There is a lot of information out there about narcissists. The traits of a narcissist, who they are, why they act the way they do, and how to get rid of a narcissist. However, one question discussed less often is “what does a narcissist ultimately want?” They are predictable in their unpredictability by sometimes being nice and other times being abusive. You know you will get one extreme or the other with the narcissist; however, you don’t know what determines which extreme you will be on the receiving end of. You try to guess their next move and think you have finally figured them out. Then, they are again unpredictable, and you don’t know where this change has come from. What does a narcissist ultimately want from you, and from others?
As I discuss what a narcissist wants from themselves, and others, it is important to remember this is always changing and the narcissist may not even be able to answer this question at any given moment. What they want today can be very different from what they want, and expect, tomorrow. They have unstable senses of self and are constantly at the mercy of the world around them. They try to control everything they can because they so often feel out of control.
When you can understand the narcissist’s strong need to control, and why they must always be in control, then you can better understand what a narcissist wants. The lack of object constancy and the unstable sense of self of the narcissist are driving factors in how they respond to, and manage in, the real world. And I mean the real world because the world non-narcissists exist in is very different from the world narcissists exist in.
If you are interacting with a narcissist and you feel like you are having two different conversations, or very different memories of how things happened, that is because the narcissist exists in a world which they have created and firmly believe as real. And this is when their gaslighting is the strongest: you try to counter what they say and express your thoughts about reality, and they try to convince you that you are wrong. You didn’t remember correctly, you’re crazy, or any other dismissive statement that makes you the problem and not them.
The narcissist must exist in a constant state of gaslighting people because this is how they can control their own narrative. Gaslighting is meant to control the memories of the other person, but it is always used by the narcissist to create a reality which is in-line with what works best for them. If they can convince you that you are wrong and things happened as they tell you it did, then they can continue to live in their alternate reality, with as little interference as possible from you or others.
At the end of the day, what the narcissist ultimately wants is to be in control. To feel free to live in the world they have created for themselves, with little interference from others. Each obstacle they encounter leads to loss of their narcissistic supply and when they have no supply left, they will face narcissistic collapse, which they will have a very difficult time recovering from. The narcissist presents themselves as all-knowing, superior, and grandiose but this is all a façade they have put up to protect against their low self-esteem. The narcissist wants as little interference as possible from others so they can live as they choose in the fantasy world they created.