If you think a narcissistic kid at the age of 11 is dangerous, think again.
If you think a young thirty-something should be treated with caution, just wait.
When they get to fifty, everything changes. Habits become more toxic for them, as life becomes much more difficult for any victim in their path.
If you think you know and can safely put limitations on a narcissist as to what they would do to cause pain, this is the age where you will need to raise that bar even higher.
Here’s why.
You think you’ve seen their worst? Just you wait!
I know you’re probably thinking of that young, springy narcissist you know. They’re horrible to be around, and so toxic.
They’re also young. They are still walking through life learning a lot about the world around them.
They slip up sometimes, and it bothers them because they want to maintain this image of themselves that’s pretty much perfect and untouchable.
But when these people turn and cause trouble, boy do you know about it. You hate having to be a part of it, but you really haven’t seen anything yet.
Fifty hits them like a bullet train
As soon as a narcissist reaches a certain age, they start caring less about being seen as perfect.
This inner lightbulb goes on inside their mind as they think about people in general. That goes like this:
People tend to start to care less the older they get. Confidence grows and people start to live a little more freely with age.
It’s the perfect opportunity for narcissists to do the same. In fact, the older they get, it truly is remarkable how much more dangerous they get.
This bullet train that hits them will cause ripple effects that you won’t enjoy, and the danger is that they can cause real trouble, even more than before!
What happens?
By the time narcissists reach this age, they start to think they’ve got nothing left to prove, and so they stop pretending.
It’s the kind of age where you know you aren’t completely young any more, but also that you’ve got enough time to treat the world like you don’t care.
What happens then, is the act of dominance.
It’s a new level of authority they’ve always carried with them, but this time, it comes with a far stronger need to assert themselves wherever they are.
Narcissists at fifty are done with impressing people. They are happy to take over and become the kind of people that are even more toxic than you ever thought they could be.
You’ve put up with them being critical your whole life, and now they will do it in front of people.
You’ve tolerated them telling you that your hobbies are ridiculous, and now they use an audience to speak in front of you because they want the laughs and extended agreement.
They treat life as a kind of, “So what?” ride, and you are, I’m afraid, going to be stuck on it with them all the while you refuse your own boundaries.
Hey, I never promised it was going to be an easy read today!
They think there will be no consequences
I guess that level of entitlement just went a few notches north!
In a way, this has always been the case for narcissists. But the older they get, the less bothered they are by consequences.
It’s the caring less about what happens if they step out of line or say something that will hurt somebody else that’s the problem, and this comes with age.
The truth is, narcissists reach that certain age and just assume they will be let off the hook a lot more because they’re ‘getting old.’
Oh, you know how it is.
No, we don’t. We know what rudeness looks like though, and we know that the older you get, the more dangerous that becomes.
The performing decades of their past
Everything gets rolled up into one, doesn’t it? Those performing years are stocked up and stored away in their minds like memories they don’t want to let go of.
They know what works, what doesn’t, how to press buttons, how to come across as innocent, how to plead ignorance, how to be the victim, when to cry, when to walk away, who to gossip to; the list is endless.
These decades of hard work can now just play out to the world, and they really do.
I think the most crucial point to make is that the older narcissists get, the older everybody else around them gets, too.
The older people get, the less likely the narcissist is able to control them.
Therefore, they actually do need to be more cut throat about their games, and that involves a lot more danger to the wellbeing of those on the receiving end.
The mask slips more often
From a person who confidently wore that mask at all the correct times, you’re now seeing a cold, bitter person getting older by the day.
They resent this. There will be things they naturally can’t do as well any more, or perhaps they’re getting more health conditions that limit how good they feel day to day.
Age to us normal folk isn’t really a huge issue, but for the person who wants to remain perfect and have an enviable image, it can feel like the end of the world.
As a result, the mask will start to slip more and more, and everybody who knows the narcissist will start to see a shift in how they act, and just how dangerous their toxic behavior is becoming.
It’s almost as if they’ve grown really complacent with themselves, and they let the darkness that’s underneath the mask slip out and be seen to the world.
As the power fades, they become more territorial
Let’s be honest here, the older narcissist is going to grab hold of whatever they can, aren’t they?
They know their power is fading, so they overcompensate that by being far more territorial.
It reeks of desperation, doesn’t it? And I kind of get it if I think about the narcissistic personality.
I mean, if I were obsessed with power, I’d do exactly the same thing.
Luckily, the only thing I’m obsessed with is outing these people to the world.
Remorse and resentment
Older narcissists are filled with remorse and resentment; two very powerfully negative emotions.
They’re remorseful because they wished they’d done more, taken more opportunities, earned more money, lived in a way that made them shine more than they did.
They’re resentful because ‘everybody else’ got to do that except them.
They become fixated on the people who earned more, bought more, went on more vacations, and the danger of this is when they shout it out to the world and make themselves look like some kind of victim.
It’s dangerous to be in the path of somebody with so much anger still sitting inside them.
You become their target, and it’s not a nice place to be. You’re the person who experiences the danger first hand, and it only gets worse with each passing year.
