Hi everyone, sorry for the long post. This may not sound like a big problem but those who have abusive family and friends know how difficult it is to break the cycle and to not lose the all the other mutual friends/family in the process. I have spent the whole afternoon crying everyday the past few days.
We are a group of about 7 ladies who know each very well, the kids are friends and the dads/husbands all know each other well too. Holidays have been had together over the last 4-5 years , plenty of meet ups etc.
It started with 2 ppl being neighbor's, the third being another school mum, the fourth being same church and so on, but now all know each other on an equal footing supposedly.
I was the one who invested a lot originally in bringing the group together as a cohesive unit as well.
I have been in a similar group before this one , which was in my 30s (I am now in 40s), pre-pandemic and there was one person who was a narc there too and made my life miserable, I eventually had to leave the group , as she had built up flying monkeys etc and I had to leave or die of exhaustion trying to be better.
Fast-forward to this group that started five-ish years ago, and bang same thing, one dominant narc, and I find myself doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the group over the last year esp. and getting very little respect from the narc who (of course) is the self appointed leader of the group, I thought i was handling it better but all I did really was stick my head in the sand, and hope it magically got better. I think she is teaching the others to disrespect me too, and there is some laughter behind my back, but I think the others are confused and misled by her a lot.
After educating myself a lot in the past 6 months with Dr Ramani videos, other books on narcissism , I did manage to learn a few things. I want to not run away this time - with all my soul , I want to solve this riddle.
Things I learnt -
- Yes Narcs exist. I have to fight myself to believe this , as I am religious and constantly trying to do good and believing that it is what others want to do in return as well. I am constantly naively shocked when people behave nastily despite giving my head a wobble all the time. They walk amongst us, call them narcs, or dark triad, or evil, or selfish. Accepting this made me so sad I was in denial for so long
- Narcs target empaths
- Narcs hold a lot of envy in them. Empaths naturally care and enjoy human company, they make many things look easy that don't come easily or naturally to narcs
I tried one last time after another 4 years of subtle undermining, targetting , bullying by my 'friend' narc - to make her understand how i felt - overworked (doing all the organising, paying at times, hosting, meal prep for meet ups etc , a lot of the time). Even though I know appealing to their empathy is supposed to never work.
Her answer basically was people who were in financial problems or other depressions in the group needed me to carry their load as well. She spoke for them, she was deciding who would do what and made it subtly clear to me that no one had time for 'anyone being difficult'.
She had decided that some people would need to contribute very little in terms of money time and effort and still be appreciated a lot, and vice versa - and that she held the power to decide this. She has built one or two of the vulnerable 'follow the leader, just want a good time' types into her supporters by now.
I feel God or the universe is giving me the same life lesson again and again, and till I learn and own the situation and deal with it, it will not go away.
I have as of last week left the phone group that the 8 of us were on - and have created a new one for an event I always do annually at mine - and have excluded the narc and one more person I felt did not bring anything positive to my life and was in the group to take / not share or build genuine friendships (and hence usually went along with the narc's ideas).
I had originally included the narc as well, for the event but after leaving the main standing WhatsApp group, I removed her from this event one , and had said I would add her to 'another group for similar event I was co planning' that had other people that were in the same charity community thing she was involved in.
It made not much sense, as obviously she would want to be in the one our friends were in and perhaps additionally in the other one not in lieu of. But for the first time I have tried the non truthful, manipulative, subtle, 'words don't match actions' , word salad, approach that narcs take - as apart from greyrocking, I think fighting them with their own games is the only way to extricate without open conflict. I am trying to play her own game back at her now.
So for the first time I have done something to detach from only her while retaining the other friends.
Please advise if have been in similar, what can I expect next from her? from those of you with lived experience ? Narcs do not give up power easily and she has bled me dry with hundreds of little paper cuts in the past 4 years so will she let me go peacefully?, especially knowing I havent run away per se from the whole group in fear, but intend to still have most of the others over in two months time - or do I now face the narc rage for excluding her? God help me.
I have to do this without hurting the DC network with the other DC's + I do not want this breaking up the dad's weekly dates or my family getting victimised in retribution and exclusion targetted at me if that makes sense.
Please help..... I am actually very scared ....I have never stood up to a narc in my whole adult life, I just run away when I can and start over