If you never thought you’d have to deal with narcissistic abuse in marriage, you’re not alone. To see if you’re experiencing any of the 19 types of emotional abuse you’ll experience from a narcissist, take our free emotional abuse quiz.
If you are experiencing narcissistic emotional abuse, you will need support. For live support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session today.
5 Clear Signs of Narcissistic Abuse in Marriage
1. You’re constantly second-guessing yourself.
Gaslighting makes you doubt your memory, instincts, and even your sanity. You start asking, “Is it really that bad?” That’s by design.
2. He makes big promises—and never follows through.
Future faking sounds like: “We’ll go to Italy next year” or “I’m applying for jobs tomorrow.” It’s all smoke and mirrors designed to keep you hooked.
3. You’re carrying the entire relationship.
If you’re paying the bills, managing the emotions, and making excuses for his behavior—you’re being exploited, not partnered.
4. Therapy made things worse.
Couples therapy often misses narcissistic abuse. When the abuser charms the therapist, you walk away feeling more confused and blamed.
5. You think choosing yourself is selfish.
Survivors of narcissistic abuse in marriage often struggle with guilt. But choosing you isn’t selfish—it’s survival. And it’s the first step toward freedom.
Transcript: How To Deal With Narcissistic Abuse In Marriage
Anne: I have Ingrid Clayton on today’s episode. She’s a clinical psychologist and trauma therapist in Los Angeles, California, and the author of the memoir, Believing Me. Welcome, Ingrid.
Ingrid: Thank you so much, Anne. So happy to be here.
Anne: Ingrid, let’s start at the beginning of your story.
Ingrid: Wow, for me, it goes back to my childhood. So my parents divorced. And my mother rapidly remarried my dad’s best friend. That already sets the stage of the first betrayal. And this man, I can now use this language. This is not language I had for a long time, but he started to groom me. And what I now know set me up to please, appease and do everything I could to keep myself safe in a very unsafe environment.
So with my first husband, with so many boyfriends before him. My blueprint was, I will find a way to keep myself safe in an unsafe relationship. So my memoir is about me unpacking decades of that experience.
Sort of untangling it as a survivor, but also as a therapist who didn’t know that she had complex trauma. Because as we know. With narcissism, it’s decades of gaslighting and I believed it wasn’t that bad. Maybe it’s me, and if I try a little harder, you know, all those things.
Anne: So when you say blueprint, you didn’t know that you were continuing to encounter abusive people. What labels did you give them back when you were unaware of the type of character these people had?
Ingrid: I don’t think I would have used the word abusive, that felt too strong. But I saw there was a pattern, I saw they were dysfunctional relationships.
Patterns Of Dysfunctional Relationships
Ingrid: I went and sat on many therapist couches. And a lot of the language given back to me, things like codependency. I couldn’t see myself in that label, this idea that I was trying to control. There was this lens that felt shameful and stigmatizing, and that also didn’t feel like it helped me. So I kept going and trying. And I thought maybe one day it would shift. Meanwhile, there was just a lot of wreckage, and I didn’t know why.
And the narcissistic abuse always presented a little differently. It was active alcoholism, someone who was compulsively cheating on me, exploitation, financially and otherwise. It looked differently in each relationship, but I certainly saw the thread. And it was so painful. So devastating.
Anne: This is why you’re not codependent, you were doing safety seeking behaviors. While you were sitting on those therapy couches, did any of the therapists say the word abuse to you?
Ingrid: Gosh, it’s a good question. I know none of them used the word trauma, which was the piece that finally became so helpful to me. They may have used the word abuse in relation to my upbringing. So here’s the other part of my story. Growing up, I went to the counselor at my then high school. Eventually, I said, here are all the things happening. I think this is wrong. And she said, “I’m a mandated reporter. And we need to call social services.”
So it turned into what was essentially me initiating this intervention on my family. I was about 16 at the time, but if we rewind even further, maybe 12 years old, a friend’s parents had called social services on my behalf.
Intervention & Family Betrayal
Ingrid: And they orchestrated this sort of secret meeting with me and a social worker. She sat me down with her clipboard, and this seemed like this formal way. And asked me all these questions. She wanted to know where’s the physical abuse. And I was like, I know he’s hit my mom, but I’ve never seen it. I didn’t have the words. I’ve just seen her bruises. I know he’s done this to my brothers, but it wasn’t about physical abuse.
And at 12 years old, this woman said to me, emotional abuse isn’t reportable.
Anne: Wow.
Ingrid: Okay, so I get to 16 years old, and here we are. I have a counselor who’s taking me seriously, and she’s said, I’m a mandated reporter, we gotta bring social services in here. And what happened then is, they brought my stepdad in and he said, Ingrid, You’re a liar. You made this all up. I have no idea what you’re talking about. This is all a figment of your imagination.
And then we turned to my mom, who basically said, I believe him. So this is such a big piece of the trauma landscape, right? There’s the, what happened to us. And then there’s how people responded to what happened to us. In fact, a deeper cut as far as I’m concerned, in my personal experience. I knew what my stepdad was doing was wrong, but I believed the people meant to protect me and help me were going to do that.
Ingrid: And when they didn’t. Not consciously, but in my body, I started to believe, particularly when my own mother wasn’t able to step in and protect me.
Narcissistic Abuse In Marriage: Struggles With Self-Worth
Ingrid: I must not be worthy of protection, love, safety, so it’s this additional layer to what informed me going out into the world. I wasn’t experiencing physical abuse in any of my relationships. So it’s not like I went to a therapist and said, Oh, you know, here’s my experience. And they were trying to reflect that back to me as abusive. I was talking about cheating or unavailability, but I don’t think they were using that language.
