The hurt after realising you were with a narcissist.

[Fightingback16]

Is it normal to be hurting so much. Since the shock has been wearing off and it’s taken 2 years the past few days I have been feeling so hurt and down.

To realise that all the feelings you had all along and was 10 years for me. The lack of connection you felt and was told that was my fault and I tried endlessly to get one but just thought I must be damaged was all him.

It was all him….I feel so betrayed and completely alone in my memories in my head, my poor former self what did he do to her, it is so sad. And now I feel it all, all the things I felt but never understood.

I've been where you are. I get it. I'm glad it makes sense to you.

Stick to thinking of him as an old prawn. If nothing else, it'll bring you a wry smile

While I think of it, the one line 'How to have healthy boundaries lesson' is this:

If somebody does something that makes you feel bad, tell them, and if they keep doing it, even though they know it makes you feel bad, leave them.

That's it. You can find reams and reams of stuff on boundaries, but it's all there in that line. It is particularly important to note that there is no mention whatsoever of whether you are right or wrong to feel bad about the person's action. That's because your feelings are right, 100% of the time, for YOU.

Good luck, and enjoy your power!

You know what I find the hardest and what wobbles my brain the most is the disparity between who I am, well who I’m getting to know and the person in my memories. I don’t really recognise the person in my memories, it’s almost like I have another identity inside that isn’t me.

I hope that doesn’t make me sound mad, I don’t actually have a different personality or hear voices but that person is not me and it feels very disconnected.

I hope that doesn’t make me sound mad

There it is. That's where you need to apply the 'I AM NORMAL' thing.

You are having normal reactions to abnormal treatment.

It's absolutely standard to feel that you've changed, or that one part of you thinks a different thing from another part of you. I promise you, you are textbook. Nothing weird or mad at all.

Have you had a google of what narcissists do, and how it affects people? There's lots of videos on YouTube.

Yes ive had a google, quite a bit really and although I do understand it I do not like feeling like this. There is a different person inside me who did different things to what I would have done. To my memories I literally would have told him to go f**k himself the weirdo instead I have person inside who literally collapsed to the floor crying and begging. I do not like my memories at all although I totally understand why they happened and why I reacted in that way.

Plus I have to live with the feelings of what happened. I have to live with the abortion and how it made me feel and how for years I was very depressed after but never acknowledged it. I get to carry all the shame which I guess he wanted me to carry. Yes I did those things in order to survive but it hurts an awful lot.

@TheFoundations your comments here are amazing! So right. It's a huge comfort to read as I think I may have just had my brush (9 months) with a narcissist.

@Fightingback16 I'm so sorry you've been through this. You must feel so confused. It's almost easier to believe his version because it means there might be some sense to what happened, but there isn't. You are SO brave for doing what you've done. You have it in you to recover. But now you have every right to feel pain.

I do think that narcissists (and the other cluster b cluster-fucks) are absolutely amazing. Not in a good way, obviously. They seem to me to be a different species. I mean, really, we're all the same, most of us. We have really predictable patterns, like, OP, your difficult childhood having the results it's had, and everything else we do, like, if somebody insults us we hurt or get angry/if somebody says they love us we feel a bit squidgy/if somebody spills a drink on us, we feel a mixture of pissed off and sympathy for the other person (because it feels horrible to spill your drink on someone) Everyone is roughly the same.

Cluster Bs are all the same too, but different from us. It's often said that they must have a rule book somewhere, or a script they've all learned from, because they're disturbingly similar. They're so clever that they can manipulate perfectly sane and intelligent people into doing things that are wildly out of character. They manufacture pain that stays in their victim's life for much longer than they do themselves.

The only reason they can do it is because we, the victims, think we are faulty. When they hurt us, we don't say 'You hurt me - stay away from me', we say 'You hurt me - but perhaps I'm wrong to be hurt?'

You are still hurt, OP. It's a bit like a broken leg; however much you want it to be healed, you still can't take the plaster cast off until it's better. It's a long and tedious wait. Do everything you can to support your healing, and allow the process its time.

