What is the difference between masculinity and narcissism?

Rabbi Landau explains that there is a fine line between masculinity and narcissism, and most men don't know where it is. Masculinity in the Torah means strength, stability, and leading with love. Narcissism is ego, control, and the need to dominate.

“One serves the family, the other uses it.” The difference shows in the question a man asks. Real presence asks, “What does my wife need from me?” False presence demands, “Why isn't she giving me what I want?”

That is how he reads “v'hu yimshol bach,” and he will rule over you: it is about anchoring, not domination. True masculinity, he says, is not about power. It is about presence.

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that holy strength is not measured by how much power a man has but by presence: the ability to be there completely for the other person. A man's daily work, he writes, is turning from “What do I get?” to “What do I give?”

Also answered in this teaching

What question should a husband ask himself when he comes home?

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau puts it simply: not “What do I deserve tonight?” but “What does she need from me tonight?”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Masculinity in the Torah is strength, stability and leading with love; narcissism is ego, control and the need to dominate.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

When a man's strength becomes a need to control, the family turns into something he uses instead of something he serves.

What may be behind it

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the question “Why isn't she giving me what I want?” comes from the ego, and that strength from that place may look like leadership but is really domination.

Deepest human truth

True masculinity is not about power; it is about presence.