Anne: They discounted you to the point where you thought you were not worthy of protection. But was there also a part of you that thought, maybe this isn’t abuse? Not understanding what narcissistic abuse in relationships is made it hard to identify. Like, maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, or maybe I’m crazy, or maybe this is my fault?
Ingrid: I would say both things became true. This is where I picked up on those story lines, and I wasn’t sure. I never thought I made it all up. So it’s not like I thought I was a liar. I knew what happened, but I did wonder, and this is so classic for complex trauma survivors, was it that bad? Like we all walk around with this trauma measuring stick. I can think of someone else who had it worse. So suddenly mine doesn’t really count.
The thing that we know about trauma is that it’s not even about the traumatic event. It’s how the traumatic event overwhelmed your nervous system. So this whole idea about a measuring stick related to the event is just ludicrous anyway. But honestly, I wasn’t the only one carrying that measuring stick around. I think therapists in the mental health field carried it similarly for many years.
The Journey To Self-Discovery
Ingrid: You know, trauma was related to acute single events. It was related to veterans, which meant it was largely related to men. I’m 50 years old now. So I grew up when we didn’t have as much information. And consequently, even my own training as a clinical psychologist. I mean, I’ve been practicing in the field for almost two decades, and that didn’t give me the lens and language either for trauma from narcissistic abuse.
And the story of my memoir is that I have to become my own trauma therapist. And I’m just sitting at my kitchen table, writing these stories, reclaiming them again. So that I could look on the page and see for myself, this was narcissistic abuse. I didn’t have that lens or language either. I’m so grateful that I received this call to write in this fast and furious way that wouldn’t let me go no matter how much I tried.
I also think it’s the most heartbreaking thing. I’ve been asking for help since I was a little girl, and I had to wrestle it for myself all alone at my kitchen table.
Anne: All of my listeners would relate. Every one of them, because they didn’t know they were surviving narcissistic abuse in their marriage. They did what they were supposed to do and resisted oppression. They were resisting the abuse. And they didn’t know that’s what they were resisting, but so they went for help, right? They went to clergy. They went to their therapist, and it wasn’t named trauma.
Misguided Therapy Approaches
Anne: Instead, maybe in couple therapy, for example, they’re told, okay, let’s improve your communication strategies. Let’s figure out how to …
Ingrid: Knit this relationship back together, I think that’s unfortunate. A couple comes to them and they’re saying, we’re having difficulty. There’s this idea in couples therapy. Obviously they’re coming, because they want to work on the relationship. They probably believe it’s salvageable. And as an individual therapist, I had to call my client’s couples therapist. Do not mistake her boyfriend’s ability to charm you in session for this being a repairable, healthy, relationship.
Anne: The victim does not know that she’s a victim of narcissistic abuse.
Ingrid: That’s right.
Anne: And the perpetrator is never going to be like, hey, I’m a perpetrator.
Ingrid: I’m the problem, yeah.
Anne: He’s never going to say that.
Ingrid: That’s right. Yeah, it’s a painful reality that we ask for help and the help is not helpful. Oftentimes it’s even more harmful.
Anne: Yeah, it’s really hard. So let’s talk about your relationship before you understood it was abuse, what did you think was going on?
Ingrid: I want to start by saying that I felt like marriage was the thing that would give me the stamp of approval that would finally make me okay. So if I wasn’t chosen by my parents, I had this deep need to be chosen by somebody else. It’s another aspect of the blinders I had on.
Not Knowing The Red Flags Of Narcissistic Abuse In Marriage
Ingrid: And so when I met my ex-husband, there were signs. You know, what other people would call red flags. So I saw these things, but simultaneously did not see them. So I was racing towards this finish line of wanting and needing to be married.
Anne: You mentioned that desire to belong. Was it also external? Did you grow up in a religious setting where marriage was part of the equation to happiness did that idea of marriage also come from an external source?
Ingrid: Yeah, I mean, look at every movie and TV commercial, right, it’s everything I grew up with and experienced. This even going to graduate school as a woman and getting my PhD. You would talk to people, and you would tell them about your studies, and they would be like, Oh, so tell me about your relationship status. It didn’t matter what else I was doing. I felt like I was still sitting at the kid’s table, the kid’s table of Thanksgiving, until I was partnered up.
So it was a million subtle cues from the larger environment that, of course, impacted what was also this internal trauma response, right? Like this need, this drive to be validated, and it attached itself to this idea of marriage. And actually when we got engaged, my ex-husband wanted to be an actor, and he wasn’t working. And we entered into this arrangement of living together.
It was like suddenly he just started pulling back more and more. Where it’s like he’s not contributing to our overhead. But the mask he continued to wear more overtly was, we are the happiest loving couple ever. People see our energy, and they’re so jealous of our love.
Graduate School & Financial Exploitation
Ingrid: Right, this sort of love bombing slash sort of future faking. Like it’s gonna be so amazing. So the overt mask was still we’re incredible. But simultaneously, he starts not contributing to our bills. And I’m saying like, what would you do if you were living alone? You know, wouldn’t you feel like you had to be responsible for yourself?
Because at the time I’m in graduate school, I’m living on student loans. I certainly wasn’t taking out student loans to support another person who just stopped working. So I would bring these things up in this very sort of neutral way. Hey, you know, I see this happening. And if he didn’t immediately like agree or change. It was like, okay, I brought it up. He says he wants to work. He says he’s trying, so I guess that has to be enough.
