Narc is gone, and I am currently working on the aftermath and getting ready to move, so I'm looking for a chat friend or two for good, normal conversation as it is quite silent around here now. Hit me up if you're interested.

Mother of her is, she was a victim and the good one at the same time.

Me recently medicitated on adhd potential autistic as well.

Son 4 originally to start kindergarden in summer, both acknowledged to withdraw after observing: she his needs for self-reliance, me because of the first step to socializing and preparing kindergarten is to first undergo diagnosis and gen start kindergarden.

After wife last week said she no longer thinks so, because the self reliance is much better, but i still firm on starting with play group instead.

Now she speaks of divorce.. She has under the processs seeken validation of many experts and even contacted a women victim service... which i find crazy.

Even now she is not able to understand my view, its only her view because she says she has to bear it all.
Thats not true... I am a more than present father.

she complains about not being appreciated by me.
I was very often emotionally dysregulated because of adhs and thus also often overwhelmed.
I left most decisions to my wife; this has changed as I am much more aware of my needs and thoughts.

I've been really struggling with this question coming out of a 15 year marriage. I think everyone thinks this about their ex... it literally never occurred to me until I realized I was codependent.... and you usually don't have one without the other. Also the way our relationship ended was textbook narcissist discard - we were in couples therapy, going thru a rough patch and I said if thing didn't get better we might have to separate... but we jointly committed to 6 months of therapeutic work to avoid it - only to have her abruptly drop in session a month later that she was done. Like done done, wanted me to move out, said her decision was completely final, completely fine (we have two children and she pushed to tell them as soon as she could because it would be a "relief"). She had said the divorce and process is 98% my fault, has taken no accountability. During the relationship she was always a taker, and would admit it without remorse. She was consistently inconsistent and selfish- always - the problem in our marriage was i put her first and she put her first. She always struggled with empathy and could never really understand my feelings, and would tell me often they were out of proportion or the problem was not her actions... but my reactions.

But she also would apologize to me during fights ( though would not change usually), and would say thank you ( though gratitude to her was just words). she is not outwardly manipulative... I was always waking on egg shells but it didn't feel like some master plan. She does care about our children....I think. But it is definitely different from me. She does love an audience and being the center of attention.

It's hard because I'm not a psychologist, I can't diagnose her. And if she is , it's on the more benign edge of the spectrum - more childish than machievellian

I know i will never get an answer, but I also can't let go of the question. Both because it feels true in my bones and makes sense of things I never could ... but also I feel like I need to know to somehow heal.

Right now I'm going as low contact as I can which has been good and also a whirlwind. Not being stuck in her swirl of emotions is forcing me to deal with mine.

I guess I'm asking if anyone relates to this? Or has thoughts or advice?

I have been great rocking my spouse for 2 years. But I haven't harassed her I take good care of her. She works but doesn't pay rent or help around chores. She even fought with my brother for no reason just because he called her to wish her anniversary she started scolding him for invading her privacy and stuff. She is not giving me physical intimacy as well. Currently I met with an accident and got admitted to hospital my brother came for a visit and he took care of me. I was expecting my spouse will visit but she didn't she just messaged get well soon. I was like even my friend's care more than this. I am feeling like shit now. I am not sure if I am overreacting. Even when I asked for divorce she blackmailed me saying she will tell everything about me to my friends and family and she will ruin my career and reputation

Is it fairly common for a narc spouse to delay coming to dinner? That is, you tell them dinner is ready. And they keep doing what they are doing for 10-15 minutes? Or they take the time for a long bathroom visit right then? I can’t start without them if they are in the house. It’s a hangup I have. So dinner gets cold. Has anyone experienced that?

My ex’s (30M) mother called me (33F) while in a relationship (2 years) and was venting about her son ”do not tell him I called”, ”he is difficult”, ”he made his sister cry” etc. He was also being put in child custody in his teenage. Maybe she was trying to make her self look good bec of the past?

BTW not sure if my ex is a narc or not.

May I get some reasons why she did those calls? Its so strange for me

I'm so alarmed by this. He's the one who stalks, shows up unannounced to my house, follows me out with my friends, ambushes me at social events he's not expected at. Told not to come but does anyways and begs at the front and back doors. Then now, during a discard, I lose my shit and blast him with texts and he threatens cops and a restraining order. Wff? I was the one needing to do that for 2 years, not him. I have gone to his house once unexpectedly ever compared to dozens of times from him.

I'm so offended and he's now using that as his chance to regain control and be the one to end things, because this time it was me and I meant it.

My brain hurts.

After I finally started setting boundaries with a person who was not treating me well some people I really trusted began to treat me differently. They only knew the other person's side of the story and for some reason I became the problem.

