Narcissitic Personality Disorder (Part 2)

[Gettingagrip]

Starting another thread for us survivors.

Fluxy, apart from the few times that my ex lost control and flew into an eye/vein bulging rage at me, he has always spoken in a calm, low voice. He speaks slowly - every word chosen and delivered with control.
It was always me that became 'eratic' and 'hysterical' ie, got emotional, during a row and showed my emotions.
For that reason I always came across as the one who was loosing it.
Even now, during e mail correspondence, he accuses me of distressing him with my abusive and out of control anger and asks if I am on medication.

But I am not, and never was, 'loosing it'. Infact, since I started talking about my marriage I have realised just how normal I really am!
But I spent a lot of years living with my ex N being told that I was dysfunctional, chaotic and out of control. I began to believe him of course; he was the voice of authority. I believe it's called gaslighting. Of course I'd never heard of that either until I started posting on here.

Keep posting on this thread Fluxy. You will hear similar stories and experiences to your own. You will begin to realise, like me, that we are/were all married to the same man. And we can't ALL be mad, can we??

I just wanted to stop by and thank you all for your good wishes! It means a hell of a lot

Today's felt strange to me. Not only have I tipped over into the start of "old" - which is not as bad as I thought it would be! - but am also a bit hungover, thanks to last night's extra bottle of wine ... which was my idea of an aid to introspection. There's something about writing to this thread, which really helps me gain perspective on the weirdnesses in my life. Your replies add to that, too.

I am sure everybody experiences "reality shift" now & then: when somebody dies; when a partner's infidelity or another betrayal is discovered; in wartime and during natural disasters. Those are traumatic experiences. In my life (and in yours), that level of trauma is a regular occurrence. No wonder we think we must be mad!!!

I can't think about this today. I'm working on a big programming task and have been grateful for the need to think in straight, logical lines! All the posts from the last few days have been bubbling away in the background, though ... figuring themselves out, I hope!

Big night out with my sister tomorrow. She's a walking repository of all my family's problems (she jokes that her kids will need therapy when they leave home!) but I love her and am looking forward to it.
I'll be back when I've got over my 3-day hangover

Aggy, I don't know if you're still wondering about empathy? Translated, it means "feeling with". That leads some to believe it means "feeling another's emotions" - which is not an accurate interpretation. Because of this, it's a hotly-debated topic amongst autistic people, who are deeply affected by other people's feelings but do not empathise.

As others have said before me, it's best described as being able to "walk in someone's shoes". The ability to imagine how it must feel for someone else. If your neighbour tells you her car broke down on a snow-covered hill, would you think she must have been scared and cold? Would you wonder how she got home; if she was worried about missing something important through being stuck; how she managed to get help? That's empathy: it means you imagined yourself in her place, and "felt her feelings" as it were.

The narcissist AND the autist lack this ability. They can learn how to simulate it, but will often get it wrong. When they can't be bothered to pretend, they'll commit terrible solecisms like the fathers, here, whose concern for their children's feelings was limited to the children's impact on their own feelings! Most of my ex-friends would have responded to the 'snow' story by immediately saying what they would have done. That was their attempt at empathy.

While you're enmeshed with a narcissist, it becomes very difficult to empathise with 'normal' people. I don't know whether this is an effect of channelling all your empathy into the futile effort to understand the narcissist, or if it's a ripple effect from being around people with no habit of empathy. I do feel it's worth practising - at my worst times, I've gone out of my way to "think myself in someone's shoes", as I was alarmed by the fact I seemed to have lost the knack.

Dunno if that helped any??

I love your garden stories! I can't wait to hear from you in May, when all your work comes to fruition

I too am the one that rants and raves whilst he is emotionless....talking always talking but in that measured...infuriating way. He's recorded all these episodes. This thread makes me feel less threatened by that.

I too have found that since dd started school and I have normal people in my life again, his behaviour seems weirder by the day.

Another thing to throw into the pot here. My H has no interest whatsoever in the world around him. We are in a rural location and we get loads of birds in the garden, from wrens to buzzards. We get hedghogs, shrews foxes etc etc. He doesn't acknowledge any of it. I think that's weird.

Ages ago I went to his house to work, there was a massive factory fire on the way and you could still see it at his place....he never even looked out of the window.

Anyone else had similar?

saddest glad I am not the only one. I too ended up ranting at my ex while he sat emotionaless, passive, saying nothing. When he ran away I found that he too had recorded some of these 'rants' on our computer (have no idea to this day how he did that.)

He left me threee letters to read when he had gone - in one he said that he thought he "had some but not all of the traits of NPD. For instance I don't fly into a rage - I make sure you do that"

I think he knew something was wrong but then, too afraid to confront it (typical, denial) he just wiped the thought totally as he raided our bank account, booked his flight and disappeared abroad abandoning his wife and baby. Not forgetting his two daughters by his ex.

