“She said you don’t understand what I said
I said no no no, you’re wrong, when I was a boy
Everything was right
Everything was right
I said
Even though you know what you know
I know that I’m ready to leave
‘Cause you’re making me feel like I’ve never been born
She said you don’t understand what I said
I said no no no, you’re wrong, when I was a boy
Everything was right
Everything was right”
Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney
Narcissistic abuse. I cannot help it but that is on my mind, morning, noon, and extremely late into the night. And don’t even ask about how I am during the holidays! She is renting space in my head and is ready to renew the lease.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Who knew it had a name?
I was married to a narcissist for 19 years and raised (or at least thought I was) to believe that divorce was not an option. I was raised to believe I was only valuable if I gave of myself to my detriment. So what do I do? I test that philosophy and I marry a narcissist.
Let’s set up the abridged timeline.
- April 1994-My dad, diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, but now in remission, asked me to move to Boca Raton. (“Just move. Your mother and I don’t have to schlep to New York anymore. We’re tired.”)
- December 1994-After 7 months of job searching from New York, I secure a job in South Florida.
- January 1995-May 1998-My mother has provided over 4 dozen phone numbers of single women to her youngest son. (“Oh, Steven, stop it. They can’t all be horrible. Maybe it’s you.”)
- June 1998-My father, during lunch, tells me he is running low on time, the cancer is getting worse. He looks fine and played 18 holes earlier that day. He wants me to re-think the woman I went out with the previous evening. The phone number again from my mother. “It’s time. You need to be married and I need more grandchildren.” For the record, my brother and sister were both married and presented my parents with six grandchildren. “I’m on the back nine. I want you to get married and give me more grandchildren. Now!” He finished his Johnny Walker Black ordered another and said that it did not matter if I liked her, she met the criteria. She was female, Jewish, and single. (Jewish guilt: It’s the punch line of so many Jewish jokes, usually involving Jewish mothers. “Don’t worry about me… You go. Enjoy yourself. I’ll sit in the dark…Come over when you can.”)
- July 1998-The Narc, after two dates, demands to meet my parents. My parents love the idea and make Friday night dinner. She tells my father she loves watching football and would love to watch it with us on Sunday. Game over! (For the record, she lasted five minutes. She saw my mother getting ready to go to the mall, asked if she could join her, and never watched another game).
- June 1999-I married the Narc. A woman that I did not love or even like. None of my friends did. The wedding, which I did not want to attend, included five tables of my friends and zero tables of her friends.
It was a trap that nearly killed me. If you have read some of my essays, thank you, and you are aware I struggled with depression and considered suicide. I stayed in the marriage for my two sons (I could not imagine coming home from work and not seeing them) and came to believe that my only hope was to accept my lot and learn not to want anything or care about anything (to express a desire to a narcissist is to give them the power to deny your desire, which they will).
Every day was another threat. Always beginning with, “I’m going to tell your parents that you…” The thought on her part was that a threat would stop me from getting upset. Years later, the threat was, “If you even think of divorce you will never see the boys again.” I was to find out that she would make good on that last one.
To disagree with a narcissist is to risk rage, revenge, and reduced “privileges”: privileges such as being treated with respect, spoken to at all, allowed to have money, etc. I was a well-educated, creative, talented, and caring man from a middle-class background and couldn’t see that I was living in an abusive situation. At first.
See for yourself
Google the term and see the thousands (more?) of posts, articles, videos, support groups, therapists offering help from narcissistic abuse.
Some of these posts leave me speechless, others leave me feeling empowered, but most often they leave me feeling like, “Jesus, now this all makes so much sense and it explains everything.”
Let me backtrack a bit…
About twelve months ago, I was desperately searching for sound living ideas to get healthier and shed some weight I’d gained since my separation and divorce two years earlier. I found something that led me to something else and something else. It was two o’clock in the morning and I had not been sleeping for quite some time. Oh, I’d pass out for a while after three or four cocktails while watching Law and Order reruns, but, as I would soon learn, that was not sleeping.
I started to think about that later. I was living the life of a retired business person who moved from New York to South Florida. Except I had no money, she took it all. It’s what my dad used to do. He would play golf, have lunch with fifteen of his closest friends in the Polo Club dining room, drive home in his golf cart, plop into his La-Z-Boy, and turn on Matlock and Law and Order, while waiting for my mother to tell him who they were going out to dinner with.
