Sleeping with the Enemy Part 1: How to tell if your partner or spouse is a narcissist

 

I remember two events in my married life like they both happened yesterday.

The first: I have my back pressed against the hallway wall in our flat, while my husband clamps one hand around my throat, and makes a fist out of the other in my face, asking through clenched teeth if I want him to punch me. I am struggling to breathe. This is my punishment for not doing the washing-up before my husband got home from work.

The second: I am standing warily outside the door of our flat’s kitchen, too afraid to enter, as my husband stirs a pot of food on the cooker. He turns and glares at me. “Do you want some?” he jeers. “Go and buy your own food,” he commands, knowing that I have no money of my own. “This is mine. And from now on, you should ask my permission before you eat anything. I buy everything in this house. Don’t you feel ashamed?” This is my punishment for not having dinner ready when my husband got home from work.

 

On both of these occasions I felt powerless, and afraid, but also guilty for upsetting my husband. These two events occurred several years into my relationship with him, and by then my whole life had become about him.

It was my life, and yet all I ever thought about was not making him yell, having to have dinner ready at a certain time or he’d be upset, having to be back in the house at a certain time or he’d be upset, not forgetting to do what he’d asked me to do (to the letter) before leaving for work that morning or he’d be upset… every single thing I did was dictated by his likely reactions, his likes and dislikes, and where he wanted me to be/what he wanted me to be doing.

That’s living with a narcissist.

The physical abuse was a nasty, frightening, and painful part of what went on for me, but what made my husband a narcissist was the control he wanted over me. He wanted my mind permanently on him in an abnormally obsessive way, and at times he used physical force or threat to “put me in my place” when I had apparently failed to keep up with his every demand. But the physical abuse was mostly a means of getting back the control that he felt he was losing. The real damage he did to me was psychological.

 

Some things my husband did:

– He would keep me short of money. I would have a little bit in my bank account that he would put there and tell me not to touch it because it was there “in case I die, because you’re so useless you won’t be able to survive without me.”

– He would tell me all the time how much I needed him, and brag that my life was only as good as it was because of him. And his abuse was so thorough, that by the worst period, I couldn’t even argue with him on that. His behaviour turned me into such a nervous, forgetful, shy, self-doubting shell of a person that I honestly believed that nobody would want me except for him, and that I was useless without him.

– He would criticise my appearance constantly. Once he walked off in a tantrum and left me standing in a clothes shop because a jacket he had seen on the rail and wanted me to wear didn’t fit me. When I caught up with him later, he bizarrely blamed ME for not magically fitting the JACKET. That is a great example of just how self-absorbed, illogical, and childish a narcissist can be.

– Once when I failed to orgasm when he wanted me to during sex, he slapped me so hard on the side of the head that it stung, then put his hand tight around my throat and seethed, “Concentrate!” evilly in my ear. Whether I enjoyed it or not, he wasn’t going to stop until he’d got what he wanted – typical narcissistic behaviour.

– He would criticise how I did things and tell me what to do all the time. From the number of sheets of toilet paper I used, to the clothes I wore, to the food I cooked, to the way I did my hair, he would try to dictate it. The words he used most often were: “You should…” “Why can’t you look/be more like…?” and very often judgmental statements such as, “You are the most untidy person I have ever met!” “You’re disgusting.” “You look a mess!” “I’m ashamed to walk down the street with you/take you to meet my friends.”

– He would talk SO kindly about me to other people, and praise me to the skies when with friends or colleagues… and then talk to me personally worse than he would have done to a dog. At times, I couldn’t believe the contrast. When we were out with other people, I would be largely safe from criticism, but in private he had a tongue like a razor. I felt like I was living a lie, and that nobody would believe me if I told them what he was REALLY like when it was just me and him.

– He hated me having a job. But instead of coming out and saying, “You can’t work,” he would sneakily make life hard for me so that I gave it up on my own instead and he couldn’t be blamed. He would criticise my hours, berate the type of work I did, say it wasn’t “real” work if I didn’t get paid for it, etc. He would even just go into a bad mood sometimes to make the atmosphere tense at home so that I would feel unsteady and spend all my time and energy wondering what I had done to upset him, instead of focusing on good things that were happening for me. The last one is classic narcissistic behaviour – trying to bring the attention back to themselves all the time. These were all ways of sabotaging my work and stopping me from having a job which might lead to enough financial independence for me to up and leave him. Narcissists beat you down so that you stay close to them and they can carry on abusing you.