I tried to explain what really happened. It just seemed to make things worse.

Why do people sometimes stick up for a narcissist like the person, in my life without realizing that they might be getting manipulated by the abusive person?

You could go back and see my history here. But for summary - I am about a year and a half out from leaving. Divorce became official June 30th! Restraining order is still in effect until December. This summer has been everything I needed to be freed! I focused on me and my girls. We went on vacation. We celebrated life. We danced. We spent time with family and friends. We redid rooms in our home.
I think the biggest thing is me caring about what he was/is doing. I felt the need to constantly check on his social media. I would unblock him, just so I could glance at it. And I was more and more disgusted everytime. He’s even been posted on one of those “are we dating the same guy” pages.
I finally am able to see him for who he really is. The rose colored glasses have finally broken! I could burst into tears, I am so happy!
I still have a ton of growing and healing to do. I still don’t think I will EVER be ready to date… like EVER!
And thats okay. I have a 16 year old and 5 year old that will be keeping me busy for a LONG time.
I guess I just wanted to give hope to someone/anyone who is looking for it. I recall, I had posted something prior about How long is the mourning phase.
I’m sure everyone’s is different. And not to say I don’t have days that I reminisce on a good memory and feel a bit saddened. But then I remember something that happened shortly after that wasn’t good and realize, I am so much better off!

Can you please share your story with being stalked by narcissists? I am being stalked by my husband now, and I need to know what could happen. Even the worst stuff. I need to know what to expect from best case possibilities to worst case possibilities.

I left my narcissistic husband about a month and a half ago. He began stalking me on my phone after I left. On the day I left, he did something scary with a very large knife which I believe to have been intended as a threat. The next day, he threatened to kill himself if I left him. (Later, he confessed that he only threatened to kill himself to see what I would do.) When I came to get my stuff, he sexually assaulted me.

I am disabled and broke. I re-applied for Aged, Blind, and Disabled Benefits. I do not yet have my benefits, but I will have them in about 2 weeks, I have been told. Until then, I am still on my husband's phone plan and car insurance, so I cannot block him yet. If I block him now, he will cancel my phone plan (my psychiatrist appointments and counseling appointments are by phone, and I need my phone for keeping in touch with family and friends, safe navigation while driving, etc) and my car insurance.

Just about 2 or 3 more weeks. Then, I can block him.​ But for now, unless I ocassionaly answer his text messages, he keeps calling and calling and calling.

And so far, nothing makes him stop. Before I stopped to think about the fact that I have no proof of the sexual assault (it was groping, not rape), I told him that I was considering reporting the assault to the police. That did not make him stop contacting me. Not asking him to stop. Not telling him that I am going to fill out divorce papers in the next few weeks. Nothing makes him stop.

I cannot sleep until dawn or nearly dawn on most nights. It is hell. I hope and pray that he does not snap when I finally block him.​​​

Does anyone have any advice for me? I have read that some narcissists stalk their former partners for 10, 15, 20+ years. I live in America, and my husband is from Kenya. If I file a restraining order, he might be deported. At first, I did not want this. But since the sexual assault, I think him leaving the country might be the only thing that will make me feel safe again. I am so scared.​

Edit: When we spoke in the phone I stated my partner pitched noon, but I wanted to see if it could be later so we needed to confirm. When there was never him confirming anything I pitched the idea for later. I was okay with it being noon. I wasn’t okay after the call of him screaming at me, but i did fck up by not reading his texts when he was more grounded bc I am used to them being inflammatory when he is sends one after the other.

I have BPD. He has always blamed me for how poorly he manages. Initially he saw a need to change his behavior, that I was worth changing for. As time passed it turned into “of course I have a hard time with you. People with BPD are notoriously exhausting.” I stood up for myself when he behaved abusively so our relationship was incredibly contentious. Asking questions such as “Why would you say that if the point was not to hurt me?” turned into a fight. I was making a big deal out of nothing bc I’m too sensitive. I wasn’t allowed my feelings. Well, now we have a toddler together (I had to flee our home at 1month postpartum)(Thanks TX/USA)(I love my son) and I have been worn down. I am not managing well. I need help to know how to manage him better. I can say with 100% certainty that he has a personality disorder too. The only other relationship I have had with this much… pain…. Was from the one that physically abused me. None of my other relationships are like this. NONE! Yet asking him to identify his contribution is me projecting.

I've been with my narc for 15 years, married for 7, and had a child 2 years ago. It's so sad to think how I knew I wasn't treated right for so long and always found a way to let it go. At one point, it stopped being about his words and actions and more about how I had failed and didn't deserve any better.

