A digital journal to aid in healing and recovery from a relationship with an emotionally unavailable partner.
hugs and love, Laura
In response to message posted by Hermes:
My heart goes out to you in your recovery. Grieving the loss of a relationship with a N has many layers. They are not the usual layers of grieving a healthy person. The problem is that some of the layers ARE the same as grieving a healthy person but then there are layers reserved only for the loss of a N relationship, which are not understood by the 'civilian' population and can ONLY be understood by those who have survived a significant relationship with a N.
In a healthy relationship break-up one grieves:
Those are typical feelings that can come up after a break-up of a healthy relationship.
But grieving a N there are other ingredients, not available to the public understanding, such as:
Grieving a N is a burden, it's a hole in one's life.
Love, Nicky
Posts
OMGosh these words are SO true to what I am experiencing right now. And sums up exactly how I feel...Thank you for posting it...and as I said to Liz, for letting me know I am NOT alone:( Though I wouldn't wish this on anyone. My biggest question...how do you break free and stay free?
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't until I completely accepted that there was absolutely nothing I could do to change him and that he is utterly incapable of loving and that he never loved and I was merely another object/character in his life's drama script that I was able to break free.
ReplyDeleteJust remember, CONTACT = PAIN.
love and hugs
Wow. After reading this and the article, I can't help but think of "War Stories" and Shan Yu (Sun Tzu) talking about really knowing someone.
ReplyDelete"Live with a man forty years; share his house, his meals, speak on every subject. Then tie him up, and hold him over a volcano's edge. And on that day, you will finally meet the man.
It's an unfortunate truism that some folks, just ain't right. There very existence is a tornado come through the lives of those they touch. Without a doubt, a recipe for some serious unpleasantness.
My great hope is having been afflicted with these folks, we will become smart enough to see the signs and avoid them in the future. We must endeavor to know the world without becoming worldly. Learn to lavish upon ourselves that same unflinching and unconditional love we once bathed our abusers in. We must, while knowing someone else, know ourselves, or all is indeed lost. In retrospect, I think part of why I fell prey to Earl so readily is not only did I not really know him, but I didn't really know myself them. Which is a hard realization to come to so late in life.
I think bathing ourselves in unconditional love is key. Though, I will say that I knew myself very well when I met my exNSP. It's now I find myself wondering who I am.
ReplyDeleteMy 58th birthday is in a week. I met him just after I turned 55. Everything I am reading on this blog is him to a "t". I have been living in a state of confusion and pain for well over a year. I have finally forced myself...and trust me it was as though I was trying to push an elephant into a Volkswagon...away from any contact with him. I fell in love with a man who didn't exist. I do not want to be with my exNDP, but I still have such a strong love for the picture perfect man he painted himself to be. I am left so fractured, there are days I am so lost, I struggle to function. This is going to be a long, long road and I so could use some help.
ReplyDeleteDear Heather,
ReplyDeleteHelp is in finding others who have also survived the nightmare AND finding a therapist who is well versed in sociopathy / NPD and PTSD. hugs and love Laura
Thank you Laura. I never thought that I might be suffering PTSD relative to this situation, but indeed I will further follow that up. I have amassed a library of reading about NPD and since finding your blog have purchased Narcissistic Lovers: Hope to Cope and Recover and I look forward to digesting that too. My search for help has been four months long to no avail and I finally found your blog. Thank you, thank you, thank you Laura. I no longer feel so all alone. Reading all of this brought a spark of life and fight back into me. Hugs...Heather
ReplyDeleteDear Laura:
ReplyDeleteAs you know if you visited my site Laura, I am an graphic artist. As you can well imagine my ability to visualize is somewhat enhanced. As I was writing to you on your blog this morning to thank you for making this blog...I saw myself in a battlefield after the killing with bodies strewn around and the air thick with smoke from fire. I was terribly wounded and kneeling there wondering if anyone would find me. It was quite but for the crackling of something burning and I called "Medic!"....and again I called "Medic!" and there was your blog...just like that and I knew, I was going to be ok. : ) Thank you, thank you...you are my Medic and now I will continue my journey of heeling with renewed determination and hope....Hugs, Heather
Hi Laura...here is a blog I started several weeks ago...the few entries in it will reinforce where my struggle moments are. I am going to continue my blog. It is a way I can write my feelings on those bad days and those good days. I anticipated excitedly that it's contents will continue in a positive upwardly mobile direction. I hope it will become my thermometer so I can see my own improvement. With improvement I know comes the inspiration to continue improving. http://heatherclarke51.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteHi Laura: The most incredible thing happened to me yesterday. I left my exNPD a year ago after only spending only 5 weeks living with him after spending a year and a half dating him. The last year he spent the year arguing with me and asking why and I spent pretty much a year trying to tell him the truth and of course that made it worse. Finally I got so angry with the way he was treating me that I all but stopped communication. As recently as a week ago an email came in, in which he was lamenting the mess I made of his life and how bad his life was. He truly was working on making me feel guilty and it worked to a degree. And then yesterday I was led to a website which described he and his new live in girlfriend that he's had for some time attending a wedding together. Wow...nothing as fantastic could have happened to me. I was immediate. All my understanding was confirmed and I no longer felt sorry for him nor guilty about my decision to leave after only 5 weeks with him. For some people it might have done the reverse, but it basically set me free. Why is that Laura?
