I wish I could take it back, because if that would have made her happy talking about disease, I would have listened as long as it wasnt all night. I feel responsible because I should have listened more about her day.
Hi BK,
If you listened more about her dayand about disease
she would have found something else to be upset about, and the exact same thing would have happened. I'm not sure if you understand that it wasn't about you or anything specific that you did? The behavior of someone with a personality disorder is
pre-determined. It was pre-destined before she even met you! Amazing when you realize it. You can't win no matter what with these people. She will do the very same thing to the next unfortunate bloke because her behavior expression has nothing to do with her partners, personally. They are just objects of disease interacation and
projection.
Here is a way to look at it... A person has diabetes and is often sick during a relationship. The partner of that person would not take the diabetes illness personally and say if they behaved differently then maybe their partners would not have been sick with diabetes. It is the same thing. Your ex was sick, but emotionally. I know it can be harder for us to see as an illness when it is an emotional versus a physical illness. But they are the same in terms of your ability to have changed anything by your behaviors.
I just wish I could get some real closure. Some peace from the fact that I meant something to her
Partner's of N's often need to give themselves their own closure, and you can give it to yourself. Let your peace and closure lie in massive education regarding NPD (this will make so many of your "non understandables", understandable), and your release of your own guilty feelings in all of this, with the help of a counselor.
About her caring about you, it seems like at least some N's/N-traited people do have genuine caring feelings about their partners, and genuinely do not want to hurt them. It is just that they do not have any kind of consistent control over (yet are still accountable for) their irrational emotions, thinking styles, behaviors, as not to do so. They are emotionally disordered.
So in the midst of, and underneath all of her emotional illness and crazy, hurtful behavior, why not believe there was a small part of her that did care about you, and let that thorn in your side go now? It is very possible.
Now, I know you are not going to ask "if she cared, how could she
xyz & xyz"... <arrrrggggh!--smile

> If you wonder that, then again, you need to
read all you can on NPD.
And regardless, again, like a broken record (sorry!) as so many have said already... if you could get to talk to a counselor a few times, it will make a difference for you.
BlueTopaz