So I just start to swallow it down and accommodate what is his really financial exploitation. You know, fast forward to where we got engaged. And he proposed with this little silver, um, like a dime store ring as like a placeholder for an engagement ring. And we went shopping for an engagement ring, and we get to the counter and see this one, and isn’t it amazing, right?
Like, I feel like I’m living in this, uh, jewelry commercial, you know, it’s like, here it is. Is this the one? He turns to me in front of the salesperson and says, if you put it on your credit card, I’ll make all the payments. And I was devastated. And embarrassed. I thought, what does even the salesperson think of me right now? A, that I’m being put in this position, and B, I’m about to hand over my credit card.
Discovering The Truth
Ingrid: And I know that in my body, it’s like, no one can ever know. So that’s part of what allowed me to know there was abuse. My ex-husband pretended he wasn’t pretending. That’s like our whole relationship, I was like, okay, I’m going to hand over my credit card. And of course he never made a payment. We never brought it up again.
Eventually, I came to see that he was probably drinking and smoking pot all day in our apartment when I was off at work. And I am a recovering alcoholic. I almost have 30 years of sobriety now. I forget what it was then, but I had a lot of time under my belt. So I know alcoholism, right? I grew up also with addiction. And I knew that I was uncomfortable with some of his drinking. I literally didn’t know that he was using to the extent he was.
So just all the secrecy, the lies, and the layers of deceit, it just started to pile up. Until it was only a year into marriage. I’d never had this conscious thought before, but suddenly I knew I had to open the hall closet. And open the hall closet door. I saw a suitcase tucked behind like boots and all kinds of things.
Again, never a conscious thought, but my body knew you got to open the closet. Drag that suitcase out from the back, open it up, and there were all the vodka bottles. So, I finally had this evidence, this, oh my gosh, this is part of what’s going on. I Even if I didn’t have a label, I knew what narcissistic abuse in my marriage looked like.
Choosing Self Over An Abusive Narcissistic Relationships
Ingrid: And it wasn’t something he could talk me out of. Like, oh yeah, I’m trying to work, and oh, I’m getting a job tomorrow, whatever it was. It was like, I had this concrete thing, and eventually it was part of what enabled me to say, I can’t do this. And in a strange way, I look at divorce as probably the beginning of the healing of my complex trauma. Instead of waiting and hoping for someone to choose me.
And I did it with the marriage, but then I was like, he’s going to choose me again by getting a job, right? Like, he’s going to choose me again by quitting drinking, right? He wants to get sober. He wants to live this life that he’s been promising me. Like he talked the best game ever. I believed those words. And so I thought, doesn’t he believe them too? Like he will show up for that.
And finally I said, I can’t keep waiting for someone else to choose me. I have to do it even though no one else ever did.
Anne: You chose you. You started learning how to heal from a divorce you didn’t want.
Ingrid: I had to choose me, and that’s what I did in my divorce, and that puts a nice bow on it, which is a true one. I believe I got so much freedom through walking away. But it’s not to say it wasn’t excruciating, because simultaneously, I believed in my then late 30s that I blew it. This was my one chance to have a family, the thing I always wanted. It seemed like instead of getting that stamp of approval, I was wearing the scarlet letter, the thing that said, damaged goods.
Resisting Abuse
Ingrid: What I had to wade through in terms of that pain and shame was enormous, and yet it was one of the first things that really freed me from narcissistic abuse.
Anne: Yeah, we heal so much through choosing ourselves. Around here, at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, I just call it resisting. Because you were thinking, if I do what he says, I don’t want to do this. But if I agree, if I hand over my credit card right now, maybe it will make it better. This is the only thing to do to get out of the situation in that moment. It is a form of resistance, because you’re thinking, this is what I need to do to get this over with. Or, this is how I work through this.
Because we don’t have a framework for, Oh, I just walk out of the jewelry store. No one’s given us that framework for a solution. Because that doesn’t feel safe either. Because he might get angry, there might be all sorts of other consequences.
Ingrid: That’s right.
Anne: So it’s a way to resist abuse. Understanding that victims are doing the best they can with what they have. And also with the level of education about abuse they have at the time.
Ingrid: Yeah, these aren’t conscious at all. It’s the body’s instinctual response to safety. It’s the last house on the block. Because if you can’t fight back, if you can’t run, guess what? Appeasing and pleasing is resistance, it is an adaptive response. To be in, and listen, it’s not just abusive, any marginalized community, any sort of power structure where someone has power over you. It’s a highly adaptive response to narcissistic abuse in a marriage.
Reclaiming Self-Worth
Ingrid: I am a smart person, right? I asked for help, so the other reason I think it’s important for me to address it as a trauma response. Because what that means in terms of my healing is the nervous system. It’s not going and sitting on a couch and talking about it forever. That in fact kept me stuck. It’s working with a part of the brain that was offline. We need to work with solutions that work with the body when it comes to trauma.
It’s why actually I don’t like the words, people pleasing or control. My motivations were never to please, and they were never to control.
Anne: Exactly.
Ingrid: I was trying to stay safe in an unsafe situation. I was trying to survive. Of course, boundaries made sense intellectually. Of course, I can understand those things. They were not available in my body. It’s another layer of gaslighting essentially because it’s telling me, oh, it’s so easy and what’s the big deal?
