You spend weeks planning these events, only for the narcissist to get involved and somehow turn each and every one into a major disaster. You arrange it all; the one thing that changes it all? The narcissist entered the building.
The narcissist came in and decided the event was going to be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
I had a client tell me once that her mother's 70th birthday ended with her sister crying in the bathroom and her father driving home in silence. Guess who caused it?
Everything else that happens after that is no coincidence. Let's look at why, and see if any of it sounds familiar to you.
1 Nobody even sat down yet
The narcissist arrives, and I'm not kidding when I say it's as if the entire room shifts in a nano second. I put that down to energy, and how people seem to respond to that.
Maybe they get a little quieter, or the laughter dims down to a gentle hum rather than anything too obvious or overt. If I could be more specific; people automatically become more careful. They don't want to be too loud any more, and you feel it too. Why?
I feel it's a lot to do with how infamously narcissists show up late, like they were dragged from their last important event to this one and just couldn't make it at the same time as everyone else. They walk in, with no apology, and they make an entrance.
It's usually loud and heads turn as they enter the room. No sooner have they walked into the door, they're rearranging every single thing you organized to make the room look nice.
They make a snide remark to you about the way you seat the table up, or your choices of drinks for guests.
"Who chose these napkins? And why is Aunt Sue next to me, you know I can't stand her." Loud enough for Aunt Sue to hear, of course.
They walk right by your elderly relatives because they 'don't matter' to the narcissist (although they'll never admit that). What use could that person possibly serve to the narcissist anyway? The worst part? The event hasn't even started yet.
That's what fills you with the most dread, and I understand that.
2 ….Aaand action!
Once the narcissist has settled, you'll find everything kicks off. It's like a show, and you're just there to attend without being told you needed a ticket.
Everything that happens when you all gather around the table, wherever in the house it is, will be material the narcissist will use either now, or at a later date.
They take it all in, and do so with such egotistical pride that you don't even know which way to turn next. It starts with one person mentioning a job they recently got. Yeah. I had an opportunity similar once. I'll tell you all about it…
Another person has exciting news to share. Hmm. All I can say is I hope it works out for you because sometimes life doesn't always go the way you want it to. The most obvious for me is when someone else makes a joke and people laugh at it.
Right after, the narcissist will make a joke, too. Only theirs will be louder, sharper, and they will tell their own story in a way that is always going to be bigger and better than the way you tell yours.
It's no secret that they can't possibly attend an event; they have to dominate it. In fact, I'd go as far as saying they demand all the attention, and when it's not on them, they will make sure it comes back to them as soon as possible.
I had a client tell me her sister announced a pregnancy at Christmas, and within two minutes the narcissist was talking about their own back pain. Sound familiar?
3 The cracks start to appear when…
There will always be a moment during the event where the cracks will start to show. I bet you could almost set your watch and say, "By this time, that will have happened."
See also 7 Weaknesses Every Narcissist Has That Will Destroy Them In The EndIt will usually involve somebody saying something very innocent, and to everyone, it will have landed fine. Not the narcissist.
They will take offense to anything you say because they can, and because they know it invokes some kind of guilt or shame within you when they inevitably react to it. I cannot believe you'd bring that up in front of everyone.
I don't even know why I bother coming if that's how you all feel. Typical. Nobody thinks about how that might affect me. I knew I shouldn't have come.
Suddenly, everyone is running around trying to patch up the mood, making it better, falling over their apologies because there are so many of them. Your mother starts overexplaining. Your father disappears because he hates conflict.
Your sister pours the narcissist another drink and pays them a compliment hoping to sweeten them back up again.
And you sit there watching it all unfold, knowing you did nothing wrong, knowing the comment was harmless, but somehow you're the one feeling guilty.
Just like that, your event is not the perfect time you thought and hoped it'd be. The narcissist was always going to do this.
They can't just have one nice time, it always has to come crashing down and nobody will dare to view them as the one responsible for it all.
4 Want to know why the narcissist does this at every family event?
A narcissist will never ruin an event simply because they had a bad day, or are under a lot of stress. They ruin them because they can. Because there is a room full of people they can perform to, and that performance has to remain on them.
If it doesn't they will immediately ignite the drama flame, and flare it around the entire room until they've got the attention they were initially after. Birthdays are this kind of nightmare, as a birthday belongs to somebody else.
They'll knock over a drink, start an argument with an uncle, bring up an old grievance out of nowhere. Anything to yank the spotlight back where they think it belongs.
The narcissist will look for any way imaginable to make it all about them. They have to view someone else opening gifts and having a song sung to them; big, big mistake.
What a threat this is to the narcissist, who just wants that audience, and cannot stand the idea of someone else reaping all the compliments and praise. That's why they love to create scenes.
Anything at all to bring that attention back to them is what they're after, and if that sounds familiar it's because all narcissists are the same.
5 Who cleans up the mess?
That's right; you! As the guests are walking out of the house after what can only be described as the strangest time, all those dishes won't clean themselves.
You sit there and replay everything, wondering how it could've gone differently, but in truth, it was always going to be like this. You didn't ruin anything, in fact, you tried your very best to make it all go smoothly, and for what?
You held it all together, and it still managed to fall apart. That's because the narcissist's ego and intent is always going to be bigger than your desire for a nice event.
They ruined the last several events if you recall, so this one was never going to be any different.
Once you see that and sit with it, you can start to see that any time a narcissist is involved in an event you attend or organize, there will never be a drama free day to be expected.
You could plan it down to the napkin folds, hire a mediator, ban alcohol, and they would still find a way to plant a bomb under the dessert.
Hopefully that means you can finally stop blaming yourself! That's what the narcissist wants, after all. This time? It's all their fault.
6 The car ride home is its own event
You thought the event was over. You're in the car, seatbelt on, ready to just breathe.
Nope.
The second the doors close, the debrief starts. And it's never a debrief, is it? It's an interrogation dressed up as one.
"Did you see the way your sister looked at me?"
"Why didn't you back me up when your dad said that?"
"You were on your phone the whole time. Everyone noticed."
You're trapped. Literally trapped in a moving metal box with someone who has been storing up ammunition all afternoon and is now unloading it into your lap. You can't leave. You can't walk into another room.
You can only sit there and take it, while pretending to focus on the road or the passing streetlights.
And by the time you pull into the driveway, you're more exhausted than you were at the event itself. That thing you were dreading all week? Turns out the real event was the twenty minute drive home.
7 What the kids pick up on (even when you think they don't)
Kids see everything. I mean everything. Even the ones sat in the corner with a tablet, headphones half in, they clock it all.
They notice which auntie went quiet when the narcissist walked in. They notice grandma's tight little smile. They notice the way you laughed too loud at a joke that wasn't funny, just to keep the peace.
And later, when nobody thinks they're listening, they'll ask something small. "Why does uncle always talk about himself?" Or, "Mum, why were you crying in the kitchen?" That kind of thing.
You can tell them it's fine. You can say, "Oh, that's just how they are." But kids are little sponges for tension.
They soak up the atmosphere and store it somewhere, and years later it comes out as anxiety around family gatherings, or a strange guilt they can't explain, or a habit of walking on eggshells with people who never actually asked them to.
So yeah. They know. Even when you think you've hidden it beautifully, they know.
