Welcome to Thomistic womanhood. In today’s video, we’re going to talk about how society conditions us to get with narcissists. There’s a lot of channels on YouTube dedicated to narcissism. There’s a lot of women that get with men who are maybe narcissists or at least on the spectrum somewhere. And we’re going to talk about kind of why that happens and what I think are some trends in society that I think lead us in that direction. So stay tuned.

Welcome to Thomistic womanhood, happy Thomistic Tuesday, or whenever you’re watching this. So in today’s video, we’re going to talk about what leads us to date narcissists, what are the factors in society that are pushing us in the direction of dating men who are jerks? I think sometimes saying they’re a narcissist is maybe a little too dramatic, because not everybody is like clinically diagnosable as one, like, that’s sort of a medical term, a psychologically medical term. But there are a lot of jerks out there, and men in general, and women too. But right now we’re talking about men, they can be very selfish. And a lot of women, there’s an epidemic of women getting with selfish men, and they have terrible relationships with, and it’s just an awful scarring experience. And a lot has been discussed, you go over the narcissist side of YouTube, there are lots of channels about what is narcissism? What does it look like? What does it look like in a relationship? What is it look like in parents, because unfortunately, there are a lot of narcissistic parents?

But I think what everybody misses is that there are factors that I think are setting us up for this outside of the psychological factors. What I mean is a lot of talks has been given to if you came from maybe an abusive family, or you had some sort of traumatizing experience, if something psychologically happened to you, there’s a lot of talks how that’s going to condition you to get with a narcissist, or get with someone selfish, pathologically selfish, because we’re all selfish to a degree, but how that’s going to condition you to gravitate toward this kind of men. And there are other factors that nobody is discussing, that I think are present in the society that are pointing us women in that direction. Even if you come from a good family, and you had loving parents, and you weren’t really groomed for a narcissist, you can still end up with really selfish men. And I think as women, we beat ourselves up about it. And we’re like, man, how did I not see that coming? After the relationship blows up in our face? It’s like, Ah, how could I have let that happen? So these are some of the factors that I think is how that’s happening. So factor number one, I’ve got three of them here that we’re going to discuss today. Two of them, I think, mostly come from working, and I’m not putting down working, 2020, we have to have a job. But two of them I think are caused by overworking, working a lot. And then the third one is just kind of, in general, the expectations and the tight of society.

So the first one in the workplace, us women, I’ve mentioned this in other videos, but us women, most of us get jobs, probably around late adolescence, that’s when you get your first job, you’re between the ages of like 16 to 20, mostly like 16 to 18. you’re in high school toward the end of high school, at least here in the US, it’s common for in late High School, usually get your first job. And as women, our identity isn’t completely formed, think of like who you were as an 18-year-old as a 17-year-old, as women, we weren’t formed yet. When you’re a teenager and an adolescent, you haven’t figured out your identity yet, you don’t know who you are yet. And I think that as women, there’s a whole side of us, our femininity or softer side, that doesn’t get developed, because we get brought out into the workforce immediately, as soon as we’re like, no longer children, and we can start understanding the world around us and we come mature, we start approaching adulthood when we have the chance to start figuring out our identity we’re already sent off into the workplace. And there are reasons for that. I’m not saying don’t give women jobs. I’m not saying don’t work. It is a kind of a rite of passage. It’s something that matures us and I have seen women who their parents didn’t give them jobs, they were left at home. And yeah, sometimes you can develop a certain immaturity. However, when you go in the workplace, the workplace is kind of a harsh place, and people will hurt your feelings, you’ll have customers say really mean things, you’ll have coworkers be petty and competitive, and there’s office politics, and oftentimes us women will get our feelings hurt a lot. I know for me, in my first couple of jobs, I was upset all the time, I was constantly getting my feelings hurt because I am a very sensitive person. I feel like I’ve grown out of some of it. But yeah, I was a very sensitive girl, it was very upsetting to be in the workplace because people were just rude all the time, or what I considered rude. And I would often tell, like authority figures in my life, you know, I’d be like, Oh, I, this person said this to me at work, and blah, blah, blah. And I got told to suck it up, it was like, Oh, well, that’s the workplace deal with it. And to a certain extent, it’s important to develop thick skin and not be too touchy. And, having a job can help with that. However, on the other hand, too much of that is not good. As women, we need to understand that it’s not good when people are rude to you, it isn’t always something you have to just suck it up and deal with. And a lot of workplaces are kind of toxic. And I think that sets up us women to get with these toxic guys that hurt our feelings all the time because we’re so used to working, and people are just like, hey, just deal with it, just deal with it. And so we get this numbness to it. And then when we go into our relationships, somebody is rude or they’re small enough to where they’re the things we’ve learned to kind of just blow off because in the workplace, you have to blow off a lot of things to keep things running smoothly, you have to do that. And I think sometimes we carry that into our relationships. And then when these narcissistic, bad men get in our lives, we don’t notice the red flags right away, because we’re so used to brushing off insults, brushing off rude things. So that can be the first factor that I think sets us up to get with men that are not good for us.