And it must be you. It must be you. This idea that we are intrinsically broken, and I believe we are beyond not broken. It’s a genius adaptation. I look at the ways we have threaded the needle of safety in the trickiest of environments. And I go, that is brilliant. There’s a literal brilliance to it. And so my hope is that we can take back the brilliance and genius adaptation and hold onto that. Even as I say those words, I feel like self-esteem is rushing into my body.
Narcissistic abuse in marriage robs you of so much. I go, I am not broken. I am brilliant. And I don’t want to live in a chronic trauma response anymore.
Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: Future Faking In Relationships
Ingrid: We are meant to have more freedom and flexibility. So we have to start with taking the shame and stigma out of experiences where we’re literally just surviving. The environments in which we live.
Anne: And for that reason, I like saying resisting because you were doing something active to protect yourself. It was the best thing you knew at the time. You were doing it instinctively. Think about how smart and powerful, and how awesome you’ve always been. You mentioned future faking. I realized I’ve never done an episode about future faking or gone into depth about it. Can we go there for a second?
Ingrid: The way I experienced it. Despite my ex-husband’s literal inability to show up for this life, he talked such a good game. Like, you want to go to Italy, we’re going to go to Italy. Let’s start saving for Italy now, he said. Let’s open a savings account where we just put money in for this trip to Italy. And I’m like another form of financial exploitation. But it’s also an aspect of this future faking. We’re going to do all these amazing things.
It’s presenting your hopes and dreams and literally saying it out loud. It feels so tangible. Someone to meet us, validate us, to say, yes, we’re going to do this together. It’s so compelling. It was to me. And even though he didn’t bring much to the marriage, it hooked me. It’s another aspect of sometimes hoovering even, right? Of saying all the things you want to hear to get you back into the relationship.
Breaking Free From Emotional Abuse
Ingrid: It’s going to be different. I’m doing all these things. And he did that too, like I’m going to get sober. And I went to a meeting. I went and took an application. And they were one-time events that he did just enough to show me. Similar to opening the savings account. It’s I’m going to tell you, in fact, that you can expect all these things to happen. And then I’m not going to do anything other than this little thing to get you to change your mind.
Anne: Abusers are transactional. Like a machine, and their words are like quarters. So he thinks all I need to do is put this quarter in. I say, Hey, let’s go to Italy. That’s a tactic of narcissistic abuse. I put this in, and then beep boop out comes what I want her to do. They don’t see us as human people. More of this is a transaction, and I say this, and I get this back.
Ingrid: I would even say calling it a quarter is giving it too much credit. I mean, it’s like a wooden nickel. It’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s part of what also creates, you know, the fog of emotional abuse. You can’t tell what’s real. I had to stop listening to what my stepdad said happened, what my mom wanted to believe happened, what my ex husband said he was doing or going to do. Almost at any cost, I had to prioritize my own experience, my own feelings over anybody else.
Anne: You’re very brave. You did it!
Ingrid: Yeah, I feel like my whole life has been trying to wrestle me back. And I’m mostly just grateful that I don’t live there now.
Finding A Healthy Relationship
Ingrid: I don’t question my worth. I question my sanity. I know what I know. And I know what a reciprocal relationship feels like. I have a husband who has never lied to me. And you talk to people who don’t have experience of abuse. And they’re like, that’s just normal. Of course, you should expect that, and guess what? I never had a relationship where I could say that before. I never knew what that felt like in my body.
In my first marriage, the closer we got to the altar, the more I was like, I don’t know that I’m doing the right thing. And then I could lean on, this is what happens, it’s cold feet. I look back and I go, that was not cold feet, that was wisdom bubbling up to the surface. And I don’t know that every “healthy marriage” isn’t hard. But I can tell you the contrast is remarkable in my personal experience, it’s night and day.
And I will also say the difference in how it felt when we met was remarkably different. I was so used to the feeling of someone having power over me. And I think this is common. We can mistake that unsettled feeling of nervous system dysregulation for butterflies. It’s so exciting, right? I genuinely thought that was healthy chemistry. I was like, Oh, I got that feeling. Now I know that’s a dysregulated nervous system.
So when I met my now husband, who was so kind, I felt so at ease in his presence. I walked away and I was like, he would probably be a great friend. And I just assumed there would be nothing romantic. Because I didn’t have that old like fireworks, crazy chaos thing.
Marriage Isn’t Supposed To Be Hard: Navigating Challenges Together Without Abuse
Ingrid: And over time. I got to see, this is what it feels like to be seen and respected. And to not feel like someone has power over me. But that we’re literally building something together. And it’s what it’s felt like this entire time. I will say that does not mean there haven’t been hard times. We became parents, and parenting brings up all kinds of stuff. Like, how will we pay that bill or navigate these different things?
It’s going to kick some dust up, life is still in session. But he’s my person that I can turn to when the dust gets kicked up. He’s not kicking the dust up in my face and going, what’s the matter with you? So we go through the hard times together, even when that means maybe I’m triggered and dysregulated. And I’m having a hard time.
And he can say a genuine, can you take care of yourself? Like, because I’m going to take care of myself and come back. And then we’re going to have a conversation where I’m in my right mind.
Anne: But at no point, I’m guessing, during that time, did he suggest you were crazy.
Ingrid: Never, no, of course not. Yeah, very different.
The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop
Anne: I talk so much about the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. You can get more information by clicking the link. Living Free is designed to help you regulate your nervous system through thought strategies.So that you can actually implement communication and boundary strategies to protect yourself. And that piece of the puzzle is so important. The workshop helps teach women those strategies, and then our coaches help women actually implement them.
