Discussing a Narcissist. It’s Difficult.

/ apensiveheart



I had a little bit different experience yesterday, a first in the nearly 2 year discard process from my now ex-wife who happens to be a narcissist.  Those of you that have been following my blog know that my ex works for the same company and, up until recently, even in the same building.  Considering I have worked there for many years (far more than her), I know a LOT of people.  Combine that with her narcissitic personality and physical attractiveness and a lot of people know her too.  Oddly enough, our divorce has seemingly been off-limits, meaning no one has really talked to me about it.  It’s like something that everyone is afraid to broach, with me at least.  That changed yesterday.

Before I go further, it is important to know that my ex has been married 4 times, including me, and 3 of the 4 were from the place that we work.  I know, that should have been enough of a flag right there, but it wasn’t.  In fact, I had been the doofus in between ALL of her marriages.  In my mind, I thought that was what she wanted, i.e. that she only got married so many times because I wouldn’t marry her.  Clearly, I had no clue about Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  Apparently many people at work thought the same thing, that she ultimately wanted to be with me and most understood that we had spent many years together and were “finally” married.  Of course, that has all changed, we are divorced, and many people were apparently shocked or surprised and didn’t know what to say (other than “there she goes again”).

Yesterday, I happened to be discussing business with a female friend at work that I have known for 30 years.  When we were done talking business, she looked right at me and asked “what happened”, and shared that so many people were taken aback when the divorce became known, and that most didn’t actually know until my ex changed her name back to her maiden name (which clearly had the impact that she wanted – shock and awe and also letting everyone know she was back on the market yet again).  I honestly wasn’t sure what to say, and I struggled with whether I should just minimize it, or tell her what really happened.

Discussing a narcissist to someone who doesn’t know anything about narcissism is incredibly difficult.  It honestly can sound as if you are the crazy one, that you simply have issues with the breakup and don’t want to accept any blame or fault in what happened.  Luckily, this particular woman was also good friends with one of my ex’s other previous husbands and they (including him) were shocked and didn’t understand when she left him.  So I started to explain some things, starting with the crazy making and emotionless process that my ex utilized when she initiated the devaluation and discard phases.  Interestingly, I shared that my ex had told me the particular husband that this woman was friends with pushed and abused her, thats the explanation my ex provided to me at least.  She was both surprised and angered by that, telling me this guy would be the last one to do that (and no, I didn’t know him, although I knew who he was).  Yet another piece of the narcissist puzzle and another lie falls into place.

feb16b

I found myself at various times during the discussion feeling as though I must have sounded like a crazy man.  Luckily, this person I was talking to is a good friend, one of few that I can trust, and she was easily able to connect my ex with the things that I was telling her.  This woman was also now able to make sense of the heartless things that my ex did to husband number 2 that she knew so well.  It was a relief to tell someone, but it also caused concern that I really don’t want that kind of personal information somehow getting back to my ex, inviting her to initiate some new smear campaign or feel the need to defend herself.  I don’t believe my friend will share the information and she was absolutely understanding and felt really bad about what happened and how it occurred.

I find it very interesting that the divorce has been final for nearly a year and this is the first person that has asked about things.  The feeling that I got during the discussion was that though people were shocked, they weren’t surprised.  Too many people were very aware of my ex-wife’s history what with 3 different husbands from the same work location (and all 4 of us were husbands before she was 36 years old sadly enough).  Of course, in hindsight, I should have known better too.  The saddest part is there WILL be a number 5 (she is living with her latest supply just a few miles away from my house), and likely a number 6 and who knows how high the tally will go.  It is a testament to the acting skills and convincing nature of the narcissist, not to mention the ability and desire for “normal” (co-dependent?) people to love and accept people, even with all of their mistakes and baggage.

It’s not a discussion I really want to have again.  It was uncomfortable on so many levels, a refresher in the trauma my ex created in my and other lives.  Is it ironic that everything associated with the narcissist other than the idealization phase, is difficult, even conversations about them?  Hmmm…

20 thoughts on “Discussing a Narcissist. It’s Difficult.”