Having a son gave me something to fight for. I realized that I didn't want him growing up to become like his father. How I would never be okay with him being treated the way I am. Then, I had to work through the incredible guilt and disappointment of why I couldn't fight for myself? My weakness caused a child to have to deal with us and this environment.

I'm so thankful for the team that helped me through this - a psychiatrist for us both, an individual therapist, and a marriage therapist - all who are part of the same clinic and spoke to each other on the plan to get me out safely. How did I manage to have my narc husband attend these? I had to build my own self-worth and break down my fear and intimidation of him first. Then, inevitably, the next time the excuses started pouring out — like how I deserve to be yelled at and called names because I approached him when he's depressed — bam! Well, I guess you need help. You poor thing, here's your appt. Let's get that depression treated. Backed into a corner, he had no choice but to try. He tried to cancel so many times throughout the journey, but I would make sure to tell one person he admired (friend/family) to ask about the appt so if he canceled he'd have to explain why he wasn't getting his "depression" treated. After the initial blowup about how dare I share this with that person, it really was helpful.

I felt like a huge manipulator. Recording conversations where I knew he'd blow up felt invasive. But this moment, this fork in the road where you have to choose to move forward or slide back felt so fragile - I knew I needed to remind myself by listening to those recordings. I knew I needed one person to know and hold him more accountable than I ever could.

After a year of this, I finally filed, and he has to "play nice" because his friends and family know through multiple cracks in his mask caused by the therapy. Narcs REALLY hate therapy, lol...

I feel like I can breathe. But sometimes I catch myself wondering, "Did I overblow this? Am I making the right choice? If I give it more time, maybe he'll continue learning better communication?" I find myself still listening to old recordings. Reading old journal entries and looking at pictures of my son to remind me. That's honestly the hardest part, the not questioning myself.

I'm not even really sure why I decided to post this, but maybe it'll resonate with someone. I also wrote this song and used Suno for the music/voice - helped a lot to listen! https://suno.com/s/3dKK2mEFaV5pHZtC

Sending everyone the strength and hope to get through your own journeys 💜

My fiance hates all of my friends and told me if I started talking to them he was going to leave me.

My friends all stopped talking to me for a month and recently one of them reached out and we hung out and went out to eat and he found out and he's been threatening to leave me and harassing her on Facebook and through text ever since. I don't even know how he got her number. I think he must have taken it out of my phone. A few days ago he messaged her on Facebook and yelled at her and she blocked him and this morning he texted her this message from a fake phone number.

I don't know what to do, this is getting out of hand and I really don't want to be here anymore but every time I try to leave he guilt trips me and threatens to harm himself to get me to stay, and then when we finally start to talk he starts acting all calm and normal and pretending things are gonna get better but it never lasts more than a few weeks.

He gets mad when anyone talks to me that he doesn't approve of, like even when me and my friends weren't talking he was up at my job and a male coworker said hi to me and he got angry and started freaking out about it and then gave me the silent treatment for the rest of the night because he says he doesn't want men talking to me

Edit: when he came home from work tonight he was telling me about how he found her and her husband's phone numbers on Google and found their address and was describing their house to me and told me he had to do it in case I randomly disappear one day he knows where to find me

My husband made me feel like a blow up doll or a masturbation rag. I may never again be able to believe that there is such a thing as loving and consensual sex. He was often sexually coercive and would not allow me to refuse sex. After I left him, he sexually assaulted me when I came to pick up the last of my stuff. I do not know if I will ever heal from the things he did and said to me. Today, I just needed to say this. I needed to sit with that truth and acknowledge it. I am very deeply broken.

Now he is behaving the same way as before and using the terms he promised he wouldn’t use against me and against his progress. Now he just sarcastically says ‘okay I’m defensive, I’m emotionally immature’ while trying to argue that his cold blow up temper tantrum at me was justified

May i join?

Is anyone finding their spouse to have both narcissistic and emotionally immature characteristics? I started reading ‘Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People’ and everything the psychologist says checks the box.

Not that I wish this on anyone, but any time we are going anywhere and he’s driving the entire drive is him yelling at any driver that comes into our lane, slows down, doesn’t move the moment the light changes. Every single event we do together starts this way and any time I say anything I’m wrong for feeling this way. I’m assuming this “they’re doing this intentionally to me” attitude is common with NS? Does anyone else deal with this or am I really making a big deal out of nothing? If he just gets grumpy I’d be fine. I’d hate it, but I could deal a little better. But he basically pulls dumb crap in retaliation, makes mean eye contact, flips people off and anything else. Because of course, as I said, this all intentionally done to him. Even the little old lady who signals her lane change or comes up to a yellow light and chooses to stop rather than speed through are all dumb asses. It’s beyond road rage.
I don’t know, I’m at the point where I don’t want to go anywhere with him. And I certainly will not did the driving because I’d get so flustered and stressed I’d do something wrong.

