Narcissitic Personality Disorder (Part 2)

[Gettingagrip]

Starting another thread for us survivors.

when I say He I mean H.

Wow, Saddest, that's amazing! Clever boy (and a very wise mum.)

I'm off to see if I find that one on the interweb.

And!

He got the bus into the next village to buy popcorn for us to eat while we watch "Pineapple dance studio" together this evening.

They have played beautifully together this afternoon, despite the age gap. They've been trying to make videos to go on "you've been framed". Really daft, but so much fun.

Three telly references....shit! I'll get "told off" again if I'm not careful!

thanks math - yes he does and always has make dcs work hard for his affection. IMO he has a completly unrealistic expectation of parenting and when we were together he did bystander parenting - where he would do nothing or minimal and always superficial parenting and then jump in to criticise me.

I always had to work hard for his affection - in fact he almost but withdrew it and any goodwill tbh when ds1was born - is that also a defining point?

And now he has two more dcs who he lives with so the affection now has to be spread further.

Thank god for mumsnet

Yes SINCITY.

If you read the Patricia Evans books, it's the point where he feels most secure. ie, that you won't leave. That's when he anchors all of his split off emotions into you. Because he senses that it is safe to do so,

His split off stuff, is all the stuff he was defined as not feeling at all as a child. He of course did have feelings, but was not allowed to express any of them, thus defining him as someone he was not. Usually by the father.

When you show any sign of being other than the split off stuff, he feels hugely threatened, and becomes like a scared child...aggressive, tantrum like behaviour. And totally self absorbed. Like a child.

I haven't explained that very well. I hope you get the drift. Probably read her books...she puts it so much better.

I think somewhere deep down, they're very jealous of babies. I also think they're congenitally unable to be good or even good enough parents.

That's why they can't remember their childhoods.......because they are too traumatised and negated.

It's terribly sad. But even sadder to be on the receiving end of it all.

sincitylover I joined this thread recently,having had a similar experience of reading it through and finding scales were dropping from my eyes.
I am still amazed - horrified- daily,as I read of similar/identical experiences from so many women.
I echo what you say about minimal parenting with criticism - my x was either Mr Super Dad or doing exactly that.
As for working hard for affection,that felt like a flickering light with random brightness settings - dazzling to absent but with no predictable features.The very thing that seemed to me to be "rewarded " by affection on one occasion could be the reason for it to be withdrawn/absent another time.
Mumsnet is my lifeline right now

< affection,that felt like a flickering light with random brightness settings - dazzling to absent but with no predictable features >

Thanks for this, PM! It's a perfect description of my experience, especially with XH#2 - the one I thought was/is an Aspie. I'm going through one of those self-doubt phases atm; needed the validation. Everybody told me how they could see he loved me at our wedding - apparently, he kept gazing at me with adoration. Confusing, since I didn't get a glimpse of that: he slagged me off at the registry signing and told me to fuck off at our reception! He was doing it on purpose, wasn't he? Adoring gaze when others were looking; sneering dismissal for me.

I nearly asked my Dad for a lift home that day - should have done! Or maybe not - one psycho for another isn't that much of a deal

It pisses me off that I'm still coming to terms with all this; still trying to repair the damage. Oh well.
Whine over. Thanks again!

It was my amazing therapist Johanna that pointed out this to me.

She had this way of making a statement that STUCK!

1: Where on earth did he get HIS parenting skills?

2: So you are doing 80% of the parenting then.

I can't even remember what triggered her saying those things.

He was such an inconsistent parent....ridiculously strict and increasingly aggresive, and then completely undermining me, for example, by letting ds out when he was grounded.

