But strategically, whether you forget or remember a narcissistic person’s birthday, it can be unsatisfying if you’re someone in their life. If you remember, they may not be grateful but instead play it down. Forget or remember, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, sure, thanks for remembering.’ If you forget, they will go at you for forgetting, and now it’s a day they also get more enabled than usual. And so, if you have someone narcissistic in your life, be prepared that their birthday is when they will behave more poorly than usual. And I bet you didn’t think this elevator could go down any more floors, but yeah, it can get worse. I don’t know how many of you watch the show ‘Succession,’ but there’s that great scene in ‘Succession’ when Kendall throws himself that big, sad, ridiculous birthday party. He spends a fortune, and it still didn’t feel good, and his even more narcissistic siblings manage to shame him and mess it up for him. So, he sat victimized and dejectedly in the corner of the party—classic narcissistic birthday look.
So often, narcissistic folks can’t win on their birthdays. They often want that day to be something more grandiose and corrective, and it simply can’t be. Over time, people in long-term relationships of any kind with narcissistic folks may feel tense as that narcissistic person’s birthday approaches. I mean, none of us are mind readers, right? So, we don’t know whether to make the
narcissistic person’s birthday a big deal, a small deal, go to work, don’t go to work, plan something, then what do you plan, what gift to get them, how much to spend on, and on. And every year, it’s very likely that something more bizarre happens on their birthday; some new birthday tragedy unfolds. It really can make these days fraught for everyone in the narcissist’s life. There is hypocrisy when you forget their birthday. If they forget yours, you may not even care and not even bring it up. But if you forget theirs, even if they forgot yours, be prepared.
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