      • Sure. I really like your blog so much already, even though just having read a few posts so far. You come across as so honest and opening up about your experiences. It is (naturally) very healing for me to read other bloggers, who also know what narcissism means, and how it affects a partner of a narcissist.. I will try to read most of your blog, step by step, although it may take a little time.. 🙂 I totally get what you are saying about the post-narcissist paranoia! In fact, I actually wrote a post yesterday called “Looking over my shoulder”… 🙂 I send healing thoughts to you.

        Liked by 2 people

  2. I don’t even try to explain anymore. No matter how many ways I’ve explained it to my older brother, he just doesn’t get it and still pushes his self-righteous on me. I just use the term ‘soul vampire’ and if it clicks they understand. Even most therapists are clueless. It’s amazing how unaware people and society are about cluster b personality disorders by the damage and affects they cause and as rampant as it’s become. I’m still slow in my process of recovery. Good you found validation. Heal on friend.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I understand what you are saying. I think the fact that this woman I was talking to had already been confused by my ex’s behavior when she dumped husband number 2 (the woman’s friend), it made more sense, especially since she knows me pretty well too and knows that I don’t typically do stupid or silly things. With that said, even though they nod in agreement, they cannot understand the brutality of narcissist. It is nice though to have any level of understanding from someone on the outside. Thanks for your comment my brother.

      Like

      Reply

  3. Hello again, Pensive Heart! I’ve recently been nominated for a blog award, and so I had to pick my own nominees for who gets the award, so to pass it on to several people. Although I have only very recenty stumbled upon your blog, I really do like the personal way in which you describe your expreiences with narcissism. So I have nominated you for the “One Lovely Blog Award”, too. You can read all about it in my latest blog post, here:
    https://survivednarc.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/another-one-lovely-blog-award-nomination/

    It would be fun if you have the time and opportunity to participate (it’s basically just writing a blog post and mentioning your own nominees).
    Take care / SurvivedNarc

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  4. Dear Pensive,

    Thanks for your posts, in response to which a few thoughts of my own, as another man facing a similar situation. Let’s talk about “being replaced”, replaced in a way that implies that you weren’t actually anything special, anything unique, you were just a good source of supply. About a year ago, you pondered on whether knowing about NPD was a blessing or a curse. I spent a lit of time looking into this, trying trying trying to make sense of the person that I had fallen in love with, the person I eventually left because I felt like I was growing less and less every day of bliss that we spent together: my world was dwindling in scope until everything just became about her and what she needed, and yet our relationship seemed never to go beyond emotional first base: this odd, shallow form of over-the-top affection and sex, but no apparent depth or real, adult intimacy. What I have come to understand since (we work together; she’s with someone else, but I am still “backup supply”) is this:

