Magnet For Narcissistic Men: Sad Life Of Incredible Women

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Why do high-achieving women attract narcissists and emotionally unavailable partners? In this episode, Dr. Sarah uncovers how successful women—driven, disciplined, and emotionally intelligent—often fall into trauma bonds and toxic relationship cycles. She explains how childhood wounds, people-pleasing, anxious attachment, and the need for validation make high performers more vulnerable to narcissistic abuse.

If you’re constantly overgiving, fixing, or attracting emotionally distant men, this episode is for you. Learn why your success doesn't protect you from relationship pain—and how to stop repeating the same patterns.

Dr. Sarah shares 5 essential tips to break free from toxic relationships, rebuild self-worth, and attract emotionally secure, healthy love.

High achievers attract narcissists, trauma bonding, emotionally unavailable men, anxious attachment, people-pleasing, toxic relationships, healing relationship trauma, secure relationships

Transcript

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Welcome to the Relationship Success Lab, the place for relationship empowerment and actionable tools so you can heal from trauma bonding and create secure loving relationships. I'm Dr. Sarah Award-winning expert clinical psychologists and co consultants, helping high achievers to have happy and healthy relationships. If anything that we talk about today does resonate with you, please click the link below and we would be more than happy to help. Now on with your journey to relationship success. Hello my friends, and welcome back to today's episode. I am so excited to have you here because today we are going to be talking about why these incredible successful, intelligent women who have their life put together. End up having a broken love life. And more than that, why is it that they become magnets to narcissists? Because unfortunately, the very traits that make you incredibly successful in your life can also be the same traits that end up making you a magnet for narcissistic partners. This is a really juicy topic, so I'm going to be talking to you about the different traits that you possess that make you a magnet fan narcissist. But I'm also going to be talking to you about five take home tips, things that you can implement right now, so that you can start your journey on ending toxic relationships and negative cycles. So let's begin. Why are you a magnet? Why are you a magnet 10 narcissists? This is such a big thing, and here it is, the fact that you've worked incredibly hard, the fact that you've achieved so much, the fact that you've succeeded so much. Actually becomes an indicator for certain wounds that you would've had. More often than not, I see these incredibly intelligent women who are so successful. They've started their own business, they've gotten promotions. They're really high up in their career. They are incredibly intelligent. They have built their own wealth, their own assets. They've got their own home, their own car. A stable set of friends, and they're looking after their body and doing all the right things, but somehow something breaks down. I mentioned that level of success, the fact that they've worked so hard in all domains in life. More often than not actually signify certain wounds in childhood, and it's actually those wounds that we end up carrying throughout adulthood, these wounds that we never resolve and they exist in adulthood. Those are the wounds that end up attracting the narcissistic partner. When we enter a relationship, we never enter a relationship because we are attracted to their. Funny qualities to the fact that they might be generous or that they're tall or they're good looking, I mean, sure, those things help, but actually the reason why we get attracted to partners, the reason why we choose our partner is because they evoke a deep seated wound inside of us, and we hope that we can resolve that wound in that relationship and so they would have to be able to evoke it for us to be able to resolve it with them, right? And the very traits that make you successful are also representative of those wounds that Nuss are attracted to. So what are these traits? Well, first off, it is around the wound of not being enough, which mirrors the wound of seeking validation. Now, more often than not when I come across these very intelligent, very successful women when they talk about their childhood care, love, affection, attention, understanding, all of these things that they would've needed on a basic level, were given under particular conditions. for example, they had to work really hard in school, and if they did well. Then they got attention. But if they didn't do so well, their parents would be incredibly disappointed in them, and the same might be applied in other areas in their life. For example, if they looked a particular way, then they would get approval. If they looked a different way, they'd be rejected, humiliated, judged negatively. It could be about the friends that they have. If they had a particular set of friends, they would get approval if they had another set of friends. They would be disappointed and judged if they did particular extracurricular activities outside of school. depending on what they were, they would either be accepted or rejected and judged. growing up, if you are constantly battling between this, you start to believe that you are not enough, just the way you are. You are not free to just explore, to test out things, to see how things play out for you. Whether you like something or you don't like something, you don't have that freedom. You might try it, but you get stung really early on. And the people who sting you are the people you would've expected to love you the most. They are the people you would've hoped to have had the most amount of affection from. And they're also the people who would've expected to be able to trust the most because they, your parents or caregivers, they're the big people who raised you. As an innocent young child, you just look at the big people to know the answers. You believe that they have the answers. And so if they're teaching you something just through their actions, what you start learning is that. Well, I'm not good enough just the way that I am, and I have to work incredibly hard to be validated, to get approval, to get affection, to