Having trouble pasting an image in GIMP?

Hi so I am trying to crop a picture so I just have the image selected, then paste that image on top of another picture (using GIMP). So I was able to crop it using the paths tool without any problems but every time I try to copy and paste it into the second picture, all that happens is it crops the second picture into the shape of the first image. I have tried copying it normally and doing "copy visible" as well as trying to invert the image just in case but that doesn't work.

When pasting it I have tried creating duplicate layers of the second image first, doing paste as new layer, etc. But it always does the same thing. I know I did it before without problems so what is going wrong this time? I feel like it shouldn't be this complicated to paste an image onto another image!

Thanks!