7. COLD OR MEAN-SPIRITED (LACKING EMPATHY)
Now, I know what you’re thinking. How does somebody show an apparent lack of empathy on a first date? What I found from experience, and not just with first dates but just in meeting people and first encounters with people, is that people will show their true colors through the stories they tell. And I have an example from my life. It actually wasn’t a date. It was kind of a business thing. I was hiring someone for an event, and we had an interview.
Everything seemed to go great. You know, it was very casual. We were just talking. Everything seemed fine, and then towards the end, he came out with this off-color joke that was just not funny at all. It was about disabled people, and I think he even used the R-word. This was the first time I met this person, and it left me thinking: one, what about me made you think that I’d be okay with that? And two, you don’t know me. What if somebody very close to me had the very disability that you’re blatantly making fun of right now? It shows a very obvious lack of empathy.
Again, I’m not saying this person was a narcissist, but that is highly narcissistic behavior because that person is not thinking at all about how their words are going to land and whether their words are going to hurt somebody else.
So, red flags: saying things that can be hurtful to another person, or making off-color jokes, saying things when there’s a good chance that they’re going to have a negative impact on the person you’re talking to, but you say them anyway and don’t seem to care.
So those are the seven ways you may be able to spot a narcissist, or somebody who’s highly narcissistic, on a first date. And again, this is all about your own discernment and your own intuition. I’ve learned to trust my intuition, and whenever I have not, whenever I have suppressed it, I have regretted it big time. So trust your gut. If you notice any of these warning signs and you get that feeling that something’s off, even if everything else seems good, pay attention to that feeling.
Read More: Narcissists’ 7 Favorite Catchphrases.
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