The Narcissistic Women Who Fetishize Flawed Men

In the jungle that is the dating scene, there is an odd couple which I often observe, and which has recently been on my mind: The strikingly-beautiful woman and the awkward-looking guy.

To the naked eye, it appears that the man is ‘punching above his weight’, which may be sufficient enough for most people.

Yet my eye is far from naked. I look upon such couples through the thick lens of hard-earned experience, as well as a deep understanding of personality disorders. What I therefore see, is not one narcissist, but two — with a unique twist. One looks, talks and acts like a narcissist, yet is not, while the other seems nothing like a narcissist, yet actually is.

That’s right, we have in this couple a wolf in sheep’s clothing, dating a sheep in wolf’s clothing — and both of them are fooling each other.

The Vixen And Her ‘Man’

What strikes me about the women in such relationships is not just their beauty. They tend to also have impeccable posture, effortless body movement, and an ice-cold demeanour. They usually have a chic outfit on with flawless makeup. Every facet of their appearance looks to have been carefully considered. They never make a sudden movement, betray their emotions, or show any trace of insecurity. They remain calm and collected at all times. Eerily calm. They hold an exceptionally strong frame, and in many cases, incorporate masculine fashion pieces into their style. Trousers. A suit jacket. Something to send the message that you are not dealing with a ‘girly’ girl.

Even with their cold demeanour, they still manage to ooze sex appeal. Yet not the intoxicating, outflowing kind, but rather the contained, held-in-a cage kind. You can see it, but are unable to feel or access it. This vixen of a woman is like a model in a magazine. She is alluring, seductive and out-of-this-world beautiful with a glossy coating. Yet that is all she remains. You can only look.

Then I turn my attention to her boyfriend, and I grow unsettled at my first thought: It feels like I’m looking at a mother with her young son.

Punching Above His Weight

In comparison to his symmetrical, flawless vixen, something seems off with this guy. He might be wearing mismatched clothes with mismatched colours. Where his girlfriend has a carefully-selected outfit and accessories, he seems to have tossed anything on. In other cases, he also has on a stylish outfit, yet seems to carry it awkwardly, as though he had not chosen it. Funnily enough, it looks similar to hers.

Her perfect face is straight out of a magazine, showing no signs of wear. His wrinkled face looks tired and disproportionate. His eyes seem sad, and his demeanour broadcasts that he’s not sure of himself. His body might be gangly and skinny like a boy’s, and his mouth turned down into a frown. His vixen looks unimpressed while occasionally giving the odd smirk. Most telling of all: He dawdles behind his striding girlfriend, who always takes the front position when they walk. It’s almost as though she has him on a leash.

Judging by appearance alone, it makes no sense. What is she doing with him? the uninitiated person might ask. To answer that question, we need to move beyond the outer form of this odd couple, and delve into their psychology.

Alpha/Beta Ping Pong

The clue to the vixen’s psychology lies in her eyes. They tend to be sharp and glittery, while seething with an almost imperceptible rage.

Such women usually come from matriarchal homes with weak or absent fathers. Their mothers were often equally striking when they were young, with an equally-striking vicious streak. That is, once you get to know them, and touch upon their triggers, that calm, chilly demeanour quickly turns to fire. Their sudden bite proves poisonous.

Over time, a picture emerges. The vixen has a history of dating highly-masculine or successful men — as well as their weaker opposite. The vixen claims to yearn for a man capable of handling her intensity, but seems to run into inevitable conflicts with such men. After all, alpha men tend to do what alphas do: They set boundaries and put her in her place. This is too much for her to handle, and she grows furious and leaves.

While licking her wounds, she decides to go for someone ‘safer’. She meets this awkward guy who is somehow also fascinating and handsome — in his own way. He brings intrigue to the table. Perhaps he’s an artist or runs a successful business. His lifestyle and sexual tastes are unusual. He is just appealing enough to draw the vixen’s interest. And best of all, he doesn’t have the abruptness and boundaries of those asshole alphas.

Unlike those guys, this man is enraptured with the vixen. He sees and treats her like the queen she knows she is. He also seems to go along with whatever she suggests. He’s receptive and empathic to her emotions. She feels safe with him, enough to share her hopes and dreams about the future. Oddly enough, he wants the same things.

But she’s no silly girl. Her brain is ticking, analysing everything about him. While he seems to have some semblance of a normal life, a deeper look shows that he’s a bit of a loner. He does have friends and hobbies, but they prove to be surface-level. Nothing she can’t convince him to toss aside.

The vixen and her new man go on numerous dates, which involve deep sharing of their past relationships and childhood traumas. Nothing is taboo. Their sex life, their heartbreaks, their deepest desires. The guy reveals that he has a troubled relationship with his family. He has an especially wounded relationship with his mother. That’s good, says an unconscious voice in her head. That makes him malleable. He can be flexible to her designs.

He has a darkness about him, a sense of woundedness. The vixen knows that his sheen of confidence is paper thin, covering his fickle self-esteem. It’s written all over his face. She senses that she can easily control and manipulate him.

The vixen believes she has met the perfect guy; the ideal blend between her dream man and a ‘safe’ guy who can be controlled. The ultimate compromise. If she can’t have the alphas wrapped around her fingers, she will have this guy instead. Her trap is set.

What she doesn’t know, however, is that she is walking into a trap. It is not only her new man’s confidence which is fake. In fact, their entire relationship is a fantasy, custom-made just for her. She is about to get attached to a covert narcissist. A man with an emptiness where a heart should be, hidden by a personality fuelled by grandiose projections.

As for the covert narcissist, he too is walking into a trap. Date by date, kiss after kiss, one love-making session after the other, a spider’s web is being woven around him by a psychopathic borderline.

