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A large body of research shows that narcissists make poor romantic partners. They are less committed, more likely to play manipulative games, and blame others when things go wrong. Despite that, narcissists are often attractive and charming initially. This has led researchers to posit that relationships with narcissists may be especially appealing early on, only to have a sharp decline in satisfaction. Surprisingly, there hasn’t been much research examining the relationship trajectory of those partnered with narcissists. In a study that I just published in Journal of Personality, along with William Chopik, we examined how narcissism might affect changes in relationship satisfaction over a six-year period.
In the study, we analyzed data from more than 5,000 couples who participated in the German Family Panel Study. The study provided up to six years of survey data from the participants and their romantic partners. The participants completed questionnaires measuring narcissism. In addition, both partners rated their overall relationship satisfaction each year.
The study used the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept (NARC) to assess narcissism. The NARC posits that narcissistic traits come in two forms. Narcissistic admiration involves being charming and making efforts to impress other people. Narcissistic rivalry involves denigrating others. Both strategies are methods narcissists use to maintain their inflated and grandiose views of themselves. They can feel good about themselves by puffing themselves up (narcissistic admiration) or putting others down (narcissistic rivalry). Rather than these two dimensions representing two different types of narcissists, they are complementary tendencies that can coexist in the same person. Some narcissistic individuals primarily rely on admiration strategies (impressing others), whereas other narcissistic individuals rely on both strategies.
Not surprisingly, narcissistic rivalry is associated with a host of negative long-term relationship outcomes, while narcissistic admiration is often benign or even associated with positive outcomes, especially in the short term. It is also important to note that this study assessed narcissistic traits on a continuum within a general sample of partnered adults. Therefore, these findings reflect varying levels of narcissism rather than focusing specifically on individuals with a clinical personality disorder.
In the study, we found that those higher in narcissistic rivalry were less satisfied in their relationships, and so were their partners. While relationship satisfaction tended to decline over the six years of the study for everyone, we expected the declines to be steeper for those partnered with people high in narcissistic rivalry. To our surprise, this was not the case. However, we did find that in fairly new relationships (existing a year or less at the time the survey started), those partnered with narcissists were not especially unsatisfied.
These results do suggest that narcissism is associated with more problems down the road, but the “road” may be longer than six years. It might be the case that narcissistic rivalry either blows up the relationship very quickly (meaning those couples never reach the long-term stage required for this study) or very slowly, rather than being a straight trajectory of declining satisfaction. We also found that men partnered with women high in narcissistic rivalry tended to be less satisfied the longer they had been in their relationships, but this effect did not occur for women partnered with narcissistic men. Again, this points to the idea that narcissism is linked to declines in partners’ satisfaction over time, but it is not a simple linear trajectory.
Because the most negative side of narcissism—narcissistic rivalry—exists alongside the charming admiration tendencies, some people may continue to find these relationships satisfying over long periods of time. Over time, narcissists may gradually undermine their partners’ sense of agency and self-esteem in ways that differ from person to person. Typically, the ugly side of narcissism emerges when the narcissist is under threat, and their grandiose bubble is in danger of bursting. Again, this may explain why there is no one-size-fits-all linear decline in satisfaction.
Whether it’s a relationship that ends too abruptly to be tracked in a long-term study or one that gradually chips away at satisfaction over a decade, the data still show us that the charm of narcissistic admiration rarely compensates for the long-term eventual toll of narcissistic rivalry.
