I fully appreciate that getting old is a process we all go through. Our bodies slow down, and yet the world somehow keeps spinning. People everywhere start reflecting on their life, and wondering what it all amounted to, and that can be such a strange, bittersweet time. For a narcissist?
It's a total disaster, and today I want to talk about why that is. Remember, they did all of this to themselves, even if they don't want to admit that.
Every cruel word, every game, every person they burned through, it all comes back around. And old age is when the bill finally lands on their doormat.
1 Nobody showing up
When you're going through a crisis in your life, who are the people you call? Who is always there for you, no matter what time, day, or season it is?
I ask because I'd like to think you have some people, or at least one person who never fails to show up and support you, dropping everything in order to do so. Now let's think about the narcissist you know.
In younger age, they have had the kind of pulling power to bring anyone they want close to them. They need them for this, want them for that, and whoever it was, was there without fail (whether they wanted to or not). As older age creeps in, something changes.
I don't know if you've been witness to this, maybe you yourself dropped away from the demands of an aging narcissist and can attest first hand why you did so, but let me explain what happens. The older a narcissist gets, the more stories other people have of them.
I'm talking decades of:
You're so sensitive. Nobody could love you like I do. Why are you so needy all the time? You'll never amount to anything. I don't know why I bother. You're wasting your life doing nothing. Your hobbies suck. Your friends are morons.
You never cook chicken the way I like it.
I had a client tell me her mother's final voicemail was a rant about the wrong brand of tea. Not a hello, not a how are you. Just complaints.
That's got to do something to a person, right? I mean, eventually, that kind of talk and treatment has to affect them, and by the time the narcissist is of older age, the receiving person has usually had more than enough, and I don't blame them.
If this was your parent, you've likely stopped calling as much. If this is a spouse, you've probably distanced yourself if you even stayed at all. The bottom line is; you stopped orbiting their ego and started to see their entire personality as nothing but a performance. You grew tired!
I don't blame you, most people do grow tired of narcissists, and now all they've got is their own company, which of course, they always hated.
More often than not, they will end up alone, sitting on their couch, waiting for their phone to ring which we all know will never happen. The narcissist knows what caused this, they just don't have the courage to say it out loud.
Instead, they'll continue to blame everyone else for not caring, or being insensitive or unbothered by the narcissist's needs. It's obvious a narcissist deserves this kind of lonely life, where everyone could be there, but nobody actually is.
It's a real reflection on how those people were treated in their lives, and how they choose to keep away from such negative, toxic energy. Yes, that's incredibly humiliating for a narcissist, but they chose this life, and they chose their behaviors. What do they expect?
See also 7 Weaknesses Every Narcissist Has That Will Destroy Them In The End
2 When their stories begin to crumble
I was the best judo player in town. Nobody worked harder than me. Your mother was so lucky to have found me. Without me, everyone would be lying in a gutter somewhere begging for money. I used to run 10k in under 30 minutes.
For years, these kinds of stories worked. People leaned in and listened, being wowed by someone who had all these impressive anecdotes to share. Sometimes, people will have been far too young to even question them, but the narcissist still loves talking about themselves and how great they are.
Well, those kids are now adults with minds of their own, and stories like this can get tiresome very quickly to listen to. These are now people with their own memories and perspectives, and remember the truth about what happened back then. Those people compare notes.
Someone told me once that at a family lunch, three siblings realized their dad had told each of them a completely different version of the same holiday. Same trip, three fantasies.
They bump into each other and put those notes together, coming up with a very different narrative that favors the narcissist even less.
The narcissist's story crumbles, and when it's gently and calmly contested by you, you will see nothing but a flash of rage as they stand up and insist they're right about everything. You don't know me! You were just seven years old, what do you know about it?!
The room suddenly goes quiet, and there you are again, feeling like that little child being spoken at, and being wrong and stupid. Why would anyone want to keep putting themselves in that kind of situation? They wouldn't, and they don't.
Every time the narcissist speaks of their past, they are rewriting history to suit themselves and nobody else. That stings for the people who were there and know the truth, but the narcissist, rather than admit they weren't perfect and that people could survive without them, continues pretending.
They're humiliated, and in older age they are still trying to save face. That's got to be embarrassing deep down for these people, don't you think? There is suffering there, and the narcissist knows it.
3 Their health becomes everything, and people are getting sick of the performance
A narcissist and their aging bodies make for one heck of a clash. When younger, a narcissist relies heavily on their physical appearance, making half their image about the way they look.
They have to be the fittest, healthiest, slimmest and most envied person in every room they walk into, and so they use their bodies to gain that traction. Sadly for them, they age.
While you or I celebrate that and love our bodies as it changes the older we get, the narcissist will see this as a terrible thing. Each ache becomes this major catastrophe that they can't escape from.
Whenever they have some kind of health appointment, they use the consultants as their audience, telling them of every woe and problem.
Whether the narcissist themselves declare some kind of diagnosis, or if it's official, the narcissist will use that against everyone they know, and use it as their conversational centerpiece. Nobody understands how difficult it is. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong.
You have no idea how hard it is to live like me. Oh, we have some ideas…
People are drained. They've heard it so many times before, and it gets so tiring. They've spent their lives giving comfort and attention, and it keeps going and going. How much more can they possibly give?
It's no wonder families and friends then learn to keep a distance, with visits getting shorter and shorter. It isn't cruel, it's just that people have had enough, and I don't blame them. As a result, yes, the narcissist ends up alone with their complaints, wondering where everybody went.
And then comes the guilt trip phone call. "Nobody visits me anymore, I could be dead for all you know." Same script, different Sunday.
Can you blame them?
4 The mirror stops lying to them
For years the mirror was their best friend. It confirmed everything they wanted to believe: they were the best looking one in the room, the one who aged well, the one people looked at twice.
Now? The mirror has become the enemy.
The jawline they were so proud of is gone. The hair they used to flick around is thinning, or grey, or just, well, not there. The skin doesn't bounce back. The eyes look tired even when they've slept.
And they cannot cope with it. I mean truly cannot cope. Because the narcissist built their entire identity on being admired for how they looked, and now that currency is spent.
You'll hear them muttering, "I don't even recognise myself anymore," or, "Cameras these days make everyone look awful." They blame the lighting. They blame the phone. They blame anything except the passage of time that comes for all of us.
The rest of us made peace with aging. We had to. But the narcissist never built the inner life that makes that peace possible.
5 Money can't buy company anymore
For years they threw money around like it was the answer to every hollow feeling they had. Dinners paid for, rounds at the bar, "borrowed" cash that was never asked back for. That was the currency they traded in, because they had nothing else to offer.
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseIn old age, that wallet gets thinner. Pensions don't stretch the way a full time salary did. The fancy gifts stop. The generous gestures dry up. And guess what dries up alongside them? The people.
They sit there wondering where everyone went, muttering, "After everything I did for them." Except they never really did anything for anyone. They bought attention. There's a difference.
Real friends stick around through broke patches. Real family shows up when there's nothing on offer but your company. The narcissist never built that kind of relationship because they never invested in anything that wasn't transactional.
So the phone stays quiet. The visitors stop coming. And they finally learn what the rest of us knew all along, that love was never something you could put on a card.
