My N left me 2 months ago. When we first met 7 years ago, we were so attracted to each other, we came from opposite cultures and you know how they say: opposites attract…. Little did I know that N’s attract codependents. To make a long story short, he started by telling me a few months into the relationship that I should maybe try a bit harder to think before speaking (I , by no any means want to pat myself on shoulder but I thought of myself as someone who was well spoken and educated) He recommended I wear a ribbon on my wrist as to remember to “think before speaking” and I agreed thinking I should of course improve my communications skills as I certainly don’t want to say something that would embarrass him or anyone for that matter in public. He explained to me in the most logical way why it was important to think before speaking and for whatever reason I believed him as I saw him as the smartest person on the planet (he was a walking encyclopedia) .

I am writing this now and thinking “did I really fall for this?” Months passed and slowly the beginning of the end started. I can’t remember any of how our arguments started- call me crazy- but I can’t! He would put me in such a corner that I would feel controlled and would raise my voice (please note that this is about the tone and pitch of my voice! ) or roll my eyes or simply walk away. BAD MISTAKE,! Over the years he told me that doing these things is disrespectful in a relationship and that I would have to make an effort (which I totally agree and I am not making excuses but he pushed my buttons so hard that I didn’t know how else to react – sometimes I used to think I lost my marbles!) . So I did the mistake of PROMISING I would never raise my voice, or make a sarcastic remark or roll my eyes and the worst one not to interrupt him.

Let’s just say if I interrupt him in an argument he looses it! He keeps telling me that he told me hundreds of times not to interrupt and that I am thick headed and never learn from my mistakes…. that all he was looking for in a relationship is trust and respect and if I did these things I was showing a lack of trust and respect…. But I trusted him fully and more than respected him! PLEASE NOTE THESE ARE THINGS I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DO DURING AN ARGUMENT.

I usually thought I was pleasant to be around but I don’t know who I am anymore?

And so, the horror started when an argument would start and I raised my voice, he would then start screaming for hours (no exaggeration) because since I started raising my voice he was now allowed to yell. He always expected me to calm down the argument but he wouldn’t let me walk away. If I tried….he would hit me…. And i wont go into details but let’s just say that every other week I had bruises all over my body that were well aimed…he knew exactly where to hit. This went on for years….:( the crazy part is that I know he has a soft side to him and he is struggling with his demons…. I tried to help him so many times but I was never good enough! Even when I stopped raising my voice and he said that was not good enough.

I supported us financially for 4 years and agreed to it because I loved him and wanted him to work out his entrepteneurial skills and the minute he made money, he left me in the most cruel way possible for another woman.! He says the he loves me and cares for me but as a friend only. He says he doesn’t want to fight anymore (well me neither!) but he doesn’t realize that the cause of the fights are him…. I just can’t be this perfect person he wants me to be…I am exhausted….

How can someone I love so much do this to me? Every holiday or birthday there was a fight….he broke off on easter holiday as to punish me….?! I have been reading about N’s so obsessively trying to understand how I could not see this before! I mean I should have walked out the second he laid his hand on me the first time….

I found an article that talk about “the victimized Extreme narcissist” and it described my N’s behavior to a T – I hope it helps one of you with some answers…. I still doubt myself very much because he is such a smart person but slowly am realizing he is suffering inside and I have no choice but to forgive the past…we had nice moments together but he just would not see things from my point of view
Thanks for reading this… I hope my heart heals quickly- my brain knows I should move on but my heart is being stubborn….

Any of your input would be helpful… I feel so foggy and can’t tell if maybe I was the one who pushed his buttons so he acted that way? The sad part is that he told me that now he knows what not do to his current/future relationship…. Thanks for turning me into an experiment…:( how can someone be so cruel? I keep saying cruel because I have no other words to describe it!

Will he change? Will the new person reap all the benefits of my “hard work” …. I took beatings from this guy just to save my marriage…! And now he walks all over me….

You are free of him and of the stress he created in your life. That IS a good thing.

The feeling of utter abandonment when you most needed support is awful. I’ve been there. It is a daily struggle to not remain angry about that, even after nearly 6 years of separation. The only solution that will overcome the emptiness is to create something new … new memories to eclipse the pain.

Even though it is tempting to assume that the flavor of love you’ve just tasted is the norm, try to remember that it is not. If you are conscious of the pit you feel in your stomach when you are involved with someone who is suppressing you, you can hone that radar to alert you earlier than the point of deep involvement. The real trick is to honor yourself and what your intuition, or whatever it is that alerts you, with complete faith. It is easier to recover if you’ve done so, I think.