I was watching Law and Order reruns because she would not let me. The show meant little to me. The same show every week. Murder. Detective makes a sarcastic remark. Rest of half hour detectives search for a killer. The following half hour the DA and hot assistant DA try to beat the killer in court. They win. They lose. Show over. So, you can see why the Narc hated it. She could not keep up with the plot.
But it was deeper. The Narc saw me watching Law and Order one night and yelled. “How am I supposed to sleep with you watching that! I don’t understand you. You are not to watch that again! Always about you. Everything is about you. You don’t even care that now I can’t sleep.”
It had nothing to do with the television program. It had to do with her seeing me garner some enjoyment at 10:00 at night. I was downstairs, and she was upstairs. So how was I even bothering her? It was control. She would walk upstairs knowing she got under my skin.
When we first started dating, she enjoyed sitting at a bar with me having a cocktail. She made sure the wall unit she had built for the family room in the new house we had just purchased had a bar attached to it.
“I thought it would make you happy,” she said while handing me a $2,000 wall unit invoice for services rendered.
Love-bombing over
I learned after the divorce and the nights of research that narcissists have no personality. None. They have no soul. They take on the personality of the person they are with, thus making that person feel comfortable. Until they do not have to anymore.
“I’m miserable,” I thought. “But maybe if I go through this marriage with a buzz on, it will look better.”
After our second son was born, she informed me there was no need for me to drink. Before we would enter a restaurant, she would remind me that if I so much as ordered a beer, she would make a scene. Scotch? Uh-uh. Vodka? Not on your life.
When her father, who I believe taught her the art of narcissism, came to the house one Sunday afternoon, I asked if he’d care for a cocktail. He was good for at least one Bloody Mary, especially if I was pouring.
His attention immediately turned toward his daughter. “Dear, people who need alcohol to exist have several issues. Don’t you think?”
“Damn,” I thought. “She got to him.”
It was not the alcohol. It was the fact that I enjoyed drinking the alcohol.
It was taking in the mail and opening letters, bills, and all correspondence addressed to me. “Why do you NEED to get Sports Illustrated? And Time? And you are to cancel that subscription to the New York Post.”
It was going to the Dry Cleaners. “I will wash your shirts. You do not have to waste money on dry cleaning. You wear those suits once and toss them into your dry-cleaning pile. That is to stop. (I had a system prior to meeting her. I usually went twice on the suits before going to the cleaners. But as you just witnessed, that went out the window).
It was my mustache. My father, brother, sister’s husband, and I all had mustaches. She demanded I shave mine off. The argument? They were out of style and people were talking about me. I had it since college. I trimmed it and kept it short. (After twelve straight days of screaming at me, I caved).
It was Sunday football. “Excuse me, but your sons would like to watch Buzz Lightyear thank you. Your stupid football can wait.”
It was calling my mother. (“What don’t you get about the fact that I come first. Your mother is such a bitch”). For the record, two people disliked my mother. The guy who married her sister, but he was a horrible man, just despicable. And the Narc. She tried to jump the line ahead of my sister. But my sister was having none of it. The Narc wanted to be the first one my mother called each day, not my sister. The Narc wanted my mother to stop calling me and only call her. When neither of those happened, the Narc was like a caged animal verbally attacking my mother and sister to me as often as possible.
It was anything I enjoyed.
While searching through multiple pages of narcissistic abuse, I clicked on a post in a support group. “People very high on the narcissist scale are the only people that, with time, appear healthier and healthier in a relationship, while the victim appears sicker and sicker… and, to the untrained eye, a lot of times people don’t realize what’s going on and because of that, the victim ends up being emotionally abused for years and years and then they receive secondary abuse by professionals who don’t understand what’s going on and who think that the problem lies with this person because their symptoms look so clear.”
I felt like this person was speaking to me. By the end of the post, I was shedding ugly, uncontrollable tears because I had 19 of the 20 signs of being a victim of narcissistic abuse.
A Side Note
If you are reading this, thank you, but every time I use the word victim, I cringe. From the day we met, she used that word, victim. “Oh, my sister thinks she’s such a victim. My mother thinks she’s a victim. Don’t you see? Your sister thinks she’s a victim.”