The second factor is we go to work to give, even in the best of workplaces, let’s say people aren’t being rude, they are respectful. At its basis work is a place that you go to give. John Gray talks about this, he’s the author of Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, he wrote a book called Mars and Venus in the workplace. And he made what I think is a very astute observation, he said that we go to work to give, we don’t go to work to receive. And that’s why when women are in the workplace a lot, you’re giving, you’re showing up, you’re doing a job, work is different than socializing. When you’re socializing, you’re there because you like each other there, you’re there because you want to be there, you care, it’s warmer, but when you’re in the workplace, you are not there because they like you, you’re there because you’re useful in some way, there is something you can contribute to the group to make everybody reached the goals of the company, and what you’ve all been hired for. And so even in the best of situations, work is a place where you give all day, you do your job, regardless of how you feel about it. And again, that is important, it can be a maturing experience, it can help us grow up. So I’m not saying it’s completely bad. However, as women, when we work a lot, because jobs are pretty demanding, especially, with all the economic problems we’ve been having the jobs that are left are usually fairly demanding.

They’re either the nature of the role is just very demanding work, or because companies are trying to do more with less, you may have a job that on the surface is easy. Like, let’s say you’re just a receptionist. But because of how short the payroll has to be, maybe as the reception is, you’re being expected to do the work of two or three people. And so even things that historically have been easy jobs are no longer easy jobs, they’re very stressful. And you just you give and give all day, and it can be very draining, but it can also set us, women, up any pattern of giving. And so then when we leave work, we don’t realize, oh, a relationship is different. You’re supposed to receive part of the time. And it can be hard for us to receive from a man because we’re just so used to eight hours every day all day, just giving, giving, giving like Oh, do you need that report? Oh, let me answer this phone. Oh, oh, we’re doing an off-site. Let me go. Oh sure. I’ll print up the pamphlets. For that, blah, blah, blah, and jobs often want you to anticipate needs and offer and take initiative. So there is so much giving that happens in the workplace, that as women, we start to give in our relationships and narcissistic men, they’re usually pretty feminine and they want to receive all the time. And so then we don’t even realize that we’re over giving in a relationship, because we have such a habit of giving. So that is something that we have to kind of consciously think about, because narcissist, they love women who give too much, it isn’t always because you’re codependent. Maybe you just have a very demanding job, and you’ve created such a habit of giving in your job, you’re unknowingly carrying it over into your relationships, so food for thought.

And then the last one, this is not necessarily the fault of the workplace. This is just the way our society is in general, at least here in the US. And most of the, I would say it’s pretty worldwide. I was gonna say like, oh, in the Western countries, but I think even in eastern countries, too, it’s a little bit like this. Well, no, actually, Eastern countries are better about this. This is a western country problem. But we are cut off from the traditional expectation of a man protecting and providing for us, we are completely cut off from that. So here in America, especially again, I’m American, I can only speak to America. But I know a lot of other Western countries have had this attitude thanks to feminism, we got rid of the traditional notion that a man is supposed to protect and provide for you, now it’s like, well, you’re a woman, you can get a job and you don’t need men and blah, blah. And okay, but now that leaves us with a vacuum of what do you expect from a man? Then? What is the man bring to the table? What do you need a man for? And we don’t really have any expectations really in its place. Other than Oh, men are oppressors, they’re going to make you miserable. It’s going to be this and that. And so because as women, we don’t have that traditional expectation that a man provides for you. He buys you things, he pays for the meal, he buys you presents if you get married, he provides the bulk of the financial support, you know, maybe you want to work part-time, fine. Maybe you want to stay at home with your kids. And then he’s the breadwinner, he provides the financial stability for you.

There was actually a funny TikTok, where this girl had this concept of expecting men to provide and it just illustrated so well, this girl got into like a little bit of road rage with this Armenian, some woman from you know, the Middle East or something. I guess it came to America. And these two women, I guess one of them cut off the other one and then they both pulled over. And they got in a little argument. And the woman she had this nice BMW, the Armenian woman had this nice BMW, and then the other girl was just like, she just had like some Toyota or something. I’m not knocking Toyotas. I have a Toyota but they’re not a fancy car. So they get out and they’re arguing, and the girl holds up her hand and the Armenian lady goes, Oh, that’s why you have it because she was dissing her car. She’s like, you cut me off in your crappy car, and blah, blah, what are you thinking, and this girl’s like, whatever. So she raises her hands to say something. And the Armenian lady is like, Oh, you don’t have a ring. You’re not married? Oh, no wonder you have a crappy car. Oh, you poor thing. Like, Oh, you know what, I know, this nice Armenian guy. He just needs two years to get his papers, his green card to come to the US. He’ll come over. And then I hope to bury you in two years. And you’ll have a nice BMW too honey.

