Key Points

Feeling respected is important in relationships.

New research is looking at the relationship between narcissism and respect for a partner.

Narcissists who inflate their self-esteem by taking pleasure in others’ failures tend to under-respect their partners.

Not all narcissistic self-aggrandizement strategies are linked to lack of respect for a partner.

When it comes to romantic relationships, we want—even need—to feel appreciated. We desperately want our partners to acknowledge our efforts, to respect us, and to see us as important and worthy of their time and attention. We want respect. In fact, seeking and surrendering to your partner’s respect is natural and appropriate when you’re in love. But what if you’re in a relationship with a narcissist?

NarcissistsAreAggressiveInSeekingRespect

If almost all partners want respect, that desire is heightened to impossible heights for people with the set of personality traits captured by the term narcissism. Narcissists—who tend to have inflated self-images—thriving on seeking out social interactions that can enhance their own feelings of esteem and respect from others. When they see an opportunity, narcissists often use their romantic partners to enhance their sense of esteem; they may selectively date beautiful, high-status partners or strategically pair themselves with partners they know will idealize and compliment them (Campbell, 1999).

However, the desire for respect doesn’t always translate into the giving of respect. If narcissists are so focused on garnering respect from others, do they have the space to devote the energy to giving others respect?

Self-Inflated Strategies in Relationships

If you know what it’s like to be in love with a narcissist, you may be familiar with the idea that they can use a variety of tactics to enhance their inflated sense of self (Back et al., 2013). They may, for example, adopt:

Narcissistic admiration strategies. These strategies involve directly promoting self-enhancement. For example, they might respond to their beliefs that they are incredibly interesting, incredibly charismatic, and incredibly sexy.

Narcissistic rivalry strategies. These strategies involve taking pleasure in others’ failures. They reveal underlying insecurities and are seen as an aggressive or hostile approach to protecting their own self-image.

So what about respect? A team of researchers (Frabel et al., 2021) recently examined whether narcissists, who we know want to feel respected, tend to respect their partners.

Narcissistic rivalry is associated with lower levels of respect for others

In their first study, the researchers found that a tendency to use narcissistic rivalry strategies was associated with giving partners less respect (Frabel et al., 2021). In other words, romantic partners who feel compelled to maintain a grandiose image of themselves by despising others are less likely to respect, honor, approve of, or show interest in the person they are dating or the person they are married to.

Interestingly, individuals’ tendencies to use narcissistic admiration strategies were not associated with their partners’ giving respect (i.e., no zero-order correlation), with further analyses (using multiple regression with narcissistic rivalry also as a predictor) showing that narcissistic admiration was positively associated with giving respect. In other words, narcissists who tend to construct themselves to feel respected tend to show respect to their partners.

A second study, focusing on heterosexual romantic dyads, reinforced these findings, confirming that partners of individuals who engage in more narcissistic rivalry tend to feel less respected. The study also suggested that women who engage in more narcissistic admiration may enjoy feeling more respected and may give more respect to their partners.
How Much You Respect Your Partner May Be Linked to Their Personality

It’s easy to assume that we’re responsible for the dynamics of our relationship. If we feel disrespected in our closest relationship, we may assume that we don’t deserve our partner’s appreciation. We may believe that their feelings toward us are due to something we’ve done or who we are. However, this research offers a different perspective. Some people fail to respect their partners because of an aspect of their narcissistic personality and the strategies they use to maintain their inflated self-image.

So dating a narcissist can come with a variety of challenges, and adding to that list is the potential for feeling disrespected. The evidence that not all narcissists treat their partners with low levels of respect may have confused our sense of whether it’s “them” or “us” when it comes to feelings of disrespect, but we now know that respect is tied to how some narcissists reinforce their inflated sense of self. Narcissists who feed off the failures of others are especially likely to have partners who feel disrespected.