As time passed, she turned it to me. “Oh my God, stop acting like a victim. If anyone is a victim, it’s me. Your family has made me crazy, and it’s all because of you and your stupid family.”
Don’t believe me? My father died seven days after my first son was born. Truth be told, he was lying in a coma and being kept alive by machines. My mother decreed that after the baby was born, she would pull the plug. But once he was born, she then waited until after the bris. (Every year on his birthday, my mother would call after speaking with my sister. “Steven, how can you even think about celebrating? It’s the anniversary of your father’s death.” And of course, the Narc would let me have it).
Anyway, knowing the plan, I was walking around in a daze. The morning of the funeral, the Narc looked at me. “Stop acting like a victim. This is not about you. You always make everything about you. Do you think I should invite my parents to the funeral and then back to your mother’s house for lunch?
And your point?
Suddenly, everything that I had been struggling with over the last 20 years — 6 months of dating, 19 years of marriage and 3 plus years post-divorce — finally made sense.
The reason I wrote this essay is to help others recognize the signs of being in an abusive relationship with a narcissist, including the different stages these types of relationships that predictably follow: love bombing, devaluation, and the last stage, the discard. In between, there were sprinkles (or showers) of triangulation, cognitive dissonance, and other strategies to keep me on my toes and always confused.
Why she chose me
When I began a relationship with this woman, I was in my mid-thirties. I was healthy, fit, successful, surrounded by friends, happy, fulfilled, and full of life, radiance, energy, love and pure joy. I woke up every morning loving life and feeling ready for all of life’s adventures. (Okay, maybe I was slightly miserable, but at the end of the day, who cared?)
It turns out, this is exactly the type of person/narcissistic supply they seek because if they can take someone like that down, then wow, their confidence shoots through the roof!
By the time this relationship was ending shortly after I turned 50, I was sick with mystery symptoms, parasitic infections, exhausted, 30+ pounds overweight, constantly hungry, anxious, depressed, lacking in confidence, unable to sleep or work or stand up for over fifteen minutes at a time and I was full of sadness, fear, anger, doubt, and confusion.
Let me just add about that lack of sleep. I would intentionally go to bed after her and try to slither into bed as to not awaken her. It was exactly like the movie. I was sleeping with the enemy. I feared waking her up. Most nights I was successful. But success came at a cost. She would turn on the light at 3 AM and confront me with a text on my phone, an e-mail from my computer, or a receipt from something I purchased. (Yes, she ALWAYS had my passwords).
Any of the three would cause the argument she wanted. My alarm would go off at 5 AM, ending the monologue. I took the boys to school, and she went to sleep. I believe the lack of sleep was intentional and caused brainwashing. I believe that now. Then? I was struggling to survive. A good day was not getting yelled at and told how useless I was.
What happens in a relationship with a narcissist?
With all my searching, there was something I saw that struck a chord. It was all of three paragraphs and it was me. It was my life. So, I delved deeper. Who was this person who understood me?
Dr. Christiane Northrup. A leading authority on women’s health and wellness. Women’s health? Do not ask. I kept reading.
“Energy-vampire-relationships are akin to a parasitic plant, such as mistletoe, overtaking an elm tree. The mistletoe grows into the vascular system of the elm tree, extracting water and nutrients for survival. If the elm tree is healthy, it can withstand this relationship for a while, but eventually will become sick and can even die.
The same is true for someone involved with a narcissist. If you are in a relationship with an energy vampire, you may withstand the energy drain for a while, but eventually the relationship takes its toll. And I’m not just talking about feeling a little emotional or drained. There can be serious health consequences when you are in an unbalanced relationship with an energy vampire.
In my decades on the front lines of women’s health, I’ve seen people suffering from adrenal fatigue, chronic Lyme disease, irritable bowel syndrome, thyroid disorders, an inability to lose weight, diabetes, breast cancer, autoimmune disorders and so-called mystery illnesses. Most, if not all the time, these illnesses do not respond well to medical treatments. That’s because the root cause is a relationship with an energy vampire… Until you address it, no medication, diet, or amount of meditation and yoga will help.”
That was me!