And it was really funny. But I thought it illustrated a very traditional expectation that this girl has a crappy car because there’s no man to provide her BMW. Like there’s this expectation that that’s where you get BMWs you get them from men. And I was like, wow, that’s interesting. We’ve completely lost that notion. Now, to be fair, our economy is not really at a place where every man can provide you a BMW, so if you’re a guy lurking, watching this, you’re probably sweating, like I can’t provide a BMW. But that’s not what I’m saying. But not every guy should provide you a BMW isn’t what I’m saying. But there is an expectation that men provide you something and we’ve completely lost that in America. And I think because of that loss, when we get with these selfish, narcissistic men, we aren’t even expecting them. Half the time we feel guilty if they pay. We wonder if maybe we should offer to pay for it. And then that can end up confusing things because then the guy thinks, oh, maybe she’s really not into me, you know? But we don’t expect men to pay for us all the time. Sometimes we don’t. We don’t expect men to bias nice gifts. Sometimes if a guy, if he just feels like giving you a pretty necklace that he saw in a store, and he thought of you, and he wanted to give you a gift, we kind of get suspicious, and we’re like, what does he expect out of this, and so there’s things like that we don’t expect men to provide for us, we don’t expect them to protect us. That’s another one.

That’s why a lot of these narcissistic men, especially in like the pickup artists movement,  a lot of these men, they’re able to exploit women, because women have completely lost the concept of male protection. Men are there to protect us, help defend us against the bad men. Not all men are bad, there are good men, and there are bad men, and you team up with the good men to help the good men you have to give them something out of it. But also because they will help protect you from the bad men. And that’s a concept we’ve completely lost. And so it’s very easy for women to get with these narcissistic toxic men. And we don’t even realize that we want them to do some protecting and providing for us until it becomes a huge problem. And we have like months of resentment built up, and it’s like, oh, he never did anything for me. And I over gave and he just sick. And it’s like, Yeah, because you weren’t taught any different, you weren’t taught to expect any different from a man. So that is something that I think society and feminism to bears a huge responsibility for teaching women and setting up swimming to get into these like awful relationships because our expectations are just so off.

So anyways, food for thought, I just wanted to talk about that. These are things not to be discouraged about, it’s important to know the factors that lead us into these relationships. Because I think a lot of us women, we can be very hard on ourselves. And we think, Oh, I must be codependent, I must be forgiving, I must be, something must be wrong with me. If I attracted this kind of man into my life, and I had this awful relationship with him, even if it was just like one or two dates, we can often feel terrible about it. But again, I don’t think it’s all our fault. I don’t think it’s all just us being psychologically codependent, or whatever, I think a lot of it is just the lifestyle that our society expects women to live Things are different now than they used to be. And I think some of those factors are setting us up to gravitate toward these relationships that are not good for us. And so again, some of you, maybe you came from a good family, and these factors are going to be less of an influence on you. if you had a very difficult family background, maybe you didn’t have a strong father figure, maybe you didn’t have a loving family that you came from, maybe your family was abusive, then these societal factors are going to intertwine with those psychological factors that people talk about, on the narcissism channels. Like, I’m not saying that that’s not a factor. It definitely is if you had an abusive, cold father, then you’re going to totally get with an abusive guy, because you’re not even going to notice it’s abusive. add on to that the fact that our society is also doing some conditioning, I’m not going to say it’s on purpose, because that’s a little conspiracy theorist. But right now, just the way society is the way we live, especially here in America, I really think that that is a major contributing factor to why so many women are getting with toxic men. So anyways, well, not only getting rid toxic men, but we’re also overlooking the healthy men, because that’s a that’s a problem too. If you are in the habit of over giving, and brushing off your feelings, and not really listening to how you feel about things, you can often overlook a perfectly good guy, and just go straight and make a beeline for the toxic guy because you just you don’t know any better. It’s the habit. It’s the momentum you’re in. So anyways, I don’t want to like ramble on and on. Like I said, don’t be discouraged about it. this is food for thought think about it and see if these factors, maybe were part of your past relationships, and just be aware of it. It’s not again, I’m not saying don’t work, we all most of us have to have jobs, and having a job is not going to ruin your chances of having a good relationship. But if you don’t know about these things, you can’t compensate for them. You can’t consciously make better choices. So knowledge is power. And it’s important to know all the factors that are influencing you, not just the childhood trauma ones. So in that spirit, that’s what discussing this about today. So Hope that was helpful. If you have a question or a comment, leave a comment below and that’ll be that so have a good day.