My neighbor stopped by yesterday to get some of my extra gravel for a project. We were chatting and he mentioned that my ex had been kind of weird and not very friendly. I said something along of the lines of, “yeah, he was a pretty disturbed person.” And the neighbor replied with a smile, “Well, you picked him, there must be something about you!”
He wasn’t being mean, and he really is a nice guy. I like him. He said he’d bring me fish from his cabin this summer. He looks out for me. But there it was, the classic response. You picked him.
No. We pick a new mattress because we like how it feels. We pick out our clothes for the day because they fit with the activities we are doing. We pick the prettiest flowers or the ripest tomato. And sometimes we are wrong. The mattress turns out not to be quite right or we realize the tomato is over-ripe. And then, we can honestly say, well, I picked this and I was wrong.
But do we “pick” a narcissistic partner? Do we, really? No freaking way. Rather, we pick the mask. It’s like choosing to paint your walls a soft coral and having them turn bright red after about six months, and someone saying “Geez, why did you pick this color? What were you thinking? What’s wrong with you?” Honestly, we’re just as baffled as they are.
And narcissists, my friends, are typically very, very good at appearing to be the color we want. They almost never show their true selves at the beginning, knowing that if they treat us with disdain, act overly controlling, or pick fights over nothing, we won’t be interested. Who wants that sort of treatment? Rather, they pretend to be all we are looking for, the soul-mate we never thought we’d find. We pick that.
And slowly, the soft coral walls we wanted to live within turn a virulent red that we don’t. But no, we didn’t pick this. No one does.
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This post was previously published on butnowiknowyourname.wordpress.com and is republished on Medium.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
 White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism |
 Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box |
 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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