When you travel with anybody, you learn so much about them in that time, but travel with a narcissist, and everything about them gets exposed in the quickest of times. Taking out your usual routine means you are stripped back to who you really are.
There are no walls to hide behind when you're stuck on foreign land, and let me tell you this…
…It's not a pretty sight. If you want to be warned before you head to the border, then you might want to stick around.
Because once that plane lands and the routine falls away, the mask has nowhere to hide. And you'll see things you can't unsee once you've seen them.
1 Why is everything all of a sudden your fault?
And there it begins: with every single thing being your fault. It starts with the flight. You didn't check in early and now you assign your seats. The flight is then delayed, and you end up sitting on the tarmac for two hours while the airport fixes an issue.
You finally get to the hotel, and it looks nothing like it did on the internet. You should have researched better, why didn't you? It rained on the drive to the hotel, too. Did you not think to look up the annual weather and plan the vacation a little better?
I say all of these things, because it's typical of a narcissist to blame you before the vacation even gets started. Before you've even unpacked, you're in a slumped state of mind, and you can't undo any of it.
The thing the narcissist fails to remember is that things go wrong, things that are out of your control as much as theirs. Narcissists are always looking for someone to blame, and that's exactly why they look at you.
It's half the reason why you're around in the first place, so they always have a scapegoat to blame when things don't go their way. Heaven forbid they let it go, or blame themselves. I told you we should've gone somewhere else. You just don't listen.
You hear it all the time.
And what do you do? You apologise. For weather. For flight delays. For things the pilot couldn't control, let alone you. That's the trap right there.
2 The narcissist needs an audience, and you're right there
Narcissists won't cope very well if they're forced to not have some kind of audience any time. Think about when they're at home; they have work, neighbors, friends, relatives, these are all people the narcissist uses and can tap into their attention whenever they want to.
Trust me, they know how to take advantage of all of that. Then, there's vacation. Mostly, their audience becomes you, because everyone else is so temporary. That doesn't mean the narcissist won't try to make the waiting staff laugh or feel flattered.
It doesn't mean they can't perform for whoever is watching, because they want to be able to grab the best table. First name terms mean everything, and if it means they get to harvest some compliments along the way, then that's exactly what they will do.
If all of this fails due to a language barrier, cultural difference, or simply the wrong place at the wrong time, you'll hear all about it that evening. The narcissist will tell you how much they don't want to go on that tour tomorrow because the guide is boring.
You spend each night of the vacation you were once looking forward to, listening to the narcissist complain about every little thing. As much as I don't want to tell you that, I need you to know the truth.
Sound familiar? You sit there nodding, sipping wine you can't even taste, wondering when this became your evening entertainment. Their monologue, your silence, on repeat.
3 Your needs became extinct
If there was anything you had hoped to see or do while you were on vacation, you can forget it. People go away to visit museums, or go on that hiking trail. If the narcissist wants to lounge by the pool all day, that's probably what you'll end up doing.
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseYour needs, just like when you're at home, will mean nothing to them. In fact, if you say you want to visit that little village where the old church is, you'll be greeted with eye rolls.
Your preferences never matter, and you will be pushed and pulled into following their desires rather than do anything you want to do.
The moment you try to say, "We haven't got to do this yet, could we…?", is the moment the narcissist will treat you as if you have all these terrible demands that are out of the question. You're difficult. You're negative. You're pushy. You're needy. You're making everything complicated.
You can't compete with it, and instead, you follow them like you're their shadow because it's easier and less dramatic than using your voice and stating what you'd like to do on a particular day.
I had a client tell me she spent seven days in Greece and never once saw the sea properly. He wanted the pool, the bar, the pool again.
4 They crank up the control
If you're at home and you live with a narcissist, let me tell you, there is going to be far more breathing room there than on vacation. The routines are a great example of this, and even how you use your space and how you spend those quiet moments alone.
You're able to some extent to get away from the narcissist due to your own responsibilities, or theirs. On vacation, all of that is paused.