get love. I have to work for it, and people have to see me in a particular light in order to get those things. And if I am not the way that they want me to be, then they will be disappointed in me. And by the way, whilst I'm talking about this, if you are in a relationship with an narcissist. I hope some of this stuff resonates with you because this is exactly the same pattern that plays out in your adult relationship. You are in a space where you've been so used to working hard to succeed, to be a particular person to better yourself. you are bettering yourself through objective metrics, but you are constantly striving To get validation. When you meet somebody with autistic tendencies, they are the very individuals who are very quick to criticize. They're the individuals who will either validate you or very explicitly dismiss reject you, and judge you, and criticize you and put you down, and that evokes the same wound of not feeling like you're enough. So in that moment, you naturally magnetize them. I'm not even going to blame narcissists here. I'm not victim blaming at all, but. if you are this individual, you're going to have to take responsibility we cannot control what other people do or don't do. We cannot control if other people criticize you judge you or care for you intermittently. The only thing you can control is yourself. So you need to take ownership you need to become more aware of these patterns that these childhood wounds are playing out in your adulthood. And it's only when you become aware of it, then you can make a choice do I want to continue down this path where I'm constantly trying to get validation and I feel like I'm never enough? Or do I want to start fulfilling my own needs around validation, that I'm not constantly trying to get it, or I get it in Breadcrumb. It's really about healing your own wound. So this is the first trait. It's about the sense of not enoughness. The second one is more around people pleasing, when you have succeeded so well in life, you would have had to kiss ass a lot. You would have had to please other people so that you can climb up the ladder. You would've had to please other people so that you can get into certain circles. And to get into certain situations, to get into social events, whatever it might be. But you would have had to please other people. You would've had to prioritize them. And again, this would've stemmed from childhood wounds. if you had this fear of other people. Rejecting you because you weren't doing enough for them, and the only way that you ever got affection and attention was when you were doing a lot of caregiving and perhaps you had to become a pseudo parent in your childhood. If that was the case, then guess what? You are going to be naturally geared to prioritizing other people and who loves to be prioritized. the narcissist because for them it fulfills their need to feel important, to feel admiration from other people, to feel like they're being validated and that they are the center of the universe. It maintains their need. for that dominant position, it maintains their sense of grandiosity. And so naturally, you as a people pleaser would be a magnet for somebody who needs to be pleased all the time. And unfortunately, it's the same trait that has created your success that ends up making you a magnet for individuals with narcissism. And finally the third trait is that you might have a tendency to normalize poor treatment when you have worked relentlessly hard to succeed, to improve yourself, whatever domain that might be. I'm generally talking about objective metrics. for example, your career, your finances. But if you've worked incredibly hard, you would've also had to put up. With a lot of crap from other people. You would've had to put up with a lot of mistreatment of people criticizing you, of people judging you, but you still had to put on a happy face and just continue. You would've been back stabbed along the way because the industries that you entered have been ruthless. There would've been a lot of competition. a lot of people trying to get one up from you it just gets ugly. But You would've still sat through it all just so that you can get to the next step. And so your tolerance to be treated poorly and Apache being quite high because it's not the first time you've been treated poorly. It's the hundredth 200th, the five, the fifth hundredth thousand times that that's happened. And so you become so acclimatized to it. It's not nice. It's not okay, but it's become normalized from so much exposure. And who treats you so poorly? it would be the individual with narcissistic traits. It would be the person who gaslights you. It would be the person who makes you question your reality. Who nitpicks, who makes sly comments and these comments or these judgements, they, they just increase over time. They become more and more severe, but your tolerance ends up being quite high you notice it, but you don't necessarily respond. Because you are trying to get to the next stage where it might be better. You are hoping that it'll be better because you've witnessed it somewhere and that's the thing that you are banking on. So it's those three TE traits. First is seeking validation. Second is people pleasing, and the third is your tolerance for poor treatment. Now, I've got five main tips that I really want you to follow through, and the first one is really about boundaries, because boundaries are symbolic of how much you respect yourself. I know the term boundaries get battered about a lot on social media in particular, but boundaries aren't just about saying no. It's about ring fencing yourself and having a gate. And if you imagine that you've got this gate and you've got a door on it, you can permit anything that serves you inside. But anything that does not serve you, you can show that thing, that person, that quality, that trait. You can show them the door so that they can leave, but you have a gate, you have a door, and you are a guardian of that door. You can let people in and show them the exit when it's time for them to go. And we need to be able to do this without guilt. Because more often than not, people who are people pleasers or who constantly work hard to get validation or who have a high tolerance for, poor treatment, those are the very people that end up feeling guilty when they've done nothing wrong. Objectively, they've done nothing wrong, They've just