I have a bucket of popcorn and a telly prog to watch with my ds.

xxxxx

Saddest - my ds's are really missing my x .His strictness was annoying but tolerated because - I think- he gained a greater degree of power by conveying his irritation to me at the way things went around the house .I would then carry the anxiety not the dc's.He wd then undermine my boundaries, as you describe - extending an early bedtime,sneaking sweets to a dc who'd been told "no" by me and having quiet,"supportive chats" about "Mum being a bit ott".
Now,it's just cross,tearful Mummy who is missing x ,but wont make it all better by asking him to come back...The undermining is still working.
Grace - everyone -my dc's,friends,my "family" his friends and family (those I know) and his therapist see my x as "adoring" me.He wd tell me many times every day how he "loved me to bits",and tell strangers in shops, the street etc..
Trouble is,as I've said already ...not me...the "avatar on the pedestal"
Doesn't stop me missing him terribly though.
He was lovely to sleep with - as in sleep I mean(!)- he snuggled and cwtched and murmered "love you darling" whenever he or I stirred and always first thing in the morning.I SO miss that and wake up crying a lot at the mo.
I have txtd him recently - on Friday a string of anger and other stuff - only got a response to the one about money AND then I sent him back a txt he'd sent me recently about how much he loved me and the children and couldn't wait for our baby to be born.He txtd straight back "it's all true,I mean every word" ----very hard to read ,and tempting to respond by asking him to come over.
But I remind myself of what I have read here - espec the straight talkers -AF particularly.
Where is the asshole TODAY asking to speak to the dc's and explain his sudden absence as their mother struggles on in late pg with HIS baby? No txts about that.No enquiries about my health,consultant appt he was due to accompany me to,no message to pass on to my parents who are due a token but dreaded visit tomorrow - he knows how much I have appreciated (needed) his support in dealing with them...etc etc...
I am eating crisps and listing anything I can lay my hands on on ebay ,desperate to raise pennies..
Bastard.

Yes My h "adores" me too, and lots of folk may well believe that I am mad and that it's all my fault.

I so very much know what you mean. H was lovely to be in bed with. Lots of snuggles and spooning. kisses in the morning. But then he would yell at me for waking him to tell me that he loved me.

Weirdly....and this may be TMI....The last time we made love/ had sex...not sure which now...was amazing. I thought at the time that it would be the last time. It's all in his "script".

I miss him so much, yes it hurts, more than I have ever felt hurt in my life. I fell for the whole con, and my last seven years haven't been real. I've been in love with a performing monkey. Just sometimes, going through the motions....ticking off duties from the list.

AND you're in the last weeks of carrying his baby. and left with all the responsibility. Crying is healing. Cry then.

Don't panic about money...it will come to you, just don't panic. I believe that.

PM take up the whole bed for yourself. Stretch out and enjoy your space. Imagine your new baby starting school and where you want to be, who is there, who you are.

It may be a load of bollocks, but it gets me through some very dark hours.
xxxx

I always had a thing about eye contact during sex - you know, I'm sure most people do. With Jon, though I still wanted the eye contact, there was always a distance there. I sometimes found myself thinking "I see cruelty." Unfortunately, I let other parts of my body overrule what my eyes were telling me!

He did some very nasty things to me in bed though - after we married. Saddest, it's weird what you said about knowing it was the last time! Ours was the only time I felt he was fully there, emotionally.

Your DCs need time without this man, PM. You will all settle down, but you need time. Resist, resist, resist the temptation to get in touch with him. I know it must be so hard for you with the baby coming. But stay strong.
xxxxxxxx

Thank you so much S,G an MA. It really is SOOO helpful to read what you say.
I am resisting but it requires superhuman strength.