I had no idea how a relatively smart, extremely loving, seemingly “awake” father, husband, son, brother, and friend got to this place.
I spent the last few months researching narcissistic abuse and scrolling the accounts of narcissistic abuse survivors and experts, and everything finally makes so much sense.
I now know exactly how I got there. The red flags were always there, but I didn’t know they were red flags.
First, there was love-bombing
When I first called my ex-wife (yes, it was a number from my mother of a woman she had never met, like Trump 0 for 30 meant nothing) she was a 30 something-year-old who had just moved from Canada into her parent’s winter apartment in Pompano Beach. Her father moved her down and told her to look for a husband. She did everything she could to comply. She had never lived alone, and her father was paying all her bills. During that first conversation, she told me she wanted to get married and asked me why I would not want to be with her tonight instead of going out with my friends. If I come by, she said that she would make it worthwhile. How desperate can one be? (The pressure was enormous from my parents to take her out. Don’t believe me? Call your local single Jewish male friend who lives close to his mother and ask).
That should have been a red flag…
But I recently learned that narcissists view sex very differently than you and me. They used it to get a “high” and to get a life force, validation, and attention from their “narcissistic supply.”
The date was awful. AND she phoned me as I was driving home refusing to hang up. Had I asked her to marry me that night, she would have said yes. To be clear, she was in love with me before we ever met. Should have been a red flag. It was. It was a red flag. I wanted nothing to do with her and to quote the great John Belushi, “But nooooooooo!!!”
My parents demanded I take her out again. My friends thought that since she will give it up, I should take her out. (By the way, this is how guys think. Me: Should I take her out? Them: You gonna get laid? Me: Yeah, I think so. Them: Definitely).
I knew if we had sex, game over. This woman would give it up and think that because she did, that meant, in her mind, marriage. I knew it. I just knew it. And not only did I know it, for whatever the reason, but I also had a feeling that even though she was in her mid-thirties, she rarely, if ever, had done it before.
But we had a lot of sex at first. I knew this was not a connection or intimacy! I knew it was not love! I also believed that she thought the more we had, the closer she was coming to getting an engagement ring.
I felt like a “good” partner — she hit the jackpot with me in the sex department! I never said no, unless I was not feeling well or too tired, which was rare at first.
But guilt always followed the no because she usually let me know how disappointed she was with me if I said no. This was very subtle — silent treatment for the next few hours, cold shoulder, disappointing glances, guilt trips with statements like “we haven’t had sex in sooooo long” (even though we had just had sex a few days before).
And then, “If you don’t have sex with me, then you don’t love me.” Followed by tears.
The sex guilt followed throughout our 19 years of marriage. Early on, she totally used it as a weapon. The sex felt good physically, but there was an emotional emptiness about it I just couldn’t figure out…
We eventually hit a few road bumps in the sex department… When our second baby was about eight weeks old, I realized that we hadn’t had sex in a while, so I asked her, “How come we’re not having as much sex lately?”
She said, coldly and with no emotion, “Because that’s all you think about. You don’t want to love me. You never loved me. You just want sex and then to go to sleep. Sex is something you earn. You touch me during the day, then compliment me, then hold my hand when we are watching television. Then, I determine if you have earned it.”
I swear this is true. Nothing to do with love or marriage, or it’s just fun. No. With her, it had to be earned. Red flag? Gee, ya think?
Yes. Now that I have analyzed the sex while dating, it was used by her to earn a ring.
This was the first time that she was that direct, and the first time my intuition told me that this is not how a loving wife speaks to her husband, especially after we now had two beautiful children.
This is also a perfect example of withholding love and affection — a tactic that narcissists use and something they excel at.
I should note that the first few months of our relationship were quite different. Love bombing at its finest! Except I didn’t know it was love-bombing — I just thought that this woman wanted to get married and with a few changes we could be happy, and she could love me.
Love? Well, I knew she loved my parent’s country club, but not my friends. I knew she wanted to marry me and turn me into her idea of what a man should be, which was someone who would impress her father. Everything was to impress her father. Red flag?
Then it was time for devaluation
Something happened after our second child was born. Even the look in her eye changed. Her demeanor seemed different, she no longer had a smile on her face (even if was not real, she no longer pretended that I mattered). Postpartum depression?
