Hi!

Hi!

I’m John.

I throw on my jacket as the car door thuds closed. Ear buds in, annoying assistant dismissed as a result of same, app open, I’m ready. It’s a cool April evening, bright, with a gentle breeze. Perfectly uplifting. I begin my regular evening walk through the wooded trails as I normally do except this time my walk will not be to the soundtrack of YouTubers explaining narcissism and NPD, instead, it will be to the sound of my wifes voice ringing loudly into my ears.

I’m a lead software engineer within a large company. It makes me happy that my software skills are not just reserved for work only. I was able to leverage them for the construction of some very bespoke and extremely peculiar tooling. I’m happy, satisfied, content with the result. I’m “supplied”. But not a single soul will know about this and I have no need to share, publicize or brag. Such is my personality type. In fact I’m uncomfortable with praise and attention in general. I go above and beyond for people and want nothing in return. I’m “supplied” when I know they’re happy, i.e. it makes me feel valued. This time however, it’s just for me, just this once, and I’m perfectly at peace with that.

As I begin to walk I choose audio item number one from a dropdown of nearly three hundred recordings of my wifes antics. Four years of covert audio recordings assembled into a bespoke app that allows me to rubber-stamp the various ramblings with tags such as “Abuse to me”, “Child abuse”, “Controlling behavior”, “Attack on my family” etc.

The rubber-stamping will later provide me with just the juicy bits minus all the other ramblings, long gaps and irrelevant noise.

You may relate to this? From what I now understand, people tend to record their partners when they know something is up with them.

For me, I have two reasons to arrange the audio that has been accumulating and sitting idle:

1. I want to fully understand what has been happening to me for the past seventeen years.
2. I need to have evidence to substantiate my claims of abuse against my wife in our divorce proceedings.

My wife is a Narcissist

Let’s call her Susan. Simply put, every single solitary interaction with her is exhausting.

Yep, and it has taken me about fourteen years to discover that.

Things were always bad but over the past three years it became so bad that that I ended up taking the plunge. We will be divorced within the next nine to twelve months or so.

She argues, she sulks, she disagrees, she complains, she cries, she controls. She constantly demands attention. Nothing is ever good enough. Nothing is ever her fault. But above all, she’s the victim, yep, she’s one of the cry baby types.

Your type may be the silent treatment type, or the domestic violence type, the impressing the neighbors type, mine is the always-the-victim-and-it’s-your-fault type

There is constant you - me rhetoric.

• “You never do (insert good thing) for me”.
• “You always do (insert bad thing) to me”.
• “If you hadn’t (insert bad thing), then I wouldn’t…”.
• “If you had (insert good thing), then I wouldn’t…”.

Sheer and utter despair and confusion

Rewind many years back before I knew what was going on. I found myself watching more and more YouTube videos on mental health and personality disorders. Autism, Bipolar, Histrionic, Borderline. None of them seemed to fully match the horror show that was Susan and her relationship with our daughter and I unfolding. I had completely resigned to accepting that there wasn’t a single other person on the planet who could understand what was going on. Least of all, me. I had this really weird problem. Ten minutes after one of her episodes I actually couldn’t remember what the heck she had been on about. I’d have it completely forgotten. So now I had two problems. One, I couldn’t remember and two, I couldn’t figure her out. I couldn’t figure out her triggers. She would be hot or cold regardless of what I did or didn’t do. I went to a therapist because my anxiety became too much. He didn’t spot the narcissism, or at least he didn’t mention it me if he did. In fairness the focus was less on her and more on me.

On three separate occasions I went to her local doctor/practitioner. There was intervention each of those times but still I was no closer to understanding just what on earth was happening in my life. She was this perpetual wall of sound, constantly, nagging, never happy, always complaining, fault finding, being disruptive, selfish, antagonizing, combative, preventative, controlling, accompanied by outbursts of anger that could last for days.

It was torture.

Never abusive?

I never saw this horror show as abusive. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t see this perpetual dissatisfaction (that I was supposedly responsible for and responsible for fixing) as abuse. I saw it as “dissatisfaction”, plain and simple.

It was right in front of me all the time

I also dismissed the possibility of narcissistic personality disorder. I had watched a large number of videos about narcissism on YouTube in my search for answers but they didn’t register with me.

I couldn’t see any grandiosity. I certainly couldn’t remember any Love Bombing, I mean, sure, our relationship was good in the beginning but there weren’t any wild adventures or any enchanting, extraordinary love bonding. It was well… just ordinary.

Manipulation, well… she didn’t seem to be manipulating me, I think I’d be smart enough to recognize that.. surely… right… yea?

But then one or two things began to click, then one or two more then…

BOOM

I can’t say it hit me like a tonne of bricks and that I suddenly understood everything. Far from it but I gradually began to realize I was on the right track.

