Grandiose narcissists appear to be the life of the party.  They know everyone and name drop when telling stories about all the people they know. They seem to make friends with ease and people seem to like them.  However, despite their stories about who they know and the amazing things they have done, they seem to lack any real friends.  The relationships they talk about are superficial and they don’t seem to spend time with people outside of a work setting or otherwise business-related purpose.  Do narcissists have friends?

For many narcissists, they can meet people easily and seem to connect well with people they interact with. They are personable and friendly, seemingly invested in you and your interests. However, if you look closer, the narcissist doesn’t have people they are close with. Their relationships all seem superficial and specific to a certain setting such as work, their child’s school, etc.  Why would someone who seems to be outgoing and personable not have friends they spend time with for fun?

The narcissist does have friends, but how they define their friends is different from how a non-narcissist defines friendship. For a non-narcissist, you pick your friends based on shared interests, a desire to learn more about that person, and to grow together in the friendship.  For non-narcissists the friendship is mutual.  Both friends enter the relationship to learn and benefit from the other person. 

For a narcissist, friendships are not mutual.  They have no interest in learning about someone else if it doesn’t benefit them in some way.  The narcissist carefully chooses their friends based on the image they want to project.  They choose friends in positions of power because they want to be seen as an equal to someone powerful.  On the flipside, the narcissist might be friends with someone who has no strengths.  The narcissist would choose this person as a friend because this helps them feel superior because they feel they are better than this other person.

For the narcissist, friends are chosen that will help refill their narcissistic supply. For this reason, friendships for narcissists are transactional. People are chosen by the narcissist as friends that will benefit them in some way.   With a transactional relationship, it is treated like a business deal.  For example, you do X for me, and I will do Y for you.  Every move is meant to benefit the narcissist and not the growth of the relationship.  Because the relationship is business like, it can be ended at any time, and this again is based on what the narcissist wants and needs.  If the narcissist thinks their interests are not the focus, they will end the relationship. 

As you can likely see, friendships with narcissists are superficial.  There is no deeper meaning or connection because that is not what the narcissist wants or needs. The narcissist is incapable of being vulnerable because this would risk them being exposed for the fraud they are.  Mutual friendships require vulnerability.  The narcissist will only enter into a friendship if it will benefit them in some way.  Most people will see they are being used by the narcissist and will end the friendship.  The narcissist may make friends easily, but they lack lifelong friends. 

Friendships with narcissists are unstable and can end at any time.  The friend of the narcissist may not even know what they did to lead to the ending of the friendship, and this makes it more confusing for them.  True friendships will never occur with a narcissist because of their lack of empathy and inability to be vulnerable.  Talking to a narcissist will feel empty and void of any true value and non-narcissists will usually only keep a narcissist in their life for a short time before cutting their losses and finding someone they can connect with.