Never Enough

One of the key traits of narcissism is a lack of empathy. However, as my Ex actually has demonstrated empathy, doesn’t that refute my interpretation of her as being narcissistic? The amount of empathy that I received from my Ex varied–it also diminished after our breakup, but we’ll come to that later. When she saw me crying, she usually comforted me, except when being angry with me. One example for a lack of empathy was when I cried in the car while discussing the movie incident. After I revealed my vulnerability and it seemed that we reconciled, my Ex chose to reinforce her punishment by telling me that she is still mad at me. She often demonstrated a lack of understanding for my feelings, for example when she shamed me that I got upset about a coworker of mine.

Another example was when we watched a movie about Italian culture. This was during the time when my Ex was trying to convince me of the perks of Mediterranean culture and that we can adopt the best parts of it. The movie plays with clichés about Northern and Southern Italy and ends with a big celebration, in which all persons involved get together and overcome their prejudices. It reminded me of social anxiety that I used to have during childhood and triggered a feeling of shame that I had during family celebrations in adolescence: I don’t enjoy being part of a jolly crowd, I don’t fit in, and something is wrong with me. My Ex sensed that I withdrew emotionally and asked me the next morning about it. When I told her after initial hesitation that the movie made me sad and reminded me of my social anxiety, she pointed out that I had been sad just a few days ago. She was referring to the night when she told me that another woman would not have dated me again. In this situation, she didn’t have empathy for me and invalidated my feelings, because she assumed that I was punishing her for making me watch the movie with her.

It didn’t occur to me that this lack of understanding constitutes a warning sign, because I was used to it. While growing up, I had learned to hide my inner feelings and to adapt to what others want from me. It fit the general theme that my Ex was reiterating: something is wrong with me, I have these stress and anger issues, I should be less like myself and more like she wants me to be. Dr. Ramani explains the empathic ability of narcissists as follows:

It’s not completely accurate to say that narcissistic people completely lack empathy. They actually have what’s called variable empthy: they turn it on and off to get what they need. It’s not pure empathy, but more of a transactional empathy, and it turns on when they have a good day.
—Dr. Ramani¹

Academic literature suggests that individuals with pathological narcissism have little or no impairment in cognitive empathy, but significant impairment in emotional empathy.² Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s emotion, whereas emotional empathy is the ability to feel someone else’s emotion. Dr. Ramani illustrates the difference as follows:

Empathy has two pieces. Number one, it’s the piece of attempting to understand, reflect and be present with the emotions or feelings of another person–even if you’re not experiencing them and perhaps even if you don’t necessarily agree with them–that you would understand that a person may be sad, or angry, or have some other emotional state. Part two of empathy is being able to self-reflect on your impact on other people. In the simplest example, the self-reflective part of empathy is taking a minute before you react to someone to think about how your words and how your actions could affect somebody else.
—Dr. Ramani³

My Ex demonstrated empathy with animals, and spoke about being empathetic with children or abstract groups of people–a behavior that Dr. Ramani calls macroempathy.¹ My Ex has the capacity for empathy, but chose on a case-by-case basis whether or not to provide it to me, which included moments when I shared my deepest vulnerabilities–but got a lack of understanding in return.