonverbal communication, hidden messages, and suggestions that may be occurring in that discussion.

And typically, how this plays out is that the husband keeps on asking until he finds something to latch on to, even if the conversations are really a knock you as’.

So essentially, he’s just conducting an interrogation. Waiting for some sort of slip-up, or looking for an opportunity to make a misinterpretation. And when he finds something he can latch on to, he’s going to accuse the wife of being interested in another man, spending too much time with another man, or getting too close to another man. The husband is going to provide reasons why he is a better choice as a mate than another man, even though the wife isn’t requesting that information.

Sometimes this can escalate to where the husband demands that the wife not have any contact with other men, which, of course, can be very disruptive. It can mean the wife leaves the workforce or abandons other social activities. So there’s an isolation component with this particular sign.

7. Envious of wife’s success

I want to clarify the difference here between envy and jealousy.

Envy is defined as unpleasant. Often painful emotion. Characterized by feelings of inferiority, hostility, and resentment, produced by an awareness that another person enjoys the desired possession. Envy is sometimes called the only unpleasant sin. Many people use the word jealousy and envy interchangeably, but we do see a distinction between the two.

Jealousy involves a third party and is caused by a fear of losing possession to a third party. And typically, the narcissist thinks of that possession as a person, specifically his wife. So this is like the behavior I mentioned inside number six.

The husband is envious of the wife’s success across many domains. Financial success, even if that financial success helps the narcissistic husband. Or social success like when the wife has friends.

The husband may suggest that the wife’s job title is inflated. So he may try to minimize her accomplishments. He might say, they call you a manager, who do you manage?

Where the husband may make fun of the job titles the wife has. Oh, you’re a supervisor. Is that they call the person who sits at a desk and does nothing? Where the husband might say, you’re a vice president. Isn’t that just a glorified secretary?

8. Doesn’t listen to her- and his responses are all about HIM

The narcissistic husband doesn’t listen but expects a lot of attention from the wife. And he also expects his wife to have a perfect memory. So the husband may look like he’s listening, but when he responds, the responses are all about him. He only pays attention if the conversation is about something that could benefit him.

Interestingly, the narcissistic husband frequently accuses the wife of not listening. If he has to repeat something because the wife doesn’t remember or because she didn’t listen to it the first time, the husband is offended. But he lacks the insight to realize that he’s not listening to himself.

9. Downplays her contribution to taking care of household and children

The narcissistic husband downplays the contribution of raising children and/or taking care of the household.

So for couples that divide up responsibilities, where the wife looks after the house and the children, we see that the husband doesn’t recognize how much money that saves, on childcare, grocery shopping, cleaning, and all the other various activities. So it really downplays that contribution quite a bit.

The husband refers to his work as meaningful because he earns money. Again, he doesn’t recognize that the wife is actually saving him money. And he uses this as his justification to spend money. At the same time, he criticizes the wife for any spending that she does.

10. Views her as his personal support tool – all about his needs

The narcissistic husband views the wife as a support person dedicated to him, which is interesting given the content of sign nine.

The narcissistic husband has an expectation that the wife will take care of his wants and needs. He relieved used this as her job and she’s supposed to do this because he’s great. Because he’s accomplished, and because he’s so important. This is how he thinks of it.

As part of the sign, we see that it has an expectation of sex. And has offended if the wife is not interested or if she’s not feeling well. No reason is good enough for the narcissistic husband.

Typically, if this happens a few times, this is when the husband starts to threaten to find a physical relationship somewhere else. So again, we see a good deal of manipulation with this particular sign.

The narcissistic husband places a high priority on his wants but doesn’t view the wife’s needs.

Those were the top 10 signs of a narcissistic husband. Please, don’t forget to share this topic with friends.