Mrs. ‘I Will Fix Him’

At their core, vixens are borderlines — they are drowning in overwhelming emotion while dreaming of finding a man to be their rock. However, they also have the ‘gift’ of a narcissistic false self. To top it off, they are endowed with the calculating, vicious mind of a psychopath. Yet they are neither narcissist nor psychopath; they merely possess their traits on top of their borderline pathology.

The vixen tends to be addicted to the attention of men. She constantly has numerous guys on her leash at the same time, even when in a long-term relationship. When she feels insecure, she leans on these ‘satellite’ men for comfort and validation. If her boyfriend acts up, she will triangulate the other men against him to hurt and punish him.

Such behaviour betrays the vixen’s love/hate relationship with the masculine. Her hatred towards men emerged in childhood, due to her emotionally and often physically absent father. Often the covert narcissist she chooses is a carbon copy of her inept and immature Dad. While her father’s failures sow the seed of her hatred for men, it is her mother who waters that hatred with her words.

The vixen’s mother trains her daughter in the art of manipulating and controlling the men in her life. Ever the matriarch, her mother sees men as tools to be used. Where their masculinity is useful, she encourages it. If she considers their masculinity as a threat, she shames and emasculates the man to cut him down to size.

This strategy almost always fails with a true ‘alpha’, who does not tolerate attacks on his masculinity for long. A covert narcissist, on the other hand, carries a cesspool of toxic shame while being plagued by low self-esteem. On top of that, he is enraptured by and emotionally invested in the vixen. Any time he acts up or goes off script, the vixen shames him back into place. Unlike an overt narcissist, the covert narcissist’s false self is fragile, and can be easily moulded how the vixen wants.

As for the covert narcissist’s glaring faults, the vixen believes that she can fix him. The covert narcissist is like an old, weathered house with make-over potential. The vixen encourages her covert narcissist to pursue success in ways that serve her. She also takes control of his appearance, coercing him into dressing and grooming himself according to her taste.

In many ways, the vixen is trying to make the covert narcissist into the man she needed her father to be. Her entire relationship is a case of repetition-compulsion. It is a replay of her childhood, with a flawed man who stands in for her flawed father, giving her a chance to resolve what went wrong.

As for the covert narcissist, a similar story also emerges.

Mr. ‘I Will Save Her’

Above all, what the covert narcissist sees in the vixen, is his mother. He is drawn to the vixen’s vibe, which matches his mother’s. The covert narcissist is especially drawn to the unique way the vixen withholds love, which also matches his mother. This is completely unconscious.

The final piece of the puzzle is the vixen’s seeming perfection. She is sexy, worldly, intelligent and all-powerful — just like his mother was when he was a child. In his grandiose mind, where he is all-special, the vixen is the ideal woman to complete his world. After all, nothing less than perfection will ever do for the narcissist. And the vixen does appear to be perfect.

Having been humiliated, neglected, rejected, controlled and exploited by his mother, the narcissist goes about recreating his childhood with the vixen. And boy does the vixen deliver. With her fierce energy, sharp judgement and coldness, she quickly breaks down the covert narcissist into the boy he used to be. Over time, his defences crumble, as does his identity, and become merged with the vixen, as it was when he was a boy. The relationship is perfectly placed to recreate the covert narcissist’s childhood.

This is where a closer look is needed. Softened by the intimacy of the relationship, the vixen gradually reveals her borderline side. A more insecure side of her which she hides in public emerges. She admits to the covert narcissist her fears and weaknesses. She shares with him the pain inflicted on her by the ‘abusive’ men of her past. Finally, she has found a man who is different from those guys. Caring. Intelligent. Capable. This time things will be different.

By casting herself as both helpless and a victim, the vixen activates the covert narcissist’s saviour complex, which is fuelled by his grandiosity. His doubt and shame wash away, and the hero in him emerges. He feels elated and powerful. Invulnerable. He revels in the idea of being the man the vixen could never find. At last, he will measure up to her expectations.

But who exactly is ‘her’?

His mother, of course. The woman he could never please. The woman who would never accept and love him. The wounded woman who hid behind a cold, uncaring exterior. The woman drowning in her trauma, whom he could never save, no matter how hard he tried. This time, he won’t fail. He will be for the vixen the man he could never be for his mother.

Let The Shit Show Begin

The vixen/covert narcissist relationship is a recipe for disaster. The covert narcissist is quick to disappoint the vixen’s need for a powerful man who will play the king to her queen — who will be the man in her life she never had. As the months progress, the vixen comes to realise that the guy who held so much promise as her ‘fixer-upper’ has collapsed under the weight of her power, proving himself to be a mere broken little boy.

In her disgust, the vixen directs her attention towards her satellite men. She triangulates guy after guy against the covert narcissist, flirting with them in his face or constantly comparing him to them. Over and again, she reminds him how inferior and worthless he is. How much of a disappointment he is. This drives a knife directly into the covert narcissist’s deepest wound. What began as a dream devolves into a familiar nightmare. Her disappointment has once again exposed his deficiencies. Once again, he is a failure.

The covert narcissist eventually can carry no more. He devalues the vixen and tries to end the relationship. Overwhelmed by her borderline fear of abandonment, the vixen switches and begs for the covert narcissist not to leave. Sometimes, he finds the strength to escape. Other times, the relationship devolves into an on-and-off-and-on again cycle which can last for years, as the manipulation and heartbreak grow worse, and the vixen brings out the psychopathic elements in the covert narcissist.

What results is a shit show that no outsider would believe. Both parties end up losing from the experience, their sense of trust eroded, as the vixen is left feeling cheated and lied to, while the covert narcissist walks away feeling emasculated and broken, in desperate need of restoring his grandiosity so he can survive to idealise another day.