    The Narcissist is genuinely that: a figure lost in an image. My N still believes in magic, fairies and dragons. At the heart of this magic thinking is this logic is the logic of Santa Claus: if I am a good little girl (or at least, people think I am), and if I obey all the rules (because I can’t really understand others) and make people think I am a poor lost solitary soul with a good heart (basically, Cinderella), I will get what I want. God only knows what kind of parenting or neurological disorder produces this, but they don’t move beyond this as most people should (at, say, 8 years old). They do not learn that, if you want something, you have to make it, and that applies as much to relationships as anything else. So, they produce a mask, a false self (as Alice Miller would put it) that is that “good little girl”, that they MUST project in order to get what they want in life. This has several results. First, it means that, to get what they want, they DON’T make it, they have to depend on others (sort of Santa Claus figures). Second, relationships with narcissists are not the usual adult process of “mutual making”, but a process of exchange: they are a “good little girl”, for which you will give them what they want in life. There are several problems with this picture: the first one is that people are MEANT to make what they want, and if you get others to carry that burden, they gradually sink under the weight, gradually sucked dry by the unequal parasitic exchange. The second is that, despite the fact that this way of doing things is ESSENTIAL to their lives (because they know of no other way of getting what they want), it remains deeply unsatisfying. MAKING what you want brings satisfaction, builds the soul, and teaches us to learn from our mistakes, because the making is part of us, and therefore the mistakes are also part of us, so we grow and mature. The narcissist doesn’t experience this, but instead spends their life getting others to feed the mask they have produced in their childhood: their partners must comply with this self-projection, and any disappointments are that other person’s fault. This is so essential to them that they fail to grasp how temporary and shallow such feedings of the false god are: they’re hungry again pretty soon, and – given the effect that this exchange has on their partners, who become increasingly worn down, demoralised and unsure – their partners become increasingly unsatisfactory as supply. In all truth, the narcissist will actually have several sources of supply on the go at once: not necessarily other sexual partners, but “feeders” that are kept separate from one another so that the image produced by the narcissist can be maintained, again and again and again. It works for a little while, but in truth this process fails to feed the actual soul of the narcissist, to make they themselves grow, so it passes into memory like a mirage. The nicest thing you ever do for a narcissist will be lost to them in a matter of months. But in the end, she will indeed move on, to a new source of supply: nothing distinct, but just replicating the same desires (although she may have picked up a new set of wants from your relationship, like the donut shop), and the next person is simply there to provide for those, and has no more reality as a person to the narcissist than their own manufactured mask.

    This is why the narcissist continues on through the endless cycle of idealise and seduce, devalue and discard. It is not because you and your life together had no value, but because the value it had did not find its way to nourish her actual, true self (which remains starved, angry and hidden), but instead fed an empty mask that she mistakes for herself.

    I still live with this masked impostor every day. In a funny kind of way, it’s a ridiculous, shallow thing – so empty and childlike, endlessly going round and round without depth or insight. I only wish I wasn’t still in love with her, or at the very least, what I sometimes think she could be. But it’s been thirteen years now, so I guess that won’t go away any time soon…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Wow! Thank you for the comment. I am speechless! You absolutely nailed it. I actually started getting depressed reading what you said because it is so accurate and on target and reminded me of so many recent events. But the more I thought about it, what you said just makes it that much clearer that I am in a better place now (even though it doesn’t feel like it sometimes). You described her to a T and I am accepting more and more just what a mess she is. Excellent feedback! Thanks again.

      Like

      Reply

      • Dear Pensive,

        Sorry, didn’t mean to depress you, although this whole business of loving, living with and losing a narcissist is by its nature such a downer, just so endlessly disappointing that there’s no avoiding it I guess. But unlike others that I have read on so many forums, you don’t seem to be letting bitterness eat you up and just become scar tissue on your soul. You are one of the few writers I know of on this that have genuinely looked at your own part in all of this, rather than just making yourself out to be the poor innocent victim of the blach-hearted villain. To be honest, that’s why yours is the only site or forum that I have written on: you seem to be a good sort of person, and in the world of NPD and ASPD forums, that is a rare blessing. My point though is this: I still love my ex, as you clearly still love yours, and I DON’T think she’s evil, which is what makes all of this so confusing, so horrible, so tragic. But what I came to understand (usually through my own mistakes) was how tragic, at a deep level, it was to be her: how everything that was genuinely good, genuinely special, genuinely real, passes into mist and fog for them so quickly, like pouring water into a leaky plant pot. The water drains away before the plant gets a chance to grow, and nothing you did for them and with them becomes part of them. Imagine what that is like, all your life: all those wonderful events fading away like a rainbow. I understood this eventually when I began to tally up the actual facts I found out about her early life with the way she presented it when we were together. She used to say that her youth was terrible, like a prison in which her family was locked in a little countryside house, and went nowhere and saw nothing. But then I gradually found out about all these wonderful places and trips her family had gone on to foreign lands (she loved travel, it was a huge “buzz” for her when we went anywhere), but these great childhood and teenage journeys seemed to have just disappeared from her memory, faded into nothing, making no impact on who she was. When I asked about them recently, she portrayed them negatively, like a “yeah, whatever, I was miserable during them”, a manner that she now treats some of OUR journeys, which she seemed so excited about at the time. And she was excited. But like everything else, these events – and the specialness of them – do not seem to find their way into her soul: they just fed her false self, which she mistakes for who she “really” is, and protects so vehemently precisely because it is so fragile and brittle. She spends her life getting others to feed her brittle china doll, her “good little girl”, while wondering all the time why she herself is still so very hungry. I’m afraid that her terrible protectiveness of that china doll means that questioning the way she acts will only mean you are seen as a cruel and horrible person, a person that has “hurt” her china doll, though, so this pattern will never change. Narcissists are genuinely emotionally disabled. But it IS important to remember how tragic this is for her, as much as it is for you and I. Except for one thing: while she is trapped in this forever, we can grow. Tomorrow will always be the same for her, the same thing again and again and again. For us, tomorrow will be different, because of today and yesterday and all the other days we have had, that are, and remain, and will always be special and part of us.

