My mother and I are an NPD/BPD (respectively) family combo.

My personal perception is that there is no such thing as a malignant narcissist. I think there are sociopaths, who are malignant, and narcissists, who are severely delusional and lacking self-awareness and thus hurt others in the process of their daily life, but not in some willful, sadistic way.

I think this is because my mother is extremely narcissistic, but she also sees herself as a saint, and only ever goes into a narcissistic rage when her moral perfection is called into question. She also lies so often that she gives herself away to multiple people on the regular, and sometimes she just seems flat out crazy with the way she completely revises history to make herself look like an angelic savior. Most of the time my brother and I are just like about the whole thing. When I'm not in the middle of a righteous fury BPD rage, I just see my mother as tragically deluded.

All that said, my experience with my mother is that she can't handle being vulnerable when it comes to her perception of herself as morally perfect. So she never admits to wrong-doings or expresses the emotion of remorse. However, there have been numerous times when she has taken action to try to make things up to me after one of her ridiculous ****-ups, even when I had nothing to offer her, not even "supply" because in some cases I was thousands of miles away and not communicating very much. In such cases when it has been in person, my mother's anxiety is also pretty easy to read, and I pick up on her anxiety when she thinks I'm ticked off at her, combined with efforts to smooth things over, usually with gestures or gifts or whatever she thinks will work.

Maybe it's because I have a PD of my own, but over the years I've just learned to interpret my mother's 'form' of remorse. in much the same way she has learned to interpret my rages and crises as a need for help that I'm too proud and terrified to actually express, just like she can't handle expressing remorse.

Doesn't mean either of us aren't immature, insane brats sometimes, but our ridiculous, dysfunctional love is still a love none the less.