NPD / Abusive partner - Recovery thread

[IseeGraceAhead]

These threads were started last year by therealme though I gather there were excellent predecessors.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a diagnosable condition on the continuum of Personality Disorders. Few Narcissists are diagnosed, however: a person must either present themselves for treatment or be sectioned to ensure diagnosis. Narcissists are very clever, they generally avoid compulsory referral. Narcissists believe They Are Right & Everybody Else Is Wrong; they will never seek treatment as they find themselves perfectly fine!

Common misconceptions:

[1] You can't call someone NPD if they haven't a diagnosis. Diagnosis is unlikely for the reasons above. Even Narcissists agree it's reasonable to determine a personality type as NPD (see links in first post). If you are in a relationship with a Narc, you don't need to be a clinician to know.

[2] He's got Aspergers or BPD, or is just a bit shit at dealing with people. Really? The obvious question is: why would you want to devote your life to someone like this? On a more technical note: emerging evidence, via biopsychology, suggests that Asperger and NPD brains exhibit similar differences from the average brain. And BPD is the baseline for all other Personality Disorders.

[3] S/He isn't "bad", they're just very hurt. Yes, they are very hurt. The more insight you gain into this spectrum, the more pain you feel for the sufferer. If you have a Narc parent, it's almost a given that you've gained tremendous insight - it was a necessity for your survival. The important thing is, YOU are not the same or you wouldn't be reading this. And understanding does NOT mean you can fix it.

[4] S/He just needs loving care. Yes, they do. They need it like a junkie needs heroin. You can keep on giving, they'll keep on taking and it will never be enough to satisfy them. Never. They'll suck you dry (emotional 'vampire') and then they'll rip you to shreds, just because you 'ran dry'.

[5] I get that s/he's abusive, but why say they've got a Personality Disorder? There's a spectrum of disorders: some are more 'needy'; some more 'domineering'; some are just fucking strange. At bottom, they're no more or less than deviations from the average. Nobody would choose a disordered realtionship unless they suffer from a need to be their partner's therapist. If this is you, try reading some of the links below.

MH sending you strength for the sake of your DCs. Find a solicitor if you don't have one go through WA if you need a referral. Try to sort out the legal stuff as logically as possible.

This sort of BS leaves you feeling like a burst balloon.

xxx

RANT ALERT

Do you know what really Fucks me off, and i never swear!

That fucking bitch came into my family she fucked us all about for her fucking issues to be relived through my INNOCENT children, she enabled a fucking shit to fuck with us for her pleasure, acting like a fucking victim, all the while sucking the fuck out of us, emotionally and financially, and now the fucking bitch is probably refusing to allow his fucking massive bonus as she fucking probably views it as her fucking money now they are married, yet the fucking bitch, didn't mind me and him wasting fucking tens of thousands out of our pot on fucking pointless fucking court fucking cases due to her fucking interfering....

I a fucking livid... fucking bitch and fucking bastard, fuck fuck fuck

I have fucking had enough of being quiet and fucking swallowing their shit to hurt the kids through me to fucking ease their fucking guilt, I fucking hope hell exists and they fucking end up there... fucking nasty bastards!

Maths I can't aford one anymore, I am up to my eye balls in debt, that is a months salary for her, and is impossible for me to clear at the moment!

I feel like a weight has been lifted for that rant, I am sorry if I offended anyone!

I can't live this sodding life, there is never going to be any sodding let up ever is there!

He is never going to stop, I thought he had enough and had moved on for fun else where, he never is going to, I am a life long toy to play with for him, I will never be able to hide and be free!

Do you think if I show him I am changed and he can't have that toy any more, that he will leave me alone, I was the best toy, so bloody nieve and manuable for him all that time, to play his evil games and then he got myra hindleys evil twin to use her psychology and up the game... I am going to be their link, their sick game for life... ways to hurt and destroy mummiehunnie!!! what can we do now....

She was there with him when he first threatened to destroy me, her and her mother, who used the abuse her father and other men had done to them as ways to destroy me, the fucking warped shits...

None of you will know what the hell I was going on about there, I really badly needed a rant... sorry for taking up internet space with the issue!

I will swallow this crap as I always do, I will go along for their games.

I foolishly hoped that he would turn on her, and leave me alone eventually, it looks like they will last as he will never turn on her as I will be the forever scapegoat, and they will live happily ever after... I hoped that she would get what she wanted and one day she would see the man, it looks like she likes living with evil and gets off on it,what a perfect couple, two evils together, thank heaven the children have no more to do with them!

Hi everyone,

I've been looking for this thread

I haven't had a chance to read through yet or to follow the links, but I will.