You will come out the other side. It takes ages, I know, but one of the big steps is when you stop just feeling shit, and start getting really really fed up with feeling shit. You've almost had enough of this tedious recovery, now, and so, naturally, you will leave it behind soon. Try to see the fact that you've had enough of the recovery process as a good sign. You are moving on.

No shame. You did what you did under duress. You can't hold something against a person when they did it because they were being tortured.

Although I wouldn't label DH as a narcissist, more garden variety selfish jerk whose happy to gaslight and emotionally coerce, crying reading this thread.

I love the idea of thinking of him as an off prawn. @TheFoundations was spot on about my childhood too. My Dad was abused as a child and still carries the trauma of this. I spent my tween and teen years trying to support him and helping care for mentally ill sibling.

I feel responsible for the breakdown of our marriage. I feel like if I could have said it better, or done better, or something I could have reached him. The logically bit of me is jumping up and down screaming at me that nothing I could have done would make a difference, but the little child that grew up to fast is still telling me it's my fault.

I hate being here with him, but I need to stick around a bit, waiting on some assessments for SEN DC. Should be done well before Christmas. I need to make sure those happen first. Then I have to somehow find the courage to face him,
tell him in fine and then not give in like last time when he trys to gaslights me into thinking it's all my fault and all I need to do is try harder and we'll be a happy family again.

I don’t feel responsible anymore about any of what happened, I have thankfully got through the part where you go over the whole relationship with a fine tooth comb trying to find where I went wrong. To be honest I hated him for a long time but I couldn’t leave. Then when my dad died I saw an exit as he could no longer use my dad as a reason for me to stay. He did try the whole your dad would be rolling in his grave if he could see you, lying to them about getting married etc etc. But he was dead and he couldn’t hear it.

The logically bit of me is jumping up and down screaming at me that nothing I could have done would make a difference, but the little child that grew up to fast is still telling me it's my fault

The child is the bit that jumps up and down, the bit that tells you it's your fault is the adult who is trying to do the grown up thing, and take responsibility. The narcissist essentially taps into the frustrated and unheard child, and makes it tantrum. That's why we do stuff we hate. They find the bit of us that is out of control and always has been and they push all its buttons.

That's why a brush with a narcissist can be a fabulous learning opportunity. I would never have realised that I even had a tantrum-ing inner child otherwise. I would have continued with my previous mentality, the naive one, where I was just a moody, sensitive sort of person, and other people were all just doing their dogged best to keep me happy.

I call the counselling I had my 're-parenting'. My counsellor taught me things that some people are taught throughout their childhood; mainly that my feelings are not only valid, but vitally important, and the other big one was that there is no rulebook. It doesn't matter if someone thinks I'm hurting too much over something (aka 'you're oversensitive'), because there's no 'correct' level of sensitivity. It's all about being exactly who you are, and choosing people who welcome that.

@Fightingback16 Very nasty to use the alleged feelings of your deceased father against you. It was helpful for me when I realised that there are no depths to which a narcissist will not sink, in pursuit of their goal of having complete power over their victim. Once I stopped internally going 'I can't BELIEVE she did that!!' and replacing it with a simple 'She did do that' it helped me to see how bad the behaviour was. The shock and disbelief almost marrs the ability to objectively critical.

I have parents who have narc tendencies and the manipulation they undertake was always very upsetting to me. I'm no contact now.

Always remember when a Pawn gets to the other side of the board, she gets to become a Queen 😉

How long does it take, do you think? I am 2 years out and still struggle. His manipulation and toxic mind games with her DCs goes on.

Keep thinking I will never be free.

The bit where you obsess wildly over what you did wrong or was it even what you did wrong or if only you'd said this or if only he'd done that etc took me f-ing AGES! Sounds like you're through that. For me, once I started to find suffering tedious rather than addictive, I was nearly there. You said earlier that you keep thinking you're ok and then you fall back; that happened for me too. The times I thought I was ok got longer, and the falling back got less. I didn't notice I was ok until I thought 'Wow, I've not thought about all that shit for weeks.' After a while, I was grateful for her for putting me through it all. Most painful lesson I've ever had, but also the most valuable and life changing one.

