Reading Time: 5 minutes I recently talked to a woman who’d been emotionally and psychologically abused by her fiance for almost two years. It was bad. Everyone could see it but her. She told me that after her best friend’s roommate pointed out to her that he was a classic malignant narcissist she knew she needed to end it. She looked it up online. She read all the “symptoms” and sure enough, it fit him to a tee. So, she was finally done. He’s crazy. 

The roommate is a barista. While the observant barista might have been right, those kinds of diagnosis are very complicated and it’s not easy to get right. Even more so, it’s sad that so often we need an excuse to leave a relationship that’s not working.