Since You Asked: How to Deal With a Narcissist

Sat, 23 May 2026 06:00:00 -0500

Dear Lorraine,

I’ve been friends with Deborah for twenty-three years. We met in a quilting circle, and she was the friend who called when my father died, who drove me to the hospital the morning of my gallbladder surgery, who I have trusted in the way you trust someone you’ve watched handle their own hard things.

Over the last few years, though, I’ve started noticing something I can’t stop noticing. Every situation, every gathering, every conversation eventually comes back to her. Not cruelly. She doesn’t do it to wound anyone. She does it the way some people hum without knowing they’re doing it: reflexively, without apparent awareness. When I told her about my first grandchild last October, she turned within a minute to her own daughter’s fertility struggles. When our group of friends went to Savannah for a long weekend, she steered every dinner conversation until the rest of us had mostly stopped trying. Two women in our circle have quietly stopped coming to things Deborah attends.

Narcissism on Sunday Evening Review

Since You Asked: How to Deal With a Narcissist