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There are  few issues more ​unstabilizing to a marriage than one partner’s inability to feel the hurt and damage their behavior is doing to another spouse–or to care.

It is called by different names: selfishness, narcissism, and self-centeredness, but in this post, I’m going to call it “grandiosity” 1.  I’m also going to talk about this trait in men, although it is by no means rare in wives.

Grandiosity is garlic – It offends YOU, not HIM

Grandiosity doesn’t hurt those who suffer from it. In fact, it feels like the natural order of things.  If you eat garlic, you offend those around you with your breath, but you feel fine and dandy.  You enjoyed the meal.

What could be wrong with that?

Those who are grandiose offend without feeling distressed themselves.  This is an essential and often overlooked point.  They may have moments when they may question themselves, but these are often fleeting insights. They don’t go to therapy because they need anything to change except one:  They need the therapist to get their wives off their backs. 

“Get her to stop bugging me/being so selfish/complaining/acting jealous/lazy etc.” 

And if the therapist wants to empathize with the husband’s pain, they are barking up the wrong tree.  The therapist is making the situation worse. While it can be challenging for a therapist to speak truth to a powerful man, it’s essential for the work.

So the first point is that if your husband is grandiose, his only distress is YOU and your unwillingness to be happy for him.  Accept the rules he lays down about how to be in this marriage.  To admire him.  Appreciate his good qualities.   Support his desires and support him.

You and your unhappiness are the only leverage.

No therapist in the world is going to change him unless you are unwilling to tolerate his behavior any longer, and he values the relationship enough to be willing to change.  You have to be willing to speak up and hold your ground. And if you have no leverage, nothing he wants, nothing will change.  Your overwhelming unhappiness isn’t enough.   You have to be unwilling to live with the status quo.  Otherwise, you have no power.  You cannot change this man.  If you are willing to accept this unfair arrangement between the two of you, it will continue forever.

Why?

BECAUSE HE IS NOT UPSET ABOUT THE ARRANGEMENT EXCEPT FOR WHAT YOU CAUSE HIM.  HE’S EATEN GARLIC, AND YOU’RE OFFENDED BY HIS BREATH, NOT HIM.

If you enter couples therapy, appreciate that if you’re not offended and willing to do something about it, it will not change.

You’ll be blamed

So many wives I see are actually outraged that they get blamed for complaining about the offending behavior.  Tables are turned, and instead of it being about what their husbands have done, the argument changes to what’s wrong with THEM for objecting.  “Your nose is too sensitive.”

He has bad breath, and he thinks it’s a natural odor.a  You don’t want to kiss him, and he thinks you’re sexually uptight.  Whatever he believes about his noxious behavior, he’s losing your respect, and maybe his marriage and family, and he’s got no clue.

He’ll use his gender as the natural order of things.

Traditional patriarchal ideas are reasserting themselves. He’ll hop on that wagon faster than a dog onto a meat wagon. Nothing is more satisfying than having someone who has power in the larger culture to point to and to say “See? He agrees with me! Get back in your place!”

In fact, the notion of masculinity is at war with itself. We have the old patriarchal version and the new collaborative model. One works well with a small minority of women. The other keeps marriages together in this era. Terrance Real calls it: Relationality. It’s valuing relating to another human being over trying to gain control and superiority over them.

Distorted judgment

Not only is he in no distress (except the distress you cause him by your unhappiness…), but he has distorted judgment.  He’s going to deny, normalize, or minimize the impact that his destructive behavior is having on you.  He will deny that he even has the power to hurt you.  

“If you don’t like my drinking/drug use/unemployment/refusal to do childcare/sex with other women/rudeness then ignore it.  Or get out!

“Stop beating me up!  Don’t focus on it.  Stop making such a big deal about it!  Lighten up! Let it go!  Accept it!  Can’t you see how unhappy you make me continuing to harp on it?  You are ruining a good thing we have…”

Blunted sensitivity to you

He will not admit that his behavior is harmful when he is disrespecting you or your wishes.  He has a blunted sensitivity to your feelings and the way he’s impacting you.

He’s “blindly insensitive” to how he’s misusing the good faith you are putting in him.

You see it.  If you bring him into couples therapy, the therapist will see it.  But he not only can’t see the power he has to hurt you, but he resents you for pointing it out to him.  Feeling compassionately toward you feels “wrong” to him, if it interferes with his own desires.  It feels “selfish” of you to expect him to think about you or the impact his behavior is having on you.  He resents the intrusion into his ability to live the happy life he chooses.