I’m still not sure what it was — whether it was because we now had two kids and more responsibilities, or because I was making all the money and she couldn’t make money no matter what job she tried, or because her sister who she loved yet was envious of, had three children and married a doctor or something else… or any of these… but she rarely hesitated to let me know what a loser I was and that her family despised me. What was worse was that by this point, my relationship with my family was on a respirator because of her and I was floating in a boat rudderless with no land in sight.
Or, maybe she was just done wearing the mask
I’m still not sure, but the loving, kind, caring woman that I once knew was now an angry and resentful woman who hated family, who yelled at her kids, who was impatient, and who wanted nothing to do with anything peaceful and loving. Or with me and our relationship and family.
Sex was out. Done. Finished. And like everything else, we did not talk about it.
See, that’s another red flag. No communication. Marriage should mean the ability to talk about anything and having a partner who genuinely cares and can help you work through the problem.
As the days got longer, our communication sank. There was no dialogue, and more times than not, I had no idea what was going on.
And her solution? Spending other people’s money. More times than not, it was mine. When she was out of control on my credit card, she jumped to her father’s credit card, which I never understood why she had, but she did. More about that at another time.
So instead of her behavior being the issue, suddenly, my reaction was the problem. I learned that narcissists blame everything on you, and everything is your fault.
But I didn’t know that.
I just thought that there was always something wrong with me. That I was always doing something wrong. That I was never good enough. That I could never meet her needs. One day her father made the comment, “She can never be satisfied.” I put none of it together.
The guilt continued. There was no end to the guilt.
But I didn’t leave.
I didn’t leave for so many reasons.
Then the blows kept coming… and hadn’t stopped until she passed away…
Narcissists love to be seen and admired.
She loved being the center of attention.
She would always listen to my phone conversations. She would tell me that if I wanted to talk in private, I was hiding things from her. But she would always walk away or close the door when her father called. I walked in one day when she was on the phone with him. “The concept of working to support this family is foreign to him, and he rejects it like the plague. He works to support his drinking and his drugs, but never to support his family.”
I was exhausted and had no idea how I got here. She now claimed a beer or a cocktail after work made me an alcoholic. And the drugs? I was taking extra-strength Tylenol before going to bed to help with the physical and emotional pain. She would open my medicine cabinet while I was at work and pull out the Tylenol so I could see that she knew I was buying it without her approval. The monologue would either be that I am a drug addict or that she could buy it for less money with a coupon she would regularly clip from the newspaper thus saving this family money.
The emotional abuse, very subtle most of the time, took a life of its own…
There are so many scenarios and conversations and situations hinting that she was a self-absorbed narcissist, and I was being emotionally and mentally abused. But I just thought she was having a bad day, or that she was unhappy with her family, or that she was just momentarily angry with something I did…
I used to run three or four times a week after work. When the Narc discovered this, she informed me she was now joining me. And the run would now be a walk. We would make it to the end of the block. An argument would ensue. She would turn around and head back to my apartment and more times than not, I would run after her and apologize. Red flag?
Her job was to seek and destroy. If I liked it, she had to be a part of it and destroy it and then tell me how stupid it was.
I just could do nothing right.
If I loved something, she would hate it. If I hated something, she would love it. (Unless it strategically benefitted her). She hated watching the Yankees but called me a few days after meeting my parents. “We’re going to your parents’ house to watch the Yankee game with your father and then to their club for dinner. I’ll be over soon.”
“My father called you?”
“No, silly. I called them to see if they wanted to come over for dinner and he asked about coming to watch the game and the club.”
“You called my parents?”
“I was going to cook lasagna for them.”
The entire conversation reeked of desperation. And who does that? Called my parents? It flipped me out with anger. I said nothing, heard her say, “I thought you’d be happy. It’s not about you anymore. I’ll see you soon, Sweetie.”
And that was it. “It’s not about you.” I heard that often. I would think, “When was it about me?” And now I know. It was never about me. NEVER. Or rarely. Growing up? I was the youngest of three. It was usually about my sister. Not me. I knew when I heard those words… Red Flag! But she just kept on coming. Like a steamroller.
