Back in 2015 I cut out a whole bunch of people that I had been ‘mates’ with for 7 years. It’s now been as long since I saw them as I’d spent hanging around with them.
In that time, I’ve done my therapy. I’ve been in the support groups. I’ve read a lot of books on psychology, on people, on human behaviour. I’ve learned a lot. Very recently, I’ve realised this group of people were narcissists. And they used me.
Rather than a standard piss-and-moan about something that happened ages ago, I want to warn people so that they don’t fall into the pitfalls that I repeatedly did. A narcissist may not come to you saying, ‘I am brilliant’ (although they might). If they are slightly less subtle, how might we spot them?
To start with, what exactly is a narcissist? Is it just someone who loves themselves? WebMD describes it as ‘extreme self-involvement to the degree that it makes a person ignore the needs of those around them.’
Bearing in mind, this particular bunch had known each other since they were 11, and went to the same private school. To get in, an applicant would need to pass an entrance exam and their parents today would pay £12,600p.a. in tuition fees. This kind of environment is known to foster arrogance and self-entitlement. This group would refer to a ‘hierarchy’ that they claimed informally existed in the school. I met them when we were in their mid 20s and I stayed mates with them ‘til we were in our early 30s.
Then I came to my senses.
They were incredibly self involved, and definitely put their needs above mine. They were obsessed with their local drinking places, a bar strip so utterly shit that both Panorama and Cops with Cameras would film their TV shows there as they knew there’d be a cavalcade of drunk knobheads kicking off every weekend. Most of these people would be blue collar, low-skilled and low-paid workers blowing their wages on booze. My group were in management positions.
Yet they were, just like most other people on Oldham’s Yorkshire street, desperate to prove themselves. One of them, we’ll call him Hicks, smashed up his hand in a street fight then went into work in his office two days later, overseeing his team.
Years after growing a set and ditching this group, and after stumbling across an online article, it dawned on me that this group were narcissists. It also dawned on me that all the signs were there, and had been completely oblivious to them. After a bit of research it turns out what I’d been subjected to was Narcissistic Supply, a need to be watched by other people: to have an audience.
Until I was maybe 29/30, I lacked the confidence to simply say, ‘no thanks, that’s not my kind of thing.’ I’d get myself roped into all sorts of shit nights out – and with numerous dodgy characters in various groups of mates – all because I couldn’t stand up to others and say no. (I say no a lot now, to many people’s dismay.) I’d find myself protesting, saying I didn’t want to go there, only for the main culprit, Hicks, telling me, ‘but it isn’t about where you go. It’s about who you’re with.’ He would say, ‘We’re you’re mates. If you don’t come out with us, what are you going to do?’
I was usually, by choice, designated driver. When I was learning to drive, my instructor told me that when waiting at a red light, you must apply the handbrake to secure the car. If someone runs into the back of you, and they slam you into the path of oncoming traffic, you are partially liable as you hadn’t secured your vehicle. RAC seem to confirm this.
Ferro and Hicks, who both also drove with full licenses, thought this was absurd. They were so infuriated by this that they would call me ‘an actual physical retard.’
This is abuse.
Of course, I didn’t recognise it as such. It would be dismissed as ‘banter.’ When you lack confidence, you find yourself ushered into the ‘audience’ role – there so the narcissist has someone to watch them.
Back in 2012 I went to Warehouse Project with Hicks and maybe a couple of others. We’d not particularly discussed how we were going to get there, but Hicks told me a few of them would meet at mine. Immediately, they were taking cocaine in my bathroom. Regrettably, I partook too under the assumption we’d be getting a taxi.
I drove to Trafford Park.
Thankfully, I was fine. Nothing happened. But why would Hicks do this? An intelligent bloke, in a management position in work. Why would he not stop and think, wait, this is a bad idea? And why didn’t I? But to my defence, I’m brain damaged and was in special needs in school. He’s privately educated. It makes no sense.
I fell into the same patterns of victimisation until 2015, where I went on a stag do. The weekend, based in a European holiday destination, was a few weeks prior to the wedding of one of the group. We’ll call him Ferro. There was a fancy dress theme, and I wore an outfit that involved a plastic helmet that rested on the head and the bridge of the nose. As the helmet was round, and shiny, there was some urge from these neolithic yuppies to slap me over the head, cutting the helmet’s visor into the nose. I was walking around the town with blood all over my face. You can see the cuts here:
I had met this group through Hicks, whom I had trained in martial arts with for some years. Another member, we’ll call him Crowe, I hadn’t seen since I was first in the group. He’d fucked off to Dubai or somewhere to teach sports, I gather. Now he was back in the UK and had joined the stag do.
He started to ask me about the training I’d done. I hadn’t said five words before it dawned on me what he was going to say in response. I was right.
‘Yeah, it doesn’t mean shit though. I could batter you whenever I want. But I won’t, ‘cause you’re a mate.’
Bullshit. He, like everyone else, still felt the primitive urge to slap me around. And while he was saying this, it dawned on me he’d said it before, years ago, when I was giving him a lift. It also dawned on me that the reason I didn’t do anything with his sister – who had tried it on with me a number of times – was that I couldn’t stand him. I just hadn’t connected the dots. I brought this up with Hicks, and he dismissed the situation. It was ‘only a joke,’ he ‘didn’t mean it,’ etc. Even when Crowe squared up to Hicks’ brother-in-law-to-be, Hicks only made a passing comment that it ‘wasn’t a good situation’ and that ‘if any two people were going to kick off it would be them.’
After the stag do I turned up at the reception, cuts still healing, after which I didn’t speak to them again. I’d been in enough therapy to know better than to keep meeting them. After blocking them on 3 social media platforms, I never heard from them.
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