After I published the blog post, “Narcissism and the Housekeeping of Friends,” I was left troubled with thoughts that wouldn’t quit dogging me.
Was I a “bad person” for no longer wanting to carry on these friendships associated with my past narcissistic relationship?
Did I owe these individuals I was once friends with anything for the time we’ve known each other?
Should I have handled my severing of these relationships differently?
These questions nipped at my heels from time to time over the years after I moved on with my life following the end of my narcissistic relationship. But no matter how much I doubted and second-guessed my handling of these troubled ancillary acquaintances, in the end I always remembered one key point.
The mutual friends I shared with my gay narcissistic ex were potentially flying monkeys and agents for him, wittingly or not.
Flying Monkeys
I always hated that term—flying monkeys. There’s something irritatingly juvenile in its colloquial pop-culture usage, and I find it belittling of the entire dynamic that animates the agents of a narcissist.
Yes, agents—now that’s a term I can agree with. Dr. Todd Grande popularized this word in describing the active and involved allies of a narcissist.
During the several years that my ex gay narcissist and I were “partners,” there were a great many friends coming in and going out of his life. Some carried over from his past, but the majority were unknown faces with fresh supply. New horizons awaited my ex gay narcissist, and those horizons were populated with a great many people to meet and befriend. Old bores wouldn’t cut it.
Many, many people passed in and out of our orbit over the years. The majority of these relationships were superficial, and their longevity fleeting. My gay narcissistic ex either lost interest or fixated on a slight. Sometimes the other person would grow tired and impatient with him, having seen a glimpse behind the mask. (All of this was a warning of my impended fate, one I chose to ignore.)
Some remained consistent fixtures, though, and I slowly warmed to them.
But all the while, my ex gay narcissist was grooming his agents all the years we were together, whether they knew it or not.
Maintaining The Image
A narcissistic person invests a great deal of time and effort in maintaining an image—wealth, romantic stability, intelligence, a successful career—whatever provides status. It’s why you see the worst of your narcissistic partner. A narcissist only has so much psychological wherewithal to maintain the artifice of the image he’s projecting for others. And when he’s worn out, guess who’s going to witness the decline? You are.
Personally, I experienced two realities for years in my own narcissistic relationship. There was the public presentation of my ex gay narcissist and how he expected me and our relationship to be seen, depending on the crowd he was performing for. Any deviation on my part would result in poisonous glares and curled lips. These cues spoke of his private self when the mask came off.
And when my gay narcissistic ex found the new supply to be my replacement, he slowly began building his case with those he once presented me as the perfect partner to, the one who he “wanted to be with more than anything else on this planet.” The fickle nature of a narcissist is dizzying—an embellishment from yesterday is easily replaced by a new swindling sales pitch today.
A new narrative was in order; one to dissolve all that which the gay narcissist originally presented about me and our relationship. But my gay narcissistic ex wasn’t the bad guy in the narrative, mind you. Perish the thought.
And he wasn’t wrong or mistaken about anything he said in the past, either. Rather, “the relationship got away” from us both. Feelings changed. I changed, too. Sure, the gay narcissist took some blame. With great nobility he told me and those around us that he sensed the relationship was fracturing, but alas, he didn’t address the distance that was growing between us soon enough. He thought he’d be able to handle it, but he was not in the end.
Agents on a Mission
Shared relationships with a narcissist will never be clean. You’ll always wonder about the authenticity of messaging and the privacy of conversations. You’ll always be connected to the narcissist so long as you maintain relationships with his associates. People are objects to a narcissist, and these mutual friends will eventually be objectified as tools.
In the early days of my gay narcissistic relationship ending, the gay narcissist and I shared one particular friend that he introduced me to. In the days before the initial breakup, I confided to this individual with a great many tears. The compassion this person showed me was deep and true, and I will always be grateful for that support during a time I truly felt my grasp on reality slipping.
But a couple of weeks after I was discarded and the new supply was installed as the gay narcissist’s perfect partner, this same individual attended a night of dinner and drinks to meet my replacement. This was completely within her right. But to say it wasn’t unsettling for me would be lying.
There were others, however, who seemed to overtly thrive off of the drama between the two of us. Some even appeared to enjoy reporting to me early signs of turmoil going on between the gay narcissist and the new supply.
Some of the gay narcissist’s agents and flying monkeys meant well and were doing their best to straddle the drama that was going on between us. But others, I’ve always suspected, enjoyed involvement in the drama—even the planning of my fate before the discard.
But everyone, wittingly or not, were agents on a mission. And for this, I eventually did some friendship housecleaning of my own and moved on. I said it before, and I’ll say it again. I surely handled ending many of these relationships without tact, and it’s more than possible I caused some undue hurt feelings for this.
But once it was done, a weight lifted, and that’s still a priceless feeling.
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If you’re interested in learning more about narcissism, toxic relationships, dark personalities, and sexuality, then I highly recommend the books below.
Please consider buying through the provided Amazon Associate links. While the content on my website is yours to read for free, I do appreciate any support offered toward my work.
The reading list includes:
Should I Stay Or Should I Go: Surviving A Relationship With A Narcissist (Dr. Ramani Durvasula)
The Human Magnet Syndrome: The Codependent Narcissist Trap (Dr. Ross Rosenberg)
The Sociopath Next Door (Dr. Martha Stout)
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World Of The Psychopaths Among Us (Dr. Robert D. Hare)
In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding And Dealing With Manipulative People (Dr. George Simon)
Being Homosexual: Gay Men And Their Development ( Dr. Richard Isay)
The Velvet Rage: Overcoming The Pain Of Growing Up Gay In A Straight Man’s World (Dr. Alan Downs)
2 Comments
You’re right about agents being healthier to avoid that maintain closeness to, and I think the root of it is that the narcissistic/agent dynamic exploits the common human need to feel included and important, or “essential personnel” to their community. Despite being NPD, I have also been on the wrong end of a relationship with a deeply malignant and straight up evil man, to which I lost a friendship that went back to my teenage years. Like with your friend, whose compassion for you was sincere, I was shocked to find that even somebody who I KNEW was bonded to me, could try to “see both sides” and stay friends with someone who was that sadistic.
At the end of the day, I guess everybody reacts to what their principles are, and sometimes even the generally noble principles of being fair-minded and compassionate can get hijacked like crazy. If nothing else, it’s nice knowing that people are really taking a hard look at the dynamics that inform narcissistic relationships, because they tie back into some root issues with how human beings have been relating to each other for centuries. Here’s hoping that specific silver lining turns out to be platinum once people really start adapting to all this information and using it to change things, lol
Thank you for taking the time to comment on this writeup, Theo.
I agree. No matter how kind and likable a person is, when that same person is also make great efforts to see the side of someone who treated you badly, it’s just hard to come back from that.
The person trying to do that is free to do so, obviously. But you, in turn, are free to read that and take into consideration your own self-preservation.