My dad and my abusive ex boyfriend could both be described as fitting those profiles -- I still…

My dad and my abusive ex boyfriend could both be described as fitting those profiles -- I still follow one of the "children of narcissists" subreddits because it does provide me with helpful context and validates some of my experiences of mistreatment. So I do resonate with a lot of the experiences you're describing. It just gives me pause whenever someone brings out narcissism as the explanation for how and why someone is what they are -- to me, the label doesn't add anything to making sense of the abuse, basically. It's our behavior that matters, not our mental illness or how we experience empathy (or don't). But from the sound of what you're saying, we're actually pretty much on the same page, in the sense of not seeing all people with NPD and toxic or anything. I just might be a bit more hard-line on not wanting to use narc as a term to make sense of any of it.