Can you negotiate with a narcissist?

Can you negotiate with a narcissist?

ABSOLUTELY yes.

People will tell you that it is impossible to negotiate with a narcissist, and they are partially right. It is nearly impossible to get a narcissist to compromise on something they know is important to you and will cause chaos and drama to argue about.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate with a narcissist. It just means you have to be strategic about doing so.

There is a story that I read after my divorce that sticks with me. A question had been asked on a FB page about strategies for mediating with a personality disordered individual. One woman responded that she had made a HUGE deal about a hairbrush in her divorce. Instead of fighting over the kids, she kept going on and on about this brush. She didn’t actually care about the hairbrush, but the narcissist latched on to this being an important item. So he fought her over it. She ended up leveraging this brush – that she never actually wanted – to get the things she actually did want in the end. Is there something in your situation that you can make up to fight about?

In my own case, I used this a few times (though made the mistake in mediation and our custody modification of thinking that if I just told the other people exactly what I wanted, we could figure it out). I knew that we were up against a situation where ex was saying that abuse allegations were made up. I also knew that eventually a court would try to order counseling for the kids with their dad. He had already snowed a psychiatrist, a social worker, and a forensic psychologist. I was pretty sure he could do the same for the kids’ counselors. And I also knew that counseling with their dad wouldn’t actually be effective. So I would regularly ask him to go to counseling with the kids (like once a month or so). It became a way to control what was being argued over, which helped things stay calmer outside of that one “disagreement.”

Another strategy for negotiating with a narcissist is to appeal to their ego. When you send an email and want them to agree to something, you can add phrases like “I wasn’t sure about the kinds of lunches I needed to pack for [child]. I know that you care about healthy lunches. What do you think we should pack for school?” if the other parent isn’t sending the kids to school with appropriate food. You can even try “Good parents love watching their kids play soccer, and I know you are trying to be a good dad.” You don’t have to believe it. You are just focusing on getting your desired outcome. It’s crucial to frame your negotiations in a way that appeals to the narcissist’s self-interest and reinforces their sense of power and control.

The worst thing you can do when negotiating with a narcissist is to get overly emotional. It’s where the work learning gray rock is important, even if you use a modified version in your regular communications. If you are unemotional, disimpassioned, and neutral during most of the negotiations, but you get emotional in your disagreements over the proverbial hairbrush, then you are setting yourself up to be in more control during the negotiation.

Can you negotiate with a narcissist? Yes. Does it take practice and strategic thinking? Absolutely!