ReplyDeleteWe don't always know what is real. Sometimes we are led to live an illusion that when replaced with a reality, however unprepared we are, surprisingly and ultimately, becomes an incredible gift.
ReplyDeleteI received an early birthday gift yesterday. Shackles I hadn't recognized I was wearing were suddenly released. My soul, that I hadn't recognized had been stolen, was returned. Stress I hadn't recognized I had become numb to, was lifted and I was overwhelmed with a sense of relief that I had no idea I would feel so profoundly. I was free and I hadn't recognized I had been enslaved.
I celebrated throughout the afternoon and evening with several dear friends and I retired my landmark day, hoping that the joy I felt was not just a temporary euphoria and I fell into a peaceful sleep.
I awoke at 6:30 am this morning, the sky was illuminated with the most vibrant yellow and pink gradated sunrise I have seen in years. It was as though a light that had been turned off was suddenly been turned back on. Nature reminds me often that there is great beauty in this gift of life. It inspires me to treasure all that I have and all that I have been given. It displays very clearly the difference between reality and illusion. I love the beauty of this earth. My heart is clear and my eyes are wide open. The universe continues to take care of me and repeatedly endeavors to keep me out of harm's way in spite of my naivety. I am humbly grateful. This was the first morning of the rest of my life.
The day was full of energy and fruitful in successes. Optimism filled the air. The euphoria I had felt the day before had seamlessly morphed into the positive energy that had always been the touchmark of my personality and had, I am told, mysteriously quieted in the quarter year past.
Tonight as I write in this journal the sky is twinkling with thousands of specs of light sending their silent pulsating signal to us down here on earth that tomorrow will be another long hot summer day.
I am luckiest person I know.
Today is my birthday. I am so grateful to have been born into this world and to have been given the gifts I have been given, to have been given an immortal essence that feels so intensely, the joy other's feel and the pain other's feel. It's a gift that is a window into human beings and into ourselves. Of all the gifts I have been given, my capacity for love and compassion is the one I see as my greatest. There is a responsibility though that comes with such a gift. There is a responsibility to myself. We must all have walls around us. Walls we build, brick by brick throughout our lives. They must be walls custom made by us, to protect us....not from the injustice around us, but from our own potential injustice to ourselves. I have learned so very much in these years I have been given. The experiences and lessons I have been blessed with are the mortar and the knowledge and understanding of those experiences are the bricks. One brick at a time, one lesson at a time, it is my responsibility to ensure that my wall is high enough and strong enough and clear enough to all others around me as to protect me and allow me to experience the joy that life can bring. I have completed a most incredible three year journey that has provided me with all the bricks and all the mortar I need to complete my wall.
ReplyDeleteI now know that there are human beings amongst us that through no fault of their own are unable to feel anything for anyone. They aren't even able to recognize that others than themselves have feelings. They are described, by the very spiritual, as being vacant of a soul. They come into this world with a beautiful immortal essence of integrity, an essence all their own and tragically that essence is ripped from the bodies they are given to live here on earth in and they can never be retrieved. Reaching out to help these beings can endanger our very existence as they are condemned to wander this earth searching for other's immortal essence to fill the emptiness they know exists in themselves and their prey is the humans whose immortal essence is made up of open hearts and great compassion and whose walls are weak presenting vague and unclear boundaries. The are predators. The concept of any human being having no no immortal essence of their own or the concept that there are some human beings who are not redeemable was so foreign and impossible for me to believe as to be inconceivable. I had to experience a very severe case of this phenomena in someone I had grown to love dearly in order to be convinced of its very existence. It is the absolute saddest experience I have ever had to endure. I would have preferred to have experienced the death of someone so dear to me and so hopeless. It would have been kinder than to have to accept that the torture they are doomed to live in will for all that is the rest of their life here on earth. It was, however, I believe the most valuable lesson I will ever learn. It is the lesson, in the learning, that now allows me to safely protect myself so that I may experience joy for all that is the rest of my life. So armed with my essence and my enormous capacity for love and compassion and with all my bricks and mortar in place I look to my future with unlimited optimism and excitement.