The recording thing freaked me out and despite what he said in the letter, for many months I blamed myself for diving him away, for being horrid, mad, impossible to live with, for drinking too much (he honestly drove me to drink.)

But I know now that many Ns use silence as their weapon. He used to say 'have you finished your monologue now?' I would say in total frustration that they ended up being monologues because he said nothing - and he would defend that by saying 'well I can't speak to you when you'e in that state.' But I didn't begin in that state iykwim. Mind-bending.

Also he would get up mid-'conversation' very slowly and leave the room, and climb the stairs very very slowly and get into bed and cover himself. If I went up to 'continue' it he would pretend to be very afraid of me - cowering under the duvet.

As my counsellor pointed out though - if he had really been afraid of me he would have run from the room and probably got out of the house. As she said it was just all play-acting.

You are not alone.

I was not mad.

He was/is the mentally ill one.

unlikelyamazon - sounds a bit like my H. He has apparently got in his possession films of me 'ranting' (I have too ended up in the past acting like someone losing their mind while he just sits back and delights sadistically in the state he has got me into). He secretly filmed me apparently a couple of years ago. This was before we were separated for a year. During that year he continually used them to try to blackmail me, and he always holds them over my head as proof that he will prove I am crazy (and he will destroy me as he likes to say when angry). He will not confirm whether or not these hidden cameras are still around the house. I have asked him for a truthful answer but as always this is to no avail - there is never an honest, straight answer. It makes me very resentful and angry towards him - as do alot of other things!!!!!!!

On Shrink Rap recently with Dr Pamela Stevenson she said to Heather Mills "you're so conditioned to please", which hit me in the solar plexus. Have a N mum and growing up with her felt very unsafe, I became the peacemaker of the household, always trying to smooth things over and stop people erupting at each other, physically standing in between them at times, to this day I can't do confrontation and if it's around me I feel physically sick. My development in the area of dealing with real emotions is severely stunted and I use all kinds of coping mechanisms, often pushing the self-destruct button. I remember when us kids were little, if we became ill it was so irritating to our mum, she was just cross that we weren't well, has anyone else experienced that?

sarajen....it's very interesting that you should mention Heather Mills, as I thought that her ranting during her divorce looked like utter frustration and despair. And from all that I have heard about Saint-Sir PM , I could feel her pain.

That's not to say that she is perfect at all, but I used to think when she was on the TV at that time 'there but for the grace of god...'.

Her childhood sounds not so good also, which would probably set her up as a people-pleaser.

My exH didn't tape me or film me (he is a total Luddite where technology is concerned), so instead he wrote down my statements in a little book, and years later produced this book to prove that in 1993 I said so-and-so about whatever, and now in 2003 I was contradicting myself, and actually saying whatever about so-and-so.

This from the master of change-your mind-itis so as to keep the upper hand always.The times when I most wanted to stab him through the heart with a rusty screwdriver were when he had agreed to something, and then at the last minute changed his mind. And it could be the most innocuous thing ever, but he just had to say no at the last minute.

Insane -making.

I don't really belong on this thread because I don't believe XH was N (BPD and a bunch of other PDs almost certainly), but I remember how horrified I was when he whipped out his bundle of notes he'd been keeping on me for over 20 years. Master of the wind-up, check. He also insisted that some medication I had once taken for vertigo was for my "psychosis". Apparently it can be used in psychiatric applications sometimes. He wasn't completely wrong, as I did end up on ADs!

My nurse practioner is a total star.

He came to see dd this afternoon. While she was changing from her school uniform, he was following me around telling me I was disgusting, and that I shouldn't trust the people I spoke to etc etc. I engaged I am afraid and said that I didn't deserve this...he yelled "yes you do!"
(he's not abusive though!)

Whilst he took dd out I spoke to Nurse prac....she said that a good technique was to just say...."it's not me it's you" to everything they say.

I did this when he got back. IT WORKED! I stayed calm and he gave up.

And another thing....
I thought about the filming, recording, note keeping.

It really proves nothing but what nutjobs they are. I wonder whether it's a form of mental masterbation for them, to listen to themselves winding someone up so much.

lol saddest! @ 'it's not me it's you'!

My mother's favourite pastime is winding people up. She does it to her siblings and their children and has caused a great deal of trouble in the family due to this habit. Mind you, they are all Ns so they all do it to each other.

Trouble is I am left to smooth it all over. COrrettion...WAS left to smooth it all over...not any more! Even at my father's funeral she was at it.

I do think they feel triumph when they do it. It gives them great pleasure. Mental masturbation is a great description of it!

ExH has or had an internet alias, and a Jekyll and Hyde type alter ego in RL.

