The Middle of the End
When you live with a narcissist for long enough, your world view slowly changes. Of course you have no friends. You shouldn’t have friends that the narcissist doesn’t like. You’re not worthy of new friends. In fact, you’re not worthy of much.
Anything you do is wrong. You don’t know how to change a diaper or cook a decent meal. It’s your fault that sex isn’t any good. You should be able to work full time, grocery shop and keep up the house without any help. What’s wrong with you?
When you’re down there, being lied to and gaslit in the torture chamber of your safe space, your home, you start to believe it. Of course you didn’t do that correctly. And somewhere, the part of you that is still alive, still breathing, says, “I can fix this. I can make it better.” So, you lie, you cover for the narcissist, you pretend everything is ok. And it is, in public. Which is why they try to keep you at home.
When my daughter was two, I had the opportunity to go away for an international Kodaly conference in Canada. I applied for both the conference and the pre-week of solfege study with an eminent Hungarian. I got in to the pre-week, and my school agreed to help me pay for the trip and encouraged me to go for the additional training. This was a couple of years after the Beginning of the End. My first significant time away since Anne was born.
The one thing my ex didn’t ever seem to mind was me going away to study. It was my lifeline, and he knew it. That August, I went to Canada.
Almost two weeks out of that house. Out of that marriage. Suddenly, people were telling me I was smart, that I knew things. A man found me attractive enough to flirt madly with me. Who, me? I don’t deserve these things, I said to myself. Yet over and over, during that time away, I was told I did deserve the praise, the pleasure, the support of new friends. I leaned into it, hard. I felt like I could breathe again for the first time in years.
Returning home, spouse picked me up at the airport and immediately launched into a litany of the things I should have done while I was away, and all the things he had done better while I was gone. From deep down, in a place I had forgotten existed, my anger rose. I turned and looked at him in the driver’s seat. With more clarity than I’d felt in years, I said, “I want a divorce.”
He begged, he pleaded, he cried. We went into therapy with the first of 3 different therapists over 8 years. We were not the children of divorce, and we both believed we could work it through. We tried, God knows we tried.
By the time we entered into round 3, the only thing we could agree on was how we could learn to be different in our next relationships.
I often wonder what would have been different if we’d given up sooner, if we’d divorced immediately when I asked for it. I don’t think either of us would have grown up.
I know I wouldn’t have had the support of the women I gathered around me in those final years. I needed that, badly.
And I suspect I wouldn’t have heard those glowing words at his funeral, either.
Anything you do is wrong. You don’t know how to change a diaper or cook a decent meal. It’s your fault that sex isn’t any good. You should be able to work full time, grocery shop and keep up the house without any help. What’s wrong with you?
When you’re down there, being lied to and gaslit in the torture chamber of your safe space, your home, you start to believe it. Of course you didn’t do that correctly. And somewhere, the part of you that is still alive, still breathing, says, “I can fix this. I can make it better.” So, you lie, you cover for the narcissist, you pretend everything is ok. And it is, in public. Which is why they try to keep you at home.
When my daughter was two, I had the opportunity to go away for an international Kodaly conference in Canada. I applied for both the conference and the pre-week of solfege study with an eminent Hungarian. I got in to the pre-week, and my school agreed to help me pay for the trip and encouraged me to go for the additional training. This was a couple of years after the Beginning of the End. My first significant time away since Anne was born.
The one thing my ex didn’t ever seem to mind was me going away to study. It was my lifeline, and he knew it. That August, I went to Canada.
Almost two weeks out of that house. Out of that marriage. Suddenly, people were telling me I was smart, that I knew things. A man found me attractive enough to flirt madly with me. Who, me? I don’t deserve these things, I said to myself. Yet over and over, during that time away, I was told I did deserve the praise, the pleasure, the support of new friends. I leaned into it, hard. I felt like I could breathe again for the first time in years.
Returning home, spouse picked me up at the airport and immediately launched into a litany of the things I should have done while I was away, and all the things he had done better while I was gone. From deep down, in a place I had forgotten existed, my anger rose. I turned and looked at him in the driver’s seat. With more clarity than I’d felt in years, I said, “I want a divorce.”
He begged, he pleaded, he cried. We went into therapy with the first of 3 different therapists over 8 years. We were not the children of divorce, and we both believed we could work it through. We tried, God knows we tried.
By the time we entered into round 3, the only thing we could agree on was how we could learn to be different in our next relationships.
I often wonder what would have been different if we’d given up sooner, if we’d divorced immediately when I asked for it. I don’t think either of us would have grown up.
I know I wouldn’t have had the support of the women I gathered around me in those final years. I needed that, badly.
And I suspect I wouldn’t have heard those glowing words at his funeral, either.
RSS Feed