We know that on any day of the week, narcissistic folks want a lot of validation, praise, adoration—all of it. Well, a birthday is sort of a guaranteed validation day. On top of the social media wishes, people will get phone calls, perhaps even gifts, maybe even a party, or people gathering for them. Birthdays are a guaranteed validation day. We know that narcissistic people, more than everyone else, are prone to throwing themselves big birthday get-togethers, big dinners, or they just make a really, really big deal out of it. They may ruminate about their birthdays for months: What should I do? What if nobody comes? What should I do? What if people don’t remember it? And it can really spin into a strange victimized rant like three months out. Not all folks are like this, but some.
We also know that some narcissistic folks will often try to be quite hypocritically self-righteous about it: “Oh, I don’t care about birthdays; I don’t need anyone to remember my birthday.” Please. But then let’s say the day gets away from you, and you forget to wish them a happy birthday. There will be hell to pay. The narcissistic person—I often have this image of the narcissistic person sort of sitting splayed on one of those fainting couches, just waiting for the greetings to pour in on their birthday. And like I said, with social media and devices, most of these greetings come in electronically, and because it’s so easy, people on social media will sort of, it’s again, it’s social media and devices, quick and dirty, and the platform reminds them that it’s somebody’s birthday and will send these effusive and vapid greetings throughout that day. The narcissistic person may just keep looking at their device and drinking in all the adoration and sometimes even reveling in the idea that other people have to turn their days around them.
Now, I’m going to have some full disclosure on this one, though: I abuse this birthday privilege that people have to do what I want. My daughters often fight like cats, and so on that one day, I say no fighting allowed, so they have to hold their tongues on it all day. It’s all the gift I need, and it’s really manipulative because their silence, whatever. It’s my once-a-year silent retreat. I would give up cake, gifts, all of it for that. And honestly, at the stroke of midnight, the gloves come off; they start fighting again. What am I going to do? But so, yes, I kind of get that whole ‘people have to do what I want today’ thing.
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