You just got out of a relationship with a narcissist and find your new partner also has narcissistic traits. How do you keep ending up with the same manipulative partners who want to control and abuse you? Today, I will discuss some reasons why you might be attracting narcissists into your life.
As I go over some reasons why you might be attracting narcissists as dating partners, or even friends, this isn’t meant to blame you and make it seem as if you are the problem. My goal is to help you look at yourself and what traits you possess that might be leading to you finding yourself in relationships which aren’t healthy. And many of the qualities I will discuss are great qualities to possess when you can apply them to areas of your life that don’t lead to you being taken advantage of by someone else. You want to learn how to recognize your strengths while also protecting yourself from those who will look to take advantage of you.
One trait which might be attractive to a narcissist is you are a people pleaser. You want to ensure people around you are happy, and their needs are being met. You are a giver by nature and will give what you have to others to make them happy. Seeing others happy makes you happy and you thrive off this. However, this becomes a problem when you are always giving to a narcissist. The narcissist will take things from you over and over again with no intention of giving in return. They use your kindness and need to please against you to feel better about themselves. Relationships with narcissists aren’t reciprocal. They will take as long as you continue to give, and they never seem happy enough so you keep giving. This can become exhausting for the people-pleasing partner because they try to make the narcissist happy but it is never enough for the narcissist.
And as a people pleaser you may be an empath. Empaths are compassionate and understanding which allows them to better manage being with a narcissist. While narcissists push most people away and quickly can make enemies in their life, the empath wants to be understanding of the narcissist and accept all their flaws. Empaths are drawn to narcissists because they want to help them be better people.
And as a people pleaser, and empath, a person then acts as a fixer. The empath may see the narcissist who isn’t doing well in their relationships and wants to help them. They want to fix the narcissist and make them a better person because the empath can see how much they struggle. If you are someone who likes to fix others, then you will more often end up in relationships with people who need fixing.
Despite the narcissist thinking they are better than everyone and no one can compare to them, the narcissist still prefers to be with people who are successful and this is for two reasons. The first is, the narcissist wants to be with someone who is successful so it can boost their image. If they are around successful people, then they hope to also be seen as successful. Another reason the narcissist might be with someone who is successful is because their partner can be seen as a challenge for them. The narcissist finds no greater pleasure than putting down someone whom they view as successful and powerful. This helps give their narcissistic ego an extra boost when they can break down someone they look up to.
The last reason I will discuss today as to why you might find yourself in relationships with narcissists so frequently is because you were raised by a narcissist. No matter how dysfunctional someone’s childhood is, people tend to enter relationships which are familiar to them. If you grew up with a narcissist parent, the unpredictability, control, and manipulation are all normal to you and you know how to exist in this chaos. And combine this with you being an empath and fixer, then you want to make changes in your new adult relationships because you didn’t have the ability to have any influence on your parents and how they treated you.
If you notice that you are in mainly abusive, narcissistic relationships, look within yourself on what might be the reason. Until you learn what about you leads to you being with a narcissist, or attracting narcissists over healthy relationships, then this pattern will continue. You deserve better and not everyone can be fixed. Wanting to fix someone is never sufficient enough if they don’t want to be fixed. And, a narcissist doesn’t want to be fixed because they see nothing wrong with how they treat people. Continuing to put time and energy into someone who doesn’t even see how they treat people will just lead to a variety of negative emotional and physical impacts on you.