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This is a follow-up to my Elephant Journal piece about being labeled a narcissist.

That article came from a place of confusion and emotional pain. This one? It comes from the other side of the mirror.

When an ex called me a narcissist, it wasn’t in a private conversation—it was in a public meme. One of those passive-aggressive social posts that’s meant to go viral while taking a pointed shot at someone just outside the frame. She never said my name, but anyone who knew us knew exactly who it was about.

I wanted to fire back. I wanted to call it what it felt like to me in the moment: vindictive, self-serving, maybe even cruel. But I didn’t. I sat with it, against my will, even when the stress caused a devastating bout of insomnia.

What started as outrage slowly gave way to something more uncomfortable: reflection. Because while I didn’t agree with the label, I couldn’t deny that I’d left her with something to be angry about. That meme was a message. Not just to her followers, but to me.

The word “narcissist” is heavy. It’s clinical. It conjures up images of someone grandiose, manipulative, incapable of love. That wasn’t how I saw myself. I thought I was emotionally aware, empathetic, and generous. But the truth is, I was naïve, withholding, and maybe self-righteous. I intellectualized her feelings, avoided her desires, and made her feel alone even while we were still sharing a bed.

I wasn’t a narcissist, but I sure wasn’t the hero of our story.

Just recently, I came across a video by psychologist Dr. Orion Taraban. He broke down how the term “narcissist” has become a kind of shorthand in our culture: a word people use not just to describe someone clinically disordered, but anyone who left them hurt and confused. It’s a label that lets us turn messy heartbreak into clean morality plays. And it’s everywhere.

Dr. Taraban also pointed out something else, something that hit even harder. He said when someone talks about multiple narcissistic exes, or talks about one ex that way for years, it may not just be about the ex. It may be about a pattern. It might reflect their own unresolved attachment wounds. That insight didn’t let me off the hook, but it made me ask harder questions about us.

How could I self-sabotage something I cherished so deeply?

During one of my therapy sessions, an answer emerged: perhaps both of our core wounds were triggered and we both went into survival mode. Our dynamic ended up with heat, chaos, swings between intensity and withdrawal.

It felt romantic until it felt like war.

I was drawn to her passion, her fire, and her undeniable comedic persona. But I also idealized her in a way that denied her desires. She wanted kindness; I wanted a fantasy. In a way, we were both reacting to ghosts.

And when it ended, we each told a story that helped us survive it.

Hers needed a villain.

Mine needed a martyr.

Neither version was entirely fair.

But here’s the part I’ve come to accept: I hurt her. I made her feel invisible. I minimized her needs. And if she experienced me as narcissistic—even if the DSM wouldn’t agree—then that label still reflects something real about how I made her feel.

And that’s not nothing.

It would be easier to tell you she was crazy, that she weaponized therapy language to dodge her own accountability. It would even be easy to say that she used that meme to get attention. And maybe there’s some truth in all of that.

But there’s truth in what I did, too.

In what I refused to look at. In the emotional cowardice I mistook for stoicism.

We’ve all seen the memes. We’ve all heard the stories. We think we know who the narcissist is in someone else’s breakup. But what if the truth is harder than that?

What if the narcissist isn’t always a monster, but sometimes just a deeply flawed version of ourselves, seen through the eyes of someone we failed?

I wasn’t a clinical narcissist. But I was careless. I was defensive. I confused being “calm” with being avoidant. I confused being “right” with being kind.

And for that, I’m sorry.

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