While you or I might age in a way that we are comfortable with, a narcissist is not the same. At a time where growing softer and slowing down, reflecting on your life, a narcissist will not find peace in older age.
A client said to me recently, "He's seventy two and still picking fights with the neighbours over the bins." That's the energy. Not wisdom, not calm. Just the same old chaos in slower shoes.
It's not pretty, trust me. If you have a narcissistic sibling, friend, parent or relative, I want to show you four things to expect as they hit those (not so) golden years. Don't believe for a second that these people get the happy ending they lived their entire lives for.
1 The mask will start to erode
A narcissist who gets older will constantly continue to shock you. As younger people, they will have thrived. Their performance will have been the best part of their day; proving to everybody that they're these magnetic forces.
Dinner parties, social events, even at work, a narcissist with age on their side will be able to produce a constant stream of fresh charm that even the most intelligent people can see as authentic.
Their energy is high, and any stories they have to tell will be sucked in and treated like the best news ever. Like us all, narcissists age. They grow older, and so does their energy. Eventually, they all appear stale, and that's when the cracks can really start to show.
I had a client describe her father at 70 still trying to work the room at a wedding. She said, "Dad, you've told that story three times tonight." He glared. Sound familiar?
There's just something different, and when you see it, you will start to build on that and see it more and more. One of the most obvious signs are the stories told, it's as if they're on repeat, and maybe even more than once in one night.
Picture a washing machine going and going and going on the same cycle, yet never really finishing. These people are still wearing that old faithful mask they've worn since they can remember, but it's fading. It's wearing out and becoming somewhat translucent.
Before, you could probably tell when the mask was firmly on, and when it was off. Now, things seem a little more blurry, and that will be because they are.
I can't tell you what that will feel like for you, only that you'll be fascinated by watching the narcissist evidently struggle where they once felt on top of the world. It's satisfying, but at the same time, it's as if you're watching a car crash in slow motion.
2 Their world becomes smaller by the day
During those former years, a narcissist will have had what looked like seemingly solid relationships. Like their hair, these will thin out as they age. You can forget about the friends they had in their twenties, because they won't exist.
Drifted away with those will be the once unmissable coworkers who played along for far too long. Retired, moved away, or simply lost touch with the narcissist, these people won't be around, and will really dilute the narcissist's world.
I'll add in here an interesting dimension of the adult children of narcissists, who will become distant with them in their older age (aside from perhaps the Golden Child, who wants to hang around for that exchange of egos).
Interest dwindles, just like the narcissist's hopes of being the center of attention like they once used to be. Ironically for the narcissist who always believed the supply would keep appearing, is all of a sudden standing in a room that you could hear a pin drop in.
I had one client whose narcissistic father turned 70 and only three people showed up. He spent the whole night ranting about how everyone had betrayed him. Sound familiar?
Where did they all go? What happened to them all? The blame, naturally, will shift to all those people, and not the narcissist. My children are so ungrateful. My old friends developed this arrogance that I couldn't stand.
See also 8 Ways To Ruin A Narcissist's Life Without Breaking A SweatThe younger generations nowadays have not a single thoughtful bone in their bodies. The truth is, those tools the narcissist once used to gather these people have now stopped working.
In their malfunction, the narcissist is unable to beckon anybody even remotely close to them, and as a result, their circle will be painfully (for them) small.
3 The main flavor of their character is bitterness
I've yet to meet a single older narcissist who isn't completely and utterly bitter from the inside out. I would even go as far as calling them walking lemons, but I quite like lemons and so I don't want to make that comparison.
If you thought it was a bad enough grudge the narcissist held when they were thirty, wait until they get to 70. Those grudges will get louder and last longer, and all the lies they tell will be laced with even more spite.
This is partly due to their personalities naturally going there. They want to be cruel because that's just how they've always been. Narcissists are angry people with nowhere to aim but at the good in the world. You know how you get older and you care less what others think?
I had a client tell me her father, eighty-two years old, still brought up a Christmas argument from 1994. Like it happened last week. The bitterness doesn't fade, it ferments.
That's a nice, healthy way to live as long as you're harming nobody. You can dress the way you want, and say no when you really want to say it. Narcissists have their own version of this, growing old and being less bothered about hiding their anger.
After all, they can blame it on age. Charm might still want to be offered, but narcissists grow old. They're tired of having to pretend all the time, but they won't name what this is.
Before you know it, you're tripping all over the bitterness because it's all the narcissist leaves behind when the crop dusts their energy everywhere, to the point where even a stranger can feel it.
These people have spent their entire lives holding onto such a host of resentment that now is the time it all spills over.
4 Their vulnerability finally lands with a thump
Age kicks us all in the teeth at some point or another, and narcissists aren't exempt from this. My knee is playing up. My back isn't what it used to be. I can't grip the remote like I could before. I can't drive any more.
I've got to take my medication every morning. What happens when a narcissist has spent their entire lives burning people who now don't want to show up and help at all?
Surprisingly, this will happen as they age, and you can expect it to happen to every single narcissist you know. They are old.
I had a client whose mother screamed at her for bringing the wrong brand of painkillers. Decades of cruelty, and now she wanted bedside service? Wild, isn't it?
They are bitter. They evidently need help or support, and their vulnerabilities, which you or I may see as just the natural process of getting older, will become a weakness to them.
True enough, you can spend your whole life avoiding something until it actually starts to happen, and then what? A narcissist will lash out. They will punish the few who are still standing. They make looking after them the worst nightmare imaginable.
Instead of being young and able while you tiptoe around them, these people grow old and you still find yourself walking on eggshells. Don't imagine a narcissist to soften with age, because they only know how to become even more impossible than ever before.
The more you can prepare for that shift, the better equipped you'll be when it finally happens. Good luck!
5 Health Catches Up, And Fast
Years of bitterness, stress, late night rage spirals, the refusal to ever look inward, that stuff doesn't just sit there politely. It builds up. And it shows up in the body eventually.
I've heard so many stories of older narcissists suddenly facing a string of health issues. Blood pressure through the roof. Heart problems. Digestive stuff that won't quit. The body keeps the score, doesn't it?
And here's the kicker. They don't handle it well. Not even a little. Suddenly the person who mocked you for being "weak" when you had the flu is now demanding round the clock attention for a sore back.
"Nobody understands what I'm going through."
Funny, that.
You'll hear them weaponise the diagnosis too. "The doctor said I shouldn't be stressed, so don't bring that up." Convenient, isn't it? A medical excuse to keep dodging accountability.
But the body doesn't lie, even when they do. And watching them realise they can't charm or manipulate their way out of a failing heart? That's a reckoning they never planned for.
6 The Phone Stops Ringing
There comes a point where the narcissist sits in their kitchen, mug in hand, and realizes nobody has called them in days. Maybe weeks.
The kids? They've got their own lives, and frankly, they're tired. Tired of the guilt trips, the unanswered birthdays, the cold shoulders that lasted years for some imagined slight.
See also The One Thing a Narcissist Can't Fake, No Matter How Hard They TryOld friends drifted. The ones they bulldozed eventually figured it out and quietly stepped away. No big confrontation. Just… gone.
And here's the part I find almost sad, if I let myself feel sad for them. They genuinely cannot work out why. In their head, they were always the good one. The reasonable one. Everybody else was the problem, remember?
So they sit there and think, "After everything I did for them." And they wait. They wait for someone to reach out, to apologize, to come crawling back.
Nobody does.
The phone just sits there. Silent. And that silence is the loudest thing they've ever heard, isn't it?