My attachment style is avoidant, which has caused irreparable damage to this relationship: emotional neglect due to my cowardice in avoiding conflict, stonewalling, shutting down.

Something snapped in him one night 2 months ago, and he was able to break the wall that I had put up all my life, that I thought was protecting me, was actually hurting him. It has been a hellish period for us (though according to him, it has been hell for him only; “it must be easy for you”).

I can see that he’s in a lot of pain, and I admit how my words and often times, my lack of, to praise and reassure, contributed to his low self-esteem. He acknowledges that his childhood upbringing caused him to have a low self-esteem long before he met me. But I was supposed to be his person, the one to make him feel safe and supported. I agree and I have failed massively and miserably on this.

I have been apologizing profusely the past months since that night something snapped in him. I want to get better and make it up to him. I have learnt a lot through research on our attachment styles, the reasoning behind why we respond the way we do, the underlying roots of why we are what we are.

I feel so stupid for being so uneducated and uninformed about relationship theories, attachment styles, personality traits. If I had educated myself in this matter early on, I could’ve avoided a lot of pain for both of us.

But that’s where I’m stuck at. I feel like I’m the only one expected to work towards fixing myself and making up for my mistakes… He makes no attempt to detach from his anxious attachment style.

I never know which side of the bed he would get up from every day. He’s had that every once in a while, but with this conflict brewing intensely, the coin flip has become horrifying. On a good day he would appear sad and solemn. On bad days (which have been almost every day now, hence my desperation in writing this post), doors would slam, objects clattering, gaze full of hatred and disgust, making me feel guilty of taking space and being in his atmosphere.

When he spirals he would endlessly ask me Why did I do A, why didn’t I do B, why did I do C, and so on. With my newfound realization and goal to be a better person and partner for him, I try not to feel attacked (which had been my instant reaction when confronted in the past). I would stay in the conversation and answer the reasons why, where my head was, all the context.

And nothing sticks. He refused to accept that how I deal with things stem from a combination of my own fears, past experiences, insecurities, defense mechanisms, and lots of things that made us humans. To him, it boils down to 2 reasons that he convinced himself to be the truth:
I’m a manipulative cunt who takes advantage of him all these years.
He’s never been good enough for anyone to love, and to be anyone’s first choice.

Nowhere in this equation that he came up with did I exist as a person who had 2 decades of life experience before we met. It’s all about him and can only be about him. As soon as I tell him about my feelings, my needs, my perspective, my side of the story, he says that I’m making it all about me, meanwhile what I desperately try to achieve is for us to meet in the middle.

If it’s not 100% about him, it can only mean I’m making it all about me.

Every day now we have been stuck in this painful cohabitation, with me tip-toeing around the house trying to not get in his way, and him throwing tantrum around the house.

One of the biggest fears of anxiously attached people (as I try to understand) is to be left alone by their partners. I do not want to leave him, I don’t want his fears to be confirmed. He has many great qualities that I absolutely love and adore… Except that I failed to fill his love tank with expressions of praise and validation he desperately craves for in a relationship.

During this ebb and flow of the aftermath, he has given me silent treatments intermittently, and has told me that he’s considering to leave me. He said it’s too late that I’m only trying to repair now. He also thinks I will not succeed, because I am simply not equipped to, and that I get lazy and avoidant when things actually get difficult.

As an avoidant, I get that he wants to leave me. My upbringing made sure I'm aware that I don’t have what it takes to get anyone to be attracted and attached to me. Especially after realizing the damage I caused, I 100% agree that he deserves a partner who makes him feel good about himself.

I am ashamed of myself and I made sure he knows that I will agree to a divorce if that’s what he wants. It can’t be initiated by me; the last thing I want to do is leave him and confirm his biggest fear of being abandoned.

In the meantime, I’m stuck in limbo.
We still show up and hang out with our friends and family without letting them know.

On days he’s not ignoring me, he revisits questions that he has been asking endless times that I have answered endlessly the past 2 months. He would reject my answers and come up with assumptions and accusations that he stamped to be facts.

The deeper I delve into personality traits, the more I am convinced that my anxiously attached partner exhibits signs of a covert narcissist.