Everything I stood for — she stood for the opposite — and it got worse with time. Of course, in the beginning, to lure me in, she pretended that she was into all the things I was into… I thought she was authentic most of the time. But it turns out all the things we had “in common” were not true. She just pretended to like them so she would make my family and her family think that I was her soulmate. Red Flag? Ya think?
When she was sick, she was so unpleasant. She needed constant attention. For the record, to this day when I get sick, I keep it to myself. I do not want to bother anybody. Her? Can you sit with me? Can you make me a bowl of chicken soup? Can you bring me a warm washcloth? Can you…?
Or the countless times when we would go out in public with our kids and at the slightest disagreement or tantrum, she would get up, say, “I’m not doing this. We’re going home,” and would storm out of the supermarket, the restaurant, the ice cream shop, the toy store, the library, the bowling alley — throwing her own tantrum while leaving the kids and me behind and expecting us to follow her. I always followed her so as not to create an embarrassing scene, even though my kids were in tears begging her to stay. On the way back home, she would give everyone the silent treatment and when I would confront her about it, her response was always, “You always make everything about you.”
It’s like she had two personalities — one for home and one for outside of the home, which is what made things so confusing. I kept thinking, “Well, she’s capable of being a nice, caring human being, but I just need to figure out how to get her to be that way at home with me and our kids. It must be that I bring out the worst in her, so I’m not a good person.”
Come to find out, this is typical behavior of narcissists, and this makes this kind of abuse so difficult to explain to anyone — because who they see and who I see are so vastly different.
She was always on her best behavior with everyone else — sending flowers when someone died, sending gifts when someone was celebrating something, taking meals to our friends who had just had babies, and even volunteering at the boys’ school.
What made things even more confusing (I was almost always confused) is that she would say things like, “I would never leave you and I would never cheat on you and I would never lie to you,” followed by things like, “I’m not surprised her husband cheated on her. She’s always so frumpy,” or “I’m not surprised he divorced her because she’s such a bitch.”
This is known as cognitive dissonance — a tool narcissists used to keep you under a state of constant confusion.
I spent so much of my relationship feeling rejected, anxious, ugly, undesired, invalidated, guilty and feeling like there was something seriously wrong with me because if my wife, who is supposed to be my biggest cheerleader and the one person closest to me, if she doesn’t want to be with me, then why would anyone else?
Then, it was time for the discard
I learned recently that none of it is real when you’re in a relationship with a narcissist. The love is not real; the intimacy is not real; the commitment is not real. It is all an act so the narcissist can get what she wants and needs. And when she no longer wants it or needs it, she discards you, moves on, and finds a new person to manipulate.
And that is exactly what happened.
I felt betrayed. I felt unlovable. I felt confused. I felt sad. I felt angry.
I felt so much shame.
I felt discarded even before I knew that this is what they call this last stage.
I felt that I had given this woman everything to where I abandoned myself.
And that was the end of the discussion. And our marriage.
So, why didn’t I leave?
I didn’t leave because I thought every couple goes through this.
I didn’t leave because I was so used to being put down that it became my new normal.
I didn’t leave because the abuse happened so slowly that I didn’t know I was being abused.
I didn’t leave because I was adamant about keeping our family of four together and I didn’t want my kids to forever think “my dad wanted a divorce.”
I didn’t leave because I didn’t want my kids to come from a “broken” family.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to contribute to my kids’ ACE score. (An ACE score is a tally of different abuse, neglect, and other hallmarks of a rough childhood, divorce being one of them). According to the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, the rougher your childhood, the higher your score is likely to be and the higher your risk for later health problems.)
I didn’t leave because I did not know what she would say or do to our children, and since none of this was her fault, my kids would hate me and want nothing to do with me!
I didn’t leave because I never had time to breathe and take a step back and see the bigger picture.
I didn’t leave because I thought she would be more kind “any minute.”
I didn’t leave because I am loyal.
I didn’t leave because I had already invested 15 years in this relationship.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t know what abuse looks and feels like.
I didn’t leave because it implied that I failed.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to miss any of my children’s childhoods.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t want anyone to judge me.
I didn’t leave because I thought surely she must have a heart in there somewhere and I just needed to bring it out.
I didn’t leave because, by the time she was “done” with me, I was so sick and tired and overweight that I could not imagine figuring out a new life.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t have the strength.
I didn’t leave because I felt lost.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t respect myself.