I have recently split from my XP and I have never been so scared in all my life. I thought that living with him was bad enough but actually leaving him has proved to be 10 times worse, not my actual day to day living conditions, they are greatly improved. But I feel like he's there at every turn throwing more shit at me and that he won't stop until he completely destroys me

I am so afraid for my DC and really would appreciate any help and advice about the best way to handle my ex and the situation, and the best ways to protect my DC.

There just seems to be so much I don't understand about his behaviour and I hoped that by educating myself about NPD I would be in a stronger position to take care of my DC and myself. As they say, forewarned is forearmed (I think )

Decided to bump. Not only because of several relevant threads currently active, but also because I've just been watching Russell Brand on TV!

If you haven't seen these threads before, please check the first page and follow the history links. They might help you make sense of what's happening to your life.

russell brand? hmmn NPD? a lot of celebs are i think.

here's what i've been thinking /found about NPD.

it's on the rise apparently. studies of students in the 70s compared to studies of students now show a massive increase in N traits.

Ns are 'happy' 99.9 percent of the time.the only thing that would make them crack is being locked alone in an empty room - but how likely is a person to encounter this in normal everyday life?

some experts say it's all to do with wounds in childhood. others say its a genetic / biological difference.

when my ex left it felt i was cut off so easily. i thought some regret or patching up of contact on some level would follow. even though the N had left me (for someone else) they were still dramatic about it - the were suffering / i was still the one / they might come back. of course this was not to be. i was devalued and a new narc supply source found.

this gets me wondering - is it really the N who has the problem? perhaps Ns have evolved to cope with life better? perhaps the rise in Ns shows humans adapting to environment? it seems a very effective coping strategy. i mean who wouldn't want to be 'happy' 99.9 percent of the time and resillient to any rejection / criticism? okay they cause damage in their wake. but only because we are capable of being damaged.

it's not a thought i like to think but it's where my logic has got me.

perhaps Ns have evolved to cope with life better? ... it seems a very effective coping strategy.

Narcissists would agree with you! And, yes, they are adapted to the 'top dog' role; they need it for a sense of validity. The rest of us don't need that - we have greater inner resources. 'Normal' folk can feel worthwhile through creative satisfaction, meaningful relationships, etc. Ns crave power & adulation, making them more reliant on others for validation. Without an audience, Narcissus ceases to exist. That's not strength, it's dependence.

Even self-proclaimed/self-acclaimed narcissist Brand wishes he had inner peace and a meaningful relationship. Everything he said about getting married revolved around how he hopes Katie will change him. Pathetic really.

you are very right AgeingGrace. i guess i have to accept that even if narcissism is beneficial to the N i am not a N and therefore i have to learn to protect myself from them / manage them when unavoidable (work).

would i want to live life without empathy? no.

i didn't realise brand was a self-proclaimed n. i was just reading something about freddie mercury today and that sounded very n also.

my ex had some minor celebrity. when we first met i suspect my job held some status that was attractive. however my 'success' soon became a threat. after we split friends told me that when they were asking me something about something interesting i'd done she would literally stand infront of me with her back to me and start talking about herself! i didn't notice this at the time - just thought she was life and soul of the party.

she found a higher status model and was off. i think the new partner is also a narcissist - i believe this match can work if they are different types of narc?

i did think it was odd how she would frequenlty repeat things i'd said to her the rest of the group as if they were her own thoughts. at the time i thought it was a compliment because she must have thought they were funny / clever enough to repeat.

also the lying all the time about achievements. just totally blatant.

it was the public putdowns and abuse that were most horrible. and just the ability to change emotion (i now realise it wasn't real emotion) from idealizing you to treating yo like total shit.

I'm not sure if they're really adapted that well to life. Eventually they will run out of people to mesmerise and I think most of them are actually quite stressed a lot of the time. ExH recently took me to court alleging I had infringed his parenting rights -- his story, that he stuck to through some questioning by the judge, is that I blame him for the bad things that are happening to the children (house on the market, we will have to move to a rented place, leave nice garden and convenient neighbourhood, etc). He actually stated as fact in open court that I do all this. Of course it is all projection. He feels bad in some way that the house is for sale (he should because he is the one who insisted on it) but to hear him tell it, the fact that the two oldest DCs now don't speak to him is my fault as apparently I tell them their father's role in all of this. He is so sure that he can hear what I say to the DCs that he (a lawyer by trade) stated this as fact, in a court. I marvel that someone could stand up in a room full of intelligent people and say all this with a completely straight face to a judge who shows no sign whatsoever of being slow of mind.

