Advice on possibly narcissist boyfriend?

So my boyfriend of 3 years has been showing traits of being a narcissist. He has a psychiatrist and has been diagnosed with either bipolar disorder or mood disorder (not sure exactly which). He's extremely smart, and is going to a university about 4 hours away, but I plan to transfer there in about a year. He's 21 and I'm 20. Both Caucasian. Anyway I've been doing alot of research to try to figure out if my suspicions are valid. People are complex but it's really useful to read about these disorders to help de-code irrational behavior. Anyway he's infamous for the silent treatment, as well as somehow turning things around on me, making me seem like the one that's wrong, regardless of his actions, among a very long list of other symptoms. It can be quite maddening. Here is a fight that we had and I'm hoping y'all can give me some insight. Winnie is my kitten. And please don't fixate on my opinions on cats vs dogs; it's not the point of this post.

Me: I love Winnie so much she's so cute!

Him: Yeah she's a cutie al right! But not as cute as my beagle will be!!

Me: Well she loves me and adores me bc she wants to and wants me to know it. Your puppy will only treat u like that bc you'll be the "alpha dog" and he has to treat you like that, at least until he genuinely loves you over time.

Him: Hey that's not cool

Me: just sayin

Him: Yeah well what you're "just saying" is rude, hurtful, and just flat out incorrect, you couldn't be more wrong, so it's pretty irritating for you to be all snotty and pretentious about something you obviously know nothing about

Me: How is that rude? It's a fact. Dogs will only respect you and gain love for you over time if they first see you as the alpha; they usually won't just love you bc they choose to. Cats will adore you without feeling the need to answer to you. They love you all on their own. Can we please not get in a huge fight over this?

Him:You know that you yourself have told me that cats are way more standoffish than dogs and take a lot more work than dogs right? So right off the bat lying kind of ruins your credibility. I've researched the $#%^ out of beagles, and owned 2, and Everything I've read or experienced has told me that they're ridiculously loyal and loving. So sorry but your "fact" is a load of crap. But to be perfectly honest, that's not even what really pisses me off. We were just having a normal conversation about pets being CUTE, and then you just randomly jump in and say "yeah well Winnie loves and adores me but your dog won't it'll just pretend to because you're the alpha male" wtf is wrong with you??? I know you have an uncontrollable urge to just $#%^ on everything I get excited about and say its stupid, but why in the name of god would you EVER say that to a person, completely out of nowhere? So ###$ up Abby

Me:Ok Austin, everytime we compare cats and dogs, I feel like you always try to say that dogs are better no matter what. So when you said that your DOG would be cuter than my CAT, I perceived this as you trying to undermine the cuteness of my cat for the sole purpose of it being a cat. Yes cats can be more standoffish, but that wasn't the issue I was talking about. What I was talking about was that cats don't require an alpha male to show respect/love/affection. They choose to without having to be told. While dogs do love their owners, they wouldn't show them the same respect or follow them around if they weren't subservient to the alpha/owner. I've owned shelties, labs, mutts, and a pomeranian, as well as many cats, and I've also done alot of research on this stuff. I'm sorry you feel that I was trying to ruin what you were excited about. It seems I assumed you were trying to one-up me again (as far as the cats vs dogs thing goes) which is why I responded the way I did, and I really am sorry that what I said hurt you.

--here I called him and was calmly talking to him, trying to explain my feelings and explain the miscommunication that happened, but he would just say flatly that I was being a bitch and that was that. I'm very sensitive about cuss words directed at me bc in my first serious relationship ever, I was verbally, emotionally and slightly physically abused and he is well aware of this and how I feel about it. He proceeded to throw a temper tantrum and ended up hanging up--

Him: You can offer up all the half assed explanations you want, it doesn't matter: what you said was ###$ up and inexcusable and I deserve a full apology, not some #######4 fake one

Me:Im sorry that you felt i was being mean/rude; that really wasn't my intention. I recognize that my response was defensive, as I felt like you were trying to make it seem like dogs are cuter than cats. I now know that that was a misunderstanding on my part and I reacted way too aggressively. Ill definitely work on not jumping to conclusions like that. I can understand that you may be upset as you perceived what you said to be innocent and agreeable, and therefore felt offended by the sudden change of tone in the conversation, as you felt you had done nothing wrong. I also recognize that instead of responding the way I did, I should've just told you that I felt like you were trying to cheapen the cuteness of my cat bc you tend to be biased towards dogs. But for what I said about the alpha-dog thing, I stand behind because from what I've learned and researched, its a fact. If you disagree based on your own research, that's fine, I wouldn't be opposed to hearing your evidence.

On another note; when you referred to my attempts to communicate effectively through conflict resolution and to me describing my feelings, as "half assed explanations", I feel sad because I feel you don't value what I have to say. Do you value my input?

--This is where the silent treatment began at 5 in the afternoon, and I didn't hear from him until the next day at 2 in the afternoon--
He replied with some goofy phrase.

Him: Nobody can do the boogaloo like I do

Me: Sometimes misunderstandings can provoke anger and arguments; no one likes to be attacked. But withdrawing and shutting the other person out can make it hard to resolve the problems

Him: ok baby

Me: I still have some unresolved feelings. Do you as well?

Him: not really

Me: well will you hear me out?

Him: sure

Me: Well It makes me feel confused and hurt when you call me bitch so casually. It's happened more than once recently. It makes me feel degraded and lowers my value as a human being. That's not okay and is overstepping the boundaries I'm comfortable with. I'm asking you to respect my boundaries and my value as a woman.

