The traits narcissists look for in their romantic partners
Are you falling in love with a narcissist? These are the traits they may be looking for in you.
by: E.B. Johnson
When it comes to choosing romantic partners, narcissists act carefully and consistently in order to select the right mate. Unlike those with a healthy sense of self and compassion, the narcissist has a different view of love or connection. Rather than seeing it as a chance to experience an enhanced version of life, they see relationships as an opportunity to validate themselves, their egos, and their grandiose needs. In order to avoid the narcissist’s trap, we have to rebuild our sense of self and create boundaries we can stand beside.
The traits narcissists look for in their partners.
Narcissists don’t settle down with just anyone. Like any other action in their life, building relationships is all about self-gratification to the narcissist. They’re not looking for healthy partners. They’re looking for people with a high level of empathy and a low level of self-assertiveness. It all plays in to their desire to manipulate and control the people around them. If you’re not willing to play by the rules of the narcissist’s games, then you serve no purpose to them.
Super-powered empathy
Are you someone with a high level of empathy for those around you? While this is a superpower that enables you to build loving and supportive relationships with others, it’s also a tempting entry point for the narcissist. Narcissists (of every sort) see extreme empathy as a usuable tool that allows them to manipulate you. Covert narcissists are especially good at making you feel bad for them so they can weaponize your empathy against you.
Tricky self-esteem
Establishing a healthy level of self-esteem can be a tricky thing to do. Even if we feel confident in ourselves in one instance, this confidence can fade when we don’t also remove insecurities on a core level. Self-esteem can be unstable, and narcissists are excellent at spotting these wobbles and exploiting them. When we aren’t completely confident in ourselves, the narcissists around us can take advantage of that. Making us feel bad about ourselves, they take control of the relationships we share with them.
Personal accountability
Taking responsibility for our actions is important. But many of us were raised in environments in which we learned to shoulder not only our own blame, but the blame of those around us too. Are you someone who takes accountability not only for your actions, but the actions of everyone else too? Do you personalize things and take responsibility for others in a way that can be borderline unhealthy? Narcissists love to blame shift, and they will happily use you as a scapegoat in all their relationship ills.
Knack for guilt
Narcissists don’t only seek partners with blame game issues and major empathy. They also love a partner who has a knack for absorbing guilt readily. Are you someone who feels shame a lot? Does this feeling of guilt or feeling of shame lead you to change your behavior or curb who you are? This is a narcissist’s dream. When you absorb guilt easily and internalize it in a way that affects your self-image, decision making, and behavior — you become an easy target for the narcissist; who can twist you any way they want?
Sacrificing needs
While it might seem to noble to sacrifice your needs for someone that you love, this sets you up for toxic and dangerous patterns. If you are someone who regularly puts their happiness or desires to the side for other people, then you become an easy target for narcissistic partners. There’s no need for you to sacrifice your emotional needs for the comfort of others. In a healthy relationship, all partners are free to make their needs open and known.
Bolstering the illusion
Above all else, the narcissist hides behind a thin illusion of self which involves complicated feelings of inferiority and superiority. They are truly insecure about themselves and their abilities, but they mask that by pretending to be more in control than they are. If you’re willing to prop up their grandiosity, the narcissist will find room for you in their lives. You may also add to their self-image or provide them with social credit (or benefits) that make your partnership a valuable asset.
How you can avoid getting caught in the trap.
Want to avoid getting stuck in the trap of the narcissistic partner? These are some steps you can take right now to protect yourself from narcissistic relationships.
1. Be clear about what you want
Perhaps the best thing we can do to avoid a narcissists relationship trap is to be clear about what we want from our partners. Going into any new connection with a clear picture of what you want allows you to communicate your needs and expectations more easily. It also empowers you to spot the red flags earlier, so you can take action to safeguard you intimate happiness. Want to avoid letting the narcissists in early on? Be clear about what you want and refuse to compromise on your core needs.
You need to be clear about what you want, and refuse to settle for anything less than a partner who loves, celebrates, and values you. Doing that isn’t a magical overnight process, though. It takes digging around right in the heart of who you are and prioritizing the needs that you find.
Sit down with a pen and some paper and spend some time journaling about the type of relationships and partners that you want. Be as specific as possible and record as much detail as you can. What do you want to feel like? What is an absolute must when it comes to your partner’s behaviors and outlook on life? Think way in to the future and then backtrack. How do you want to end up in life? Is a relationship a part of that final future? And if so, what does it provide you each and every day?
2. Increase your sense of self
Once we’re clear about what we want from our romantic relationships, we have to increase our self-esteem in order to defend it against outside attacks. Self-esteem is the backbone of every good thing that happens in our lives. Only when we value ourselves and celebrate our beauty (inside and out) can be take the initiative to protect ourselves from toxic people — especially the narcissists that lurk on the edges of our relationships.