        Be well. Get better. (Me too!)

        Liked by 1 person

      • Please, please DO NOT be sorry. What you are saying is absolutely true and a good reminder of where I have been and why I should NEVER want to go back there again. Sometimes I/we seem to get caught in our little hell where reminiscing seems to rule the mind, forgetting about all of the anger and sadness that were definitely present in between all of the intense emotional highs during the love bombing and fake caring the N does.

        What you are saying is like getting another shove forward, pushing me out of my little fantasy world and into reality where I belong. I truly appreciate your insight and am glad you are sharing.

        Liked by 1 person

    • Sorry for the intrusion. I just wished to say that I wished you (Amadeus) shared your thoughts and writings overall on a blog of your own. I believe that you have too much to say that would no doubt help many, for you not to do so. At times, it even has the added benefit of helping yourself.
      Thankful I came across your comment in any case.
      In Gratitiude. 🙂

      Like

      Reply

      • Why Crystal, that’s very kind of you, and I will think it over. To be also utterly honest, I have, like Pensive, spent many years in confusion and pain (this whole business almost cost me my career as well as my sanity) over all of this, and I didn’t want to write anything until I genuinely felt I had a proper handle, and some proper perspective, on events and on my own feelings. I needed to understand what I had just put myself through, and why I had turned my back on what seemed (and at least twice a day STILL seems) to be the greatest love of my life. I needed to understand exactly what the nature of the damage being done to me was, and why, when I was so passionate, so entranced and beguiled by this woman, it also felt, deep down in my gut, like I was standing at the edge of a psychological black hole: that I was paying for this bliss with my very soul. That vantage point of perspective and understanding only came to pass this Christmas last, before which I doubt I would have had much of clarity to contribute. But as I say, I’ll think it through.

        Be well.

        Liked by 2 people

      • Hi Amadeus 😊
        Sorry to hear of your personal pain. I believe you have much to give.

        I simply decided recently to post anything that moved me, until I feel comfortable, as I had opened a blog over a year ago and never used it. I only ever posted comments myself on others blogs. I have always felt ridiculed and judged due to my upbringing and subsequent relationships and equally lacking clarity due to life’s circumstances, so I was most hesitant to give of myself in such a way, although I am drawn to do so. I am generally a “Dear Abbey” of sorts in everyday life. I was asked if I had a blog about a month ago, as I had become more involved in my interactions with other bloggers via comments , as it’s easier for me if not appearing on a “platform” so to speak, I guess. I did, but it was not active due to my fears.

        I am slowly, but surely feeling a little more “worthy” each day. I believe blogging to be an invaluable tool for others to obtain “food for thought” about their chosen interests or “forced” quest for clarity, understanding and answers that resonate with them; even if not initially. It also helps immeasurably with one’s own healing and personal growth throughout life and its many varied lessons.