You'll get there. I got much better before counselling, and then finding a good counsellor (for something else) really helped me put everything in place. I'd recommend it. Not even necessarily to talk about what he put you through, but to talk about the mechanisms within you that allowed him to. But as long as he's out of your life and you concentrate on doing things that are good for YOU, you'll get through it.

Thank you for your excellent posts @TheFoundations and thank you OP for starting this thread, I needed to see this today.

@thefoundations, out of interest, how long was your brush with the narc and how long did it take to get over it?

We lived long distance (met online), so we were building a relationship for a few months including lots of journeys (both ways) for long weekends together. Then I moved to her area, and we were together for 9 months. She changed the second I moved, from super supportive 'dream partner' to someone who would laugh at me when I was crying.

I don't know how long it took me to recover. Years, not weeks or months. I had PTSD, I'd get the shivers and feel sick if I saw a car the same as hers, even though I moved area again as soon as we broke up. I didn't spot when my recovery was complete; the whole point is that you're not thinking about it any more, so it's not a concrete event. Somewhere between 2 and 3 years, I suppose.

But I don't think that's important. Other people will recover in a few months, others never will. It depends on your mindset. You have to support yourself. If we'd done that in the first place, we wouldn't have fallen victim to these 'people'. Creatures? Aliens? (prawns??)

Ooh, www.baggagereclaim.co.uk

For learning about boundaries. I didn't even know what a boundary was; I thought it was when someone did something you didn't like, and you told them to do it differently because it didn't suit you.

I got hooked on Baggage Reclaim whilst I was recovering. It's really affirming.

That's what I thought boundaries were...I must admit when I read things about them I get a bit confused. Probably because they feel alien.

Wow that sounds chilling. Laughing when you are crying?! What a psycho. Did you date during recovery or do you think it's better to leave it? I think im going to take some time out but dip my toe in in about six months. I think meeting nice men can be really healing but meeting shit ones make it worse so it's a risk.

I’ve been with a lovely man now for 9 months so that was about 1.5 years or so after. I wasn’t expecting to and I didn’t want another but we met and he is lovely. I was very open and honest and I’ve tried to push him away many times but he won’t go. He is teaching me a great deal of things. It
is a gentle love, he is calm and laid back and it is alien to me and my inner child does come out at times and I have to tell her off lol. I feel bad but I also think I deserve this and I have been honest and he just keeps saying I am here for you.

Boundaries are amazing, StartingAgain It's DEAD EASY. They should teach it to kids in school. So many parents just don't understand, and so, can't teach their kids. It's why abuse passes from generation to generation. All it is is telling someone if you get an unpleasant feeling from something they do. They don't have to be wrong. Just unfavourable to your own preferences. 'When you wear that hat, it reminds me of someone I had a horrible relationship, with and it makes me uncomfortable', for example. Then, you watch what they do. If they keep wearing the hat, and tell you you're being silly and too sensitive, then they prioritise wearing a hat over your feelings. But you don't, at any point, tell them not to wear the hat. What they do is always their responsibility.

Fightingback What does your inner child do/say when she pops up? What triggers her?

Interesting! Good analogy.

By jumping up and down, I meant that the logically side is trying really hard to get my attention, not that it's chucking a tantrum. I get the feeling responsible for everything is that inner child who felt she had to fix her family.

Its great you don't feel that false sense of responsibility anymore @Fightingback16. I don't always now, it's a hard habit to break.

Children in healthy families don't feel they have to fix their families though. Even when you were a child, you will have had the same frustrated inner child you have now. 'I DON'T WANT TO FIX EVERYTHING, I'M ONLY 5!!!' (cue tantrum actions), whilst 'outer child' who everybody could see, was being forced to be responsible. Outer child is now outer you - adult, but still feeling responsibility, sometimes inappropriately. Inner child still refuses to be responsible for anything, and ruins trips to the supermarket etc.