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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I grew up with a narcissistic father and a mother who enabled it and also set me up to enable it (she’d explain to me explicitly how we needed to let him win arguments and defer to his moods “for our own benefit” for instance). In some ways I was fortunate because thanks to a traumatic family incident in my teens, I sought therapy during college and became aware of how dysfunctional my family was. I learned to spot narcissism and codependency snd successfully avoided it in my romantic relationships. Wound up with a guy who is very different than my dad and have a healthy relationship that is mutually respectful and not codependent.

BUT despite years of therapy and a lot of work to understand these patterns, I twice wound up in workplace situations where I was working for someone with narcissistic tendencies and slipped into my people pleasing, enabling habits from childhood. The first time I wrote it off as a fluke, a bad work experience. The second time I realized— i seek this dynamic out. Not in my romantic relationships, but at work and sometimes in friendships, I seek out authority figures who have similarities to my dad — demanding, self-absorbed, highly judgmental, and willing to weaponize the appearance of vulnerability to guilt ne into serving their needs. I crave approval from people like this because they are a stand in for my dad, whose approval I never got. And since a narcissist loves to have someone working hard for their approval, these people are also initially drawn to me. In both work situations, I quickly became the narcissists favorite pet/mentee.

And thus happened despite knowing my patterns and being on the lookout for this dynamic. But I didn’t think to check myself at work because it felt normal to have a controlling, disapproving boss at work who I wanted to impress. It took me years to realize what I was doing.

So yes, I do think some people attract narcissists.[/quote]

This is exactly my situation too, and it took me nearly 40 years to recognize what was happening. Luckily, I married someone who was not a narcissist and he showed me what healthy relationships are supposed to look like. Every now and again when I do slip back into the pattern of getting sucked into an unhealthy 
relationship, he points it out and explains exactly what they are doing that is not healthy. I still attract them though. All the time. [/quote]

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