We always encounter people in life, whether they’re teachers, parents, or bosses, who see the worst in us no matter what we do. They assume we have bad intentions and are always on the wrong side of life. For some men coming from narcissistic families, this is very common and almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, this is actually freeing because you know where you stand with them. This means you have no obligation to please or to pander to their good side. This makes it much easier to defend yourself. But if you are always seen as all-good by a toxic family, then it makes it much harder to defend yourself. I will explain how this works next.
Initially, if you naturally have traits like high empathy, agreeableness, and kindness, it will be used as leverage against you. This means that you can never say no; you can’t disagree or have your own agenda. It puts you into an unfair category where you have to be a ‘good’ man and get everything right. There is simply no room for error. What other people do in a narcissistic family is always overlooked, but because you have the ‘all-good’ label, it will instantly be demonized. What makes this so insidious is that it takes a while for it to click that it is a big problem in your life. It makes things harder and affects other areas in life, like decision-making and taking calculated risks. It also turns you into an emotional slave for people who do not deserve it.
I would say the best approach is to take a middle ground. You don’t have to try too hard to be good, but only exclusively for people where trust and respect are mutual. For people where that is the opposite, it doesn’t matter if they think you’re bad. They should think that because most of the time it means you have strong boundaries and they have no choice but to respect you. In healthy relationships, being good to someone and being respected go hand in hand. Unfortunately, in narcissistic families, they repel each other due to black-and-white thinking.