"I've been in love with a performing monkey...going through the motions,ticking off duties from the list"
S - poignant and searing and SO validating.
I cry all the time.
This leads the dc's to plead with me to get him back.
Which makes me cry more.
I tell them it's pg hormones -which it partly is.They are trying to persuade me we'd all be better off with him back,and are sorry for their prospective sister with no Daddy.
I have always been absolutely clear with them about his acting out,whenever he's gone - upstairs,out the room or to his caravan.Making sure they hear that it is HIS stuff,whatever the triggers and HIS responsibility NOT theirs.At times,he's been able to remain and hear this himself and has always started a return by apologising and stating his intent to change and move forward,even asking them not to reinforce the crap by explaining what's ok and not....trouble is,he doesn't sustain it and the time frame is random.Could be 8 months no probs -as last summer,or 2 weeks then 3 days then a month.as since Christmas.
My eldest dd (14) said this morning that she thought he was probably anxious about the baby and what it reminded him of from when he was a sad little boy and that we shd all give him extra love and support for a bit...
That is heartbreaking - that she shd be trying to mother a 58 yr old who hasn't contacted her in a fortnight.
I have praised her for her sensitivity and said we all need to have more fun and let me be Mummy to everyone - but not him.
Feel like I'm carrying the world on my back.
Thank God I've got no sex drive due to pg and I know it will be gone a long while.That at least will remove that temptation,as he is ,of course ,highly skilled at conveying exactly the right balance of intimacy,fun and erotic filth in bed or even just with a glance or light touch while driving or in Tesco ...
I feel I cd never love anyone else
I cd never seek another man and risk any more change for the dc's once we get over this.
I have far too many children now ever to have room for anything other than parenting.
But then ,in any case,this monkey trickery had me SOOO convinced ,and is so prevalent judging by the posts here - HOW would one ever know until it's too late ?

And why how is it possible for such a fuck up to take up so much precious energy and headspace?

How do stop allowing this?

He s obviously perFectly ok himself and

NOT WORTH IT!!!!

Wish I cd have my hard-drive wiped and rebooted.

You know, PM, that is what is so hard in all this. Their ability to pick up, move on, wipe the disc clean.
My ex has been banging on for years about how I have destroyed him, reduced him, done untold damage and he will never reecover. He made a point of staying married to me, the devil personified, so he could tell me that every day.
Now that I have ended our mess of a marriage he remains in the background to pound it home some more as to how I destroyed his life. And yet... he is out there swanning around in his designer suit going to music recitals, meeting A and B for lunch, living his free and full life in a social whirl of engagements. He did this whilst we were married, of course, and nothing has changed for him. Nothing!

I'm still on a major self pity buzz atm (as if you couldn't guess )
When we first seperated I was on a kind of high, I was running on adrenalin and still pretty amazed at myself for having finally gotten the courage to end it all. I fantasised about my 'new' life and the freedom I would now have. And it was true, my day to day life is my own now, no more bloody lists of things I have to do by a certain time, no more answering my mobile phone 20 times a day to give status reports on where I'm at, no more sorting things out for him on the phone, no more shaving his poxy ears or quick shags on the bathroom floor at his command. No, I don't miss any of that!
I wasn't prepared for this limbo though. This feeling of 'Ok, your life is your own now, so what you gonna do with it?'. It's like I said before, I got my life back, but it's lying in pieces around me and I don't know how to pick the pieces up - some of which are covered in so much dust I can't even see what they are now!

Anyway, not to get too much on a downer here. I did go to my GP yesterday and am now on a (relatively) short waiting list to attend some free counselling. And although I have been in counselling in the past it was always with the blinkered view that I needed to fix myself according to my ex's agenda. At least this time round I am going to be talking from my own point of view. I will be able to off load a lot of the (still) feelings of anger and shock that I put up with such a crap life because I believed him when he said I deserved to live like this. Then, maybe, when I have cleared all the feelings of 'Aaarrrggghhh!' out of my head I might be able to actually see therealme again!

They are vacuums, that's how you get so sucked in. Look at your DD, PM, she is caught in his trap too. You can see how easy it is to get sucked into a black hole, because you and your children are nice, loving people who want to help and nurture and believe in love. You can throw yourself body and soul into their bottomless pit, but it will never be enough.

TRM and PM, I once asked my ex what it was that he wanted from me, because as far as I could see, I was nothing more than the really unsatisfactory hired help -- what did he want me for? He replied, 'sustenance'. And it was the truth. Vampires need to suck the life out of their victims for sustenance.

It shouldn't matter what you read on the intenet, right?
It shouldn't matter when you read somebody accusing you of having been manipulative, of lying, having read a load of twisted half truths and lies from the man who could convince Mother Theresa she was a money grabbing harlot.

All he had to do was convince one person that I deserved to be punished, that I really was the despicable person he told me I was.
So now I'm back to believing none of it must have happened the way I remember it. I did do some god awful things but not as he told it on there! I'm back to trying to defend myself because it wasn't black and white, I wasn't this cold unfeeling hard faced bitch that he paints me as.
Whats the point of trying to salvage any of my life back. Maybe he was right. Maybe I have the personality disorder here. Maybe I got it all wrong and I really am fucked up.

