How to tell if someone is a narcissist when they genuinely are exceptional?

Like he does blow his own trumpet a lot....but then he does have a first class maths degree from cambridge. He is exceptionally clever and has an exceptional job for his age.... but then he is also arrogant about his looks (which is weird because he's probably the worst looking guy I've gone out with in every sense: doesn't work out, clothes don't fit him, facial features. I've had to bite my lip several times when he tells me he's sooo handsome and how everry female fancies him ).

Talk to him about what you don't like, if he doesn't change then he's clearly not the guy for you.

Sounds more like autism to me but either way you shouldn't have to put up with his lack of empathy. You'd leave him if he was a narcissist, but grin and bear it if he was an autist - that doesn't make sense, as both are disorders which can't really be helped, it's just society has decided one is worthy of contempt and one of sympathy.

It makes sense to me because my previous experience of narcissists are that they will abuse you and they need profound psychiatric help before they can function in a healthy relationship . Where as with autism, their lack of empathy is more a lack of awareness and if they can become aware of how you feel they will try not to make you feel bad, they just find it hard to pick up on non-verbal signals such as facial expressions, body language .

There are two types of empathy, cognitive and affective and what I find troubling with narcissists is that they have the cognitive (they recognise how you are feeling) they just fail to respond to distressing emotions other display (affective). Where as, most people with high functioning autism seem to have the problem in the recognition aspect but once aware of an emotion, choose to respond to it (although can have trouble in responding in a way that atypical people find 'appropriate'.

Decided the guy is not a narcissist but we are breaking up anyway due to other issues (religion).

I think there is something...different with my boyfriend.

I know this sounds bad but I can't tell if he has a lack of empathy because he's high functioning autistic or has narcissistic personality disorder.


Like he does blow his own trumpet a lot....but then he does have a first class maths degree from cambridge. He is exceptionally clever and has an exceptional job for his age.... but then he is also arrogant about his looks (which is weird because he's probably the worst looking guy I've gone out with in every sense: doesn't work out, clothes don't fit him, facial features. I've had to bite my lip several times when he tells me he's sooo handsome and how everry female fancies him ).

What really is affecting me me is his seeming lack of empathy. My best friend has said to me recently, 'Before you went out with him your self esteem was really healthy but now it's really quite low and I feel like he's done this with all the insensitive things he says and does, they've built up to knock you down'.

I just honestly can't tell which it is, His bestfriend thinks it's ASD: he has family with austism and obviously the maths degree but then why would he keep banging on about his attractiveness if it was just that?

OK fair enough, I understand where it comes from on a personal level but if we are considering both things to be "mental disorders" that "the real person", whoever that is, "suffers from", I still think it is a bit unfair to take the view that a cognitive defect is OK while an affective defect is not.

It's a tough situation similar to how we "shouldn't" really convict a psychopath of murder... how much is (s)he responsible, what even is the "(s)he" vs the "disorder".

That gave me a mental picture of a guy sucking his own dick