Are you being abused by your romantic partner? If so, they might be Cluster B — a classification of people with socially aggressive personality types prone to egocentrism and to active harming of self and others by both everyday nurtured choice and habit.
Is your partner highly charismatic in public — appearing to be everyone’s favorite person when they see them… but in private they are over the top vain, egocentric, and self-aggrandizing? Do they seem to constantly strive to pull the rug out from under your feet, then shame you pervasively for not “succeeding” in life or in the relationship they themselves are solely guilty of sabotaging?
The realization that life is not normal hits most partners of Love Fraud con artists hard. But the ah-ha moment that a person is meeting diagnostic criteria for having a personality disorder is essential to depersonalizing abuse, as the knowledge allows an abuse victim to truly grasp the psychological tactics being used to cause the target to develop stress illnesses, social anxiety, low self-esteem, and related C-PTSD (meaning conditioned PTSD issues related to multiple exposures to trauma).
Finding a great list of questions about social behavior is the first step in doing your own forensic psychology research. Understanding your part as a victimized person who, typically due to undereducation and having believed gaslighting spun by both the Abuser and their Enablers, leaves victims in relationships with unpleasable people feeling both powerless to make the relationship better but too afraid to leave the union.
The following list of 50 questions to help identify if a person is behaving in ways towards you that reflect Narcissistic Abuse comes from an author who advocates for healing from toxic family and domestic abuse issues. If you are not sure how to answer these questions but you are feeling abused, understand you are more than likely romantically involved with a person who is not only abusive but gaslighting you, too.
Karyl McBride, Ph.D., is the author of an article titled, “Is Your Partner a Narcissist? Here Are 50 Ways to Tell”, published on Psychology Today. The list presents insight fueled questions that help reveal pattern behavior without leading a reader to leap to a false or hasty conclusion that the person they are dealing with is narcissistic.
The following questions are pertinent to ask one’s self about a partner’s everyday behavior. By taking a careful inventory of the behavior of both self (as a reactor) and of any peer or person’s behavior that is vexing or challenging to endure or witness, one is more readily able to depersonalize abuse and to realize that enabling abusers is a choice most survivors who ended toxic relationships with Cluster B people are more than likely to tell you is something less than prudent.
If your partner does not follow the standard behavior pattern indicated by the inquiry, understand it is likely that as they age and their neuroplasticity calcifies, if they are Cluster B by nurture or nature you will have some idea what to look out for as typical controlling, provoking, or abusive behaviors.
Is Your Partner a Narcissist? Checklist
- When something goes wrong, does your partner blame everyone but himself or herself?
- Does your partner refuse to be accountable for his or her bad behavior? (For example, “You made me so mad that I couldn’t help . . .”)
- Does your partner believe he or she is always right?
- Is your partner unable to tune in to your feelings or your children’s feelings?
- Does your partner seem more concerned about how your behavior or your children’s behavior reflects on him or her than on understanding and accepting who you and the kids are as people?
- Does your partner seem to be out of touch with his or her own feelings or seem to deny them?
- Does your partner carry grudges against you and others?
- Is it all about your partner and his/her money, time, parenting time, property, and wishes/demands?
- Does your partner seem unwilling to listen to you and to hear your concerns?
- Is your partner constantly telling you what to do?
- Does your partner make you feel “not good enough”? Have your partner’s constant put-downs caused you to internalize this message?
- Does your partner never ask about you, your day, or your feelings, even in passing?
- Does your partner need to go on and on about how great he or she is and how pathetic you are?
- Does your partner lie?
- Does your partner manipulate?
- Does your partner tell different people different stories about the same event, spinning the story so that he or she looks good?
- When your partner talks about his or her kids, is it about what the kids do rather than who they are?
- Are the children uncomfortable with your partner, love your partner, but at the same time are reluctant to spend time with him or her?
- Have you come to realize that the kids protect themselves by not sharing their feelings with your partner?
- Does your partner mistrust everyone?
- Are the kids always trying to gain your partner’s love and approval?
- Has your partner spent minimal time with the children?
- Does your partner typically skip the children’s events if he or she does not have an interest in that particular activity or does not value it?
- Does your partner push the children to be involved in activities that your partner likes or values and discourage or forbid them from pursuing activities that your partner does not value?
- Have others in your life said that something is different or strange about your partner?
- Does your partner take advantage of other people?
- Is your partner all about power and control, pursuing power at all costs?
- Is your partner all about image and how things look to others?
- Does your partner seem to have no value system, no fixed idea of right and wrong for his or her behavior?
- After the divorce, does your partner still want to exploit you? Or has your partner never calmed down?
- When you try to discuss your life issues with your partner, does your partner change the subject so that you end up talking about your partner’s issues?
- When you describe your feelings, does your partner try to top your feelings with his or her own stories?
- Does your partner act jealous of you?
- Does your partner lack empathy?
- Does your partner only support things that reflect well on him or her?
- Have you consistently felt a lack of emotional closeness with your partner?
- Have you consistently questioned if your partner loves you?
- Does your partner do considerate things for you only when others are around to witness that good behavior?
- When something difficult happens in your life (for instance, an accident, illness, a divorce in your family or circle of friends), does your partner react with immediate concern about how it will affect him or her rather than with concern for you?
- Is your partner overly conscious of what others think?
- Do you feel used by your partner?
- Do you feel responsible for your partner’s ailments or sicknesses?
- Do you feel that your partner does not accept you?
- Is your partner critical and judgmental of you and others?
- Do you feel that your partner does not know and value the real you and does not want to know the real you?
- Does your partner act as if the world should revolve around him or her?
- Does your partner appear phony to you?
- Does your partner swing from grandiosity to a depressed mood?
- Does your partner try to compete with you?
- Does your partner always have to have things his or her way?
If you see your own or your partner’s everyday psychological posturing and behavior choices presented on this list, understand you are caught up in the Narcissistic Cycle of Abuse.
Resist the urge to panic.
By learning about what the phrase Cluster B even means from a psychological standpoint and beginning to do your own forensic psychology research about your own core nature as well as with regard to romantic partners, close personal friends, and family members (from an armchair surveillance overview perspective not in any way attempting to “change” their behavior), one can learn how to effectively depersonalize abuse, to go Gray Rock, and to avoid accidentally exposing one’s self to further hospitality abuse.
Share this list with friends and family to show support for OTHER abuse victims. By clicking like or share, it also serves the purpose of letting any prospective abuser who might be targeting you for an emotionally and physically, psychologically and spiritually draining social attack that you are on to Love Fraud and Trauma Bonding people’s truly deplorable, socially aggressive mortal combat tactics.
A mindful reading of the list with an intent to answer in private, honestly (while talking only to yourself first), gives self-help readers the chance to truly go gray rock and to self-evaluate.
If you are seeking further insight from the author of the list, have no fear. A self-help book written by her is already here.
McBride writes, “This checklist is copyrighted and comes directly from my new book… Will I Ever Be Free of You? How to Navigate a High-Conflict Divorce from a Narcissist, and Heal Your Family.“
