Why might I be attracting a narcissist?

I have had many conversations recently with folks who have asked me, "Is there something wrong with me? Why am I attracting narcissistic partners/friends/colleagues over and over again?"

I decided to share some of my pondering here...

While there is nothing wrong with these folks who are asking me this question, I do believe that there is a unique link between people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and a specific group of people. You might be thinking, "sure, people with lower self-esteem!" That may be true in a lot of cases, but I am thinking something even more specific.

I discuss this a bit in my post from awhile back called "On the Corner of Hypervigilance and People-Pleasing." In certain environments, people are raised to be hypervigilant to other people's needs in order to make sure that their own needs are met. For example, someone might have had a parent struggling with alcoholism and the child needed to be hypervigilant when they came home to know whether or not the parent had been drinking and what was needed of them in order to get through the day without any trouble. There also might have been a person who had to be the "good kid" because their parents were depressed or over-working and could not manage to have a child with emotional needs. Again, as mentioned in the previous post, many of these parent-child interactions do not come with malicious intent, but rather just from parents who are struggling or who do not have the tools, and the result is their children compensating to get their needs met.

My thoughts on how these folks connect back to people with NPD are the following:

1. People who are hypervigilant to other people's needs (let's call them person A) would, in theory, be the perfect partner for someone with NPD (let''s call them person B), because A would start learning very quickly that hyper-focusing on B's needs would align with what B wants and therefore create a harmonious environment.

2. Person B likely struggles with empathy, so they may seek out people who are not specifically pointing out the ways that B has hurt them or might hurt them - and person A might be someone less likely to expect that their partner/friend would/should try to meet their needs.

3. Similar to example #2, with a childhood like A experienced, it is likely that A has gotten to adulthood in a fairly shut down state, which means that they are potentially less likely to make requests for or even to feel their wants and needs on a regular basis. *Person B sees this as easy going, and continues to enjoy their own needs being met.

4. Person B, enamored by Person A in the beginning of the relationship, showers A with attention they likely never received growing up. Once B's infatuation wears off, Person A may believe that they will never find someone who actually cares about them the way that B showed in the beginning, which can lead to A putting up with even more than they may have already been willing to put up with.

This dynamic by no means create one-size-fits-all scenario. This is a typical set of circumstances that have been known replay over and over again. This can lead to maltreatment or resentment, and can ultimately lead to unhappiness. I am more often seeing person A for therapy, as they might feel as though they have done something wrong, or they are noticing a pattern in their relationships. Sometimes a person like person A may feel like they are "attracting" people with NPD or people with narcissistic tendencies. This is not exactly true, but I do think that the combination of someone with that hypervigilance+people-pleasing experienced in some childhoods with [even from *especially* benign intent] emotional neglect and someone with narcissistic tendencies is a particularly convenient matchup. Therefore this may be seen more frequently.

Please feel free to share your thoughts, as I am always interested in learning more.

*Something specific to note about NPD: Usually there is not malicious intent behind the lack of empathy. Oftentimes it is simply that the person with NPD has been wired to not experience the empathy, instead of choosing to not experience it or specifically wanting to hurt someone else. People also tend to overuse the word narcissism in today's society - there are far fewer true narcissists than people label them... there are, of course, many arrogant, self-centered, and condescending people out there (hello patriarchal system of white supremacy), but that does not mean that people with those qualities are all narcissists. I do hope we can pull back from using that term lightly. I plan on writing another post about NPD in more detail later down the line.