Don’t Ask a Narcissist Why They Love You

I regret learning my husband’s answer to that question

I’m not sure who shook their head more. My sister when she asked my husband what made him fall in love with me, or mine when she repeated his answer back to me.

“I thought she was pretty, and she had a lot of friends,” he said.

“Seriously?” I asked. “That’s it? This is what he describes as the reason he chose to spend his life with me?!”

I was consumed with shock. I couldn’t believe that I had been ‘the one’ for him, for the shallowest of reasons. I had committed my heart to a man who, when asked about what he loved about me, gave an answer that made him sound like he was thirteen years old and explaining his first crush. Actually, I’m insulting most teenagers. Even they have more depth.

This was early in my journey of learning about narcissism.

I was already fully aware of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. My husband had been diagnosed with it. But like the rest of my naive, enabling kindred spirits, I believed there was still a chance for salvation for him.

So initially, I digested his answer with the rational perspective the irrational narcissist lacks. In other words, I tried to make sense of it.

Which was the stupidest (insert nicer word — most foolish) thing I could do.

“How is this even possible?” I asked myself.

He didn’t whisk me off to marry him at nineteen. We dated for years and uttered our marriage vows at twenty-four and twenty-six. The initial frat boy-esque attraction had to have evolved into something more meaningful. It had for me.

We weren’t sitting at a college kegger anymore.

Certainly a few niceties of the deeper and less superficial kind must exist. Maybe, I thought, feelings had developed that were actually about me.

Less about him.

I had to be more than a sociable beauty.

Written like this, those words actually sound quite nice. But they’re not. What they say, loudly, is that I was merely an accompaniment to his world. An accoutrement.

A supporting narcissistic cast member.

My sister had, knowingly or unknowingly, stumbled upon a sad narcissistic truth.

A narcissist will often gravitate towards someone they feel has a significant value—an individual who will reinforce their grandiose illusions. And will elevate or increase their inflated self-perception.

My husband wasn’t looking for love.

Not in the heart-warming, butterfly swarming, traditional sense.

He was a narcissist looking to enhance his world and position.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. The narcissist I married thought that I was an attractive girl with a big social circle. He was looking for an asset, not love.

Love is interactive.

Narcissists are not.

There is a striking contradiction to this serious mental health disorder.

There are obviously deep complexities between the narcissistic attractor and those who are attracted to them. There are numerous foundational aspects including the family of origin, co-dependency, or the innocently naive. The empathy lacker is drawn to the deeply empathetic. The controller, to the people pleaser. The insecure to the confident. Too many intricacies to list, even for someone who has spent a decade in counseling and research.

All of this exists.

In unison with the characteristically surface-level qualities of the narcissist.

I thought I met a guy who was in love with me — not someone who simply approved of how I reflected on him.

Had I only known he was looking through me, not at me.

But, as I said: it was early in my narcissistic journey.