Showing Gratitude for a Partner with Narcissistic Personality Disorder
The key to surviving…with your sanity intact
I have learned as a teenager, young adult, and now, in adulthood…lessons will continue to reappear in a person’s life until they make a change. Hopefully, for the better. This mantra, this statement that is seemingly common sense, this karmic law has been an alarm with a siren in my life. Now, I have realized a lesson that experience has been trying to teach me for awhile.
I was “fortunate” to encounter two individuals that suffer from a narcissistic personality disorder. While I do not blame them for something beyond their control (and sometimes understanding), I am holding them and myself accountable for everything that took place during the seasons they were in my life. This may be a form of gaslighting myself. However, I’ve reached a point in my life when I experience something, I like to take a step back and consider how I may have contributed to the problem, situation, and/or issue(s). Assessing my part and what I could have done differently in these situations is no different.
My experience with the first individual that has NPD (covert) was the most detrimental to my psyche. Ironically enough, the abuse I encountered happened during late 2019–2021. It’s 2022, and I’m just piecing the puzzle together; always been late to the party.
Initially, I thought the speed we moved from meeting to moving in together within a matter of days was a term known in the LGBTQIA+ community as “u-hauling.” Regardless of what we label it as, I recognized that it was not only toxic but odd. This didn’t raise any red flags I was in a place to acknowledge. Through vulnerability and desperation for connection and love, I made the choice to deny what my mind, body, and heart told me every day we were together, every time I left her in my home alone, every time there was an issue with her interacting with my children, every infidelity, every act of violence, anger, entitlement, and sere lack of not only empathy but humanity.
After numerous times of trying to escape the hypnotic state I seemed to be in (also known as being love-bombed), I did not realize how affected or damaged I was, until being admitted to a psychiatric facility. I mistook my weighing 100 lbs (or less), not wanting to leave my bed, and essentially alienating myself from everything and everyone as the woes of my mood disorder. During my stint in the facility, we were broken up. I had no contact with the narc. After being discharged, what I know now is an emotionally addicted brain returned to the relationship, a glutton for punishment.
Returning to the relationship was different the last time and the 10+ afterward. It was worse by returning because that confirmed everything that had taken place and all to come would always be tolerated. By 2021, I’d realized the only way I was going to survive loving this individual was to love myself first. Though in love with the narc to love me, I had to be with myself and love her from a distance. I set myself free and ended the relationship.
Present-day, this individual still watches from afar, still calls from unknown numbers, still leaves threatening voicemails…still scares me. As the research states, the narc will go as far as to enlist their relatives and/or friends to reach out; this is currently happening as well.
My fear is not only for my survival, but for those connected to me. Research also states, that these individuals quite literally lack the ability to empathize due to less grey matter in a part of the cerebral cortex. That being said, there is nothing this person will not resort to, merely to make a point that I will always be considered branded as her property. She will always know what matters most to me and how to use it to her advantage. There is also no way of saving the “new supply” to come.
This article is not to dwell on this experience or to nominate that person to receive (what I believe should be) an Academy Award for one of the top five best actresses, but to let the victims of this type of abuse know there is something to be had from this experience.
I can (and just may) write a book filled with the red flags, symptoms, signs, abuse, injuries, and trauma I’ve encountered. That wouldn’t do this lesson full justice or honor who I am. I’ve been reminded that while this individual (and another possibly for another article) may be one of the sickest humans I’ve encountered on planet Earth, she also suffers from a mental illness(es), as do I. For that reason and that reason alone, I have compassion for the 1 in 200 people suffering from NPD.
I have compassion and the utmost respect for the ones that acknowledge and seek professional help. Traumatic as this is, I stop asking why me? I no longer need to ask why not me? I know full well why. I needed to look within, focus on what I found, work through it, and love myself anyway. Fast forward from one year ago to the present day, I am selfish with my love, energy, and time…I have self-love, self-esteem, self-respect, and possibly the most important, boundaries.
Surprisingly, a person will want to abuse you MORE once you wise up enough to love yourself. Only then, do you possess the capability to protect yourself from a true narc. Only then, are you able to easily decipher narcissistic tendencies in the next individual and run with Godspeed in the opposite direction. Only then, will you stop setting yourself on fire to keep anyone warm, and the narc may not respond well.
To the other victims of NPD, know that the guilt will pass, the shame will not devour you, and you will not always ruminate over how a person you genuinely cared for can hurt you beyond what you thought you could survive.
Join NPD support group , search and watch “mental healness” on Youtube, simply type NPD into the Google search bar. Do not just read, absorb the fact that you are not insane. There are thousands (if not millions) of victims encountering these people. Their experiences will allow you to grant yourself grace; you no longer have to question your reality.
No judgment if you are not in a place mentally, financially, or emotionally to end the relationship. No judgment if you do not want to. If you’re reading this, have made it this far, and feel conviction, it is for a valid reason, I ask that you honor that and do the work to establish self-love. I’m about 95% confident once you reach a certain point in your journey of self-love, you will have your answers, you will know what’s to come if you stay, and you will know that you can survive.
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