        You have two immediate followers that value your input immediately and I personally, look forward to it. Sometimes, the clarity is found in the writing of one’s thoughts and musings and the comments that others contribute or the advice you give. For we often can see others through the eyes of a detached observer and so are not directly caught up in the direct emotion, but often the help we give others turns out to be the words and wisdom we needed to hear or have confirmed at that very moment.
        May you be blessed with finding your true inner peace sometime soon and please remember that not all individuals are so cruel. There are others that are caring and kind and value and appreciate the same from others. Take care. ❤

        Liked by 1 person

      • Oh btw Amadeus. I’m not sure if you have seen the blog “malignarc- knowing the narcissist” his writings are an invaluable insight in the mind and soul of a malignant narcissist (being that he is a rarity of “his kind”, as he says, as he not only admits to his ways, he attends therapy; albeit undertaken due to threat of disinheritance). It may simply give you a sense of validation or resonation with what you have come to understand to date, or it may help to give you the closure you may very well never fully obtain otherwise. He has many books on amazon available via kindle on the many topics covered within narcissistic abuse. He also has a few books geared specifically from the perspective of female narcissists. He is not only extremely articulate, he is very on point. An eye opener in my search for the “truth” and some semblance of understanding myself. H G Tudor is his “on screen name”. He seeks anonymity for obvious reasons.
        I hope this helps. His work is a little triggering (or perhaps a little more than that at times depending on your healing/understanding with any issue of your abuse.) I found it simply resonated like I knew it to be gospel and felt instant “comfort” from his words (and I am not religious in any way) or I otherwise “knew” it to be truth, but had to then cope with such truth.
        Take care 💪❤

        Like

  6. Hi Crystal, and thanks for the link. Yup, he’s a special one and no mistake. I found his discussions of “power” and “fuel” the most resonant. It’s rather odd, how he treats himself so well (“the lion hunting”, “the predator amongst the wilderbeest”), but never seems to ask himself the simple question: “why am I so incapable of making my own fuel, that I must so assiduously, so repeatedly, so endlessly seek it out from others?”. Unfortunately, his sense of entitlement glosses over this simple fact of other people’s lives: that most ordinary everyday people (and there is nothing special here) make their own life, build their own souls. And this seems to me to be one thing that the narcissist was never told about and never trained in or is simply, as an accident of neurology incapable of, causing them endlessly to get their “fuel” from others. Unfortunately, it’s never enough: a hole in your own soul can never be filled with the Polyfilla of other people’s lives – you have to make it yourself. No-one else can make you happy if you are incapable of doing it yourself first. There has to be something inside, of your own, and if you haven’t got it, or you’ve had it bled out of you, you’d better get on with making it again. I used to know this, and have had to learn it again recently.

    Be Well.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  7. I avoid talking about it now. I tried at some point to get out of the madness, the isolation and the silence implemented by my narc. What I have found out is that, like Mark mentioned, the degree of ignorance in the population is astounding. So I ended being judged a bitch, blamed for everything, being dubbed ungrateful/bitter/shitty to make it short or people would be self-righteous or try to silence me because they could not cope with what I was sharing. Another interesting reaction was for people to be on his side ( and that includes the closest people to me ). Uhh. I also talked about it with people that went through narc abuse and got myself blamed again. Very little compassion because there too was a feeling of challenge… The most recent episode of the happened at Christmas where I coped some passive aggressive judgmental attitude from a woman that stayed with her narc for 28 years. The funniest part is that she gave me the treatment when I mentioned the cheating and lying… knowing she was not able to confront her narc after he cheated on her the whole 28 years and she found proof of it. So, I understand the paranoia, the unease and the unwillingness. It is like a double jail time : first go through the narc hell then go through other people’s hell because they can’t just take it in. I don’t know who has time and energy for both, honestly I don’t and sometimes I’d rather stay silent or on my own event hough it feels lonely, that try to talk to people about it.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment