Why Narcissists Struggle With Give and Take

Since everything is on their terms, they will engage with you in a terrible way and their lovebombing will be about their fantasies rather than your needs, which is really just another way to degrade and erase your agency.

Intellectual dishonesty is when they ignore, dismiss, discard, degrade, or rage against anything that goes against their terms. They can’t handle you if you keep reflecting the truth back to them for ten minutes straight (authenticity is their nemesis). They can’t handle rebuke (unrepentant soul, seared conscience). This is subtle; they’ll light up when it’s about them and their interests (me), and they’ll switch off when it’s not. They don’t understand micro-obligations (not me); they don’t take you seriously during conversations; they don’t dismiss or ignore anything you say that doesn’t fit their agenda; they can’t be convicted of their own sins when they micro-transgress against you (they lose their temper, they must apologize, they treated you unfairly, they must apologize).

The impulse to degrade will become irresistible in the medium term, and they will begin gently degrading you. This is a red signal that cannot be ignored, but it usually only appears in the medium term, making it a late flag and consequently rather expensive.

However, the most important thing I want to emphasize again is that because everything is on their terms, they must unavoidably have negative give and take.

90% of the time, you will be able to identify narcissists and their siblings as sub-clinical narcissists if you can recognize the signs of poor give and take.

They will make a thousand-word remark beneath your article explaining their victimization and story, but they will not applaud your post, which is a very revealing sign that everything must be on their terms.

Because it’s their terms to sell their story.

It’s on your terms to get upvoted. Your words don’t apply to narcissists.

It’s difficult for narcissists to reciprocate. They struggle with compromise. Additionally, you must learn to recognize the signs of poor give and take. Because of their innate tendency to only love their own terms and despise yours, I believe this approach has a 90% success rate in identifying narcissists.

words

Contracts are composed of terms.

Every hour, social interactions consist of a hundred little, unwritten agreements.

Covenants are broken by narcissists. The antithesis of their relationship is their word.

As a result, they violate 50% of the 100 unwritten contracts per hour, making them serial contract breakers. They have thereby violated fifty unwritten social commitments in an hour of contact.

A good person might violate one or ten of such microcontracts.

When seen in this light, it becomes clear that a narcissist would violate 50 microcontracts, but a good person would only violate 10.

They betray others compulsively.

Even in the first exchanges, they can’t resist betraying you.

The live example of betrayal is a narcissist.

You can identify your narcissist early on if you learn to recognize microbetrayal, microaggression, microrebellion, micropromise breaking, microrule breaking, microtransgressions, microdegradation, microcovenant breaking, microthe-social-rules-don’t-apply-to-me, microgetting-away-with-things, and microignore the behavior I just committed.

Cheers to spotting.

This formula is essentially the basis for many of the general guidelines we use to identify hazardous individuals.

The unwritten social compact to treat others like human beings, regardless of how much wealth you have, is exactly what the rule “watch how they treat wait staff” means. A toxic person treats them like they’re not people.

Love your neighbor as yourself is the Christian version of this commandment.

Because they are all too aware of how respectable it would be to treat wait staff with kindness, narcissists disregard this guideline and treat them like dirt.

This is comparable to how a narcissist makes sure they don’t fulfill their commitments to you because they understand how honorable it would be to do so.

The same thing applies.

breach of the covenant. Betrayal. Treason. Lawlessness. rebellion against the good and the truth.

They always give you poor terms.

It’s easy to reframe poor giving and take as poor covenant keeping.

Every social encounter we have involves a number of unwritten social contracts. Consider them to be covenants. For orderly contact, people must adhere to a minimum of covenants (e.g., not interrupting at every word, not walking out on talks, etc.). However, I’m not referring to these. I’m referring about more subdued covenants, such as refraining from using word salads and sticking on topic.

not turning off instead of paying attention, not frowning at the speaker, and not questioning or criticizing what they say

They are all about engaging appropriately in a way that is healthy, courteous, and loving. It’s similar like waiting in line. Things run well if everyone acts appropriately. It becomes immediately apparent if someone cuts the line. Covenant is violating an unwritten social norm in that way. It’s anticipated; no one orders you to wait in line. Narcissists are adept at breaking these covenants because they feel so unique that they are exempt from the rules, and since they despise you, they utilize breaking the norms to make fun of you. That’s accomplishing two goals at once. And by breaching contracts, narcissists manipulate your expectations. Micro covenants are broken by several narcissistic qualities, such as ingratitude, unrepentance, ungraciousness, attention vampirism, etc. Fairness, however, is the most important vow that narcissists consistently violate. And the reason this indication is effective is because covenant keeping cannot be done just according to their provisions. Fairness cannot exist only on their terms. On their terms alone, you can’t have a healthy give and take.