Hypersensitivity to his own discomfort

You’ll see these men easily wounded. That’s because the flip side of narcissism and grandiosity is shame. “I’m great, you’re worthless” vs. “You’re great, I’m worthless.” In both cases, according to Real, same and grandiosity are flip sides to the same coin. “Shame is contempt turned inward, grandiosity is contempt turned outward…I’m above the rules, I’m below the rules. Terry Real wants people to stop indulging contempt in either direction. “Turn off that flashlight,” he says.

Painful growth

So it is essential to understand that “insight” into his behavior will be something hard-won and not something he’ll thank you or the therapist for.  This work will create internal turmoil.  An intrapsychic upset stomach. And he’ll be confused when he’s told, with love, that stepping down from being so unique and special is something he does for himself. He frees himself from feeling contempt toward you or toward himself.

I’ve seen wives respond with concern at his distress, but trying to take away his efforts to grow himself up interpersonally is a mistake. In fact, if you want to be “empathetic at his struggles to feel your pain,” he’s all for it.   He will encourage you to see things through his eyes.  Next, with all that great sympathy you have, he’ll ask you to give up on your demands.  Back off, and let him be.  And he will “slide” as much as you allow because he’s not in distress  EXCEPT FOR THE DISTRESS YOU CAUSE HIM.

To truly love a man who is grandiose requires you both love him and love yourself. It requires standing up for yourself while affirming your commitment to the relationship.

“How do we reconcile power connection? We do it by standing up for ourselves and our deep feelings for the relationship. ‘I love you, and I’m no longer going to cooperate with you any longer in this way.'”

The problem with grandiosity​

But little or no distress is not the same as his having no problems.  Whether he feels them or not,  he does.  He has serious problems.  He’s acting in an obnoxious way.  He hurts the one he loves, and no, he doesn’t only hurt them, but that’s enough pain to induce.

What he’s doing is toxic and poisonous to your relationship.  He’s acting abusively to you and not owning up.  He’s acting like you’re the one who’s in the wrong. And whether he’s pushed you into acting badly as well and made you feel bad about yourself, it has to stop. You have to hold yourself above the fray. Even if he deserves your contempt, you aren’t going to play his game. You are going to see past both the highs (grandiosity) and the lows (shame) and expect the third option: just a normal guy.

History of grandiosity

The reason that he’s clueless is that someone modeled that behavior for him.  Or someone told him it was okay for him to act that way.  Other people’s rules don’t apply to him.  Consideration is for other people or suckers.  Followers.  Sheep.

He was inducted into the Grandiose Hall of Fame.  He’s special, and you were, too, when you saw things his way.  But now you aren’t.  Obviously, you aren’t because you expect him to humble himself and cater to you and your desires.  There is no middle ground. There is no mutuality. Either he wins and you lose or you win and he loses. You don’t want to play that game, but he insists it’s the only game he knows.

If you were that special, you’d see how exceptional he is, and how he shouldn’t have to adapt to you.  You should be adapting to him, instead.  Like you used to, when “we were happy together.”

Treatment

Deep down, someone who is grandiose recognizes that something is wrong.  He thinks it’s shame. He’s lower than the lowest worm. So he pushes that thought out if his mind and demands perfection from himself. If a mistake has been made, it wasn’t made by him.

“Mistakes were made… by not by me.”

They just have no motivation to change.  Many men come to me only after their wives have told them in a matter-of-fact way that they are seeking a divorce. The men are flabbergasted. They will tell their wives they have “no idea” that they are so unhappy.  Things looked like they were going well because their wives had stopped complaining.  In fact, it was withdrawal, not contentment.

I believe that good couples therapy can be an essential help to couples like this. However, only if the wife is truly unwilling to put up with grandiosity and has the fortitude to speak the truth to him. And she has to be willing to leave. Bluffing is a major mistake. She can change things around, but only with a therapist who understands the nature of the problem.

It is not “short-term” therapy, however.  It is a minute-by-minute effort on the husband’s part to expand his worldview. This view has to include his loved ones and their thoughts, feelings, and desires.  With genuine love and dedication to the process, husbands, who are often basically good and decent men, can own up to their indecent and self-focused behavior and to the damage they have done to those they love so dearly.

But their wives need to be the catalyst.  Their wives must make it a personal priority to ensure they are treated equitably.  Otherwise, the treatment will fail if they expect the therapist to do it.

Learn more about how selfishness can be unstabilizing to a marriage.