When a Malignant Narcissist disposes of you it does not necessarily mean that you are free. They may have tossed you to the curb yet they will continue to try to bait you to bring you back into contact with them. Malignant Narcissism is a psychological disorder. True Narcissistic Personality Disordered people are emotionally unbalanced and you must learn how to distance yourself from them. You were their target because of your innate goodness. They chose you because you emulated the behaviors and emotions that are non-existent in themselves. They needed someone to mirror. It is covert and insidious and the MN (Malignant Narcissist) has spent a lifetime hiding who they really are.
For years I have labored how to tell what it’s like to live under the thumb of a malignant narcissist without sounding like I was bitter, angry, and seeking revenge. I spent years not revealing the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde behaviors of my ex-husband. On the exterior, in the public eye he was a great guy. He was the one who always picked up the tab, wrestling for the bill, making a big show of how nice he was to pay. Behind the scenes I was juggling with the finances to keep ahead of his spending habits. On the outside, as an accomplished mechanic with a degree in diesel mechanics, he was always offering to repair someone’s vehicle. Behind closed doors he criticized the friend for the lack of preventative maintenance, something he considered neglect of their car. The external personality would counsel young men on budgeting, while he himself didn’t know how to balance a checkbook. The list goes on. It’s an act, a con game and they have been working on the perfection of it since they were a youth. The games my MN played with my emotions and mental state will be the subject of another post.
Trying to explain a Malignant Narcissist’s behaviors, what they are like in secret, is nearly impossible because while they have been perfecting their disguise and exterior persona, they have simultaneously been working on the assassination of your character and integrity. As they drove you away they were portraying themselves as the poor victim with you being the tyrant. By the time you finally say enough is enough they have people suggesting that they were fortunate to have finally gotten free of you.
To fully understand the extent of what they are capable of doing I suggest that you do the research. There are hundreds of blogs, articles and books exposing the behaviors of Malignant Narcissism. I recommend ‘google’ searching the terms: Sociopath, Narcisstic Personality Disorder, and Malignant Narcissism. The only real way to start to work towards your own self-healing is to educate yourself. You were, in fact, being victimized. You were being used for their own self-gratification. Malignant Narcissist’s are emotionally damaged. Something happened to them in their formative years that traumatized them so severely that their only escape was to eradicate feeling. The pain was so intense that they are unwilling to seek psychological help. There is a well-known expression in the world of psychology: “Narcisstic Personality Disorder is one of the few conditions where the patient is left alone and everyone else is treated.” Accurate in its scope because the victims of narcisstic abuse are trying to find a path to healing and the Narcissist truly has fooled themselves into believing in their own perceived perfection. Perfection doesn’t need help.
I spent 32 years with my Narcisstic husband, two years dating and married for 30. There are chapters in our lives that took me down roads that were so challenging that had I not already been on a journey of self-help they could have led to my destruction. Those chapters led me into unknown territories. My innate curiosity and unquenchable desire for knowledge led me to educate myself on the unknown. In those life chapters I walked through trenches filled with muck and putrid waste and still I believed, having hope against hope, that my ex-husband would get the psychological help he so desperately needed. In the end he took the easy way out. Healing proved too difficult for him and I became baggage, so I was disposed of. He made it look like I left him. Not true. He put me in a position that I had to make a choice and there was only one choice to make.
Without any idea of what the future had in store, two years into our marriage I embarked on an odyssey. I took a look at myself and felt the need for self-improvement. I used to say that I don’t know why I started on that journey. Today I know the answer. It’s part of my story. It’s part of my belief system. It’s entirely the reason I am able to understand what I recognize today regarding the things I endured. I found A Higher Being, A Higher Authority and because of it I have a healthy love for myself. I found God. I found a Father who loves me beyond any doubt in my mind. I found a relationship that is far reaching, beyond anything that a human being could give me. In finding a relationship with a good and loving God I was able to pick myself out of the ash heap that my ex-husband had thrown me onto. When I cried out “why?” and no earthy person reached out to help, God, my loving Father did. When I was lying on my bed exhausted from the tears I’d cried until there were no tears left my loving Father wrapped His arms around me and held me close. When I tried to vindicate myself from all the lies and deceptions that my ex-husband had been fabricating for years and no one would believe me, my loving Father asked, “you know I believe you, don’t you child?” “Yes, Father, I do,” I answered. “Then rest in Me because I AM and because I know you are not guilty of the charges.”
It’s been eight years since I took a step of faith into the unknown and walked away from 32 years of commitment. When I was thrust into making a choice, I still did not give up. I asked the Father to give me one ray of hope that my MN would get the help he needed. If that flicker had been there I would have stayed. The outbreak of insidious evil that my MN attacked me with revealed to me that he was truly finished with me. So I walked. Did it end there? No! I will share my experiences and give examples of breaking free from Narcisstic Abuse in a later post. I was counseled by legal and clergy to go “No Contact.” It hasn’t stopped him. I have remarried and still he baits. You must determine to become stronger than they are. Ignore them. Responding only gives them a hook into you. Stay free. It’s the only way to true healing.