My exMIL had a horror of anyone else's illness. She openly mocked her own late MIL after visiting her in hospital where she was dying of cancer, mimicking things she had said during the visit, while my exFIL drove home, listening to her speak so cruelly of his own mother. Another time, when I had a mc at Christmas at her house (we were staying there for a few days), she was really annoyed that I followed doctor's orders and wouldn't get up from where I was lying to sit at the dinner table my mc ruined her Christmas. exH told me that if he or any of his siblings were too ill to get up out of bed during their childhood, they weren't fed either you could have a drink of water but if you wanted soup or crackers you had to get up and sit at the table.

My exH managed to make a death in my family all about him. The only thing he expressed any strong emotion about was the fact that he was so late getting to the airport that he almost missed his plane. Fact is, he made his plane, but he ranted on and on and on and on about my family and how they had kept him from getting to the airport in extra good time (he has a bee in his bonnet about 'punctuality' which means getting somewhere far too early) A few weeks later he started mixing whining about the plane and his old fallback position, the state of the house. It was not pleasant to have lost a dear family member and then be attacked with anger and impatience and name-calling a short time later about how little I had managed to achieve on the home front during the day. ExMIL managed to make a death in her family into "the Me show" in the memorable words of another SIL -- not MIL's DD, but BIL's wife. ExMIL definitely has Histrionic PD, and probably NPD too.

I actually took to recording his episodes of rage from time to time -- he alternated between giving me the silent treatment and flying off the handle. He would glower at me as he walked through the house, shoot me dirty looks if he entered a room that he didn't consider tidy enough. I found that recording these episodes helped me to stop doubting my impressions of them. I never threatened him with my memos to file in any way, they were for my own mental and emotional health purposes only.

ExH couldn't take any kind of criticism from me. He once asked me, after just a few years of marriage and before I had joined the dots to come up with the real picture, to list his faults and personality defects for him (top of the list was arrogance but there were many more); after that day, he didn't want to hear any kind of criticism from me. If I complained about his temper, he would fly into a rage, excuse himself on the grounds of my terrible housekeeping/ negligent style of parenting/ over-attachment to the DCs/ mistakes in the chequebook register/ blah, blah. blah. He always had unassailable reasons for his tantrums. He would walk out of the house rather than let anyone else speak words of reason or express their truth. If I had feelings and the temerity to express them, I got called names, b and nag being his favourites.

Trying to get my pov through to him became well-nigh impossible. As an example, he got it into his head one day that the DCs' bedrooms needed blinds, so I measured the windows and made a list with the correct blind measurements for each one. The job had to be accomplished that day, according to him, so I pretty much dropped everything to get the measuring done before he took off in the car. He came home with blinds that were the right size for three of the windows, and too small for the other one. He took it very personally when I pointed out the inches of daylight on either side of the small blinds, called me all sorts of names. He had a habit, if he was engaged in any sort of project, especially home improvement or maintenance, and I made a suggestion, of growling through gritted teeth, "Don't tell me what to do." Very alienating, and I felt more and more leery of him over the years. Conversation, let alone real communication, became less and less possible. I felt completely silenced.

I read somewhere (I think on a Sam Vaknin site, Buzzle.com -- vague memory) that empathy is the foundation stone of morality. To empathise is to have a modicum of humility, imo, to couch it in terms of values or morals. Humility allows you to have a sense of perspective, an insight into your own reactions and perceptions as well as into those of others. Ns lack this quality.

I recognise that urgency of having to get things done NOW. When my ex decided that something was going to be changed, it had to happen straight away. He would lie there in bed and make his decision - and then I would be given a list of instructions to make it so.

When ds was 4 he had a trampoline for his birthday. The night before it was decided that the trampoline would be put up in the garden as a surprize and he would have it there in the morning and ready for his party. I was there, alone, knee deep in the rain and mud putting together the poxy trampoline till one in the morning while h stayed in bed 'distracting' ds. I then had to put up the gazebo and decorate it for the full impact come morning.

Come the birthday party next day and of course it was me who organised the whole event. Games, food, entertainment....it was always left solely to me. But h paid for the trampoline; he had done his bit.

When my dc were born my h decided to keep a journal to record their life for them. I used to think this was so endearing - my kids would read it in years to come to discover their everyday interaction with their Dad and how they had grown and developed.
One day I discovered his 'safe box' open and I had a nose inside. The 3 journals were there so I had a peak. Each one of them recorded, not only the day to day recordings of my dc's life, but an interpretation of my mental state and behaviour. And it wasn't very complimentry. He would talk about his son or daughter at the time, followed by harsh criticism of me and my actions. Any child reading this journal of their life would also see a daily record of how their mother was impacting negatively, behaving irrationally and making wild and chaotic decisions around them.
I really began to doubt my ability to care for my dc. It was there in black and white just how bloody useless I was as a mother!

Needless to say, none of my dc seem to have suffered as babies or children because of me. Altough, to have read those journals you'd think social services must have been called by now....