Ingrid: A hundred percent, it’s a process, and it’s not always graceful. It’s not always linear. But if you are engaged in it, that is the bravest, hardest, but also most rewarding thing we can ever do. It’s worth it.
Anne: It’s worth it, and you’re worth it. Thank you so much, Ingrid, for spending the time to talk with me today.
Ingrid: My pleasure. Thank you so much.
Dear Anne,
I cannot begin to describe how much your podcasts mean to me. I am a 65 year old professional woman who has been married for 35 years. Your podcasts have helped me to finally understand what has really been happening to me all these years. In my heart I knew my husband’s severe addiction made me feel awful, degraded and invisible. His behavior toward me as always been so narcissistic. But the prevailing sentiment from my husband, friends and family was otherwise. I did everything I could to be enough at the expense of my self worth and dignity. When I heard you say that secret watching of this degrading material in a marriage without the consent of one partner was abuse the lights literally came on. I’m not sure where I’ll go from here- 35 years is a very entangled life but I know for sure that right now you and btr are my lifeline.
With all gratitude and love.
They are pathological. The saddest part is this person who broke my soul never even existed. Mine went so far out of their way to hurt the parts of me they promised to always protect. It’s disgusting. They planned how they would leave before they ever said “I love you” to me. I was just practice for them. It hurts my heart to say all this, but it’s better to admit the truth than blame yourself.
No one is perfect, but they are unreasonable people who have lied to you for your entire relationship. They don’t care about you, they only cared that you were useful. They bided their time and built your relationship up to be everything only to break you as much as possible so they could call you crazy. They cover insane things they did instead of honesty. I won’t go into details but they abused the law, programs for needy people, the sympathy and feelings of everyone. They ruined my life and my future, abused me in the ways they claimed to be abused and planned it so maliciously it broke me as a person.
I am trying so hard to build myself back, but everyone is leaving me now and I’m just too broken. All I feel is sad anymore. I have so many plans and dreams, finally have goals for myself, but I’m too depressed to function. I don’t know what to do anymore. Why did you do this? Why do it in such a cruel way and dangle hope like that. You don’t know what it did to me. Well you probably do you planned it while I planned a future for us. You should be ashamed, but you’ll always be the “victim”, even if you’ve done the cruelest most damaging things anyones ever done.
I carried our emotions for years. You’re just an over privileged, fake person, it’s just a cover. How you could claim to be a feminist or even decent human being anymore is beyond me. The things you did are just evil. I sometimes think I’m over you and out of tears, but it still hurts just as much everyday. You broke every promise you ever made. Even the ones I framed (you knew how much it mean to me – home, our little family). But it’s all broken.
People don’t seem to understand how soul wrenching and psychologically damaging to not only find out you were used and lied to for years, but then to be labeled the abuser on top of it!
It honestly broke me just trying to understand what was happening, even after months of research and therapy I could still barely accept I was abused and that this person I spent every day with for so long was always putting on an act. Lying to me and manipulating my family and using all my deepest pain against me.
Nothing has ever hurt as bad or broken me in ways I never imagined I could be broken. I don’t understand how people like this exist or live with themselves, but I guess they really don’t have empathy or a real conscious. You want to pity them, but the damage they do and the way they disregard the suffering of others for their gain with no remorse is unforgivable. They are soulless shells of people.
Agreed Katie. Recovering and understanding narcissistic abuse had been by far the greatest struggle of my life. Try to remember you’re not alone, it’s confusing, terrifying even when you see their true colors. There’s so much support out there for people who’ve gone through the same things, it can be hard to see sometimes but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. You matter, they are the broken ones… they thrive on pain when you just wanted love
It’s mind blowing when you look back on all the lies you believed implicitly over the years. Their whole identity is lies, they need manipulation to play the victim while still having power and control over you the real victim. You’re better off not digging, you’ll make yourself sick trying to figure out what was real and what was part of their twisted games to extort or use you in whatever way they wanted. Just try to understand there’s no figuring it out, some people are just evil and will do whatever it takes to get what they want regardless of the pain and suffering they inflict, they’ll always be the victim in their own minds
I don’t feel like I have the strength to face anything anymore.
All I do is sit here and try to feel normal. I have two grandparents struggling, everyone struggling and I still feel so crippled thinking about my ex. It’s easier to put things in perspective now, but I’m a little ashamed of how much it broke me. It’s hard to feel so used and manipulated, no one sees it coming but there’s always a part of me that wants to fight it.
It’s hard knowing your life and everything they promised mattered so little. All those fake actions like everything else about them, they were always going to make make you into their next victim story. Use you like some stepping stone for their growth. It just hurts so feeling to be messed with in such twisted emotionally triggering ways.
Please just move on, I already had too much, now with all this and me not being able to support people I love the right way because of it . . . you have no idea what you took from me. I don’t care if you ever read it, I know it doesn’t matter to you, but I didn’t deserve this from you of all people it’s been like a nightmare and how your could be so cold and set me up. I feel so gross, the ways you were with me up until you left make my skin crawl. But I need to let it go for me. I honestly don’t know how to feel normal anymore I’m so tired of thoughts of you and the insidious ways you hurt me to my core popping into my head and making it hard to breathe. I’m done please just drop it and leave me alone. You stole my life what else do you want?
Legal abuse is the WORST. After 12 years of abuse from my ex husband, after every abuse there is, including abuse from our therapists, the legal abuse was the worst. I had to endure a property settlement of 100% to him and 0% from him while I had no job (because he fired me from our business and would not allow me to work), no money, no lawyer, while my ex husband (an anbuser) ran away with all our money and brought himself a $100,000 lawyer (which is also my money) to fight me in court. I wish the courts understood legal abuse.
Clare, we totally get it. So many women experience this type of abuse. You’re not alone! Have you considered attending one of our daily support groups for betrayal trauma?
Thank you, reading this instead of venting all the same feelings and frustrations helped me tonight.
I don’t m is about you but I’m ready to move on and let go completely. I’ve held onto the hurt for too long, I’m working hard on me now trying new things to feel whole and not live in shock and pain anymore. We’ll probably never know the whole truth about them, I doubt they even really know what’s real after awhile. They’re masters of rewriting history to fit their narratives… it has to be exhausted to try to keep all the lies straight, but we don’t need to worry about them or cater to their every need while being neglected and used. It’s time to let go and think about how I can do Better in the future and not allow myself to ever fall for a soulless manipulator again. I hope you can do this same hope things have gotten better since you wrote this. Take care 💚
I wish this weren’t true for me. I feel so pathetic, I drove around all night thinking trying to escape, but no matter where I go, I cry alone in the car. I see reminders of my ex. I don’t think I knew a real person, but I miss the lie I loved.
I never mattered. I’ve had to face the hardest times of my life while trying to cope with this crippling pain from all the things they did. How far they went to hurt me and ruin my life in all the ways they promised to always be there. I want to give up everyday, I keep telling people I’m trying and don’t better but I can’t even work and am barely hanging on. I feel so trapped and alone and I can’t explain to anyone why it hurts so deeply.
I’ve never felt so hurt and depressed for so long, now everyone else is leaving my life too and I keep wondering why I try. I just want to be in a coma and not wake up I wish I never existed
My ex still posts things saying I’m the abuser and I used emotional abuse, manipulative narcissist tactics to never have to look at him or talk again. It might feel that way to him, but it’s empowering for me. You can be safe and not have to fight or hear about how awful they think you are. Women have suffered enough, they shouldn’t have to make their abuser comfortable when they’ve leaving. In fact, that’s just another way to control her or try to get her not to leave.
Unfortunately narcissists don’t play by the rules. My ex abused the law, made me out to be some monster while still writing me love letters for months. They can justify anything they do with a little reinforcement from their enablers.
I was lied to, manipulated. It’s been like a nightmare.
I’m grateful for Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Thanks for sharing. Hope things have gotten better. CPSD after emotional abuse can be devastating even with treatment. It’s never an easy road for survivor’s. Take care
It’s nice to look back instead of having to say it all… funny thing is this is someone else’s post… it’s crazy how abusers all follow the same cycle. I hope things are getting better
Oh god this made my heart ache, I know just what you’re feeling and how awful it is. I don’t think I’ll ever be fully healed after Narcissistic abuse, they are master manipulators. One of the worst mind F’s with mine was she claimed to be the victim of Narcissistic abuse her whole life!
It’s like she was preparing me or foreshadowing exactly how she would torture me. All these things her parents, sister, and best friends she has cut out of her life did to abuse her was a more tame version of what she did to me. I know I have a form of ptsd, they break your reality, flip 180 degrees and go out of their way to hurt you as deeply as possible.
It’s all about projection, power, and control. People don’t really matter to them, they could be stitching had made promises to your inner child one day and labeling you their next Abusive Narcissistic the next. The only time they feel, show the anxiety they claim to have is when they’re in danger of being caught in a life, and everything is a lie to them.. they are shameless attention seekers, you’re really better off not digging into their double/triple lives. I feel so used and ashamed for loving her, her whole life was about mental health issues and I knew that going in. But I thought she was so kind, brave, and the most genuine person id ever met.. she’s a monster.. but anyone who gets too close and sees it needs to be cut out and worked into her latest horror story, her excuses for not living and not facing her real issues.. it’s so sad that I do understand her not wanting be like her mentally Ill relatives who made her this way. But to lie to yourself and everyone, to pay to lie to therapists, to break down and throw insane tantrums when your adult friends might not agree with your opinion or think you’re uncool?? Everyone is just their supply, or another flying monkey, their friend are just people they keep at arms length and tell victim stories too for validation, or flirt with and justify later as your fault somehow.. they have no accountability and never will. Some part of them is stuck in a state of arrested development they can never grow beyond crying for attention and living in fear of anyone they get too close to. I know I was just convenient now… she knew how she would get into my head and leave me, what victim card she would play before we even started dating. They really do plan out how to grow and try to transfer their issues, the lengths she went to see so ridiculous it might be funny if it didn’t ruin my life.
I needed to read these today. Hurting so bad again I can’t pick myself back up like I used to. I have to work again but it’s like I’m cursed since my discard, everyone keeps dying around me and I feel so isolated. Why do they need to destroy you to make themselves stronger? All I wanted was love and the partner I was promised not to be used and tossed away and treated like my life doesn’t matter and I’m the crazy one for complaining about it!! I was tortured and mislead at every step and now I need it to
Just end so I can heal and do the things I need but I can’t.. help? 😑
I truly believe we pay the price for their abuse.
I’m so sorry, you’re not alone there is help emotional abuse survivors all over. I finally had a breakthrough in therapy today and admitted I couldn’t put groceries away or cook without breaking down crying. The scars abuse leaves behind can supine you sometimes, narcissistic abuse should be a crime
I am alone though in all the ways that matter. Emotional abuse and ptsd stole the parts of me I loved and needed to function.
You’re dealing with actual psychopaths in some cases, they’re close enough in the spectrum anyway. It’s impossible to justify to reconcile with the things they did to you, they made you love a lie.
That’s a convince to phrase, an easy way to minimize the trauma of truly loving a narcissistic. No one deserves to be dehumanized and used for some stunted child’s sense of power and control. Praying for all the survivors who know there’s no justice or peace and the best we should can hope for is that our scars don’t itch when it rains
I feel this in my bones. I don’t even know who I am without him. I love him but he never existed. And all the horrible and degrading things he did to me, he did on purpose for his amusement, his control.
I can’t even think about looking at him in this evil light, but I know I have to. Because the reality is he did these malicious acts on me purposefully, carefully, slowly, subtly, calculated. He tricked me into loving him and destroyed my soul and my life.
I’m now homeless, lost custody of my kids, unemployed staying with a family member and he followed me here. And he is staying in a camper on this property. He manipulated my family member and offered to help with things around the farm. I’m literally just learning what has happened to me. I haven’t even spoken to my family about this yet. I don’t know what to do. This is beyond messed up. And my heart is breaking.
I have been searching the Internet for a very long time for a triumphant story regarding something similar to my situation. My ex-husband is a pure sociopathic narcissist, and he has been abusing me for 20 years.
I didn’t know it because of the love bombing and all of the other crazy making and so I started researching it and seeing my therapist, and then he began to abuse my daughters just like he was abusing me and that really was profound but yet I stayed and still tried to work with him because I didn’t really know he was a narcissist yet.
In the end, I finally had to get help having him move out of the house because he refused and was enraged and obviously I am going to now take away his secret life that he so easily was able to have with me basically caring for the children in the home while he traveled.
Once we were separated, and I got him out of the house, me and my two daughters who were 16 years old, and 12 years old at the time we’re ready to have a safe and healthy home again, and I thought it was over and then he served me with divorce papers stating I was neglectful and abusive and unfit, and that I abandon him. After he promised me, we would have a simple divorce with a mediator, and he would be fair. And now, three years later, we are finally divorce almost one full year, and separated for over three years, and my children have become completely alienated from me. They are now almost 20 years old and 15 years old.
I listen to my lawyers and we hired an evaluator appointed by the courts and a parent coordinator and we continue to be in a worse predicament. We were given joint legal custody, and within four months after he moved out of the house, my youngest daughter began questioning me with lies that he would share with her, and when I would not entertain the conversation because it was not fair to her, and, it just made her stressed and anxious. She began to see me less and then she never came back home to me. And that was over two years ago to date, my 15-year-old acknowledges the abuse and the manipulation and her isolation but I still cannot get her to leave his home, and sadly my 19 year old, who was the 20 year old soon has completely changed and it really speaks to me the way he does.
Both of my daughters do not have a relationship but they live under the same roof and it’s very abusive, verbally emotionally and mentally and there’s not much I can do about it. No one is helping me and everyone is allowing him to continually break the court order and alienate them and it’s all proof and nothing is working except thousands of dollars I have to pay for the parent coordinator basically to allow him to continually to abuse me because he’s not coparenting at all.
So reading your article on your story was really a breath of fresh air and I’m so happy for you, but I just don’t understand how this can be so prevalent in such a debilitating abusive illegal act that is detrimental to the children and yet still it’s 2022 and still, my lawyer, and everyone else is saying just stay quiet and don’t cause any trouble because he could come back and get full custody and meanwhile I missed memories.
My children have miss traditions and I have basically been erased and now I am set with the situation. Do I take him back to court or do I have a conversation with my 15-year-old now that she knows he is abusing her and just tell her she must come with me now, but that’s taking a chance that she will revert back to him and cut me off again because he’s so strongly manipulating her and abusing her and punishing her.
I am at a loss and I am running out of time and I just wish I could find someone that would help me, it’s unconscionable how he can continue this awful behavior and abuse, and even professionals are telling me to just lay low, and my youngest will come around eventually yet no one is concerned about the immense amount of manipulation and mental anguish, and abuse that she has been living with her, which is unfair to her.
Thank you for your site and your words and your story. I will continue to follow and I will continue to research to figure out how I can stop his wrath and save my children and myself it’s just tragic and the children are hurting. They are the ones that are hurting the most. It’s just devastating .
I’m sorry for everyone out there that is enduring the struggle. For how common this is, it is shocking to me to see how the narcissistic abuse of coparent still gets no consequence and continues his wrath even though we spent a fortune on our divorce, I have no support to take him back because he has not followed the court order at all. It’s just maddening and here I am paying a coordinator a family parent coordinator again and he still doing nothing which again I’m just basically paying for more abuse. I will pray every day and hope I can get her out of that house willingly and save her and start a new life and perhaps my old lest is will come around eventually but my biggest fear is she will remain him and continue to abuse her sister along with her father verbally and emotionally. It’s just it’s unthinkable really and the truth is all of this is abuse.
Narcissistic behavior is extremely abusive. It’s manipulative. It’s demeaning. It’s degrading it’s controlling and it’s illegal. Coupled with his alienation from me and my entire family. Both girls suffer with extreme anxiety and depression. My 15-year-old has admitted she has isolated herself in her bedroom because she cannot handle the anguish from her father and her older sister. There’s no parenting going on in the house. My oldest suffers from anorexia and PTSD and she blames me for everything when she knows what her father is, and now she treats me like he does. My youngest daughter talks to me weekly and tells me she doesn’t call me because she doesn’t have privacy at the house and she doesn’t like to tell me the things that are going on because she doesn’t want me to worry and be sad.