not continuously pleased the other person. They've not always said yes, and by the fact that they've not always said yes, they somehow interpret that as doing bad. saying no does not make you a bad person. It might feel like that, and that does require a lot of programming and healing of the nervous system. if this resonates with you, click on the link. let's have a conversation because I'm on a mission to help as many people as possible start healing from this. if you are in this space and feeling guilty for nothing, then we've got a lot of work to do. The second is that you can give, but never to the point where you risk sacrificing yourself in the process. Never to the point where you end up self abandoning because you've done that. You've been there and it's not worked. So please don't do it again. Third tip, you are going to need to go through a detox. You are going to have to clear out every single thing that no longer serves you. people often go on these physical health detoxes, Where they clear out the sugar, fat, salt, whatever it might be, and they're trying to do that so that they can get their body physically fit and healthy. They go for runs more, they do more Pilates, they're exercising, they're getting more fresh air in the sun, and we need to apply the same principles to your wellbeing, to your mental health. Because actually I guarantee that there will be certain people in your life that will have to go, and it doesn't have to be dramatic. But you can start weeding out some people, people who no longer serve you. You can even start weeding out other things that are detrimental to your mental health, like social media, certain people that you end up following. It could even be TV shows that you are watching, books that you are reading So we need to do a massive clearing of the things that no longer serve you, and we're having to invite in things that would serve you. Because ultimately you cannot do something new that is helpful for you and hold on to the things that are negative and harmful for you. And we're really needing to do this detox and particularly referring to social circles and friends Friendship breakups are a real thing. We don't talk about'em, but they are a real thing and they probably should happen more often than what they do, It's crucial that we go through this process because those friendships need to reflect who we want to be, who we want to become, and if we're holding onto people in our life that are suppressing us, or people who are not waving our flag, people who do not have our back, Supporting us in the times that we need support, but then they're also calling us up on things that we actually need to change and amend so that we can better ourselves. If we don't have those people in our life, we need to get them. That is absolutely crucial because the better your friendship qualities are, I guarantee the better your relationship also then becomes. point number four. And this one's a hard one actually, but it's really about discerning anything to do with your self-worth versus anything that is to do with your achievements. more often than not, people end up equating their achievements to how worthy they are. So if I achieve this, then I'm really good. If I achieve that, then I am more than enough. If I get a bigger house, then I'm more important. If I get a better car, then people will love me more. If I get a promotion, then people will admire me. what they actually do in that process is associate all of these Things, these metrics to how good enough they are. But actually they're not the same thing. you can own the entire world and your self-worth is something that is totally separate and you can own absolutely nothing and your self-worth is separate. They are not the same thing. Your self-worth is. Infinite, your self-worth is out there in the universe. It's not here. It is not sitting in your car, Your self-worth is completely separate and you need to get better at distinguishing the two. And finally, if you are wanting to attract an emotionally available partner, you are going to have to become that to start off with. You must be the thing that you want to attract. Otherwise, it's never going to come in because it would be an energetic mismatch. that means you are going to have to do the deep healing work. If you are coming from a wounded place and yet you are still claiming, well, I am emotionally available, it's just these are the people that are emotionally unavailable and somehow I keep attracting them. Well, guess what? The wound will bleed out. The wound will play a part in terms of how emotionally available you are, and you might either end up being dysregulated and you are really anxious and you're looking for reassurance and you are just not sure where you stand. Maybe you have an anxious attachment type. Or you withdraw, you hold back and your avoidance, your nervous as to what's going to happen. And so you decide to keep a distance and keep them at arms length and play it cool. But either way, your wound will play out in the relationship. every single person that you end up attracting, you are attracting them, not because they're funny. Not because you are funny, not because you're both good looking, the reason why you end up being attracted to one another is simply because you are evoking the wounds inside of each other and it just appears to be a perfect match, but it's a match from a wounded place. if you are going to want to attract somebody who is not wounded, you are going to have to do the work yourself. Because only from a clear place, you can start attracting someone who is also operating from a clear place. if you are wanting to have a conversation about this and see how we can help you succeed so that you can have a happy and fulfilling relationship and heal those wounds, please click the link and let's start a conversation. I'm genuinely on a mission to help as many people as possible. if you've liked this episode, please share it with a friend if you found it helpful, I bet they will too. Until next time, take care and I'll see you on the other side. I am on a mission to reach as many people as possible, and you would be helping me out more than you know by subscribing to this podcast, rating it and sharing it with a friend. And if any of this resonates with you, please click the link to see how we can help you gain relationship, fitness and move towards relationship success.