Actually, DD1 doesn't speak to him because he was violent towards her back when she was 15 (plus she came across a lot of his secrets on the computer); DS won't speak to him since exH lost his temper over New Years when DS didn't want to go to some afternoon open house party at exH's gf's place, threatened to have him arrested if he stepped out of exH's home, and threatened DS that I would be arrested if DS showed up at home. DS doesn't take kindly to threats against me and has now lost all respect for his dad. To exH, this simply can't be. He has lied about DS and the whole situation to the judge too. Apparently the bad feeling is DS's fault because as he is 'in a funk' because:
Version A -- he has been turned down by colleges to which he has applied.
Version B -- he hasn't yet heard from colleges to which he has applied and his friends have had offers.
The two versions (neither factual of course) were trotted out in that order on the two separate dates we have stood in front of the judge. In addition, DS is apparently not a serious student. (DS has decent results, not the stallar grades DD1 got, but he is a very high 'average').

DS has high hopes of being accepted in the college he wants, and pursuing studies and activities that will lead to a career in flying. There is no funk. I kind of wish there was, as he has been very blithe about the whole college application process, in contrast to DD1's dogged determination a few years ago. But that is a reflection of different personalities.

He feels stress, but he doesn't deal with it in a healthy way. He blames and he is aggressive enough to file motions of contempt, lose time at work to attend court hearings, make a fool of himself in front of his peers... It has to be stressful to go around with adrenaline constantly flooding your system due to your persecution complex, paranoia, and when general bad temperedness is your way of controlling people. It takes more energy to be angry and I believe it takes a toll on your body. If exH wasn't a compulsive runner (and I believe anorexia plays a part in this too) I think he would have had a heart attack by now.

The narc I was married to also had anxiety issues, and maybe some kind of form of ocd, he would count things down and break various things down into chunks that I have not known anyone else do. If he was at the supermarket he would actually shake to beat the cashier, where as I am not competing with the cashier. I found my exh used to compete a great deal, and was only interested in people he could beat, his only friends were people that he knew from uni, that he lived with and then went on to emply, he had no friends and was incapable of making any all his friends during our marriage was via me, and he then thanked me by cheating with my two of my so called friends, and would then blame me for not having the right friends and he would not socialise with the wrong sort in his mind, and attack me for not making him any friends as I was always good at friend making, I made poor choices in friends though .

I think various narc's have various happiness, I don't think the exh was that happy actually in general, his delusion allowed him to distort and rewrite reality to make life more comfortable for him which gave him happiness imho! I agree masses of projection goes on!

I can only hope that with all that distortion he constantly does in order to preserve his own spotless purity, he will eventually find he has completely painted himself into a corner and has no more people to blame, no more fingers to point at others. I think that's where gaslighting comes in though -- denial of reality is their get out of jail card (that corner they're painted into). there's no rhyme or reason to their mental processes. That's why it does a normal, rational person's head in when you try to engage with them.

ExH used to get really angry and irritate at the supermarket. Nobody could bag the groceries fast enough and nobody could say a pleasant good morning without being greeted with a huffy look or a snippy reply. The cashiers were all of course people of a lower status than he imagined he was. Two times out of three, he would come home from the supermarket having forgotten a bag or two at the cashier station. I think it was because he used to get so irritated by the experience of waiting in line with everyone else and then having the cashier do exactly the same with his groceries as she did with everyone else's, plus anxiety about the cost of everything and impatience about the bagging process if it wasn't a self-bag place. When he would get home and I would ask where's half the stuff you went out for, he would first get really angry with me for pointing out some of the list hadn't made it home, then curse the cashiers or baggers, then go back and find his bag(s) waiting for him, kindly put aside by the cashier.. Everything was so much flipping drama. I don't miss that one bit.

actually you are so right about the anger / rages / drama. tbh i'd forgotten about how awful that was (split was best part of a decade ago). my ex used to go bright red with rage over things that i would have let go by me. there was always some enemy / competitor at work and i would be regaled with in depth detailed stories of how terrible this person was / how great ex was.

sometimes she would fly into rages at complete strangers.

she did have a large circle of friends audience. but it would always puzzle me how she would be surprised at important things happening in their lives that i had discovered from a 10 minute chat with them and she didn't even realise that was going on.

i'd be interested in knowing how other people reacted to their narc / whether you think you were / are attracted to narc personalities and if so where you think that attraction comes from / how it can be dealt with.

I can answer, Smashing, and I bet many would say the same. I found him a challenge. There was a stillness about him at times - these days I'd call it sullenness, but back then I'd have called it something like mystery or depth. He has a rare, sudden smile that's quite beautiful. Without even realising what I was doing, I started working for that smile.

He showed his rage early on. I handled it calmly - with dignity, I thought. I should have known that no-one ever has the right to rage at me like that - not for anything, let alone being late for a date at Piccadilly Circus! But I'd been trained. Thanks to my psychopath dad and narcissistic mother, the one and only thing I could be cure of was my ability to handle difficult people. It was my mission in life - and I never knew it.