 

Do you recognise any of these kinds of behaviours in your partner or spouse, be they a man or a woman, regardless of the type or level of commitment of the relationship you are in? Please note that I am only asking if the kinds of behaviours are similar; for example, their words and actions do not have to be exactly the same as those I quote above.

You may have only just met each other or have not been together long; or you may have been a committed couple or married for many years. Either way, the chances are that if you feel as though you are being manipulated, controlled, criticised, and imprisoned, then you most likely are being treated in those ways, and it is almost certain that you have a narcissistic partner.

In my next post I will possibly expand on this list of behaviours, and also suggest what you can do if you believe you are in a relationship with a narcissist. I hope this has been helpful, and thank you for reading.

(Photo credit: stock-clip.com)

There and Back: Quotes from those who have lived in the hellish shadow of a narcissist

I have kept the authors of these quotes anonymous, to protect their identities. If, reading their words, you can relate to their feelings and experiences, you are likely to be under the influence of one or more narcissists. I may edit this post in future if even more useful quotes come to light. Thank you to everyone quoted here for their wisdom!

“The Powerball Lottery here was recently up to 560 million. I think everyone I know bought lottery tickets. But, realistically, the odds of winning are ridiculous. It ‘could’ conceivably happen, but it’s not something you would ever count on or plan your life around. Imagine how silly if I ran up debt or didn’t get a job or education because I was “gonna win the lottery”. But we do this, in our relationships. People ‘can‘ and ‘do‘ change, but the odds are so rare that you can’t ‘count‘ on it happening. It’s foolish to spend your life waiting or hoping for someone else to change. And this is even more true about narcissists. Narcissists don’t change because deep, deep down inside they believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong.”

“We’d been having problems with John’s family… John’s mother, particularly, couldn’t seem to cope with the idea of ‘losing’ him to me, and was trying to do everything in her power to keep hold of him. The family (there were three siblings and John’s dad besides) were all similarly possessive, refused to respect our status as an engaged couple and really didn’t seem to want us to get married. Their expectation was always that John should put me second and them first, and should go home to visit them all the time, go on family holidays, cancel other commitments to be with them and so forth (all the ‘kids’ were between 23 and 30, yet they still insisted on these frequent family gatherings where the dynamic – creepily – didn’t seem to have changed since they were all about 8 years old). The parents, particularly the mother, seemed to be entirely living their own lives through their children, and couldn’t seem to let them go in the way that normal parents do.

John, at times, seemed to be able to see what was going on, and promised me repeatedly that he would do something about it, would stand up to them, and so forth. I trusted him to do so, but when we were away with them on holiday, the parents managed to engineer a horrible row where they accused me of being a gold-digger (not that John really had any money to speak of, just an ever-growing overdraft), of taking John away from them, of pushing him around, and various other things. I stood up for myself, quite indignantly, but rather than supporting me, John tried desperately to get me to apologise to them. John seemed to be completely brainwashed by his parents whenever they managed to talk to him on his own, and afterwards I found that it was like talking to a completely different person. We’d both agreed to return from holiday slightly earlier than the rest of the family because of other commitments (this had occasioned a tantrum of epic proportions from John’s mother when we announced it the previous week), but the parents persuaded him that he needed some ‘space’, and despite my pleas (knowing that they would use the opportunity to get their claws into him and finish off the relationship entirely) he remained with them. The following week I received a letter from him – so unlike his usual messages that I’m certain it was dictated by his parents – ending the engagement for very vague and unspecific reasons.” (A woman describing the end of her relationship with the heavily-enmeshed son of a narcissistic mother)

“He looks perfect on the outside – other women will come up to me and say they wish their men acted like him – but that’s exactly what it is: an act. In private he has been criticising my every move that doesn’t fit in with what he wants. Over the last 9 years, I can’t believe how much of my life has been eroded due to depression and his controlling behaviour.”

“Choking is the most dangerous (and narcissistic) abuse of all. They are taking away your right to breathe. It’s like a tiny murder every time.”

