A frog goes to a fortune teller to find out if he will ever be lucky in love. The fortune teller reads his palm and says, “I have good news and I have bad news. Which would you like to hear first?” The frog asks for the good news.
The fortune teller says, “You are going to meet the most beautiful girl, who is going to be very interested in you and will want to know all about you. She will want you to open up for her and you will give her your heart.”
“That’s great!” says the frog. “But what’s the bad news?”
“Well, you’re going to meet her in Biology class.”
A classic narcissist strategy is to be intensely interested in you in the beginning. This can feel like the sort of attention you’ve wanted your whole life, but all too often the attention we receive, well, it ultimately becomes biology class for the narcissist. The “interest” you experience is actually them gathering intel for later use. It’s one of the reasons someone being overly curious about you very early on is a red flag that may point to a narcissistic personality.
And how do they use this information? To discover your tender spots and use them first to idealize, aka “love bomb,” and later devalue you. For example, early on the ex asked a lot of questions about my family, and I unfortunately shared with him my feelings of sadness that they had been more concerned about their own needs than those of mine or my brother’s. I also told him I’d had been supporting myself since my late teens. He just seemed so caring and interested!
But he used this right away, on our second date telling me “I want to take care of you forever.” Wow, I thought, I finally met someone who really cares for me. I’m safe! Nope, just a love bomb and not safe at all. Then, once he had me locked into the relationship he began saying I was “too needy,” as a way to justify being disconnected and aloof. Devaluation. And both the love bomb and the devalue hit me hard becasue they were tailored to my own history and vulnerability.
And it’s important to note that “getting us where it hurts” also is a classic tactic in families and other long-term relationships. They have the added benefit of being able to accumulate lots of information about your sore spots over many years, not just by being overly interested early on.
If you are self-conscious about your level of education, you can bet the narcissist will find a way to weaponize that. If you aren’t at peace with your physical appearance, what you eat and how you look will be a focus for them. If you feel you should be further professionally, this will be mentioned — a lot. The narcissist knows that if you want to devalue, control, and make a target feel they have no worth, it’s easiest and most effective to poke at a sore spot.
Contrast this with the healthy, loving people in our lives. They want to be balm on our wounds, not salt. They don’t grill us in the name of “getting to know you” on the first, second or third date or meeting. And when they do learn about our tender spots, they respect them and even try to help us heal.
What can we do about this? Protect ourselves. Be alert to people who are too interested and too intrusive early on. If it is going to be a good relationship of any sort, whether romantic, friendship, or work colleague, there is time to get to know one another in a way that evolves. While a lot of attention right away can feel good, you might just be a frog in biology class.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ann Betz is the co-founder of BEabove Leadership and an expert on the intersection of neuroscience, coaching, trauma and human transformation. She speaks, trains and coaches internationally, and writes about neuroscience and coaching as well as relational trauma. Ann is also a published poet who loves cats, rain in the desert, and healthy relationships. While she loves deep conversations, she has learned to be on alert with too much too soon.
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