After ten eyars of therapy, I haven't finished yet. The first and longest part was getting to know myself, and understanding what had been happening in my life - repeatedly. The next bit was about learning what's 'normal' and how to set my boundaries. It would be fair to say I had practically no boundaries of my own, but was very anxious to respect parameters set for me by the nutters who surrounded me. Mumsnet has been, and is, tremendously valuable in this respect. The latest part, which will take some time, is learning to love & respect myself: I find compassion for others much easier than self-compassion. But I know, now, that as I develop self-compassion I will become wiser and more genuinely kind.

I've come to realise that I still haven't learned to live without the adrenaline cycle that perpetuates abuse. I'm pretty much abusing myself (!!) so as to stay locked in. I need a therapist to help me work through this but, for now, am trusting in self-knowledge and self-compassion to smoothe out the peaks & troughs. I am aware that a lifetime of adrenalin overload is what's caused my present illness - it's basically PTSD. I am determined. I've never lived fully free, and I want that before I die!

I've found this very hard to write. I hope at least some of it makes sense to you :)

wow AgeingGrace that post makes so much sense to me actually it's made me feel a bit teary out of relief of recognition.

when i first got with my OH i really wasn't over the ex and i entered the relationship blind of my own dynamic. my current ex needed a lot of 'rescuing' (the details of which i won't go into here for fear of recognition). however i think i needed a bit of 'rescuing' too and i think that fueled our getting together in many ways. luckily he is not a narc but he has had mental health issues (treated and diagnosed) - PTSD, depression / anxiety.

like you i am very good with difficult people. it serves me well in my work. however when it comes to personal relationships i wonder why i have been attracted to such. there has been a lot of drama in my life and yet colleagues always say how i'm so calm and collected (i keep the drama for home!). i've got into a cycle of dramatic rows from time to time with my partner and i'd like not to fear those rearing up because they make me feel out of control and scared (of rejection / upheaval / my own feelings).

on a positive note i've been trying to be mindful and so is OH and we have managed to have a calm weekend (with just a slight bicker on friday that was both our faults but patched it up)

if you don't mind me asking, how are you abusing yourself at them moment?

sorry i should have said my current partner not my current ex - must remember to proof on this site (where's the edit button when you need it?)

btw the boundary thing is SO true. i have no boundaries. i can make them up but they are so easily broken they might as well not be there. it's lucky that my current partner is more respectful (although there have been couple of times of wall punching, name calling, shouting where i wonder how a 'normal' person would react - i find it hard to imagine a relationship where there are never arguments like this, do they really exist?). however i'm terrified of things ever turning bad and me not knowing how to manage that. i say i would get out but would i really?

sorry for yet another post but mathanxiety i wanted to say thankyou for sharing that. makes me feel stressed just reading about your ex. he must have some high levels of adrenaline going on and all that need to be top dog and the best and never wrong. you kind of just want to say 'chillax' if it wasn't so serious.

I haven't read the entire thread, and apologies if I'm just blundering in, but I thought it might be a good idea to have somewhere to talk.

I just looked at the Emotional Abuse link and it was pretty much all of it word for word written about the man I pretty unceremoniously deposited at the airport last week.

OK so I'm feeling less god-awfully, monumentally stupid for having been with him for 10 years, having a son with him etc. I cried a bit that day, and the next, but mostly due to the kindness shown to me by friends in RL, on here and Twitter.

In the 45 minutes of car journey to the airport, I literally had the entire spectrum of manipulation/intimidation tactics hurled at me, from gas lighting as we were leaving the parking bay outside my home, to threats on the M25, and blaming me for not having slept with him when I had the chance, and it therefore being my fault that the situation is not resolved. In the end when he started up again as the bags were being loaded onto trolleys, I couldn't face any more, literally said Have a Good Flight, turned on my heels and got into my car and came home.

I'm beginning to realise that he has gone, that the feeling of dread when I know his key will turn in the lock is no longer going to happen, and that I don't have to worry about a cup left out, or what have you.

He still wants to talk to me, after he speaks to DS, but I usually make excuses and/or hang up. It's all excuses, ways to blame me/involve me in what has taken place that is out and out mean. I know he'll try and talk me round if I let him, and I just don't want that.

Early days, have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. I have the book Why does He Do That, I'm scared to read it tbh, I don't know if it'll help me or hinder. Is that mad to say?

I am finding it so hard to believe consistently that he really is an abuser, that he really is mad and not a good person to have in my life. Some part of my head is still apologising for him, and when I remind myself that this person is not normal, not like people are supposed to be, that apologist part is shocked and I feel mean thinking that of him..

Is this something that will pass?

WELL DONE, LMHF! :) :) :)

Yes, the 'hooks' stay in for quite a while. He spent ten years undermining your trust in yourself, even your own thoughts & the evidence of your own senses. It takes time to recover. This forum helps. Do read the book! It really helps you to identify, name and clarify what happened to you.

Be good to yourself. x