I didn’t leave because I thought my intuition was wrong.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to be a divorce statistic.
But sadly, I became a Narcissistic Abuse Survivor statistic.
How I feel now
I’ve spent the last three years feeling completely broken — my soul, my spirit, my heart, my body, all of my being — so broken, in fact, that I’ve spent all of my time and money since then to get my life back and to feel normal again.
I’ve met with so many people to put me back together, to fix me. I’ve spoken with many doctors, specialists, energy healers, acupuncturists, therapists, and practitioners and took many online courses — but I still have a long road to recovery.
Plus, I had to pay her child support each month. Talk about unfairness! (Do you think she said to anybody when she was talking to anyone who would listen about how awful I was, that the court granted us a Co-parenting agreement which she disregarded or that I was paying child support?)
OK…
I’m on a road to recovery — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I know that I’m the only one who can truly fix me, but it feels nice to have a support team to lean on. My energy is coming back, the weight is coming off, my mystery symptoms are disappearing one by one.
But it’s a slow process.
I still don’t feel safe in the world, and being married to such darkness has forever changed me. I hope to one day be able to trust again — myself and others.
I was trying to explain to a friend what this whole “experience” feels like when you finally realize what has happened to you.
I have hesitated with this, but I said that I was going to be totally honest. It feels like she raped my soul. Over and over and over again. It has changed me forever.
I thought about this. I really thought about this. I’m a man. Like I know what it is to be raped? How can I possibly compare it to rape, but here’s how I see it:
When you are being raped, your physical body is being attacked and violated and the aftermath is emotional trauma and a life forever changed, among so many other horrible things.
When you are with a narcissist, your soul body and your emotional body and your mental body are being attacked and violated day after day after day and the aftermath is not only emotional trauma, but physical trauma as well because the emotional abuse often turns into physical dis-ease and un-ease.
It’s such an overwhelming and complicated ocean of emotions and I realize that, unless you have gone through it, it is unimaginable to understand how it feels.
Sometimes I feel like I was left me for dead in a terrifying hit and run, except I didn’t die. And she was the one who hit me. I was grossly disfigured, but somehow dragged my body back home and when I asked her why she hit me and left me for dead, she said, “It wasn’t my fault. Don’t blame me. Why were you out on the road trying to get hit?”
Realizing you’ve been abused by a narcissist feels like you are waking up from a nightmare.
I sometimes also compare life with her to a hurricane, an earthquake, or a tornado. One minute everything is peaceful, the next minute everything is chaotic and falling apart. She would create all these extremely tense and chaotic situations with me and our kids, then she would step away calmly and watch the chaos unfold. She was constantly getting a narcissistic supply from all the scenarios she created. It made her feel powerful to see that she could create so much chaos.
There are some things I didn’t understand
I didn’t understand how a woman can tell her husband she has no respect for him.
I didn’t understand how a woman can tell her husband her family hates him.
I didn’t understand how a woman can tell her husband he is a complete moron.
I didn’t understand how a woman can be so cruel to her husband yet be so kind towards complete strangers.
I didn’t understand how a woman can go through her life and try to deliberately destroy those closest to her husband, one by one.
I didn’t understand why my youngest child, now 18, supposedly asked his principal with his mother present, if he can divorce his dad, just like she did.
I didn’t understand how one person can destroy lives, but not be held accountable in any court of law. She was brought to court three separate times and told the judge she would return all my pre-marital property and comply with the Co-parenting agreement. She did neither, lied under oath, and got away with it. (Narcissists are hoarders. She had to keep my property because it was in her possession. She could not part with it).
There were so many things that I just didn’t understand, which is why I was so confused most of the time.
So now I understand — I was merely an “actor” in a staged production she was directing. With acts and scenes and intermissions and finales. And then the GRAND FINALE!
And so the play began!
Practicing gratitude
Sometimes I thank my body for shutting down on me because if I had I still been able to keep going, I would probably walk myself to an early grave.
But, mostly, I feel grateful because I think it would have taken me a lifetime to learn the lessons I learned in the last few years.
I am learning what it means to fall in love with myself.
I am learning how strong and resilient I am.
I am learning there is a purpose to all this pain.
And, most importantly, I am one step closer to finding myself.