 

“At the bank today, my wife told a few complete strangers standing next to us at the counter, “I never let him have any money!” They looked at her a little oddly, but said nothing. Perhaps they eventually assumed that she was joking good-naturedly… but it’s true. She takes my salary and gives me an allowance. I just wanted the ground to swallow me up. Also, when I use the internet, she accuses me of wanting to contact my ‘girlfriends’ when I am doing no such thing. I can’t do anything without her making snide comments or looking over my shoulder.”

Thank you for reading.

(Photo credit: layoutsparks.com)

Helpful Sites and Pages on the Narcissistic Mother

In addition to my previous post, here are some sites and pages that I have found helpful in researching narcissistic mothers. Many contain information that I haven’t even touched on, and this list is by no means exhaustive. I will update it as new resources are remembered or found:

http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html Very good for identifying characteristics.

http://daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/ Ostensibly one for the girls, but may prove useful to guys also.

http://www.lightshouse.org/the-narcissistic-parent.html#axzz2IXSZAiFD Part of a larger site with info on other types of dysfunctional parents, too.

http://thenarcissistinyourlife.com/severing-relationship-with-narcissistic-mother-your-healing-begins/ In few words, Linda Martinez-Lewi provides a devastatingly vivid portrait of life with a narcissistic mother. She also suggests how the total severance of such a relationship may be necessary for the healing of the child.

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/adultchildrenofnarcissisticparents Being a member of this group personally, I can vouch for the comfort, knowledge, and empathy to be found here.

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/adult-children-of-narcissistic-parents The ‘sister’ group of the above forum, with many of the same benefits.

http://www.dailystrength.org/c/Physical-Emotional-Abuse/support-group Having a narcissistic mother is to endure emotional abuse, and in many cases physical abuse as well. A non-judgmental and friendly forum with lots of people in (and out of) all sorts of abusive relationships supporting each other.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shame/201210/shame-unrequited-love An exploration of how a mother’s failure to mirror her baby’s emotional expression (as narcissistic mothers fail to do) can result in a persistent feeling of ‘basic shame’ in her children.

http://postcardstoanarcissist.wordpress.com/daughters-of-narcissistic-mothers-2/ Written by a woman for women, this is quite a female-oriented page, but some of the info is gender neutral. Part of a larger site with lots of links to other information about narcissism visible at the top of the page.

Malignant Maternity: When Your Mother Is a Narcissist

One of the most chilling episodes of the US crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is “Turn of the Screws” (S. 4, Ep. 21) in which narcissistic mother Raina Press kills her daughter, 13-year-old Tessa Press, with a shovel for the apparent ‘crime’ of stealing too much of the attention of Raina’s boyfriend Justin. Raina then dumps Tessa’s body outside of town without a care in the world, and proceeds to act as if she hasn’t a clue what has happened to her daughter. When the shovel turns up as viable evidence of her involvement in Tessa’s killing, however, Raina shows her true colours while being interviewed by CSIs Willows and Brown:

Raina Press: I bought Tessa a bus pass, and that little slut still gets my guy to pick her up after school. We all know why.

CSI Willows: Why don’t you tell us?

Raina Press: She was trying to steal him from me. Justin was the best thing in my life.

CSI Willows: No. Your daughter was the best thing in your life. (Willows gets up, disgusted, and heads for the door.)

Raina Press: You didn’t know her!

CSI Willows: I do know that she was thirteen years old. A child. (Willows walks out of the door.)

Now, probably not many narcissistic mothers would go quite as far as to commit actual murder. But many inflict severe damage every day that leaves their children and often also other family members feeling emotionally and psychologically attacked and ‘dead’ inside time and time again.

I thought my mother loved me when I was growing up – or, more accurately, I wanted to believe she did. That was probably partly due to my innocence, and partly due to her skill in passing off everything she did as being in my best interests. You will hear a lot of narcissistic mothers utter the phrase, “I’m only saying/doing this because I love you.” Those words mask and apparently excuse a multitude of sins. I say apparently excuse because, looking back, my mother engaged in behaviours that were very hurtful, invasive, and devaluing, and these had quite serious consequences for my well-being as an adult. There is nothing remotely excusable about that.

Things a Narcissistic Mother Says and Does

– She competes with her children, and/or forces her children to compete for her ‘love’. My mother did both of these things regularly. She was forever threatening me with the words, “Wait until your dad gets home!” and ‘telling on’ me to him to provoke him into being angry with me, so that she could triumph in his eyes as the one in the right. Rather than behaving as his parental equal and disciplining me fairly herself, she preferred the childish satisfaction of winding Dad up and watching me get the brunt of it. She competed with me for my father’s attention, apparently enraged, much like Raina Press, that he gravitated towards and leaned on me emotionally in response to her undemonstrative coldness. She evidently thought that the balance needed to be redressed, and set about doing so in her own sneaky and vindictive way.

