Loyalty in Friendships
In friendships, we can see a similar pattern. The narcissistic friend may view you as disloyal for branching into other friend groups or not pulling them into a new group of people that you’ve met. A narcissistic friend, again, may do what they want when they want, but still feel as though they have some sort of control over who you socialize with and how you socialize.
Again, there’s that hypocrisy. Especially if this is an old friend you’ve had for a very long time, there may be a tendency for them to take the stance of, “I’ve known you forever, and you chose them?
You’re so disloyal.” You can feel stuck, as though you have to choose the high school, childhood, or college friend who has been around for a long time and feel a loyalty to them, but also that you can’t branch out into new friendship groups or interest groups without the old narcissistic friend’s permission or without them coming along. Narcissistic friendships can be very difficult to wriggle out of, especially because of things like guilt and pity.
Loyalty in the Workplace
Then, of course, there is the workplace, where loyalty is already kind of touted as a workplace value. But in a narcissistic workplace, it may be positioned as: if you question something, such as a bad policy or an unfair policy, you’re being disloyal. If you don’t pitch in more than you’re being paid for, you’re being disloyal.
If you consider looking for another job, a better job, or a job with more opportunity, then you are disloyal. Disloyalty accusations can be a way to control folks, gaslight them about their commitment to the job, or even imply a lack of commitment that would then make you less desirable for a promotion in that kind of organization.
In really narcissistic workplaces, anything you may do to have some kind of balance in your life but doesn’t always put work as the priority for you, is often branded by narcissistic bosses and managers as you being disloyal. It’s interesting because this is coming up more and more with shifts in the workplace.
Folks who don’t want to have to come into the office all the time and can get some of their job done at a remote site are now being hit with disloyalty accusations about not being on board with the team and the workplace community because they want to continue a hybrid work arrangement.
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