Getting over a relationship with a narcissist

[whizzeez]

I was in a 2 year relationship with a man quite a bit older than me. When I first met him, I thought he was kind, empathic and caring. However the mask slipped really quickly. To the outside world he was a pillar of the community, he's a therapist and a wellness coach and everyone thinks he is 'Mr Wonderful ' . However behind closed doors he constantly spoke really cruelly about women in general.

Before I met him I was extroverted, liked being around people and was always on the go, now I struggle to leave the house when I need to and have a diagnosis of CPTSD from the abuse that I suffered at his hands. While he never physically hit me, he constantly bullied and belittled me, would love bomb me constantly, then devalue and ignore me for weeks at a time. Any time I actually tried to break up with him, he would ignore me and turn up the next day like nothing had happened.

Eventually he discarded me like a piece of used rubbish, refused to answer any of my calls or texts, only for me to find out on Facebook that he had started seeing someone new. Yet he still tried to Hoover me back months later like nothing had happened with his excuse being that he was 'sorry he couldn't have loved me in the way that I needed'.

I have made great strides to move on in some ways, I go to a great therapist and am trying to become involved in my community again and build up trust with others again as he completely isolated me from most of the people in my life.

There are still moments when his cruel comments haunt me, one of them being if I ever had children they would 'look like gremlins ' (I cannot have kids due to pcos) and how every therapist in the country is 'breathing a sigh of relief ' I won't have kids because they would probably be messed up. Yet the outside world cannot see this cruel monster and think he is an amazing man, he revels in all of this adoration while I feel like an isolated shell of the person I used to be.

Has anyone else been through a narcissistic relationship and how did you begin to move on and learn to trust again?

So sorry @whizzeez, sounds like you have been through a lot. Narcissists can really ruin the lives of so many people. What helped me was going no contact, blocking on social media and learning about narcissists as I have met my fair share of them. Stay strong, it takes time to heal from a relationship with a narc

Yes me. It’s the worst relationship I’ve had. Mentally damaging. Just remember the bad pints and why your life with him would have been miserable

Yup.

The reason certain remarks of his still cut you is because they play on your most painful insecurities.

I'm reminded of a stranger in the street who shouted at me 'You stupid fat cow' once. If he'd called me a 'stupid cow' it might have hurt me, but because he added 'fat', when I was slightly underweight, he devalued his own words, and I just laughed and walked away.

You need the same process. You need to realise that his insults are laughable. They're superficial and pathetic. He was unable to find something real about you to criticise, so he had to resort to what your children might look like, and what a bunch of therapists, strangers to him, might think.

Learning to trust again isn't about trusting that a person won't hurt you; it's about accepting that they might. Anybody might. People are surprising and shocking all the time. You could 100% trust someone and they could let you down. Learning to trust is about trusting yourself. It's about knowing that if someone turns on you, and says something like 'Your kids will look like gremlins', you'll be able to laugh it off, because you have utter trust in yourself, so you know that they're talking bollocks and deliberately trying to hurt you.

If you've got your own back, people can be as hurtful as they want, and you'll know you'll be ok. Whilst you're still in the mindset that insults about your unborn children can cut you to the core, you haven't got your own back.

This is about you, not him.

I thank my narcissist ex (in my head only!) for pointing out to me where my insecurities were. Had it not been for that painful relationship, I would never have had the counselling I had to sort my shit out.

Hello.

I could or wrote this myself.
I am 29. My ex narc is 54.

He also works in care and the public think he is mr wonderful but I got someone totally different at home.

I have lived your life for 6 years nearly.
I've spent YEARS educating myself on this in order to heal.

I know how you feel not wanting to go out. The world seems a really big place when you leave a narc because you lived in a dilusion for so long.

I had 6 years of him loving me then silent on me then ghost then back again. It causes terrible trauma.
Please message me, I'd like to be your friend x