And it didn’t matter that I didn’t have actual siblings for her to compare me to; she would simply find me temporary ones wherever we happened to be at the time, in the shape of other people’s children. She would say, “That little girl always talks to the waiters!” “You don’t see that little boy making a fuss!” I ended up feeling inadequate and disliking these other kids, as any kid probably would, but it was her influence creating the inadequacy and animosity that I felt. Until she tried to cause trouble, I felt quite happy in myself and pleasantly disposed towards them. This is how the narcissistic mother creates chaos and grinds you down, making sure you keep trying in vain to reach her impossible standards. This is how she makes you dependent upon her, until you start perversely believing that you actually need her and her damaging behaviour! You get caught in the cycle of hoping that if you are just enough like others whom she compares you to, THEN you will have earned her love. The sad thing is, you shouldn’t have to earn it.

If you have siblings and a narcissistic mother, she may well try to drive a wedge between you to satisfy her own twisted need to feel more valuable because you are all competing to impress her. She may choose one or more of you to be her favourite children, and make one or more of you the ones who can’t do anything right. Be very aware that she is the one setting up this sick little scenario, and don’t let it turn you against each other – that’s just what she wants! My own father and his brother were drawn into an almost lifelong silent feud with each other, all because their mother had labelled them the ‘clever’ one and the ‘useless’ one when they were children. It was just her selfish, meaningless opinion, but it tainted the way they saw and interacted with each other into their middle age. They only started to have a better relationship after she died, when she couldn’t poison things between them any more.

– She invades her children’s privacy. Telling you how to live your life as if you had no choice or opinion in the matter, reading your diary, snooping through your private things, insisting that you undress and/or bathe in front of her and getting upset if you protest… narcissistic mothers do all of these things and more. When I still lived with her, mine would barge into my bedroom without knocking while I was getting changed. She continued to do so even after I asked her not to. Her reason? “We’re all women, we’re all the same!” No doubt true, but it was still no excuse for her to be there staring at me when I didn’t want her to be. She also found my diary and opened it, shaming me by reading aloud my private thoughts in front of me in a mocking fashion.

Why does the narcissistic mother do this stuff? Well, to her, you are not her child to be loved and nurtured into a whole and happy separate person; you are a possession. You don’t have rights, you don’t have feelings, and you sure as hell don’t belong to yourself! What she wants is to erode all the healthy boundaries that should exist between you and her as independent people. That way, you can be easily controlled, and you won’t get any silly ideas about leaving her or not doing exactly as she wishes all the time.

– She invalidates her children. This follows on from the invasion of privacy. By eroding the boundaries between you, the narcissistic mother effectively invalidates your existence as a person in your own right. She will also invalidate your feelings and needs, when you have them. When I was younger and got upset about something, my mother would say things like, “You’ve got a very vivid imagination,” and “I think you’ve been reading too many magazines.” ANYTHING except acknowledging my upset for what it really was: feelings needing to be heard and understood, and comfort needing to be felt. When I went to her and asked for physical affection, she would usually either push me away, saying, “Don’t be a baby!” or respond with a gesture so weak that it was hardly worth making at all. I got little, if any, of the emotional or physical mirroring that is meant to occur between mother and child. But that is the narcissistic mother’s whole MO. She expects her children to be her mirror alone, and to have no needs of their own.

This post basically describes the narcissistic mother and her main behaviours (though by no means all of them). In future posts, I will address what your options may be if you find yourself dealing with this kind of mother, and offer some ways in which you might deal with and protect yourself from her. Thank you for reading.

(Photo credits: ALAMY and themomcrowd.com)

Why Soul Reclaim?

Baggage reclaim is for airline passengers. Soul reclaim is for those who are going through or have gone through the uniquely traumatic experience of having one or more narcissists in their lives. It makes no difference how long or short your relationship with a narcissist is/was, or what the nature of it is/was. These very toxic people affect everyone they come into contact with, and they can often inflict a lot of damage and pain with seemingly no effort at all. I have seen and heard the detrimental effects of living with and relating to a narcissist described as ‘soul rape’ and ‘soul theft’, as well as wishing to use the same words to describe the experience myself. These are graphic ideas, but necessarily so – no warning can be strong enough against the havoc that a narcissist can wreak in the lives of those surrounding them.