Increase your self-esteem, and focus on bringing more self-confidence and authenticity into your life. Think of your self-esteem like the fuel that gives you the energy you need to protect yourself. It’s the battery for your self-security system.
Give your battery the charge it needs. Build yourself up. Lean into things that help you to increase your self-esteem or your ability to safeguard your happiness and wellbeing. The more fully you become yourself, the more confident you will find yourself to be in turn. This gives you the ability to identify the narcissists in your life honestly, and deal with them before they have a chance to destroy us (and the futures we’re building for ourselves).
3. Elevate your social standards
Our social standards are everything when it comes to finding a partner. Many of the intimate connections we make are made through mutual friends, or even through work settings. In either circumstance, we can help ourselves attract higher caliber partners when we insist on surrounding ourselves with higher caliber social groups. This is not to say you need to make friends with a boardroom. It simply means you seek social fulfillment in people who have the right intentions.
Elevate your social standards across the board, so that you can insist on bringing a higher caliber of partner and friend into your life. Doing this elevates the pool of partners you will select from and helps you to see that you are worth being respected and valued by high-quality people.
The fact of the matter is that most of our partners come from a shared environment. We meet them through mutual friends, or meet them as co-workers in a shared space. Magical meet-cutes are a Hollywood myth. If you want to find better people to spend your life with, you have to insist in filling the real estate in your life only with those who show a genuine interest in seeing you thrive on a very visceral and personal level.
4. Teach the world how to treat you
We don’t like to hear it, but the truth is that we teach the world how to treat us. It all circles back to our self-esteem and how we treat ourselves. When the world sees us moving out of alignment with our truth, it sends more turmoil to derail us. As we accept subpar partners, and rip our happiness to shreds, we send out signals to potential partners and potential friends. “I don’t respect me,” our signal says. “And neither should you.”
Get real about teaching the world a better way to treat you. This must include your partners. First, stop settling for people who give you bad vibes or red flags from the start. Then communicate your needs and what you expect to receive from your relationship to any potential partners. Next, you can shift into action mode and display the behaviors you expect in those around you.
Be serious about getting what you need and be committed to removing those who can’t treat you the way you need to be treated. Self-respect is displayed to others. Check your behavior. Are you showing potential partners that you’re a force to be reckoned with? Do your behaviors — the friends you choose, the careers you pursue — align with the person you see yourself to be? What relationships are you investing in? Do they reflect someone who values themselves?
5. Protect your empathy
Stop allowing the narcissists in your life to use your empathy and your compassion against you. Being a compassionate person is beautiful and challenging. Narcissists use this skill to gain control of us through our emotions. Have enough self-respect to notice when your empathy is being used against you — and use this as the red flag that you need to remove yourself from the situation once and for all.
Protect your empathy at all costs. Don’t let the narcissists steal this superpower from you. Have enough common sense to notice when your compassion for others is being used against you as a weapon to manipulate and demean. Instead of allowing it to derail, pull back and take action.
Empathetic or altruistic behavior is the ultimate act of higher human kindness. Someone who will take advantage of that is someone in deep pain, who cannot be trusted with our emotional wellbeing when push comes to shove. Build barriers between yourself and those toxic individuals who run you down. Remove them from your life when they cause you more pain than happiness. Whatever you do, hold tight to that desire to help others.
Putting it all together…
Have you fallen for a narcissist in disguise? We don’t always choose our love interests wisely, and that’s especially true when we fall for someone who is a narcissist. These are individuals who look for very specific traits in their partners, and when they find them — it can create a toxic relationship that destroys our sense of self. In order to avoid the romantic traps of narcissists, we have to inspect our personalities and stand strong in our needs and our values.
Be clear about what you want from your life and your relationships. This clarity is not only for yourself, but for any potential partners too. Communicate your needs often and early. Increase your sense of self. Live in alignment with your authenticity and you will be better able to select partners who love, value, and respect you. Elevate your social standards. Surround yourself with friends (and potential partners) that seek to build you up, rather than tear you down. You can rely on these people whenever you’re struggling with relationship issues. Teach the world how to treat you by setting boundaries and insisting everyone (including romantic partners) respect those boundaries. Stand up for yourself and remove anyone who doesn’t honor you. Ensure you stand up for your empathy too. Don’t let the narcissists in your life — or your bedroom — use your kindness to wound you. You deserve to be happy, and you will be.
- Keller, P., Blincoe, S., Gilbert, L., Dewall, C., Haak, E., & Widiger, T. (2014). Narcissism in Romantic Relationships: A Dyadic Perspective. Journal Of Social And Clinical Psychology, 33(1), 25–50. doi: 10.1521/jscp.2014.33.1.25
