Why do Narcissists and Codependents Attract?
Narcissists and codependent people have a twisted love attraction. The narcissist needs someone badly, and the codependent needs someone deeply.
If these two types meet, it’s FIREWORKS. Someone to be with! The narcissist has someone to worship them and support them without question. The codependent has someone to follow, to be with, to look up to, and to ultimately soothe their deep feelings of neglect or abandonment. It just works. The theme of this relationship for a narcissist is: you stay loyal to me under any circumstances, and I’ll be there for you. It’s a deranged loyalty program.
If you are the child of a narcissist, you are probably familiar with this archetype of partnership. Maybe you didn’t have the language to identify that “OH! One is the narcissist and the other is codependent!” But you could clearly see that one parent was the boss or the authoritarian of the household, and the other was the enabler or loyal assistant/servant. Or you could feel before you could see that both parents were disorganized. No one was completely safe. If this sounds familiar, you probably have experienced narcissism in your family dynamic.
What is a Narcissist and Codependent Relationship?
This type of relationship is a severely dysfunctional dynamic. It’s very toxic for the two involved; keep in mind more toxic when experienced in family dynamics. Children who become involved in the emotional abuse of narcissism grow up with severe self-image and attachment issues. Children can assess by their felt sense that one parent is the narcissist because they act with extreme self-centeredness, often neglecting the child’s needs. The narcissist exploits the other parent, the codependent, who focuses solely on the needs of the narcissist. When a couple like this is alone, they generally implode. However, in family dynamics, the codependent will go so far in tending to the needs of the narcissist that they sacrifice their own needs and well-being, and the needs of others, like their children. Therefore, the child is getting their needs neglected by both parents. This couple dynamic is detrimental but even more so when there are children involved.
Narcissistic Parent
Looks Like:
Authoritarian parenting style, controlled by manipulation, fear, and humiliation.
Control and power are everything, and to maintain it narcissistic parents will criticize, shame, withhold love, and gaslight their children and spouse.
Self-absorbed as if their opinions and final word mean everything, regardless of physical presence in the house.
This comes from a narcissist’s inflated sense of self-importance, lack of empathy, and expectations of total compliance within the family system.
Demanding constant validation from partner, children, friends, organizations, etc.
This can create a culture of role reversal in families where children are burdened with the responsibility of making the narcissistic parent feel good about themselves.
Viewing relationships as extensions of themselves instead of independent individuals. Appearances are everything.
Optics over love and connection. It doesn’t matter how things feel, it’s about how they look.
Codependent Parent
Looks Like:
Acting passively, sacrificing their own identity and boundaries to please the narcissist and keep the peace.
Ironically, in the quest to “keep the peace”, it actually creates deep harm and distress in the family that causes lifelong trauma.
Constantly sacrificing their own well-being and allowing the narcissist to dominate, even at the expense of children.
If the codependent can’t stick up to the narcissist or take care of themselves, how can they possibly do that for their children?
Enabling narcissist’s abuse and failing to protect the children from being emotionally or physically harmed.
This is allowing abusive and manipulative dynamics to continue to go unchecked. Thus creating an emotionally and sometimes physically unsafe environment for children.
Loyalty to the narcissist is driven by avoidance of conflict and feelings of abandonment, guilt, or shame.
Enmeshment occurs due to the codependent’s deep fear of abandonment or neglect.
Impacts on Children
In an environment where children feel responsible for their parents’ emotions, they rarely form a healthy sense of self. They learn that their emotions are overshadowed by the narcissist or invalidated by the codependent. Children raised in this dynamic are subject to sudden, unexpected mood swings with extreme highs to extreme lows. The child’s nervous system is hijacked and unable to regulate due to the contamination of the toxic roller coaster the narcissist puts the entire family through. This causes:
Loss of personhood, a sense of self, and a positive self-image.
Children learn that their feelings and needs do not matter. They derive value only from what they do to please their parents, rather than from who they are as individuals. To a narcissist, their children aren’t autonomous beings with feelings, hopes, or dreams. Rather, they’re extensions of the narcissist.
Difficulty understanding and setting boundaries, and chronic people-pleasing.
Autonomy doesn’t exist in these family dynamics; thus, children never learn how to protect it for themselves. Children learn that saying no can be dangerous, and that lesson carries over in adulthood. People who survive these dynamics sometimes don’t know how to establish healthy limits, and people-please out of fear.
Perfectionism and placing high pressure on oneself.
Because children had to survive under the unpredictable mood swings and reactions of the narcissist, they become hypervigilant and hypersensitive. They learn to adapt to others and ignore their own well-being. This is because the narcissistic parent demands perfection, and this creates an intense sense of pressure to please and succeed to gain love.
What can I do to heal?
It’s important to understand that healing from this type of upbringing is traumatic and usually causes complex PTSD or somatic symptoms. Healing can be a long-term process. A good place to start is addressing the trauma you experienced. That can be a difficult first step for some, because a narcissistic abuser will convince you that what you experienced wasn’t actually that bad. Being able to acknowledge the reality that you experienced is the first step to healing. Narcissists will minimize the abuse as it’s happening, but you don’t have to carry the water for them into adulthood. When you’re able to acknowledge your own pain, then you can begin to radically accept that your parents will likely not change. But the good news is that YOU can! You don’t have to carry the burden and the trauma forever.
Here are more helpful healing strategies:
Establishing rigid boundaries. This means defining and communicating your limits. What behavior will you not tolerate, and how much contact will you have?
Practice the gray rocking method. This means if you are in contact with the narcissist, you respond in a neutral and unreactive way. Narcissists feed off your emotional reactions because they use it to manipulate you later, so giving them nothing is the safest bet. This can look like short responses, using a flat/ emotionless tone, and withholding eye contact. Gray rocking is meant to reduce the narcissist’s control and protect you emotionally.
Focusing on rebuilding your self-identity and self-love. A narcissist can rob you of your autonomy and worth. Leaving you feeling like you’re never good enough. These thoughts can haunt you in adulthood. Separating your identity, emotions, and self-worth from your parents’ approval and criticism can help you grow into the person your childhood self always wanted to be.
Deprogramming from the gaslighting. This means taking all the harmful messages you were told and unlearning them. Making room to learn how to trust your own perceptions, reality, intuition, and heart again. Gaining back your emotional autonomy and validating your emotions.
Reparenting and building a chosen family. It’s extremely disappointing to realize that your parents failed you. But learning to provide yourself with love, validation, and care can heal your inner child. This means learning how to replace the abusive inner voice with a nurturing and compassionate one. But it also means surrounding yourself with supportive, safe people who offer you the love you wished for as a child.
Healing is not a linear process. Deprogramming is hard. But living with the trauma is harder. You deserve help, and you deserve care. You are not weak for needing care. These experiences are painful to live through and even harder to live with, and you don’t have to do it alone.
I chose Marge and Homer Simpson for the cover photo of this blog post because I think they are a perfect example of this dynamic. Marge has a tendency to keep the family and her relationship with Homer together at any cost (even to herself). She has a deep-seated need to fix and mother Homer. She is the codependent. Homer, on the other hand, displays entitled and self-absorbed behaviors, and the entire house revolves around his moods and antics. He is the narcissist.
If any of this resonates, please consider reaching out. Thank you for reading.