Living with a narcissist

[Abitwobblynow]

Is hard. Busy taking one day at a time whilst I work on myself and developing stability. He isn't horrible but he isn't available either.

Anyway, now that my eyes are opened, it is sad/interesting to see the mini-moments that announce his narcness, that I was so blind to before! If I see them, I can either set boundaries or self-soothe to stay calm.

Last weekend, he tells me he bought a Ferrari. *

So, phone rings (he is on a business trip). Telling me about his evening out with adoring female acolytes (he likes them best). I started telling him about two of our friends, who are having issues.

Silence, and then: well then. I must go.

I have come on so much. I used to be destroyed, now I feel vaguely sorry for him. It must be awful to be that empty.

*Don't worry. Whilst I did not cause him, cannot cure him and certainly can't control him, it went down on the list with all the other toys for misappropriation of marital assets when the time comes.

Garlic "I felt we had an understanding that surpasses words. Which is just as well, as he was absolutely shite with words. I thought he had some sort of affliction which, once I learned about Asperger's, fitted that description. I still think he has, but there's more to him than that." That rings some very loud bells! Even our relate counsellor suspected stbxh had Aspergers, but the wise folk of MN kept saying no, its NPD and EA. Whatever it is, its unbearable to live with, so the label doesn't matter anymore.

"If the sociopaths who shaped me have taught me anything, it's that this 'hole', my sadness, cannot be filled with anything or anyone external to myself." That's going on my wall somewhere!

Lueji, yes I've had that, sometimes I would say "why do you think anyone would care about what you were doing, do you really think you are that interesting to other people? No-one will even notice.

He insisted we have net-type blinds at all the windows in case people want to look in - when I opened them to let more light in he would go round closing them all. I asked if he ever looked into other peoples' houses and saw anything. Of course he didn't (that would require being interested in something other than himself!).

He said he thought we might be burgled if we let people see in because they might see that we have a computer and a TV like 99% of other homes WTF?!

That's an interesting observation garlic - my ex could be very very generous - but required the recipient to be very grateful. I remember we gave a wedding present to friends, it was a generous gift and something they really needed, they wrote a lovely letter thanking us. Over the years he would mention how they never really showed their gratitude for his generosity . But then there would be simple things that he simply wouldn't do, like giving a friend a lift to the airport - not a glamorous enough gesture which would gain him enough adoration perhaps?

I'm a bit behind on posts here (I seem to be a bit behind with life in general at the mo..) but DoingItForMyself and your H blankly going along with divorce: my ex used to always, without fail, give me the opposite of what I wanted. To the point that if I wanted the kids back late I'd ask him to bring them back early (and early/late) and it worked every single time. Your H knows you want an honourable process to mark the end of something significant and he won't give it to you, pretending (??) that the end of your marriage is workaday, nothing to get het up about.

Even though my ex was as dark as night and I couldn't wait to get shot of him, in the courtroom when the vile judge archly asked him 'do you want to be divorced from this woman?' (and the entire courtroom erupted with laughter - not a fine moment for me) and he whipped out his checkbook and with a flourish wrote a cheque (from his exclusive, tiny bank for v rich people) for £40 which ended our marriage, I felt unbelievably shit. yy the vile judge (who fancied him) purposely humiliated me but what hurt the most was that our marriage was over. Doesn't make any sense does it but even though he hadn't valued our marriage at all, I had; and it hurt very much that it was over and had failed.

great post garlic

Thank you.

even though he hadn't valued our marriage at all, I had; and it hurt very much that it was over and had failed. - It does hurt, doesn't it. Not so much the end of the doubts & fears, but the ending of your belief that you could love him enough to fix it. It felt like failure, when I knew our wedding guests had opened a book on our lasting six months (!) and I privately knew I'd gone against my own instincts to marry him. All that determined effort: failed. Although we know, damn fine, it's wise to stop throwing good love into a black hole, we still have to grieve for our misplaced hopes I think.

I don't know if I wanted to 'love him enough to fix it' tbh, I just wanted my marriage to erm not fail. I wanted to be married and for it to work. I expected difficult times but I didn't want the final result to be that it plain didn't work and we (I) had to call it a day.

There was one flaw though: I married a narc.

Interesting, Springy! With apologies, Wobbly, for consistently derailing your thread ...

I wanted it to work and expected difficult times. But I didn't "want to be married" as such. Does not being married bother you now? If so, may I ask why?

X2 told me he wanted to be married. I heard this as "I want to be A Married Man and, since you're not playing Wife as I wish, I'm going to find someone else to marry." Which he did within the year. Am I missing something important here? With him, I reckoned he meant the social and financial benefits conferred by marriage (funny in a self-professed rebel), but your using the same words makes me wonder if there's something else attached to the institution, which I have failed to see.

Don't bother answering if you don't want to, obv.