I have and do continue to recommend to people who are not obligated by family or law to completely disconnect from your past … and your ex-narcissist. There is no reason to take their calls, even if it is for a seemingly fun reason like a birthday. Every conversation/exchange that you allow with them opens the door for more lies and feelings of betrayal.

The horror at what you found acceptable during the relationship is part of what I’ve alluded to in other posts as the feeling of loss of myself. By the time my relationship ended, the woman who was me was unrecognizable with regard to decisiveness and inner strength.

Our boundaries are our own to set and keep. Every time we allow them to be altered to keep a difficult person in our lives, we are eroding that very part of ourselves who is our greatest resource at dark times. It is often said that trust is the hardest thing to recover. When we have come to distrust ourselves, we will have difficulty with every decision that we make in the future.

It took many years to figure out what Dorothy did get out of it. I think now that all she had to do to get out of “crazy land” was to Decide to.

Once I decided to get out of my crazy N-invested land, the real journey began.

It wasn’t easy finding my home because I had none. I was forced to leave my N-mother at only 14. Thank goddess for group homes, it was the structure and support I needed to make it.

Years later I found myself married to an N because I had no clue, was still finding my way, etc. I’m sure you know the drill.

But once I clicked my shoes and DECIDED that this is it – no more – ever – I started going to Al-Anon just for support. I learned alot there. Maybe we’ll have a N-anon group some day…

But here is what I want to share. This is NOT easy, but this is how I finally crossed the river and have had NO N people in my life ever since.

I wrote down every N or N-type I ever knew on paper and made a couple columns. Next to their name I wrote what attracted me to them in the first place, what I really liked about them, what ‘promise’ I assumed I would get from them and what short-comings I had that I knew they wouldn’t care about. (In other words, I knew with their short-comings, they would over look mine, at the time I was a pot smoker), so “good-clean-healthy folks might not like me”, was my thinking at the time.

Then I wrote what I assumed or thought at the time that they liked about me. Why were they so attracted to me? How did they stroke my ego…What did they like that I had?

I cried and raged and shamed myself through this list – but I knew I had to do the work or be forever a victim.

Then the last column was “What must I believe about myself to make this what I wanted”. You see, I didn’t believe I was good enough for the nice healthy people. I thought they would reject me. I found out some hard truths about myself, but if I didn’t find them out, there was no way on working on them to change myself.

The 3 main things I saw as a common theme – when I stopped looking at them and started looking at me – was this:

1. I loved the excitement (bad boys), it was a quick fix to my shy, lonely side
2. They co-signed (approved of) my own Bullsh** (I wasn’t exactly a goodie-2-shoes), and, sadly…I thought deep down that,
3. Good guys wouldn’t want me.

Then I worked on myself and made a LIST of what I’d never put up with again, all the Red Flags, and every date I went on I’d evaluate them and weeded out the bad ones. It wasn’t long before I was comfortable dating nice (and also imperfect) guys and what used to be “attractive or even addictive” to me faded away. N people used to pull me in somehow according to my weaknesses above, but after I got wise to that and worked on myself I am now repelled by them and they don’t like me too much either. Why? Because I’m no longer a source of N-supply for them, and somehow they pick this up I think. They know how to pick up on ‘weakness’ signals, and my weaknesses (above) are things I worked on in my own recovery. They were un-truths, but I clicked my heals and decided not to believe in them anymore. I replaced them and made nice friends along the way.

I know the suffering, and so I hope this helped someone.
Jeanette

The cord cutting CD of Doreen Virtue is going to be my next try. In the past, when healers have cut the invisible cords which connect us to all relationships, I noticed that he has felt it and responded straight away with a phone call. Narcissists are functioning on a psychic level for sure….why else would there be so many recovery sites? This is my second Narc.

This is my belief. They tug at their victim(s) inwardly so that some reliable supply is always handy. We’re addicted to them, they’re addicted to what the victim supplies. (Not the victim herself).

Soul vampires for sure. Excorcism for US would not be too far fetched–I’ve often thought that’s what Narcs need too.

In the third year, I fell for him and felt his sexual magnetism. So how did he hook me so that now, 8 weeks after I threw him off I can’t stop thinking about his ways? I tap, hypnotize, cut cords, get healing, write journals…nup, he’s in my mind. He found my weak point and it’s a weakness which turns me on…jealousy. He found my button.

He gets so angry because he blames everyone else for us being a part. He says I have backed myself into a corner with my children and don’t feel I have the freedom to try to work things out with our marriage. There is truth in that statement, however I know that it is for the best. I know it would be a huge mistake to go back into that mess. I just wish the hurting and longing would stop.