My ex journaled regularly and has also recorded me, and openly told me so. Hes also kept diarys about work colleauges too. I suspect hes been recording me for years.

Anyone know why this is?

Mine was also a sexual deviant.

I still have problems with him attempting to engage me, dont these people ever go away?

Glad to see this new thread.

I also shouted like a mad woman at my x, but only when I had tried to communicate, reason, pleaded, begged...... you get the picture. He was always totally impervious to my deep distress.

MaggieRed - that is exactly the same as my H. I have got so frustrated over the years with the refusal to communicate and just treat me like a human-being. Just this morning, I tried to ask my H a question to do with our history. (He has re-written our history and he was never to blame for anything). As soon as I ask him a question which requires some kind of straight answer, he starts running away and saying that he does not want an argument. I am usually never having an argument - just trying to talk to him. This is his get-out clause. There is always one for everything in life. And he will not look me in the eyes - I have decided that this is too personal for him to do. (I don't look at him alot either nowadays - nowadays I purposely do not have alot of eye contact with him. This seems to help me alot.). Sorry to sound rather pathetic. But he has driven me mad over the years and I used to think I was always the problem. I am not perfect, no-one is. But he is the biggest wind-up merchant I have ever come across!

And he has always had big ideas about everything. It took me years to work out that it would be down to me to sort whatever it was out and do all the hard work while he just made the decision (like the King). He did, I supppose, need someone to do all the 'donkey-work' and not get his hands dirty..

Another thing was I always used to 'jump' when he said 'jump'. He always had the ability to cause huge waves around him in life by his actions (affecting my family as well) and they used to be drawn into it as well.

Reading this thread has been my guilty secret for the last 18 months, and has also been my sanity and marriage saver.

My DH is almost certainly on the ASD spectrum, but has a terrifying significant number of NPD traits as well.

I've learned to recognise and deflect most of his more destructive and controlling habits, thanks to the observations, shared experience, advice and resources that I've found here.

I ALWAYS challenge him now, the gaslighting and passive-agressive crap no longer gets passed over, ignored or submitted to.

We now have a workable, functional and mostly kind and comfortable relationship "in progress" - probably as much as you can hope for in your mid-late forties.

We are working on the passion and romance thing, but what the hell! Feast or famine eh?

Many, many thanks to UnlikelyAmazonian, TheRealMe, Autumnlight and all the other amazing ladies who have contributed to this collective archive of shared female wisdom and experience.

Respect, gratitude and affection to you all.

You know, Flitter, this: "I ALWAYS challenge him now" is what I should have done ... always. But, by god, it was so wearing. If you are married to my ex (I'm guessing you're married to someone quite a lot like him!) - I wish you luck, because I still feel he has it in him to become the man he already thinks he is.

For me, life was already too short. I didn't need to spend it building someone else's personality for them.
You must be a better woman! Virtual coffee & cake to you

After spending a couple of days with my adorable (but rather narcissistic) sister and, probably more importantly, offline - I'm wondering how come I've gone from helping to fix marriages to encouraging people to leave them. I reckon it's very simple. It's not that I no longer want to help fix marriages (I do!) - but all that marriage-fixing has highlighted that some problems cannot be fixed. I got tired of trying to help those (mostly women), who are still desperately chasing their good relationship - with a partner incapable of sharing it: their lives passing by all the time, and their DCs growing older in an unhealthy atmosphere.

It's part of my own process, too. My Mum and Dad, insanely committed to a marriage that punished them both, gave us a legacy they were barely aware of - but we, their children, see in ourselves & each other. In my case, it meant dedicating myself to lousy relationships with fucked-up people. In a way, I needed to 'test' my relationship skills by helping others' marriages (seeing if I do know how to be an OK partner) - and then moving on, to examine whether some relationships are simply unwise. I'm ending up, here and for the near future, with the feeling that we each have one life.

This life is NOT meant as a sacrifice! To spend it in shadow; in pain; in the service of another's insatiable ego: is to waste the one life you have. A life well-spent is one in which you develop and grow, nurture other lives and enhance the world around you. To spend it worrying, suffering and being too anxious to appreciate it is ... sacrifice. And for what? To die, still being told you're not good enough?

I agree with everything you just said Grace.

I have just spent the last 2 hours re reading the NPD 1 thread. Don't know why - maybe to put my life in perspective?

But it left me feeling an intense sadness. All those posts of such pain and confusion, life living on a knifes edge, trying to predict his behaviour and motivations.

I spent so many years trying to please another person who could never be pleased. I could have spent those years pleasing someone who appreciated it! It wasn't the hand of fate that led me to meet my N husband, it was my conditioning.

I am resigned to spending the rest of my life alone now. I feel battle weary and worn out! But I do thank my lucky stars that I am alone, and not still married to the man who drained and depleated me.