I don't think many people are aware of just how nasty a narcissist becomes as they get older, but perhaps you have. Cruelty gets sharper, right where you thought maybe they'd start to mellow and bow out of the toxic world with grace and dignity…
…Wrong.
I had a client tell me last month, "I thought he'd soften when he retired. Instead he just had more hours in the day to be cruel." That stuck with me.
There is no 'getting kinder with age.' There is just longer, stronger and more sustained venom that if you aren't careful, will poison you even more. The truth is, with age, all narcissists worsen. Here are five reasons why.
1 Their performance starts to exhaust them
For years, you'll be aware of the narcissist's obsession to perform. They seemed to never tire of it, did they? You'd watch and wait with keen eyes to see if their mask would slip and eventually somebody, anybody, would see the real person.
That didn't happen as often as you'd hoped. The painful problem you have is that now you reflect and think, "Man. I fell for that mask in the beginning.
How could I have been so stupid?" It's not your fault that you believed a good person until you found out they were a lying scumbag, but here's the real thing…
…That mask takes up energy. It takes a great deal for somebody to pretend all their lives. They have an act they need to keep up with, and eventually, that becomes exhausting. As these narcissists age, something changes.
What happens is they go through these motions where they stop caring about impressing people the way they will have done in the past.
I had a client describe her mother in her seventies still trying to do the charming act at family gatherings, and she said, "Mum just looks tired now. Tired and angry." That's the shift.
Sure, once upon a time, they would have wanted to walk into a room with their head held high, wanting everybody to stop what they're doing and turn their attention to them. Not any more.
Sure, that desire is still there, but it's no longer possible to be getting older and have that kind of gravity-pulling energy they would have exuded years ago. Age does that to a person who is entitled like a narcissist. Age is the enemy.
It doesn't forgive, it doesn't pause, it doesn't rewind. Instead, it keeps moving, and that narcissist will get older and older. With that comes a new layer of bitterness they can't get rid of, no matter how hard they try.
As much as a narcissist loves to perform, they struggle with the concept of pretense, and that creates a person who is unsure of themselves. Rather than mellow, they double down and push for that toxicity to remain. That's what makes them even meaner with age.
2 Sources of supply become few and far between
If you were to ask me the two things a narcissist needs in order to function, my answer would be:
Admiration and attention. They won't care how they get it, just that it comes thick, fast and instant for them. Being younger, the narcissist will have found it easy for people to worship them.
All they had to do was look left and right, and there would be an enabler waiting ready to tell them how wonderful they really are. An aging narcissist realizes their options are very limited.
They look left and right, but they find just a few people who have stuck around. Was that person you?
I had a client say to me, "Alexander, I'm the only one left who picks up the phone, and now I'm the one getting screamed at every single night." Heartbreaking, isn't it?
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseThen you know how it feels to be one of the people left who have to put up with all the rage and punishments that were meant for many, to come to you alone. You stayed out of love. You stayed out of habit. You stayed to be loyal.
What did it earn you? I will tell you that the older a narcissist gets, the less kind they're going to be to you, especially when there are limited amounts of other people available to use and abuse.
The next time the older narcissist you know is horrible to you like never before, it will be because you are one of the only ones around for them to aim their toxic fire at.
3 All their failures start catching up with them
Who wants to warn the narcissist that their age catching up with them will make them meaner? If none of you want to, then I'll just say this:
The bridges a narcissist burns will add up. Opportunities they wasted will chase them. The relationships they destroyed will catch up with them.
I had a client whose narcissistic father, at 72, sat alone every Christmas blaming his estranged kids. "They abandoned me," he'd say. No, mate. You drove them out, one by one.
It's all very real, and I think this is just one thing a narcissist doesn't realize will happen, not ever, to them. They go through their entire younger lives assuming everything will stay the same, without comprehending that age occurs, and dynamics always change.
While you or I might feel a sense of regret about the past as we reflect in older age, a narcissist will feel nothing but anger. That anger has to go somewhere, and trust me, it does. It leads right back to you.
4 All the while you stay, you show the narcissist your weakness
I'm going straight in with a brutal truth now, because sometimes you just need to hear the thing that makes you realize quite how bad this can get…
…You are loyal to the narcissist, and that reads as pathetic to them. There can be no possible reason why anybody would respect a person whom they can control completely.
If you haven't left that dynamic, the narcissist will have everything they need to know that tells them you have zero boundaries.
I had a client say to me, "He looks at me like I'm furniture now." And honestly? That's what twenty years of staying had done. She'd become part of the wallpaper.
It teaches them they can get away with anything and everything, and that you will never leave. Staying shows the narcissist that you have a weakness they can work with, and it will only lead them to have the last laugh.
It's not that you are weak, but rather the narcissist sees you as somebody who they can fully control, which gives off weak vibes to these people.
If you stay, if you think things will change or improve, if you believe with all your heart that you're doing the right thing, the narcissist will never let you be yourself.
5 They know they're running out of time
An aging narcissist knows they're running out of time. Getting older means facing the inevitable decline in mental and physical health. Dare I say it, but sadly in society there becomes this irrelevance tied to older people as they're pushed aside for the next generation.
It's what a narcissist fears the most. They spent their best years never thinking this will happen to them, until it does.
A client said to me last month, "He's seventy two and somehow nastier than he was at forty." That's the thing nobody warns you about. They sharpen with age.
As that power lessens within them, they feel their entire identity slipping away, and it's one that they built from scratch with the help of all those they abuse in their life. Whatever control they do have, they cling to.
I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that includes you. As much as you hoped you were witnessing it incorrectly, the abuse and cruelty was always there.
You hope for somebody who simply could never exist, and the person you got in real life was somebody who with each passing year got meaner and meaner. Now it feels as though you're stuck with them, but in truth, it was always you in the driver's seat.
6 The Mirror Stops Being Kind
There comes a point where the mirror just isn't on their side anymore. The face that used to charm people into doing whatever they wanted? It's changing. The hair, the skin, the energy. All of it.
And for a narcissist, that's devastating.
They've spent their entire life leaning on appearance and charisma to pull people in. Take that away, and what's left? Not a lot, honestly.
So they get meaner. Because every time they catch their reflection, they're reminded that the tools they used to manipulate the world are slipping out of their hands.
I've heard clients say things like, "They used to be so flirty and confident, now they just snap at waitresses." Yep. Sounds about right.
The mirror is brutally honest, isn't it? It doesn't care how charming you used to be, or how many people you used to fool. It just shows you what's there now.
And what's there now isn't what they want to see.
So they take it out on you instead. Easier than facing themselves.
7 Bitterness Has Nowhere Left to Hide
When you're young, bitterness can be tucked away behind a busy life. There's work, social plans, kids running around, holidays to organize. Plenty of noise to drown it all out.
But what happens when all that quietens down? The phone doesn't ring as much. The diary thins out. The house gets very, very still.
See also 8 Ways To Ruin A Narcissist's Life Without Breaking A SweatSuddenly, there's nothing left to distract them from themselves. And for a narcissist, that's a horror story.
All those grudges they never let go of? Still there. The people who "wronged" them twenty years ago? Still on the list. Every slight, every snub, every time they didn't get the recognition they thought they deserved, it all comes bubbling up.
And because they've never done the work to process any of it, it leaks out as meanness. Snide comments. Cold remarks. Picking fights over nothing.
You ever notice how older narcissists seem permanently annoyed? That's why. The bitterness has run out of hiding places, and they don't know how to sit with it.
So you cop it instead.
