Answered on Quora.
I do not believe that they ever get to that point. I have known several middle aged narcissists, and I have known a couple of narcissists who made it into old age. However, these two were “pleasant narcissists” who liked me.
One guy simply had no interest whatsoever in anything you said, and he talked about himself and bragged constantly. Incidentally bit about having no interest in your words is a stark warning sign that you are dealing with serious NPD. They ask you how you are doing, they listen for 30 seconds, and then they are looking around the room, bored. Or they rudely tell you to shut up. Or they are just obviously not interested.
This man was very wealthy, and he was rather senile when I knew him. I pointed out his narcissism to others, and others, blind to these folks as most are, said he was just senile. They never stop fooling people.
Narcissists are often goodlooking, charming, and have figured out ways of making decent money. They keep enough looks, charm and money around them through most of their lives that they tend to have people around them and even close to them even into middle or old age.
All narcissists I have known were married. One narcissist, when he was not married, was one of the most wildly successful PUA womanizers I have ever met. Whatever the faults of narcissists, social failure does not seem to be one of them.
I suppose I would like to meet a narcissist like you describe because I have never heard of one.
The closest I can think of was a serial killer who I believe was a malignant narcissist. Cannot recall his name now. He may have killed in Oregon and Washington. He was alone and maybe even on Death Row. A female journalist went to interview him and said even locked into his tiny cell, he was still “that guy,” prancing around in his cell like a model on a runway. He would always be “Joe Cool” even as he walked to the electric chair.
Ted Bundy seemed to think quite highly of himself in prison, and on trial for murder, he put on quite a show. He had a coterie of female admirers who never left him, and I think he married one. Bundy was a malignant narcissist. A number of serial killers had this diagnosis. Incidentally, our current president shares this diagnosis with these serial killers.
That charm never seems to turn off, and as long as it is on, the moths will come to the narcissist’s light. Even alone in their cells for serial murder, they still think they are Gods among men. It doesn’t seem to be possible to take these people down a peg. Their self-regard, real or not, at least appears as hard as tungsten.