Why did I not see the NPD? A crucial point.

This is a crucial point. What I didn’t realize at the time was that 80% of the YouTube content went right over my head. It is crystal clear to me now that my lack of vocabulary on the topic caused me to miss all of the crucial points. I had absolutely no idea what lack of empathy actually meant. Similarly with supply, mirroring, projecting, levelling etc. All of these terms meant nothing to me.

I did not see that these words were describing the behaviors I was being inflicted with day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute with total and absolute accuracy.

Why did I not see the NPD. Crucial point number 2.

Here’s a hard one to swallow. She was not the first narcissist in my life. My childhood, while mostly quite good, was fraught with turbulence. Yep, a remarkably similar turbulence to the turbulence that was the abuse being administered by my wife. That turbulence is my normal. It is my baseline. I grew up having this kind of abusive behavior normalized to me.

Somebody whose tolerance for this level of turbulence would quickly see it as unacceptable treatment, unacceptable behavior, and be gone. Not me, I felt sorry for her and believed I could help her.

My friends

My buddies and I were away for the weekend on a city break just to catchup. Now that I was enlightened, I was just bursting at the seams to explain all my new found knowledge and how I had unlocked all the mysterious of the universe.

And so it came, “Hey, John, sup man, whats ‘appening dude?”.

“You won’t believe what I’ve discovered, Susan is a narcissist, she has narcissistic personality disorder, can you believe it?”

“Errrr… dude, what the heck is that?”

“Well it’s like… aaaammmmm … yea… there’s like a lack of empathy and stuff and she’s really angry all the time and … aaammmm … and stuff. You know…”

“Oooookeeey then, (yikes, what’s gotten into him, all I said was hi!) so she’s angry all the time, so why don’t you bring her for a date night out and clear the air?”

“Because that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because … aaammmm… yea… I dunno really why it doesn’t work. She has NPD ok man and that’s that.”

And I knew in that moment that I was utterly unable to explain it, unable to even articulate her behaviors. “She’s angry all the time is about all I could muster up.” I could add things like, “she’s selfish”. Then when they’d ask me for examples, I couldn’t really think of any. I knew I was lost. I knew I had a long road to go before I could begin to comprehend it let alone explain it.

The gradual clearing of the confusion

I still couldn’t explain what any of the terms such as “mirroring”, “supply”, “projection”, even “lack of empathy” actually meant. I couldn’t identify Susan’s manipulations but I knew with certainty that I was on the right track.

Then I started to learn the vocabulary. Knowing the vocabulary provided unit sized understanding of each of the different behaviors.

Then I started to recognize those behaviors in Susan, I cannot express how delighted (terrifying horror show aside) I was, how rewarding and empowering it was to be able to start to rubber-stamp her various phrases, demands, actions and behaviors with their actual names.

Soon, I began to see it for what it was. I even began to see her manipulations.

Her manipulations

Nope, they weren’t part of a great master plan. Nor were they the product of a fascinatingly intelligent bond villain like master mind for the purposes of world domination. Nor were they scheming behaviors to trick me out of my life savings (she’s far more crude and direct about her intentions there). Her manipulations seemed to serve just two purposes.

1. Attention

Positive attention would be great. I.e. she would seek out praise and recognition continually. Negative attention is also great, she would have me grobbling to her, apologizing to her, hugging her to make things better. Promising to do more for her, to do it better, to book a better hotel the next time, to bring her to a better coffee shop the next time.

On and on they go.

2. Filling the void

She seemed to need constant reassurances and little ego boosts. If I gave her the little boost she’d be happy for a few minutes. When I didn’t she’d get all obnoxious. I only succeeded a fraction of the time. She’d get triggered regardless but this kind of ego-boost-seeking behavior was constant. Boasting and seeking reassurance continually.

It becomes us

All I see now is her manipulations. I hardly see a real her at all. I see all she does as nothing other than a manipulation to gain attention and seek those ego-boosts.

She sees me only as her faithful obedient servant.

The journey continues

Weeks into the audio tagging I started to see patterns and repitition in her words. It was the same crap repeated over and over again. We have a daughter. She’s eleven. There is no outcome of these divorce proceedings that is worse than remaining in this relationship. Our daughters self esteem has been badly affected by the sustained abuse. My focus is there. What will be, will be, and I’m perfectly at peace with that. I feel compelled to share my journey and learnings through all of this. I’ve lost seventeen years but gained a wonderful daughter. I’ve also discovered so much about myself and about people in general. Understanding narcissism is empowering. It also tells me so much about myself and my own codependent personality type/disorder.

Earbuds back in, buy for now!

See you on the other side.

John