I have been watching this thread with interest, I haven't been happy for a long time. I could never say it was an awful marriage but it was empty of affection. Lots of words were said and I felt I was always wrong. I have been considering a lot the last few days, especially as we have 2 DDs. Last night I realised I couldn't bring myself to sleep with him and the half made decision that has been forming over a few months became reality and he called it off. He actually thought I was having a affair! I feel empty today, but that's not new. He is an amazing father so I hope. This can continue in an amicable way.

Sorry to offload.

Garlic, for me I think it was coming from a background where divorce happened to 'other people', its more that I wanted a long happy marriage like my DM & DF had. Although there were tough times, they loved each other and also worked together everyday, so to me that model of marriage was what I wanted.

H & I did work together for a few years and those were the happiest times I remember, as it felt like I had everything then. We didn't get on brilliantly in our personal life, but at work we were a good team, so it seemed to balance out.

Neither of my DBs have divorced and only one of my friends has split up with the dads of her 3 DCs, everyone else is still 'living the dream'. I feel like I have failed at providing a stable home to my DCs

My DS1 said in the beginning that some of his friends' parents were divorced and he didn't want to be torn between two places and having to uproot his life each time. That's how I felt about it - I didn't want my DCs coming from a 'broken home' I wanted a normal loving family with mum, dad and kids all living happily together.

But as Springy says "There was one flaw though: I married a narc."

Attila, at least if he is a great dad you can rest assured that he will do everything to ensure that they are ok, which means treating you with respect. Keep reminding him of that fact if things get tricky.

When you say that "he called it off" do you mean your marriage? I would say that he can sense that you are mentally detaching and is just grasping at straws to come up with a reason that he can still call the shots.

I'm just starting to realise that how it happens isn't really important (if stbxh wanted to cite MY unreasonable behaviour i.e. expecting him to participate in family life, crying when he abused me etc. to allow a divorce, I would, just to get the end result).

If it makes him feel better to blame you, then maybe you'll have to take that hit to be able to walk away (add it to the past few years of neglect and lack of love, ready to dump it all when the time comes and move on.)

Doingit snap. When my exH disappeared to Thailand, and I eventually found a mobile number for him out there, I sent him a text saying 'please agree to a divorce, for the sake of our son. At least do this one thing for us',

He texted back: 'I agree. I say yes to divorce' ! He clearly thought that he was doing me a hefty favour, like a Medieval King granting freedom to some thick stinking serf, by being so reasonable. In fact, he'd abandoned the pupils he was teaching during a crucial year in this country, abandoned me and his 6 month old son, abandoned two young daughters by his exp, thieved all our savings, left me with a ten grand overdraft and was shacked up with a Burmese woman having spent three months in Cambodia shagging whores before lying his way into a teaching job in north Thailand. Looking back, his text reply is absolutely hilarious.

They really are a ridiculous, pompous, vacuous breed of losers.

He also said he wanted his cookery books back.

what a prize tosser!

Hehe UV about the cook books, but shows more interested in something crap like a cook book (or rice cooker) than their ds

Ex thought he was amazing cook and controlled everything bought and cooked.

He'd also be starting a new buisness every other week and design new websites for each one!

On one of his latest websites he he sitting meditating in mind air with a ball of light in each palm! This he is how he sees himself, like Budda or possible Satan? Looks more like a first class pillock!

at your H's behaviour and attitude Unlikely!

Seaofyou, I'm worried now as I'm working on new business ideas/websites - does that mean I've become one of them ?!?!

My stbxh never cooked but always had to have something slightly different to everyone else (he'd have to have his own salad with stuff none of us liked, or add chillis or leave off the carbs) just to point out that whatever I'd spent ages making didn't quite live up to his high standards. I should have realised early on when he told me that his ex had cooked him some fish and he'd thrown it at the wall shouting "I'm not eating frozen f*ing fish". He thought this was quite funny, but it should have set the alarm bells ringing for me.

Half the stuff I cook is from the freezer, but now if he wants to spend every day at the shops buying himself fresh food he can! I've got more interesting things to do. Like meditating in mind air (wtf?!)with balls of light in my hands ....

Where's Wobbly gone - have we nudged you out of your own thread Wobbles? Sorry for all the derailing, its just a great thread for like-minded people. x

Springy the pain of that courtroom scene just wrung my heart. Your emotional honesty and that you are a good woman just springs through.

If you had to do it all over again, would you still do it? What would you do differently?
And, the seminal moment - when did you realise? [That emotionally you had nothing]. What was the straw?

My problem is that he simply isn't bad enough to do anything, and do I derail life, simply because I am not, never have been and never will be loved the way I longed for? My lovely children are wonderful and I know I try to be the best parent I can to them. He has arranged his life that we live long distances apart for long periods of time, so why blow it up.

I continue to work on the inner hole in MYSELF that Garlic refers to. Accepting and mourning, and developing myself. Learning to like myself, give myself to friends (hard for me), put energy into the world and stopping sabotaging myself. It simply is no longer about him or the m anymore.

I should clarify that by the time I left him I had done a lot of work around codependency and, once I realised at least some part (MY part) of why I was addicted to him (because addiction it is) there was nothing left and I could leave him, leave the marriage.