There is no birthday gift more valuable than knowledge and experience...the bricks and mortar to improve our lives. I am the luckiest person I know. : )
Thank you Laura for pointing me in the right direction. What you are building here and devoting so much to is a true act of love.
ReplyDeleteHugs, Heather
Heather,
ReplyDeleteI identify so deeply with the pain of discovering not only that the person you love is lying to and hurting you, but that he himself will continue to live a life worse than death, without the best of human emotions, and that there is nothing you can do to save him. It took a lot longer for me to let him go as simply someone I might be able to help than as someone I could marry. The moment of letting go evoked the movie “Titanic” for me, the image of Rose letting go Jack’s body in the freezing ocean after she realizes he is dead. She watches the face she loved one last time as it sinks into the deep forever. Of course in our case we fell in love with a dream, yet some of us may have had enough compassion to also love and care for the broken truth, the nightmare, but conceded finally that we were powerless to change it. That our only option was to wake up, because he never would.
I too began rejoicing in nature again, in the simplicity and splendor of creation, that pre-existed and will exist long after his presence in my life fades. For many of us I feel these relationships truly shake us to our core because they change our outlook of the world, these harrowing life experiences are the fruit from the tree of knowledge, ripping us out of our innocent belief that what looks beautiful, ripe and good for us is also so. The world is a much colder and darker place than I imagined, yet I only pray that the depth of my sorrow may be equaled by the heights of my future joy.
As it says in the book “The Prophet” The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
Jessica
I was in a relationship with a narcissistic sociopath for 7 months or so.
ReplyDeleteI am still looking for a lawyer to prosecute him for sexual offences against me.
All the insomnia, hyperventilation, ate nothing, etc... He lied shedloads at work so I had to involve all sorts of external persons to have him sacked. What a nightmare.
Read my blog: it's called the Hope of 125 years:
www.hopeof125years.blogspot.com
I wrote this from my point of view, and then his. Peace and love to those who can feel xxx
ReplyDeleteWHAT GAME?
HER
So surprised by your intensity to be with me,
So different your approach it bewildered me.
So what did you see? My naivety.
So magnetic your eyes they drew me in,
I was slowly and unknowingly drowning.
So much love you showed a special me,
I never knew existed.
It didn’t.
So what, about anything else now we’d found each other.
It’s us against the world,
The world you loved me more than.
We are a team now.
Your corner of the eye gaze and grin.
Told me how lucky you knew you were to have me.
It was a moment I longed for again.
Your seal of approval,
Your admiration.
Suddenly died
So how could you do this to me?
ME!
Desperate for my suffering to register on your blank canvas
Your hollow stare
Nothing there.
Nothing.
So this is who you are?
An impostor, a demon, a mimic.
Computers are not evil,
But this one passes as human.
I was once an angel above all others,
My reality can’t match that.
My reality left empty.
In a weak moment I’d wish to be dreaming again,
And then you’d call for me.
I became your puppet,
and died inside,
When you decided,
To cut my strings and find a new toy.
You so brutally disturbed my slumber.
Now my eyes are open
Even to myself.
Thank you.
HIM
I’m sorry I hurt you,
Your pain and confusion I find so amusing.
Why, why do you ask me why?
Just except what I say,
You need it that way.
You looked happy in that picture with your ex,
So I wanted you both dead.
I’d never kill you,
I love you more than my mother.
You’d kill yourself.
When you fail to keep me on the edge,
I stop calling and move on to the next.
You changed, its your fault. I would have loved you forever.
When I call, you’ll come running.
You live in the dream I so easily placed you in.
Because you are weak.
I love you, my victim.
We are one. Come home.
Where you belong.
With me. Mine.
Until I say i'm done
ANNE-MARIE MAHONEY x
I'm still trying to decide if my boyfriend is a sociopath. How do you know for sure?
ReplyDelete