by Chemuel » Fri Aug 17, 2018 8:36 pm
Obviously Your best bet is to talk things through honestly with said therapist, they will give You some needed answers on what is going on with You and how possible mental problems may show themselves.
I only share from my own experience and what I have learned about myself through consulting with professionals and eating books, but maybe some of that can give You a hint.
I, too, can cry, and I, too, have a strong sense of empathy - narcs are not psychopaths (usually?). Often, narcissism is a protective measure taken by the psyche to prevent someone who is rather sensitive from shutting down completely due to childhood trauma (which can range from abuse and loss to something as innocuous as parents who are unable to express their emotions). Meaning the child is still there, can still feel, and can still pick up on others' feelings. In fact, once discovered, it often turns into a tool for reading people so I have a better handle over them. I tend to experience grief in unexpected situations, when I am rather relaxed and alone. This will be different for everyone, but long story short, empathy is mostly a developed ability. What the narc does with it, is the identifying factor. I show zero empathy with stuff I consider beneath me - someone's cat died? Hand me the bacon, the pig was about as smart as the feline companion. Someone has trouble with their marriage? Well, probably did this and this and this wrong and therefore does not deserve empathy. The ability to feel with someone fails at the wall I put around myself like a filter. If someone suffers from something I consider justified, I can, at times, feel with them.
It's one reason why mental health is such a difficult problem. There are no easy answers or indicators. Someone has to really look at all the information at once, experience Your presence and understand the make-up of Your psyche to diagnose anything. And self-diagnosis almost never works as it warps perception around the actual issues.
Not feeling for Your wife may or may not have other reasons. You say there is a history of substance abuse in Your home and addiction, codependence and narcissism tend to find each other every time. It may be that Your entire situation only developed out of an unhealthy connection between Your narcissism and her dependency issues. It may well be You just shut down because living with an addict is pure psychological terror and You are not afflicted by NPD.
Anyway, if You got to the point where You saw Your life is not what it should be, the one thing You need to do is to keep inertia from that reckoning moment till You are with some kind of assistance. Burn that understanding into Your mind so You can call it back up whenever it seems things are well enough to just let them slide, or when others seem to be exclusively responsible. Even if something is not Your fault, this is Your chance to make it better. I hope You'll find some answers and a good way to move forward, as I am sure You will, as long as You move at all.
If it turns out You are a proper, dysfunctional narcissist, the road ahead is long and not very rewarding at first. I hope You are not. But if so, the condition has been researched in the past decades and there are angles that can help You and help those around You. If not, there still seems to be something wrong and it's a good idea to have someone with the proper skills take a look at it.