Natalie Tootie

I had always meant to see the movie Sideways, but I hadn’t until recently. I thought it was pretty good movie, and then I realized that the character played by Thomas Haden Church, Jack Lopate, is a perfect example of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He’s so right on, that I’m sure the writer must have had plenty of experience with these creatures.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a very tricky thing. Even the definitions of it in psychology are misleading because it’s understood better by some of its victims than it is by psychologists.

People often claim that people around them have “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”, usually because they are mad at that person. But unless you’ve dealt with one (or more) people with NPD you really have no idea. A person with NPD may be arrogant, selfish, self-involved, greedy, uncaring, (little-n) narcissistic or any number of things, but those traits by themselves do not guarantee a person has NPD. Someone who is (little-n) narcissistic is still very unlikely to have Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

When talking about NPD, everyone gets nervous that they have it. A person with NPD would never even think to worry that they have NPD. In fact, they would probably be confused by the topic or blow it off completely. Talking about yourself and having your own issues is the furthest thing from NPD. Being concerned with your own life and even your own needs first is human. Everyone is like that and that’s okay.

People like me who have an unfortunate natural attraction to these people, which itself is a thing, know that people with NPD have the capability to destroy your life if you let them. They are hard to describe, and that’s why I’m so excited that Sideways built a movie around a character with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

It’s hard to define NPD. I think of it as a person who lacks any stable real emotion and certainly lacks empathy. For instance, a person with NPD may cry hysterically making you think they have one emotion, but a minute later will have a completely different emotion. The character in the movie spends his time cheating on his fiance to the point of “falling in love” with someone else and thinks about canceling his wedding, but then when things start to fall apart in his life, he starts desperately crying at the thought of losing his fiance.

One way to identify people with NPD is by bizarre little characteristics that they tend to have in common with each other, but that normal people don’t have. Again, these things alone are not enough, but in addition to everything else, they help identify people with NPD. People with NPD tell people they love them incredibly quickly, within days. This applies to both friends and romantic interests, and they tend to end phone calls with “I love you” even for their friends. I know, it’s a weird thing, but it’s absolutely true. People with NPD tend to make a lot of bizarre unimportant empty promises that they don’t follow through on, in fact, they often don’t even remember them. For instance, one of my NPD guys would say he would call me that evening when I saw him every day. I didn’t know why he would be calling me, but I didn’t say anything. But then he wouldn’t call and wouldn’t even say anything about it. He did this every weekday for an entire month before I asked, “You know, you say you’re going to call me every day and then you don’t. I don’t care because I don’t know why you would call me, but why do you do that?” He became quite confused, it was clear that he was not entirely aware of what he had been doing and I rocked his world a little. Weird, huh? That’s the thing with people with NPD, their life is not consistent or stable. 1 + 1 does not equal 2. When you point this out to them, they get momentarily confused, sometimes angry, blame you, and then quickly move on. The problem is, they say 1 + 1 = 3 with such conviction that if you’re not checking yourself, or your math skills are a bit rusty, or you’re even just being easy going, you’re likely to go along with what they say assuming they know what they are doing.

Back to Sideways. Jack, the character with NPD in the movie takes a small vacation with a friend, Miles Raymond, before his wedding. This was supposed to be a trip for the two of them to bond and a sort of bachelor party trip. Soon into the trip Jack informs Miles that he intends to get laid before his wedding and doesn’t want Miles to ruin it for him. Miles is shocked, a little confused, but complies uncomfortably because, well, what do you do? Jack quickly falls in love with another woman and is almost completely ignoring Miles even though the trip was originally supposed to be a bonding experience for them.

A couple of days into the trip, Jack talks about canceling the wedding because he’s so in love with girl he just met, Stephanie. But Stephanie ends up finding out about Jack’s wedding and breaks his nose, she’s angry because he said he loved her and also because he was getting to know her daughter. When Miles is talking to someone about Jack’s bizarre behavior he says, “I’m sure he believed everything he was saying.” This is true of people with NPD. They aren’t lying all the time, although they do a lot of lying, their emotions and their behavior are just all mixed up. This is why he would get to know the daughter, which most people on a fling would not, he wasn’t thinking about ever breaking it off at the time.

Jack recovers from his breakup quickly, as people with NPD always do, and hits on a “fat girl”, describing her as “the grateful type.” Jack gets caught and chased out of the house by the “fat girl’s” husband. At which point he needs Miles to risk his life to get his wallet back out of the girl’s house. Miles is in real danger here, because the husband is violent, but Jack doesn’t really care. On the way home, Jack says he feels like driving. Then without even talking about it with Miles he purposely crashes Miles’ car into a tree to explain his broken nose. Classic NPD. He offers to pay for it, but you see how this situation is very bizarre and paying for it does not address the landslide of issues he has created.

This is one of the primary traits of those with NPD. They create one issue after another, taking you further and further into the negative, and there’s no way for the “victim” to ever deal with them all and get back to zero. The person with NPD isn’t interested in discussing it, because they have what they want, and there’s no point in it for them. Jack went on to marry his fiance, and if there were a sequel, he would have undoubtedly put that poor woman through hell.

There are so many similarities to my own experiences. I’ve never had my car crashed, but I’ve had financially worse things happen. I had an NPD guy cheat on his wife, pull me into the situation as an alibi, and I was thinking we were going to be hanging out. Then he ran off with a girl, which had clearly been the plan all along, and I’m trapped with nothing to do. Interestingly, I actually was told about the grateful “fat girl” theory by him, isn’t that bizarre? When he was cheating on his wife, he was ready to get divorced. But when his wife was pulling away he claimed she was the most important thing in his life and the tears came out. But then he would ignore her anyway. She asked for a divorce, and he acted like he had no idea why that would have happened. Then him and I got into a huge argument because I listed out exactly why it happened, said that it was obvious, and basically said I didn’t blame her, which I didn’t.

During this time of mourning his marriage, I brought up many conversations I had witnessed where his wife had indicated concern, not so subtly, with his behavior. He couldn’t remember any of them. He would say, “Where was I when you had this conversation?” I would say, “I just told you, you were in the car with us, all three of us were in the car having this conversation.” He would say, “I don’t remember that.” And he honestly didn’t, entire parts of his life seemed to be missing from his memory, including entire stories that his wife often told as humorous anecdotes about her crazy husband. I know he was telling the truth because I could see the fear in his eyes that he wasn’t remembering these things, and he trusted that I wouldn’t have any reason to lie about them. With all of my NPD people I’ve witnessed this kind of scary memory loss, and their confusion when it’s pointed out to them.

The movie is great because it so accurately portrays someone with NPD. It shows how a friend can get sucked into their issues and it quickly becomes a huge mess. By the end of the movie, even the viewer can’t list all the things that are wrong with this situation. The victims of someone with NPD are forever trying to just get things settled, and the person with NPD is constantly messing them up.

If you’ve read this far, you see that NPD is a serious psychological disorder. It’s not a condition you claim someone who’s being selfish has, it’s a mental handicap that destroys the life of the person with NPD and unfortunately everyone around them as well.

There is no cure for NPD, despite what the official descriptions may say, and it tends to worsen as the person ages. For the victims near the person, the only way out is to get away. Believe me, I’ve been burned badly by trying to fix that situation before I finally realized it was unfixable. That’s another trait to look for, someone who has a lot of very close friends that they mysteriously aren’t in contact with anymore. Everyone has friends they’ve lost touch with, so it’s just one more thing to add to the list of traits to look for. A person with NPD will usually blame those people, “He was the best man at my wedding, and then he just stopped calling. I’ve had such bad luck with friends, will you be my friend? …”