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"making nice"

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Sally:
sjkravill: Wanted to add my total support of what everyone has said to you. When reading your post I had that awful sinking feeling that I have lived through with my exN for over 20 years.

Being in that place where he would be sooo charming and I would trust him and his love for me, and feel his openness with me; followed shortly thereafter by another one of those withdrawals.  Wondering what on earth I had done?  How had he changed so completely?  Listening to his very short, but oh so stinging little remarks.  

It has gone on for so many years that  sometimes I feel as if I have now become mentally fragile. I've lost my own strength, my trust in life, trust in people.  There is a hopelessness that this will never end.

In our last face to face meeting three weeks ago he told me how much he loved me, how he wanted so much for us to get married again, how I was the only person he felt safe with and had ever really loved.  And then nothing.  Coldness, silence, withdrawal until I finally disconnected my phone and shut off my email to him.  I couldn't go through that cycle one more time.

And yet, here I am tonight again in pain and sadness, tears pouring down my face as I write this because one more time I have to face the withdrawal.  The ache the wonder of why? how? what was it all for? The realization this time that I never really meant anything to him. (Now that I fianlly get what Narcissism is about). Knowing I will never see him or talk to him again. Knowning once again there will be no closure.  Knowing once again that the charming side I loved so is gone.

Will therapy help you?  I think Rosencrantz said it so well.  Unless they have lots of experience with the symptoms and behaviors of a Narcisisist I wouldn't trust they they will be of any help.

For twenty years of therapy, not once did any therapist ever once mention that he might be a narcissist and that I was being drawn to him because of learning that kind of love from my narcissistic mother.

I truly believed, knowing what I know now, that I would be spared the pain this time.  That this time I would be able to walk away with no damage.  But it wasn't true.  I'm sixty years old, I met this man when I was 38. I have given him all of those years of my life.  No one has ever worked harder on trying to change themselves than I have.  For him.  To make him happy.  To try and keep him happy.  To try and keep him in his "make nice" behavior.  I am in a lot of pain tonight, so my perspective is probably not the best, but I truly cannot see what good has come from any of this.  All I have learned has not made me a better person for a relationship because I could could never trust a man again.

My son who watched all of this take place since he was 13 is now suffering in a realtionship with a narcissist also.  Apparantely he learned from me how to do that.  

If I lived near you sjkravill, I would want to come to your house and drag you away, begging you to listen to me.  It's really come to that for me the only way to make sense of my whole life would be if I could convince just one person not to do what I did.  

Everyone on this site has been so supportive and wise.  Please listen to what they are saying to you.  Do the reading. Don't belive for a minute that his behavior has anything to do with you.  Don't twist yourself to make him happy.  Learn everything you can about a narcissist, and listen to the wise people on this site who have experienced the pain of living with this kind of man.

You sound very intelligent and your thinking is clear and sound.  Don't second guess yourself. The truth about who is can be found within you. I wish you all of the best.  Sally

rosencrantz:
Oh Sally, I find myself wanting to say to you that he cared about you in his own way but I'm not sure if that's just because I want you to feel better and I want to stop your pain!!!  Things get so very complicated.

You are bereaved.  You are experiencing loss.  It's a loss you've put off for a long time in the hope it would all work out. You've worked on yourself big time just to avoid that loss.

It's very hard to sit here and not reach out with solutions and thoughts and support but I think that's my need and not yours.

So I'm trying to come from a different place right now.

If you worked on yourself 'for' someone else then I can see that it must seem that it was totally pointless.  You've done far more work than you ever need have done!!!!!  

But, what if 'whoever comes, God sent' (or 'we, ourselves, invited them for a purpose')... maybe this guy came to make you into what you are today.  Maybe you wouldn't have done all that work without him?  And I can tell from your posts how sound you are now.  Maybe you wouldn't have done it FOR yourself - ???

But, boy, that would make me feel so resentful!!  LOL

It's reminding me of the one person who came into my life who I felt should never have come.  Everyone else, yes, I invited them in, even if the relationship hurt me.  I could learn from them.  But this one...

I ended up very, very confused and there are negatives from that experience that live on in my life still.  BUT if I hadn't had that experience, lots of other things wouldn't have happened either.

And the biggest thing I learnt is that it's possible to build when all you've got left is a big fat zero - when you've lost absolutely everything - all you do is take a single step...

The only concern I've had in believing that fate has a purpose for us, is 'what if it's a negative one'!!!  But since I came to understand that we attract our own fate and that it is possible to trust ourselves to attract a positive fate, things have become much easier.

What do you want next, Sally?  People are always so busy defining us - now it's our turn to define what WE want!   :wink:  Life begins whenever you want it to - and that's not a platitude - but I know I haven't quite reached the point where I'm ready to redefine my future just yet and I seem to be relating very much to exactly where you are on your journey.  