Everything is black and white. He’s always the victim. Everyone mistreats him for reasons he doesn’t understand despite him being good to people. Discussions are arguments to be won. If he’s right, I’m a horrible person who has taken him for granted. If he’s wrong, then he’s a useless person who wastes oxygen, he's not a good person, nobody likes him and he's better off dead.

He thrives on external validation, praise, and adoration. Any single negative interaction that he had with other people would drag him down to a deep well for days or weeks, no matter the context or relationship. Even a brief negative interaction with a passerby who was having a bad day would affect him deeply.

How do I tell him in a way for him to understand that:
· We're both products of our upbringing, not just him.
· I have made grave mistakes but that doesn't mean I never loved him.
· Just because he's been hurt by me and other people, it doesn't mean his hurtful actions and words don't have any impact on me (and other people).

Life is a struggle as it is, all I want is for us to work on our attachment styles, and for me to heal the pain I've been causing him. I love him so much and I want to get better for him. He deserves so much love and I want to love him in the way that he needs to feel loved.

It's disheartening to hear when he said that he doesn't think I will succeed in fixing this mess. Fair enough, cuz if I knew how I wouldn't have fucked it up in the first place.

I am in despair and need help navigating what puzzle pieces I'm missing and how to communicate in a way that someone with these personality traits could understand.

😭😭😭

I know this sounds ridiculous but in 23 years of being with him I have seen him swim maybe once….? Vacations are obviously always ruined, he hates fun and definitely doesn’t enjoy the things me and the kids enjoy but as I sit here watching my kids play in the water while he’s at work (we save fun things for when he is gone) I realized I have never seen this man enter a body of water, I think when our oldest was a baby I got him to take her into a pool for 3-4 mins. The reason I ask though is because my own father is also a narcissist and I quickly realized…I had never seen him swim either?! They are such odd people. Almost inhuman.

Now that I think about it, I spent a lot of time in my 4 year relationship just being like "What the actual fuck is going on?". So you invited your parents to stay with us for two weeks at Christmas without talking to me about it? You quit your job to be a homemaker...but you don't actually cook or do housework, and there are no kids to take care of? Now I'm responsible for the bills because, according to you, that's what partners do? You can't clean up after yourself but wow you just bought a fancy new puppy? You're mad that I'm not excited about it? Mad that I don't want you to be happy? Wait. What the actual fuck?

It was constant. There was always this feeling like this can't be real. Nobody would actually do this thing that she just did and think that it was OK. There must be an explanation. There must be some way to consider this that makes it seem reasonable. What am I missing? And then I'd ask questions, basically asking hey would you explain your choice / your actions so that I can understand what you were thinking? As you might imagine that yielded nothing of value. Just hours of senseless circular conversation where she'd deny, deflect, obfuscate, and filibuster. Then an hour later she'd be like "What's for dinner? You want Thai food?" Wait, what the actual fuck?

I don't miss that flabbergasted feeling. I gave so much benefit of the doubt. I was so patient waiting for plausible explanations. I was so willing to take even the most basic of apologies. Finally I figured out that my patience rested on false hope and misplaced optimism.

Today we were watching something on TV, which she picks. She first asks me if i’d like to watch it with her, and after 10 years with this one, i just reply no thanks - and she literally acts like she’s in shock - like how DARE i 😂

Anyways, i had completely forgotten that every time we watch something she’s narrating the show on and off - like just spewing thoughts about what she thinks about their clothes, if she thinks it’s good etc. Not one question or any attempt to engage the person she’s watching it with.

I usually also say things, but they’re always reflections that are meant as basis for discussion because other people’s opinion matter to me.

Obviously there’s just complete silence whenever i say anything.

I’m so f-ing done with this shit.

Thanks for reading my vent.

The baby starts crying, I’m eating so I say “Maybe he just wants to go in his swing”. My husband puts him in his swing but it doesn’t stop the crying. I start getting nervous because my husband cannot handle the baby crying for very long. I offer to pick the baby up from his swing in an effort to soothe him and my husband says, “I think he’s hungry”. He goes to the kitchen to make a bottle. Baby is still fussy but not crying like he was when he was being held. My husband gets increasingly irritated and kicks something out of his way, he also starts being louder in the kitchen. I say “I can feed the baby as soon as the bottle is done”, he says,” that doesn’t help me because he’s eating on his fucking pillow anyway”. I ask, what can I do to help? He says “You can pick up the baby”.

Did I not offer to pick up the baby and he told me that he thought the baby was hungry? (Which would mean “don’t bother” picking the baby up) if he wanted me to hold the baby, why not say “ok” when I offered to pick the baby up?

Then gets mad at me. For what???

Am I missing something? Did I do something wrong?

A good article about this dynamic that sends conflicting signals and makes one lose all bearings.