I am forgetting though, over 25 years later, how much I loved him. So much water has gone under the bridge that it is easy to forget that bit. I loved him with my whole heart, he was the love of my life. I say that because, although he was an empty shell, we had a great rapport (such a lame word for a marriage eh) which has never been equalled, to this day. Maybe he displayed all the abuse I had so far experienced in my primary family - definitely that - but intellectually we were a match. ach, marriages are complex, no?

Yes I do regret not being married, not having built a lasting marriage. I am surrounded by people who have done that, taken a lot of shit along the way, probably, and somehow battled on through. It is better for the children of the marriage. I do still believe in marriage but whether that's grass is greener stuff I don't know. I do still mourn that marriage, that it didn't work, that I chose someone who was incapable of working through difficulties and, essentially, never loved me at all.

I should clarify that by the time I left him I had done a lot of work around codependency and, once I realised at least some part (MY part) of why I was addicted to him (because addiction it is) there was nothing left and I could leave him, leave the marriage.

I am forgetting though, over 25 years later, how much I loved him. So much water has gone under the bridge that it is easy to forget that bit. I loved him with my whole heart, he was the love of my life. I say that because, although he was an empty shell, we had a great rapport (such a lame word for a marriage eh) which has never been equalled, to this day. Maybe he displayed all the abuse I had so far experienced in my primary family - definitely that - but intellectually we were a match. ach, marriages are complex, no?

Yes I do regret not being married, not having built a lasting marriage. I am surrounded by people who have done that, taken a lot of shit along the way, probably, and somehow battled on through. It is better for the children of the marriage. I do still believe in marriage but whether that's grass is greener stuff I don't know. I do still mourn that marriage, that it didn't work, that I chose someone who was incapable of working through difficulties and, essentially, never loved me at all.

bleak thought: as narcs learn to imitate with astonishing accuracy, perhaps the love of my life was with myself.

You gotta laugh

oh bum, double trouble

Oooh Springy, that's very deep.

But Springy, that is totally right - the person he reflected, was you yourself.

They imitate the traits you have, in order to reel you in. Then they destroy all those good traits because they despise your goodness compassion empathy and, in so many ways, complexity; they are simplistic toddlers with no depth. So yes, they reflect you back at first, like a mirror.

Those reflections, in you, are real. The real you.

But they are faking those same traits. And they can't keep the faking up. Eventually they show their true colours.

You have all heard of Idealise Devalue and discard haven't you. It is exactly what they do - sometimes over a horribly long period of time, sometimes shorter (in my case we were together seven years but he had started to implode and go all 'wrong' allowing the real him to emerge, at least two years before he did the runner.

Btw, they really do think they're in 'love' when they first do the idealising bit. And we think they are because they genuinely look like they are and sound like they are - they're all very good actors in the beginning.

But they're not of course.

And Ithink they're full of self-loathing too - they hate, on some level, the fact that they can't love, not really love, that they can only enjoy seedy sex and animal fucks, that they enjoy being cruel and shallow. They try to get over that by starting all over again - with a new maiden to idealise and so they repeat the pattern on and on.

sorry if a bit rambling. watching Murray!

I'm watching Murray too and there's no way I could come up with a post like that Unlikely!

actually, this match is a bit too unbearable to watch. I'm finding allsorts to distract me

I hate hate HATE what the divorce has done to my kids. People think it's fine, all that to-ing and fro-ing, going to dad's/mum's wedding (my ds broke down at his dad's wedding and it was apparently embarrassing so everyone ignored him/shut him up sharpish. I needed to be there to comfort him!) but it so isn't.

yy there are shit marriages around and, of course, especially if you're married to a narc you have to get out to save your life (and the kids' lives) and some marriages are so miserable, even without a narc, it's better to be out of it altogether. But it sticks in my craw how easily people get out of marriages sometimes, esp when there are kids involved.

Murray is cracking up a storm after the break! I always seem to get my sayings just a bit wrong on MN

Its so hard for them isn't it springy. DS was complaining last night that he has to be so organised taking things back and forth, figuring out whose house he'll be at and what homework he needs where. Poor little love. I went out today and bought them some extra school uniform so that they can leave some clothes at stbxh's house to save one hassle, but its not fair.

A friend who visited yesterday had a good idea - that the DCs always stay here and myself & H are the ones who have to move back and forth! It could be like a bolt-hole flat where I go for a couple of nights a week - not sure about the bedding situation though, or coming home to find my toilet seat up and covered in piss and the washing up piled high!

Quite a novel idea though, maybe one for the future when/if we are able to be in the same room as each other without me wanting to punch him in the face.

I've heard that idea before DIFM. It would make sense but you'd need 3 properties in all, which not that many people can stretch to really.

There is the idea that the divorced\separated parents could 'share' a property when they're not staying at the 'children's house'. But let's not get silly.

Think that was what was being suggested Springy, which I can see being a very sensible option, but emotionally quite tricky.

One to put on my "when I win the lottery" list I think - one house for the kids, lovely penthouse apartment for me and crappy bedsit for stbxh!