TRM.

I know EXACTLY how you feel....I really do.

You are here, doubting yourself. Ironic that it is that very doubt that tells me that it is not you.

Does he ever wonder if it might be him? No thought not.

There's your answer my love.

I have used EFT in the past, and though time is thin on the ground over the holidays, I am going to get back into it. Have a google of it, and have a go. It costs nothing, you can di it by yourself, althoug I went to a therapist as well. and even if it doesn't work miracles, it can do no harm.

Of course though, all he needed to hear was just one person telling him he was right! Now he gets to re embark on his campaign to tell me that it was me - I was the manipulative liar after all.
One step forward and two steps back.
I feel so depressed. And serves me right for exposing myself to the cyber world. I really did think I was a fuck up when I wrote it all initially! I didn't ask people to condone my behaviour, I never have. But it seems I'm being told I deserved all I got now, just as I thought I did for all those years. Maybe I did?
Rambling too much, feel too panicky, all the self doubt seeping back. I need to go out and get my hands on something strong and alcoholic.

Sorry Saddest, not ignoring you, I will look that suggestion up. I need some help cos I can't do this on my own anymore. My sense of self and all my confidence has gone. All it takes is one random intenet comment to floor me and I'm right back where I started. Not good, is it?

TRM, I found it was very helpful for me personally to look at an old photo I had of myself as a girl of about 11 or 12, taken a long time before I could even have imagined the sort of funhouse mirrors experience that would be my life, starting about ten years from then. I saw the person he never knew, in that photo, and remembered myself.

It was a very sad experience in a great many ways, because I realised I had lost a lot since then, and that I could probably never get back what was gone. It was also cathartic because I really felt inspired by my true self, age 12, to define myself again, as I had done back then, and as I had felt it was in my power to do back then. Hard to really explain, but that girl is still me. He didn't know me back when I was 12. He doesn't know me now. He could try to pin labels on me, take my personality and motivation and character apart and leave me feeling as if I was a heap of little pieces on the floor -- but there I was, whole, in that old photo.

That's a great idea Math.

I too have looked at old photo's, but I've also looked and looked again at the photos since we've been together. Far from making me cry, they made me curious.

Why was I increasingly...not there...

I know it felt wrong, and can see in his eyes in photo's that it WAS wrong.

Those photo's bring back a lot of bad memories, bad feelings etc.

I am very lucky in that, because of what I do for a living, there are videos of me at work.

She is still in here somewhere...ok older, but she definitely is still there.

Being in touch via the dreaded facebook, with old colleagues, who were "forbidden" has helped too.

I have been told this very morning that far from being horrible to work with...actually I was wonderful to work with, and was someone who shared many belly laughs at work.

Made me cry....but tears of joy at being reconnected with myself.

Shine a light in those dark places by keeping on telling it like we know it REALLY is.

I cling to this thread, a couple of others too, but mainly this one ... and it's helping! It's really helping!

Last September I got away from my mother's house, after 2 years 'through the looking glass'. I made affirmation posters for my very own walls. The posters are rejections of what Jon said about me: things like "'Emotional' is not an insult", "I'm capable & competent", "What I see is real; What I feel is honest."

The other day, I looked at them & thought "These are too defensive". Hurrah! Time to swap them for some very slightly more aspirational statements

Math, I keep a photo of me at 12 on my desk. It was a very difficult year for me but the picture reminds me of how ... normal I was, despite everything. I owe that child a safe and happy life, as far as I can manage it.

TRM, isn't it SHOCKING how one madman can undermine your belief in yourself so thoroughly??! Think back to who you were when you first met him ... Would you like to tell us about you? I bet you were hot stuff, in a multitude of ways - your ex thought you'd enhance him, didn't he?

Back then, would you have been this pissed off about what somebody on a forum thought of you?

Reconnection, that's the word. Or reassimilation. Taking possession of myself. Taking myself back.