Sociopath Community

Yep.

by batshitcrazy

It's very easy to fall for the charm of a narcissist; and since charm often equals sexy, and sexy often equals sex, things get messy fast.

 

Ok. 

 

by wooster

If it has charm, then it's not a narcissist. 

If it's a narcissist, then it's profoundly charmless. True narcs are very few & far in between, but you can spot them easily by their utter lack of charm and deep-seated self-image issues.

 Ok.

If it has charm, then it's not a narcissist.

If it's a narcissist, then it's profoundly charmless. 

Charm is indeed attractive (and thus sexy). 

Can you distinguish charm from disorder and the manipulation techniques it entails?

A disordered personality is the opposite of a charming one. It's positively offputting. If you see charm where there's none, then chances are that someone is feeding your own disorder, after spotting it as your weakness.

Okay, maybe it's more complicated than that. It's very easy to fall for the charm of a narcissist; and since charm often equals sexy, and sexy often equals sex, things get messy fast. Paradoxically, narcissists are often quite faithful in the early stages of relationships, because what frequently leads people to cheat is insecurity: If you're afraid the person you love doesn't love you back, you begin looking for your next landing spot. Narcissists can't conceive that they're not adored, so they don't go through that phase.

But they'll cheat soon enough, because for narcissists, a relationship is all about how the partner enhances their own self-image. That means always trading up to someone who's younger, prettier, richer -- or just plain newer. Narcissists will lie about where they've been and what they're doing; they'll listen less and less when you speak (not that they ever listened much to begin with), and they'll leave you flat if you don't leave first.

If you're married to a narcissist you're in a lot deeper. Here you must confront the problem squarely and suggest -- indeed, insist on -- either marriage counseling, individual therapy for your spouse, or both. Narcissists resist that, since the nature of the condition is that they don't accept that anything is wrong with them. But stand your ground -- and if that doesn't work, consider leaving the marriage. You deserve better.

This broad rule holds for both sexes, but when it comes to romance, women really are in greater peril than men. A 2008 study, by a researcher at New Mexico State University, looked at the improbable attraction many women have to men who exhibit the so-called dark triad of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and impulsive thrill-seeking. The paper crunched the statistics and found that these men outscore other men in number of sexual encounters in any given week, month or year. If you're seeing or married to one of these guys, that alone argues for getting single or unmarried fast.

It's very easy to fall for the charm of a narcissist; and since charm often equals sexy, and sexy often equals sex, things get messy fast.

Ok. 

If it has charm, then it's not a narcissist. 

If it's a narcissist, then it's profoundly charmless. True narcs are very few & far in between, but you can spot them easily by their utter lack of charm and deep-seated self-image issues.

but when it comes to romance, women really are in greater peril than men.

Give or take the odd unplanned pregnancy (which indeed is unfair to women), that peril you speak of is usually self-inflicted.

Confidence can be charming, and a Narc can display delusional amounts of it. People who fall for first impressions that don't read beyond the surface level of a person can fall into it easily, especially if physically attractive enough to be distracting.