A narcissist could be your partner or spouse, your parent, child, sibling, or any other family member. They could be someone you consider to be a friend, a work colleague, landlord, or boss. They could be anyone you know.

What is a narcissist?

The term ‘narcissist’ is misleading in some ways. We may think that a narcissist is someone who loves themselves excessively – but healthy self-love is exactly what these people DON’T practice, because they don’t know how. Instead they seek to drain others to fill their own emptiness. The trouble is, they are never satisfied… and they will not see you as a person in your own right; only as a source of supply, the never-ending supply of adoration, obedience, and subservience that they require. They will drain the life out of you, unfortunately sometimes literally speaking.

Emotionally abused in childhood by either excessive pampering or neglect, they have never grown up. They basically mask a core which is empty of everything except self-hatred, and hatred and anger towards their abusers and other people, with a perfectly gilded outer appearance.

They can seem outwardly charming, affable, confident, and capable… until someone upsets them or they don’t get their own way, that is. Then the mask slips and the rage unleashed will beggar belief. Think of an adult engaging in the kind of tantrum that a child might have in a supermarket, and you will have a good idea of the behaviour involved. Mentally and emotionally, they are children in adult physiques.

How to recognise a narcissist

There is plenty of stuff already written online about the ins and outs of clinical NPD or Narcissistic Personality Disorder by people much more qualified than me to describe and diagnose it. Googling these terms will get you what you need if you are seeking a more detailed description. But from my own experience and observation, you may be dealing with a narcissist if:

– The person does not exhibit empathy. For example, do they listen attentively when you have something to say or a problem to share, and acknowledge your feelings about it? Or do they ignore and/or interrupt you and talk about themselves or someone else instead? Inability to empathise is the number one trait of a narcissist. Even if they don’t have all of the other traits, they usually have this one.

– The person behaves in an arrogant manner. Do they always want the biggest and best of everything, often at other people’s expense? Do they frequently talk about and exaggerate their achievements or attractiveness, or put others down to make themselves look better? Have they fabricated events and qualifications just to garner attention?

– The person’s behaviour is different in public and in private. Have you noticed that they appear to treat others better than they treat you? Do you ever feel that you are the only one who knows the real them, and that other people would not believe you if you were to tell them how that person behaves when they don’t have a public audience?

– The person makes everything your fault, or someone else’s fault, and never their own. It doesn’t matter to them who was actually responsible for what happened; a narcissist will never admit to being imperfect themselves, or worry about attributing mistakes to the wrong people. If you are lucky enough to get one of the (rare) attempts at an apology from a narcissist, it will be along the lines of, “I’m sorry you were hurt,” which sees them take no responsibility at all and their image remain untarnished, rather than the sincere apology, “I’m sorry that I hurt you.”

– The person breaches your boundaries. This can include literally telling you what to do and how to live your life; ignoring your specified wishes; using/giving away your time or property without your consent; invading your privacy (including checking computer histories, spying on your activities, opening your mail, and demanding passwords or access to email accounts); controlling your finances (by withholding money from you, taking your salary, spending excessively, forcing you to take on debt in their name, exhausting credit that is in your name, or putting everything in their OWN name so that you cannot access it without their knowledge); telling you that you cannot work or sabotaging a job you already have (by arguing with you about it, calling you excessively at work, insulting your job to demoralise you into giving it up, etc.); engaging in lying, cheating, fact-twisting and gaslighting (the manipulation of the truth to cover their tracks and make you doubt your own memory of events), name-calling, hurtful personal comments, physical and/or sexual abuse or the threat of such abuse, violence around you even if they do not physically touch or strike you (e.g. throwing things, punching walls, threatening or succeeding in the damage or destruction of your possessions or property, or hurting pets/others close to you.)

It is my intention in this blog to provide regular posts on how different narcissistic people may impact our lives, how to recognise that this is occurring, and what can be done about it once it has been identified. I will do my best to cover as many different instances of narcissism as possible.

I hope this is helpful. Thank you for reading.

(Photo credit: livinghealthyworldwide.com)