How We Serve the Narcissist or Face the Discard

4 min readSep 22, 2020

Narcissists don’t see other people as individuals with their own characters, desires and needs.

They see people to serve them in one way or another. And if we don’t serve them, then we are discarded and they walk away.

I found this quite a difficult concept to grasp until I remembered this experience.

A strange conversation

This was what happened with my mentor and local group leader in my last job.

One day we had to go out for a visit together. It meant quite a long road trip, so we got chatting.

During the conversation he asked me:

How was my French (we are both English and live in France)? I said it was ok, I could get by on a daily basis but lacked confidence.

Did I have any experience with Google forms or other computer programs like Excel? No, I replied, not really.

If I had any networks or acquaintances? I knew a few people but didn’t have any networks or big circles of friends/acquaintances.

And then finally we had a very strange conversation about, his depressed wife and ‘friends with benefits’, how it was the thing among young people now. I thought this was very strange but said that I was very happily married.

This was what he was looking for!

So, he wanted someone who was:

bilingual to do his translations for him or

technically able, to do his Google forms and Excel spreadsheets or

in touch with a lot of potential clients or

if they couldn’t do any of these things, then someone willing to be his mistress!

When I wasn’t willing, or able, to do any of these things he discarded me.

He was supposed to support me but instead told me to be quiet during team meetings and ignored my calls. This was even though if I made a sale, he would gain from it. This didn’t matter to him, all he saw was that I didn’t serve him and his list of things he was looking for, so he walked away.

I dealt with it by asking my regional manager to find me another mentor and group leader. Although I felt emotional and wanted to be personal, I remained calm. I said something vague, like it was a personality clash.

The way in which he asked me all these things were so subtle, especially the one about being his mistress.

It was all completely deniable.

I couldn’t accuse him making sexual advances because he was so clever about it, it was a string of questions or statements designed to see if I was amenable to his intentions or not.

This is how a narcissist works: when they meet someone new, they see another opportunity to get their needs met.

A narcissist is incapable of forging genuine emotional attachments.

It doesn’t matter if it’s their friends, partner or children. They can’t care.

So, my mentor, although he was married, cared nothing for his wife. She wasn’t giving him what he wanted, so he saw it as his right to go find it elsewhere.

A narcissist I knew was married for over 60 years and when her husband died, I saw no genuine grief or emotion.

It was as if she relished the attention she got at the funeral, the grieving widow, then shrugged and moved right on. She didn’t even choose to keep their wedding photo album.

He stopped existing for her, stopped serving her, so she just moved on. Her primary concern was to find other people to serve her, so she asked her hairdresser to be her companion.

Another way I describe it, is that her toaster was broken, she threw it out and tried to find herself a new one. That was the level of emotion that she showed.

Transactional v relational relationships

A narcissist approaches all relationships as transactional relationships, you do what they expect of you and the relationship continues.

Once you stop doing what the narcissist expects of you, then the narcissist considers the deal broken and walks away.

However, as normal human beings, we expect a relational relationship with our narcissistic parents.

We assume that they are concerned with how we feel, or what we desire. That they consider us. That our bond is greater because we are willing to give without expecting return.

This is where we go wrong, for our parents the relationship depends on us doing what they expect of us and for us the bond is deeper.

It’s not personal

There’s nothing is wrong with you if you face the narcissist’s discard.

It means that you didn’t serve them and their needs, so they see little point in the effort of keeping you around.

It’s an effort for them because they have to pretend to be what you want.

They have to expend energy on you and keeping you invested in the relationship. It’s not worth it to them unless they are getting something out of it.

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