Rather than have a house with places and corners you can get to, you have this hotel room where the bathroom is suddenly the only place you can count to ten and have a cry.
The narcissist knows where you are on vacation all of the time, so this makes it so much easier to lead you around while maintaining all the control.
They get to dictate where you eat that night, they handle all the money, and the reminders of this are thrown at you all the time. If you dare to try to suggest anything different, you get the look.
The shift occurs immediately, as if you have this audacity that you brought to the table. The narcissist may sulk or snap, or even make you suffer in silence. You'll hear all these sharp comments that cut through you like you're hot butter.
"You're impossible to please." "You've ruined this trip already." "I spent all this money and this is what I get?" The soundtrack of your supposed getaway.
Yep, even when you're on vacation. The place you both chose to go spend some nice time together. This destination becomes another venue for their abuse to pour out of them, and all over you.
5 Watch how the narcissist treats everybody else
I hate to even bring it up, but I need to, don't I? It's the same as when you're at home, but on vacation, it exposes the narcissist even more intensely because you're away from everything you both know as familiar.
As you stand there, exhausted from how you've been treated and dragged around without giving your needs a second thought, you're watching the narcissist be kind to the cleaner. They're complimenting them or sharing a joke. They're paying a genuine interest in their life story.
On the flip side, the moment someone steps out of line, be it the hotel porter or the server at the restaurant that evening, watch how they are treated.
Soon enough, their entitlement will spill out, and in that moment, you see someone who tries to keep a lid on how they act at home. They're unable to hide it on vacation.
The mask slips because there's nobody around to keep it fastened. No colleagues watching, no in-laws to impress. Just a tired server and a narcissist who forgot to perform.
6 You're home. What happens then?
When people go on vacation, they do so as a reset. They want to make memories and rest from their day to day lives. They can also stress-test a relationship and reveal things you never knew about the person you are with.
When you see narcissistic behavior, just know it derives from a narcissistic personality. It certainly is enough to make your eyes wide open to the truth.
And once you're back home, unpacking that suitcase, you realise the vacation gave you something you didn't book: clarity. Uncomfortable, unwanted, but clarity all the same.
7 The packing meltdown you didn't see coming
The suitcase comes out a week early, and that's when it starts. You didn't think packing could become a warzone, but here we are. They can't find the charger. Where did you put their good shirt? Why are you packing already, are you trying to make them feel behind?
Then it flips. Now you're not packing enough, or you're packing wrong, or you've folded something in a way that offends them personally.
I watched a client describe her husband throwing her toiletry bag across the bedroom because she'd bought travel size shampoo instead of decanting his usual one. Two hours before the taxi arrived.
And you stand there wondering how a suitcase became the reason you're crying in the ensuite. The vacation hasn't even started. You haven't left the house. Yet somehow you're already exhausted, already apologising, already dreading the airport.
That's the tell. A regular person gets stressed packing. A narcissist uses the packing to remind you who's in charge before you've even zipped the bag shut.
8 Photos for the feed, misery for you
Meanwhile, the narcissist is curating. The perfect shot of the sunset. The pool selfie with just the right angle.
See also THIS is What Makes NarcissistsThe captions about "paradise" and "so grateful" and "best trip ever with my love." You're standing off camera with red eyes from crying in the bathroom an hour ago, watching them beam into their phone like nothing happened.
And then you're roped in. Stand there. Move left. No, hold the glass higher. Smile properly, why do you look miserable? Take it again. You've become their photographer, their prop, and their fake-happy co-star all in one exhausting afternoon.
The photos go up. The comments flood in. Wow, what a gorgeous couple. Living the dream. And they eat it up, showing you the likes, reading the comments aloud like it's proof of something.
Proof of what, though? That strangers on the internet believe the story. That the highlight reel is landing. Nobody scrolling sees the argument in the taxi, or the way they snapped at you five minutes before that photo was taken.
They just see the sunset, and two people who look happy.
