Will a narcissistic father make it hard for me to judge potential mates properly?

If you are a female raised by a narcissist father, there is a strong risk of your dating and marrying another narcissistic man. I fell into this trap and it cost me a lot of years of happiness, so I want to try to help other girls and women like myself to avoid doing what I did.

Young girls naturally learn a great deal about the nature of males by watching their fathers. They also learn how husbands treat their wives by watching how their dads treat their moms. Narc fathers demand that their wives and children cater to them. They don't show empathy. They are always right and no one is allowed to refute or disobey them. The mother of the family typically cowtows to the N-dad because he has successfully crushed her will, so she usually encourages the children to do as she does, even if on some level she resents her husband. Thus, both by mimicking the mom and according to her instruction, a daughter follows in her footsteps and fears and obeys Dad.

Knowing nothing different, a little girl will assume her narcissist father is simply a normal adult male. She may even feel uncomfortable around "nice" adult men, not understanding their behavior. And certainly when it comes to attraction, she will be drawn to males who are like what she knows: demanding, self-absorbed types.

There is another key factor at play which makes matters even worse. Undoubtedly the daughter of a narc father has been taught to please the man at all costs, and probably made to feel she will never quite succeed in pleasing Dad. This is especially bad in a situation where there is a "Golden Child" in the family, and the father uses triangulation... treating the Golden Child like she is perfect, while constantly putting down the Victim Child for not measuring up to the sibling. As this daughter grows up, she will be desperate to prove herself by being desirable to and loved by another difficult male figure.

Along comes another narc guy, seeking a female victim, especially one that will be driven above all to please him. He can show this young woman the slightest potential for love and admiration, and she will be eating out of his hand. Before long he can lapse into the same abusive behaviors as her father, and since she only expects that kind of treatment, she won't even dream of leaving him.

Next thing you know, the narcissist/victim relationship repeats itself.

How can you, as a narc's victim, break out of this pattern? Can you ever trust yourself to fall for a decent guy?

Well, of course you can. The first step has already been taken: you recognize that your father is a narcissist. If you break down his behaviors and understand how he was manipulating you, you can easily learn to recognize how these sorts of men operate. You may still find yourself attracted to narcissistic men--guys that are showy, self-confident, haughty, and controlling--but you know now that they absolutely can't give you what you are really looking for. All they offer you is more pain.

You may find yourself feeling a bit like the nice guys are "too easy to please," and therefore their affection doesn't have value. But this is just your training talking, telling you that the thing you most desire is to appeal to the man who is tyrannical and has impossible expectations, and ultimately meet those expectations and prove yourself. You can escape that training, and see this as the Impossible Dream it always was. You can substitute for that Impossible Dream the hope of receiving real love from a kind, empathetic man who wants to care for you and make you happy.

You may also have been made by your narc father to feel like you are undesirable, you don't deserve to be loved. You may feel hopeless or desperate or unwilling to open yourself up to other men. Again, this is all your training talking--it isn't real. The more you recognize and understand what has been done to you, the more you will see reality. That includes recognizing you are a good person, someone desirable, someone who deserves to be loved. Don't listen to the voice of the narc in your head. Find your own voice, the voice of truth, and give yourself time to get in sync with reality.

The fact that you have survived a narcissistic relationship actually makes you better equipped to choose a good mate. You have an intimate knowledge of a whole array of bad relationship techniques and experiences, so that when you encounter them again, alarms will go off at once. It will not be your first rodeo, and you can apply what you know from experience to help you act wisely.

And remember that narcissists are an aberration in human society, and there really are plenty of good men in the world. You truly will recognize them when you get to know them...I did, and I was only a couple months out of a 15 year marriage to a narc. The utterly refreshing character of my new guy was easy to spot: his honestly, guilelessness, and genuine desire to love someone were crystal clear to me, and I married him two years later. We've been together now for 22 years and counting.

Getting over a childhood of narcissistic abuse is not easy, but it most certainly can be done--you can do it. Take the time to recover, and you will learn to make fine choices, regain your confidence, and recognize people you can trust...even someone you can trust to love you for many years to come.