Him: Ok I'll refrain from using that term, but it wasn't casual at all

Me: Austin i feel like you're using semantics to try and dance around the issue and avoid any accountability. But I digress;
I feel that bc you so quickly used the word bitch, before the argument had even escalated into an irrational full blown fight, (where rationality would be replaced with an emotional rage, fueling hurtful words) that it was casual. You used it to describe how I was acting. (not how you FELT I was acting, due to maybe a misunderstanding on my part and even your part, but you stated that I was a bitch and that was a fact: the blame game) It's not good that when saying that I was being hurtful, you said something like,"you were being a bitch". The reason that isn't good is bc when you should've been thoughtful and mature and expressed your feelings in a way that would've extinguished the argument by saying something like "I felt that what you said was rude, hurtful and uncalled for, and it made me very angry".

Him: Actually, that's EXACTLY what I did first. "Yeah well what you're "just saying" is rude, hurtful, and just flat out incorrect"

Me:You are totally missing the point. You're trying to shift responsibility for your feelings onto me. You should be saying "I feel that what you're saying is rude and hurtful and I disagree with it as I believe it's incorrect".

Can you help me to understand what you're trying to accomplish by stating that "I'm incorrect"? I honestly can't figure it out. It's fine that you'd disagree, but why would you demand that I'm wrong and you're right? What does that accomplish? I'm not going to change what I believe to be true just bc you disagree or don't like it, and I wouldn't expect you to either. But just saying,"that's incorrect, that's not true" doesn't help the situation and is quite childish.

Him: Omg you are such a hypocrite

Me: Ok, we can talk about why you feel that way in a minute, but I would first like to resolve the issue at hand: calling me bitch when calmly discussing your feelings.

Him: I said I won't use that word

Me: Yes I know, thank you I appreciate it. But you haven't acknowledged that I felt it was used like it was no big deal and why I feel that way. You denied that it was casual, and ignored my reasoning on the matter

Him: Well I just felt you were being extremely cruel and hurtful

Me: I understand that and I'm sorry that my reaction came off that way. I love you and i don't want to hurt you or be cruel in any way. I'm sorry that what I said, though it was a misunderstanding, hurt your feelings.
But that still doesn't address how I feel that you used the word bitch during a logical explanation of how you felt I was behaving.

--almost 5 hours pass--

Him: It's cold as tits down here

Me: That sucks baby it's not too bad here

Him: It's so cold and rainy and the tree pollen is super high so my nosie hurts
--he's trying to be all cutesie--

Me: I'm sorry sweetie, you should take medicine!

--been 2 hours and no response yet-

Anyway if you were able to read all of that, I commend you lol. I'm just at a loss!!! Any insight/advice would be very much appreciated!! Thanks!!

Hi. We now have a forum for Signifcant Others, so I'll move your thread there and leave a shadow thread in Relationships.

Hi Abby -

In general, most arguments are only 1% about the topic, and the other 99% is emotional because people's egos are threatened/hurt. Like you wrote, the argument was not really about cats and dogs.

So look at the conversation -

Me: I love Winnie so much she's so cute!

A simple statement, though everything we say has some reason practical or ego behind why we say what we do. So for example, you may have gotten out of it re-affirming for yourself that it feels good to be loved, and also perhaps gotten something out of letting him know you are lovable and able to love. So far so good.

Him: Yeah she's a cutie al right! But not as cute as my beagle will be!!

It seems he reacted, but not entirely positively. Perhaps he felt a bit ego threatened that your love was not 100% about him, or perhaps he is someone who always has to one-up others. So he reacts with "mine is better than yours"

Me: Well she loves me and adores me bc she wants to and wants me to know it. Your puppy will only treat u like that bc ...

Now you react likewise, "mine is better than yours"...

From there it rapidly devolves into an ego fight, I'm right your wrong, you always, etc. Then you make an attempt to talk it out later, get the silent treatment, then he ego jabs at you, then you attempt to talk about it, he falls back on a neutral white flag, you attempt to talk about again, more no lets avoid it, then you finally get him to engage and find that the right/wrong ego fight is still not over... and etc.

So suppose he is a narcissist (keeping in mind nobody can diagnose him online). A narcissist is someone who feels they have very good self-esteem, because they believe they are better than others in various ways, yet when their ego is threatened even slightly, may react very strongly. If pushed, they may go for the jugular very rapidly.

However I have no advice on how to fix/change anything. You'll have to either walk on egg-shells to some degree and avoid the ego threats, or decide if you can't really live with that. You can change you, but it's near impossible to change others, especially a narcissist type, since to tell them they have a fundamental problem with their personality is the biggest ego bruise of all.

Abby, bad news, you're "nit picky" and in all honesty it appears you did drag the argument out. His initial response, "Yeah she is cute but not as cute as my beagle will be" was completely benign AND he did agree the cat was cute. You immediately attacked denigrating a relationship between a human and his dog. He retaliated. You both cited what you believed were facts, yet they were opposing perspectives. He called you a nasty name, you focused on that, he apologized. I agree, your apology did not seem sincere because in it you further defended your position, renewing the initial argument RE dogs' "affections". At one time you stated if he has evidence contrary to what you perceived as truth, you would be willing to hear it, but previous communications regarding the same topic clearly show otherwise. I would propose that is the reason for the silent treatment, no use talking if no one is listening! If this is the way you two communicate, I believe your relationship is doomed to misery.