She misses our puppy and I’ve offered to take our puppy over there to spend the night with her and snuggle and she actually said no because the house is so unhealthy that she doesn’t want to stress out the animals, so she just locks her self in her room every night not knowing what kind of mood her sister and her father will be in. She’s acknowledging and recognizing all of the abuse, but yet she still won’t come with me and it’s just terrible.
I have been coached by many professionals and they all pretty much say the same thing I could call the crisis center or I could call someone to go to the house, but he will lie and the likelihood of them lying for him is possible. Or worse it could get him so angry, he could punish them more or they could get angry that I did it, and then cut me off because by doing that I’m just making their life more difficult at his house.
Whether it’s silence or the look or just as she says, he acts like a child there’s no structure no rules no family unit it’s all been taken away from them. I just keep trying to figure out what to do. That is not going to hurt them back at them, or at least my youngest out of that situation and I’m on my own because all of the professionals tell me not to take them back to court because I will lose. So I sit and wait in pain worrying desperately about my children particularly my 15-year-old who has not had a friend over in two years. She has not gone to a friends house in two years in fact, she doesn’t have any friends anymore. She used to sing and dance and be the happiest young lady and now she said and constantly says your chest is tight end tells me how rude and said she feels by the way her father speaks to her and treats her and ignores her and neglects her.
I mean it’s crystal clear that she knows exactly what he is yet she won’t come and I know it’s because of whatever is going on in that house so please pray, and if anyone would like to give me some advice, I would absolutely appreciate it because despite what the professionals have told me, I still feel like I have nothing to lose, and I’m going to first start with trying to have a conversation with my youngest one more time, and just again tell her that I cannot let her stay in that abusive home no longer. Tell her that I need to take her from that house because it’s not healthy. Again a take a risk of her maybe getting upset with me but it’s the right thing to do and if she decides not to then I’m perplexed with the question if I go to court or a call someone like Crisis Line or some thing to try to figure out how I can get my child out of that house. It’s so unfair and there’s got to be something I can do.
I mean, how can this be fair? And the worst part is why doesn’t anybody care about the children they say she will be old enough soon to make her own decisions. Meanwhile, I’m like what? What about all the abuse she has endured? I just don’t understand why no one cares and after everyone I’m paying I’m still researching and figuring everything out myself it’s exhausting and debilitating, and I just keep hitting brick walls and he keeps winning.
Thank you for anyone that reads this and can relate, or would like to reply with any feedback, but just when I get strong, and I feel powerful, he continues to just squashed me and step on me and manipulate me even though I don’t live with him anymore. He doesn’t coparent he’s neglectful, and he won’t work with me with anything with regard to my children. She is quit church. She is quit sports he missed her annual physical is neglectful. She calls me when she’s sick because he doesn’t care. She said that herself but yet she won’t move in with me which told me that the manipulation is very bad and whatever is going on in that house is very bad.
I did call 911 in the Crisis Line twice, and after the police went in to the house, they told me she was OK and that their stories matched and that I had to go home she did not want to see me. Meanwhile, she called me crying hysterical with the things that were going on in the home, which is what led me to call 911 and then she lied to them, and he lied again, which tells me that she has to follow whatever he does or I guess there is recourse like some sort of punishment or the stare I mean, what do you do then when your own child is stuck in a home and she has told me that she knows what he’s doing is abusive, but yet the whole he has on her is so great that she would prefer to stay there and lied to me, and even the authorities.
I don’t understand this at all. I just want my children in my healthy home so I can start to rebuild our life as a new family unit and I’ve been erased from them pretty much it’s just so wrong. It’s just impossible that one human being can hurt so many, and just ruined our lives in the course of their future as young ladies it’s too much and I am exhausting every avenue and I’m just hitting a brick wall every time.
I just read your story, and my heart breaks for you. Thoughts and prayers will be with you. These narcissists never stop!
Thanks for sharing. I’m just starting out on recovery from narcissistic abuse. I really hope they can stay healthy.
Prayers for you family from one sister to another.
Married 30 years and 4 adult kids. Same script as everyone else here. I’m grateful to have the knowledge, but in the abusive moments it still hurts and rips open a fresh new wound. Every time I metaphorically get back up, he metaphorically knocks me back down. I’m afraid I won’t have the strength to get back up again someday. I’m working to get out, finances have made me stay. I love my kids but wish I never married him.
Oh my gosh!! I could have written this word for word! And the many years wasted just hurts so bad.
I wish I could add a photo to show what narcissistic rage looks like! I’m the type to avoid conflict at all costs and extremely tolerant. But years of tolerating lies, I finally confronted him. I watched as he unsuccessfully stuttered more lies and held my ground and watched the devil emerge and it was ugly. The projecting was insane! It was like an unmasking of their true self. I’m ashamed of myself for actually giving sympathy and attention to this person when I was fed the victim stories all along. My Dad, ex husband and current boyfriend all warned me and I made excuses. My Dad warned me since 5th grade and we’re 48 now! I can’t go back or change anything and I’ll forgive myself but wow! Once you see the light, you wonder how you were blind to it for so long!
My sad story . . . it’s all because of how he treats women he verbally, mentally and emotionally abused us and he still does even today he likes to control women and neglect and manipulate us. I guess that he thinks it’s cool or something. I’m just trying to find a better place to live.