Hey, you can take all this with a pinch of salt, if you want - but just know that it takes time to work through a loss, even if nobody died.  

Say,  haven't we also lost something else?? Our definition of ourselves in relation to someone else???  That's worth grieving over, too.  But hey - what a great new definition you can make for yourself NOT in relation to someone like THAT!!!!  Gosh - this is a whole new ballgame!!!!!   :shock:

R

write:
It has gone on for so many years that sometimes I feel as if I have now become mentally fragile. I've lost my own strength, my trust in life, trust in people. There is a hopelessness that this will never end.


Dear Sally

I hear your despair and want to tell you: it will end. It will end.

Your fragility is a direct result of years of narcissist-inflicted traumas, you have been drained.

Now you are realising what has happened to you the pain is so great I know.

I have had that feeling of 'wasting' so much life on trying to be married, the anger of realising I have been abused, and the frustration that few people really see what torture its been.
Then the agony of trying to leave the relationship, to set up practicalities, to assert myself against the continual pressure to capitulate and be available to him again.

Be strong Sally: get whatever help you need.
Let this board be an outlet for your grief. Many of us have been where you are and can support you.

Nothing is ever truly wasted, you might not see or feel it today but the things which have happened to you go to make up the unique wonderful being that is you.

Take every care of yourself as you heal: eat well, exercise, find positive people and bring ordinary good experiences into your life again. It's a very beautiful world, drink deep of that and turn away from your pain for a time every day.

Take care of yourself now.
[/b]

Sally:
Rosencrantz and Guest: Hope you won't mind that I write to both of you at the same time, rather than seperately.  Not sure I have ever received two more understanding and kind responses.  What helps the most is knowing that you have been where I am.  I think this is one of the hardest parts of this situation...the isolation it creates just by the totality of it's harm. The feeling that no one can possibly understand what this is like.  

I get so ashamed of myself and worried about the sickness of it all when I realize there are parts of me that would willingly suffer more of the abuse just to keep from feeling this pain and sense of complete loss. It's as if the adult in me loses all strength to help the child that is clinging to his feet as he walks out of my life.

Yesterday I had some shopping I had to do.  As I was leaving the store, just infront of me was a little girl being held by a young woman I assumed was her mother. The child was having a complete "meltdown" over something she wanted in the store and her mother would not let her have.  I would say the child was about 5 years old.  She was screaming at the top of her lungs, throwing her whole body around in her mother's arms.  

My car was parked in the same direction as they were so I was behind them in the parking lot.  The child kept screaming at the top of her lungs and at one point the young mother tried to gently hold her close and calm her, but she would have none of it.  The child then began to hit the young mother with her fists as she was being held.

The poor young mother was holding the little girl, struggling with her and trying to hold on to packages. I asked if she would like some help, and she said yes with great relief.

The young mother was the child's sister, not her mother. The little girl had run away from her in the store and so a gift she had told she could have was taken away which started the drama.

After quite a struggle we got the little girl into the car seat, with me trying to offer some sense of calmness to the whole situation.  The older sister had done such a good job of trying to handle the child and she was so stressed and distraught you could see she about to start crying herself. I offered a hug to the sister which she gladly accepted.  The little girl now secured in her car seat looked as if after a couple of more breaths she was going to fall fast asleep from the whole experience.

When I got into my car I started crying so hard. I realized later why...the tears were for the gentle patient way the older sister had handled the situation (something that never would have occurred in my childhood) and also for the child whose tears and screams felt like my own internal screams at the pain of my life and all of those years that now seem so waisted.

How I hope they are not waisted. It seems though that there have been so many times when I have said to myself... okay, this is really tough, but I have probably learned something important, and in the end the learning will be worth the experience, that I have a really hard time believing that anymore.  Too many times, over and over again the end result has just been more pain more agony.  

My internal prayers are mostly for this to be the last time.  A committment to living in depression if that's what it is going to take.  I just wish I felt stronger.  

Thanks for letting me talk out some of this pain. I think both of you ought to open a therapy practice on narcissism  :shock: Wouldn't that be a happy job?!  Hugs to you both.  Sally

rosencrantz:

--- Quote ---Too many times, over and over again the end result has just been more pain more agony.
--- End quote ---


I know Sally - that's exactly how I felt this time round, too.

To be honest, once I got over the worst bits (and they were worse than the worst bits ever!!!) it's been much bettter.  There's a sense of achieving something at last. And since today I really 'got it' about the shame issue, I feel that everything is opening up in front of me for miles ahead.

This definitely gives us the freedom to create something really worthwihle with other people so I'm sure you will trust again one day. Of course! it won't be the passionate all or nothing, up and down rollercoaster but it will be deeper and more enduring with an all round calm to it.  

'Charm' is definitely last season's model!!!   :wink:
R

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