Lisa Q writes…

Recently, one of my best friends ended her relationship with a classic EUM (Mr Unavailable). In the time that’s passed since then, she has started to make some connections about the kind of men she has attracted in the past and found that common EUM thread. She also believes them all to be narcissists.

Whether they truly were or not I’m not sure, but at the least, they all shared narcissistic tendencies. Thus, she has begun to examine what it is about her own beliefs about herself that has caused her to attract these men. And that’s all well and good, but when do you get to the point where you are overanalyzing and overthinking it?

As she begins to date and meet men, she has begun to look for those tendencies which were so prominent in her past relationships. Again, all well and good. Except that now, she almost believes every man she meets is narcissistic.

Recently, she met a guy at a club. A few weeks later, we went to eat at the restaurant where he works as a bartender. At that point, she got his number. Shortly after, she called him. After that initial phone call, she told me that it was a nice conversation. She said that she knew men loved to talk about themselves so she steered the conversation in that direction and away from talking about herself. Warning bells went off in my head, but whatever.

A few weeks later we saw him at the club again and afterwards, they had a long phone conversation. She seemed to like him. 
Right up until a few days later when she decided he was a narcissist. This she determined because during conversations all he wanted to talk about was himself. Never mind that she had instigated this kind of conversation!

In the weeks that followed, he began to talk about all the girls wanting to go out with him and some drama involving a friend of his in which he came out looking like the hero. Is he a narcissist? I couldn’t tell you. Maybe he is and maybe he’s not, but she has decided he is and wants nothing more to do with him.

The point is, though we know our patterns and we become aware of having attracting one kind of man, we have to be careful not to project that onto every man we meet.

Is every man we meet a narcissist because he talks about himself? No. Especially not if we have initiated that kind of conversation.

Yes, we need to be watchful and aware and not let ourselves be taken in by assclowns and douchebags, but we also need to be careful not to overthink and categorize every man by those standards. That is not only unfair to them, but it may very well lead us to dismissing a man who could be anything other than what we think he is at first blush.

LisaQ is the lady behind the fab blog 40s Singleness, sharing her dating experiences and her emotional journey as she embraces herself and what lies ahead.

FavoriteLoadingAdd to favorites