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First: Why does this matter to you? Are you the spouse or a family member? Are you being inconvenienced by this situation in some way? If not, why do you care? Mind your own business.
Second: f you are not a therapist and if you are not the person’s therapist, you don’t have the standing or credentials to make a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder[1] for that individual. If she has shared with you that she has a diagnosis, then it’s proper to use that term to describe her. Otherwise, you’re just guessing. If you’ve read enough about the disorder, you probably have at least a layperson’s understanding of the diagnosis, but unless you’re a licensed professional who is treating the person, you don’t really have standing to say whether or not she is a narcissist.
Third: in my observation of disordered people, they usually come from disordered and dysfunctional families. In the same way an adult abuser is often a person who was abused as a child, a person displaying narcissistic behavior more than likely comes from a family where one or both parents displayed the same behavior.
This behavior of the parents seeming to over-stay a welcome is probably a pattern engrained from childhood, in which the parents’ dysfunction or narcissism causes the adult child’s behavior to revert to the relationship dynamic they had while she was growing up. Children raised by dysfunctional, abusive, narcissist, borderline, or other Cluster B parents often have a tendency to be codependent. This means that they will have very poor boundaries where their parents are concerned. Additionally, even a person with diagnosed NPD can have comorbidities, or show traits from other personality disorders, such as histrionic or borderline.
And finally, many adult people who are otherwise functional can revert to a child-parent behavior pattern in stressful situations, or when dealing with their parents. Likewise, many parents who know how to behave and relate to other adults in a sane and decent fashion may have difficulties when their children become adults and begin to expect a respectful relationship of equals rather than a parent-child or ‘authoritarian’ style of interaction.
If you are a friend of this family, and if this situation is somehow your business, feel free to speak to the parents or the woman and her husband who are apparently being inconvenienced by these insensitive guests, and see if they can give you some insight into the situation. Otherwise, butt out!
Footnotes
[1]They were monetized but I am giving them away for free here.
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