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)