Proverbs 11:2 “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.”
Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Galatians 6:3 “For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
For the narcissists happiness should be theirs alone, everyone else should admire their happiness, but should never be happier than the narcissist.
I have had many experiences in my life that demonstrate the principle that narcissists attempt to undermine the happiness of others through denial of any accomplishments on the part of those they envy.
When a narcissist is envious, they are generally and often vengeful, desiring to ruin any joy derived from an event that produced pleasure for their victim.
Philippians 2:3 “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”
Romans 12:16 “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.”
A good example of this is a dinner party I attended in which the host went out of her way to prepare delicious food and a lovely decorated table with name cards and special glasses, plates and flatware. When the narcissists entered the room where the meal was to be served, they proclaimed that the host should not have done all this work; they weren’t fancy people and were not comfortable with a dinner party where the table was adorned so lavishly.
Of course the hostess was hurt by these remarks, because her hope was that, in preparing a lovely table with good food, the guests would enjoy themselves much more. After all don’t we go to special restaurants for birthdays and anniversaries, rather than staying at home, to be somewhere different and more elegant than we would have every day at home?
Even though the hostess felt bad about the attitude and comments, she ignored it and carried on to serve the meal. However, the good feelings that would have come from someone enjoying her preparations, was ruined. She now had no good feelings about it, which was the goal of the narcissists.
Narcissists cannot stand engaging in joy and pleasures with those for which they have contempt. They work to ruin the mood of gatherings in which they would not be getting the glory or becoming the center of attention.
When this happens one or two times in our lives we tend to think perhaps we did something wrong. But how could doing your best to making guests happy, be wrong? Confusion invades our thinking while we are left wondering if we were rude in some way. We decide after prayer and pondering that we did nothing wrong, so, we think, “what is the problem”? There was a sense of “shock and awe” perpetrated on the hostess over a dinner party?
As time went on, more and more of these “shock and awe” events occurred leaving the hostess completely baffled as to what she was doing that was so terrible. Then the light bulb went on, she realized that this didn’t happen with other people who treated her with respect and enjoyed the things she prepared for them. Why would some people be so gracious and appreciative at a dinner party and others act as though the hostess had committed unforgivable rudeness? The Lord began to give her answers; they were in the Word of God, the passage in 2 Timothy 3, explained a lot.
2 Timothy 3:1-5 “3 But understand this, that yin the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. avoid such people.”
She began to understand that her encounter with the narcissistic couple was their own selfish bent toward being superior to everyone else. They just couldn’t allow the hostess to have joy over the gathering; they had to rob her of that, to feel superior to her.
The normal, natural and perfectly acceptable response at a dinner party to which we are invited, is to be pleased, thankful and complimentary toward the hostess who went to so much work, no matter what the food is or the decorations are, we should always be grateful.
When we encounter attitudes from the same people over and over again, we need to understand that they have targeted us for no other reason except to elevate themselves. This is their mode of operation when they are in the presence of those who treat them with love but do not elevate them above others. These same people do not consider themselves as being loved unless they are elevated. Their idea of love is doing what they want, when they want it while being the center of attention.
When we have gone to prayer, analyzed the situation in question and can find nothing we did or said to foster the attitudes or rudeness in our guests, and then we can be sure we are dealing with selfish people who must continually be hoisted to a position of honor above others.
What should our response be in these situations? First I probably wouldn’t invite them over very often; they obviously do not appreciate the gestures of kindness. However, if we are in a situation where we have to have the dinner party, then we do what we always do while ignoring the remarks. We should not allow narcissists to dictate the hospitality in our homes. If we were to go to their home, we graciously accept whatever they have for us just as they should accept our ways.
The key to dealing with narcissists is to visit with them in small doses and never respond to their rudeness. Narcissists look for and hope to cause ill feelings that turn into arguments. I have had much contact with these kinds of people; I find that it is best to be a watcher as though in a stage production, never taking into our soul the barbs that are thrown.
Narcissists love conflict and are elated when others are hurt from their rudeness. My prayer is that those of you who have had to deal with narcissists would learn to be strong enough to feel nothing when they perpetrate their acts of intimidation, perhaps even seeing the humor in it. It is silly and childish; we can learn to pity and pray for them.
