Parenting with a Narcissist

by Beatrixkiddo

I am married to a narcissist. At least, I believe I am married to a narcissist. It’s hard for me to be sure of anything anymore. Truth is I have been under the influence of narcissists since before I was born.

From what I can tell, my grandfather was a narcissist. My stepfather was an un-medicated bipolar and a paranoid schizophrenic and I believe, narcissistic as well. My ex husband is clearly a narcissist. And just recently, having discovered what NPD really looks like (despite having a master’s degree in counseling), I believe I am, once again, married to a narcissist.

The problem is, I have been so twisted and manipulated and victimized by narcissistic abuse my whole life that I have been trained to not be able to see the truth.

When they distort my words, and negate my feelings and point the finger at me for all the things they are doing, I believe them. I wonder if I am the narcissist. I know I feel upside down and crazy half the time. I know my relationships are on roller coasters. I know I feel abused and confused when I try to express myself and end up walking away thinking that I have done something or am something or am not something I am supposed to do or be.

In the beginning, my relationship was magical. He was the white knight that swept in and saved me from my narcissistic and abusive ex. He was romantic, charming, confidant, charismatic; he was a Harvard law school graduate and had accomplished wonderful things. He was educated and brilliant (he said his IQ was that of genius), and we could talk for hours. At least when we weren’t having phenomenal sex!

That was new to me, and I couldn’t get enough of him.

But the truth I have come to discover is none of this was real; he was not real. He was two-dimensional; a cardboard cutout of a man. His emotions didn’t ring true; didn’t match his behavior. His need for approval and praise began to swallow me up. He was my Velveteen Rabbit. If not for my belief in what he wanted me to see (and what I desperately needed to see), the man I thought he was; the relationship I thought we had was not real at all.

Looking back, I can see that slowly, indecipherably over time, something changed; something else swept in and replaced that magical time. I don’t think it happened all at once; at least, I didn’t see it happen. I just know that more and more often I noticed myself feeling like a dethroned princess. Here and there, I discovered him flirting with other women; trying to rekindle the flame with his ex. When I confronted it, I was the problem. If I showed him more affection. If I didn’t argue so much. If I…

And then there were the times he abandoned me. But that’s another story. I felt consumed, digested and regurgitated. And my response to abandonment was never freedom, but to feed myself back to the narcissist, when he would take me, like a mother bird to her baby.

Still, it is crazy in my head. He tells me he’s done; he won’t take the abuse any longer; not interested in going to counseling. We have a two year old, and now we find ourselves trying to figure out what to do with the broken pieces of a fantasy that just don’t seem to fit together anymore. If you don’t believe, the magnificent Velveteen Rabbit is just a pile of tattered cloth and old stuffing. And for all my years of deluding myself, now that I have seen the face of NPD, I can’t make myself believe anymore.

Every sing-song happy utterance out of his mouth makes me cringe. I think that is even worse than the coldness and finger pointing and twisting of words. Over the years, I have mastered the silencing of my gut and I could never figure out how to leave. Now, I’m not sure how to stay.

But it scares me to death to trust myself with this important decision, or really any decision at all. Do I take a leap of faith and listen that gut inside me? Or am I truly the crazy one; the self-deceived? The more I read and learn and listen to the stories out there just like mine, the more I connect intellectually with the truth that I am married to a narcissist.

As Sam Vaknin says: “Narcissists are narcissists. Take them or leave them. Some of them are lovable. Most of them are highly charming and intelligent. The source of the misery of the victims of the narcissist is their disappointment, their disillusionment, their abrupt and tearing and tearful realisation that they fell in love with an ideal of their own making, a phantasm, an illusion, a fata morgana. This ‘waking up’ is traumatic. The narcissist is always the same. It is the victim who changes.”

For me, the facts are there, but this awakening is such a bitter pill to swallow that I keep choking it back up in self-doubt.

by Beatrixkiddo

As a child, I loved the fun house. Looking into distorted mirrors, I was thrilled to see something other than what was real. As far back as I can remember, this is what I craved. What was it about reality that was so disturbing, or at least so undesirable to me? A child’s enchantment with the house of mirrors at a carnival seems normal enough. But for me, I see it now as a symbol of a much, much deeper problem in its earliest stage. A soul sickness that would grow like kudzu over time and threaten to choke the life out of me.

Narcissistic abuse and my addiction to being on the receiving end of it has all but killed me. (And it has almost done that several times.) I cannot explain how or why my eyes became open to this a few short weeks ago, but I do know that a profound shift in my makeup has occurred since that time. I think it is like a blind person who undergoes a successful operation and is given instant sight. (ok, that may or may not happen like that, I don’t know, but you get the idea.)

Once the eyes have been opened, you cannot go back to life as a non-seeing person. And it is for this that I grieve. All my life I have been angry. At them. At myself. At situations and life itself. At God. Once my eyes were opened to the realities of NPD and living with narcissistic abuse, the anger, for me, simply fall away. I am not angry at the sick ones anymore. I am not even angry at myself. But I am so, so sad. (And a bit frightened.)

I loved illusion. And so I attracted people into my life who were masters at creating illusion. I fed them by “oohing” and “aahing” at their wonderful gift to me, a hand-picked fantasy just for me. The problem is, I have yet to encounter an illusion that lasts. I think it is in the nature of illusion to change and warp and distort. Like the passing of time moves and alters a shadow. Something which appears to be that which it isn’t cannot remain constant. Because it isn’t.

How sad it is that someone came by and straightened out all the mirrors in my house and now all I can see is things the way they really are. Which leaves me with a really long list of fallen fantasies to grieve over. Like the romance. And the promises. And the vacations and travels left undone. And the house with the picket fence that will make everything bright and new again. You get the idea.

So, fine, I’ll take the time to grieve. I’ll forgive them all and myself too. And maybe through this process, I’ll heal enough to know what to do next. I’ll heal and I’ll learn how to face my fear and make sane decisions for myself, my life and my children. Because I have bought into the lie that I have been the insane one for a long time. And I guess, in a way, I have. But in a different way than I thought. Like my insanity was reflected back to me through a crazy mirror too. Which I guess makes sense, why wouldn’t it be?

So here I sit, pouring my heart out over the internet to a bunch of strangers (who feel more familiar to me than those who are supposed to be closest to me in my real life), trying to make sense of it all. I know my ex is toxic. His NPD glares at me daily as we battle for custody of our teenagers.

And thank God for this new knowledge and support because I am learning how to stop feeding it and stop battling and just trust the truth’s ability to be heard.

beatrixkiddo