I realize that without more explanation my post "how to be abused" may be confusing. I read guest 46's post and was painfully aware that they were describing the tatics that my husband, j., has used against me. I also felt comforted that i was not alone. I had struggled to understand what was happening and it was a full time job and I had started giving up, exhausted. I was giving up on looking for the road to a better life. I don't feel that my misery likes company. In a sense that is all j. and i share these days - our misery. Instead, it is my desire to NOT have so much misery, and hope that others too are striving for better that is strengthened by this venue of sharing information and feelings. Finally, in reading about narcissism and reading about the experiences of others I am not trying to reinvent this emotional wheel of hell, discover and understand it, me, & us alone.
Anyway, in addition to guest 46's post i had read about the myth of narcissist and the nymph who was in love with him - actually it was a spell cast, a curse - isn't that familiar! Her name was echo. She eventually lost her self, her voice. I wondered how did/do i give away my voice? I didn't intend to so then how did i spend so very long here? How do I interact with the false image that my husband projects and demands? How do I stand in the Emporer's parade and applaud or at least support the fantacy that he is fully dressed? I read guest 46's outline of the systematic abuse techniques i felt like, ok, ok YES this is what he does! AND I had been reading for a few days about narcissism so finally i felt like OK, I get HIM, now what about ME. what the heck is going on inside me that i put up with it? It seems obvious on paper that it is abuse and in some ways i've know what was going on all along. So what is MY correlate in all this? How does my puzzle piece fit into the abuser's puzzle piece? So i started writing from the view point of the little voice in me that somehow agrees with HIM/HIS tactics - as if I were merely an echo bouncing off of a wall. It was just a strategy, an exploration but as I got underway and after I read what I wrote I feel like I have looked at myself, felt myself in a way that i never have before. I have heard the term victim and felt it didn't describe me. I don't feel like a "victim" though I did feel victimized. As i wrote i was able to feel and see how I fit in to the game. HOW my voice echos him, conforms to the wall - his wall.
Well, I hope that someone responds and shares their view point. Does that voice (that internal by into the narcissist's image) sound familiar to you? Have you/are you going through a change of self image in the quest to get out of the narcissist trap? Has your voice changed? Has your viewpoint begun to change?
