Surviving a Narcissist and Not Getting Eaten By Your Pet

I recently read that if you drop dead and are alone with your cat, the cat will wait approximately five minutes prior to eating you. It will sniff your corpse for a little bit and then be like, “Hello Human, I am hungry! I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I need a nosh!”

Then it will commence nibbling on your extremities or just plain start eating your face.

In fact, your cat might not even wait until you are totally, completely, and fully dead. You might just be unconscious from a slight head wound, passed out from a night of drinking or maybe you just fell asleep and are napping on the floor. Cats get hungry and you are an easy food source.

Your loyal dog however, will probably wait until it is really starving and you are starting to decay a bit before it starts gnawing on you.

I am glad to have a dog and not a cat.

Don’t get me wrong -- I really like cats. I like their mercenary and supercilious natures. No one is the boss of them. It is obvious they are just putting up with you because they are stuck with you and they need food. You may be stupid, but you are tolerable in small doses. Cats know when they have to be nice to you and do the purring and snuggling thing that makes them so lovable. They are cute, graceful and fun to watch. I admit that they are pretty awesome pets when they are not eating you.

I have already announced to my family and friends that if my dog needs to eat my dead body to survive, I believe that is a good use of my body. While it is totally gruesome, if I can help out my best friend, I am comfortable with that. My preference after death is to be composted for plant food, so really, is there a huge difference?

However, I have to admit that I prefer NOT to be eaten by my pet. Just cause it is kind of gross and my family would likely be upset.

Now that we have established that not being eaten by your pet is a good thing that is preferable to being eaten by it, I am gonna throw out the idea that surviving a narcissist is another good thing. These are two good things! It is true that they appear to have nothing in common, but that is the title of this essay and I have to have some kind of bridge or it makes no sense at all.

Frankly, I got this great, disjointed idea to smoosh these two good things together after I was hanging out with an old friend I hadn’t seen in awhile. We were chatting about that article on getting eaten by your pet. She agreed with me that she wouldn’t get mad at her dog if it waited a respectable amount of time before snacking on her.

My friend also shared with me that she had recently been divorced after over 25 years of marriage to a guy she called a “covert narcissist”.

Covert narcissism, it turns out, is a real thing. Google it!

A covert narcissist is not your standard, garden-variety narcissist. Those are “overt narcissists” (think Donald Trump). Overt narcissists hang their narcissism on their sleeves. They have to consume every ounce of attention at all times. You know them when you see them.

A covert narcissist is subtle—often appearing to be shy and introverted. They are therefore more insidious because they are clever gas lighters and able to expertly pantomime empathetic behavior despite feeling no empathy. They are intelligent, high functioning, and operate well in the “real world”. They reserve their cruelty and contempt for their families whom they emotionally shred in the privacy of their homes. They are typically not physically violent. Their violence is the internal kind they inflict on loved ones through coldness, indifference, manipulation, lies and cruelty.

During our visit, as my friend and I caught up on other things besides pets eating dead owners, my friend told me her story:

From the outside it appeared as if they had the perfect marriage. But she was mainly enabling and covering for her narcissist the entire time. She wanted him to love her, but he could not. She felt ashamed that she was unlovable but was confident over time if she just accommodated him, coached him on how to be decent, reminded him how to be kind, and continued to love him and give herself to him, he would one day return her love without contingencies. So she worked hard to keep up an appearance of normalcy and a loving family. She believed this was her failure alone and wanted to hide it.

But, instead of him magically learning to love her, he grew bored with her and his then-family. He exploded the marriage with maximum cruelty by having a public affair with a much younger woman. He even publicized the affair on social media prior to telling my friend about it. He did tell my friend eventually, but she realized he had been posting his affair openly on social media for weeks prior to sharing this minor bit of info with her. He also informed her of the affair – quite sensitively -- a few weeks before her 50th birthday – a special birthday gift if you will! He stated that he wasn’t cheating because they weren’t in love. Ahhh, she thought. Indeed! Of course! How silly of her to think it was cheating and to be heartbroken! Silly silly her!

Then, not surprisingly, because the first girlfriend was kind and decent like the wife (narcissists are drawn to such types), he tired of her too. So he was cruel to the first mistress, and cheated on her with a replacement girlfriend. He and the boring, raggedy old first wife got a divorce. He immediately married the new girlfriend he had been dating. He hopped quickly from one host to the other because, as my friend explained, narcissists are a type of parasite. They cannot survive on their own and they always need a host. Intimate relationships are transactional to narcissists—not based on love -- and in the end, relationships are not sustainable no matter how hard one party may try to make it work.

My friend’s ex didn’t tell her and their young adult children about his new marriage for a long time. He kept it hidden until he had to tell my friend because she was asking too many questions. He did not tell his kids. She had to do it. It was fairly shocking and upsetting to everyone -- except her ex husband who didn’t get what the issue was and why everyone else was so salty when he was just trying to live his best life.

He had a new, insta-family and that was that. He felt no remorse, no guilt and no shame at the sudden, hidden marriage or how this could impact his own kids. He provided no thoughtful process to integrate or blend the families and make it easier on his loved ones. Accept it or get over it. My way or the highway—which had always been his way.

I was shocked to hear her story. It seemed so cruel. It was unbelievable to me!

She explained to me there are a lot of narcissists out there. Most of us know or have known at least one – a boss, a colleague, a parent, a friend, a lover. It is not an uncommon pathology.

Then she said:

“But don’t worry about me -- I know my story is crazy, but I am doing great now. I am finally free! My head is out of the sand and I can see clearly now. I don’t feel ashamed anymore because I understand there was nothing I could have done to fix the situation or make my narcissist love me. Wouldn’t it be ironic though, if now that I am alone, I fell, hit my head and my dog ate me? Just when things were looking up?”

And we had a good laugh, cause that would be kind of funny, but in a terribly awful and ironic way.

What did I learn from my friend?

Being involved in an intimate relationship with a narcissist is not the same as having your face or extremities eaten by your pet-- and I would never deign to compare the two! Please. I am reasonable.

No. They are not the same at all!

A narcissist causes a lot more pain.

Narcissists feed on your emotions while you are still alive. Being eaten by a pet is gross and sucks – it is not recommended or desirable. However, once you are dead (well, depending on how hungry your cat is) you are not feeling any pain.

Being married to (or otherwise involved with) a narcissist is like having your heart devoured by a giant sandworm that has somehow infiltrated your entire being and is slowly and methodically gnawing on your soul.

If you have already been eaten by your pet, I can’t help you.

But if you are recovering from, or involved with, a narcissist well, I also can’t help you.

I have zero qualifications other than listening to my friend’s horrible story. You should get therapy and join a support group and not listen to little ‘ole unlicensed and non-credentialed me.

However for those of us who have not been eaten by our pets, and who may or may not be surviving a narcissist, or may know one or be one, I might be able to make you laugh and offer some hope for the future because this story has a happy ending.

My friend is a kind, loving and warm person. In fact that is why her ex was drawn to her in the first place. Those are qualities the narcissists covet because they lack them. She is starting to feel joy again and is content with her freedom. Her life is better.

Let’s face it: people who are kind and loving get eaten by their pets at the same rate as everyone else. However, they are more likely than others to be targeted by narcissists for having these traits.

And while none of us can recover from being dead and getting eaten, people who are kind and loving can and do recover from narcissists every day and are able to lead pretty great lives.

I am wishing you all a great 2020 free from being eaten by your pets and narcissists!

And I mean free from narcissists – not free from getting eaten by them-- although I don’t want that to happen either. So please stay away from those guys too. I am counting on you not getting eaten in general.

Namaste!