I am in the process of leaving my emotionally abusive/narcissistic (diagnosed by me) husband after 21 years and it occurred to me last night it must be a bit like breaking up with an addict.
we are nesting and I have been in the “nest” this week and have been missing the DC (age 4 & 8), so I popped back to the family home and spent a couple of hours with them. All was good and H was fine and seemed relaxed and was civil/chatty.
I felt very sad as I drove away and thought if only he could have been like that all the time we would have been ok. But I know that it’s a package deal - there’s no such thing as nice H - the mean H who calls me awful names and smashes things up in front of the kids is the same person, snd given he’s been doing it for years its not going to chnage. (Only that morning he’d been texting me accusing me of siphoning off money from our joint account and telling me how lazy I was for not doing a supermarket shop to stock up the cupboards for his week with the kids!)
I imagine it must be like being married to an alcoholic - you always hope that the sober one is the “real” them. It’s a headfuck.