The First Step Is Admitting You Need Help in Journey Back to ME

Breaking free of your narcissistic abuser is hard. Especially when everything in your body makes you yearn for them and their attention and approval.

I’ve had two Day 1’s (of no contact) since Sunday.

It has been an emotional rollercoaster and it’s only been 4 days! I miss him so much. I miss his company. I mean, he MADE sure that he was a part of every single part of my day, therefore I feel his absence that much more. The first night I was a complete MESS. I could hardly sleep. A friend of mine that is a therapist recommended a Psychologist to watch on YouTube that has dedicated her entire channel to exposing the ins and outs of narcissistic abuse, the abuser, and the abused. I dove headfirst into those videos and could relate with everything she talked about. Everything she suggested made sense. EVERYTHING. She also validated my experience as far as the push and pull of leaving. Wanting to be done but missing them all the same.

Tuesday I did the WORST thing that I could have possibly done and that was to reach out to his friend that lives in my building. I don’t know WHY I ever assume that she’ll be on my side. All she did was give me advice on how to accept him, adapt for him, and just not be sensitive about everything. I’m actually starting to think that she must be a lot like him. She actually told me that she doesn’t think that I can handle his BLUNTNESS. It’s one thing to be BLUNT, but it’s another to be intentionally cruel and not take accountability or apologize when you hurt someone you love. I reposted a meme this morning on Instagram and it said “You deserve a love that knows the difference between “i’m sorry you feel that way” and “I’m sorry for how I made you feel”’. WHY she thinks I need to just accept his constant criticisms and accept them as “affirmations” is BEYOND me. She justified what he was doing as telling me he cared about me even though I vocalized my need to HEAR it specifically from him. For example, she said that him calling me or inviting me over was his way of saying he cared about me. Cool. But I was calling, coming over, cooking…etc. I was doing those ACTIONS which is HIS love language. So I have to break my back to meet his needs, but he can ignore mine and I have to accept him as he is? That’s often what I hear. “You need to change this, but you need to accept me AS I AM.” There’s something about me that reminds her of her wife, which makes her compare me to her wife. We’re nowhere near the same. But I guess her wife often doesn’t understand the way that she communicates either. The difference between her wife and I is that I actually took the initiative and the care to adapt to who I was communicating with. I’ve done everything under the sun. She can’t just minimize the work I’ve put in based on her wifes inability to communicate. That has nothing to do with me. Anyway, I told her that unless he apologizes, I have nothing more to say no matter how much I want him or want to make it work. I’m DONE.

That evening I remembered a website he and I had talked about the previous week (Mark Cuban’s online pharmacy) in regard to his aunts’ prescriptions and how expensive they are. So…I sent the link. I didn’t think about it until afterward, and then I said to myself: Shit, I’m at day 1 all over again! He did reply and say “Thank you”. but I didn’t respond.

Can we also give me a pat on the back for the fact that I’ve kept fb and fb messenger apps OFF of my phone (although on Monday I may have readded just to double check quickly if he had reached out! <—I’m a work in progress! Breaking the cycle is hard).

One of the nights when I couldn’t sleep. I actually did research online for local Domestic Violence resources. I reached out, and was given a number to call in order to get started with an advocate. That was one of the hardest phone calls that I have ever had to make. To have to verbalize my need for services, and wanting to END the cycle now. It was really hard. This place holds classes, support groups, they have resources for children (as my children have been witness to my constantly being made to cry by this person, and they’ve been witness to me accepting it, forgiving it and continuing to engage with this person). My advocate is putting together a folder of resources for me, and I will be stopping by tomorrow to pick it up.

One of the hardest things for me to accept thus far is that I KNOWINGLY have continued to allow this to happen. That I don’t just “walk away”…or that I even allowed it to happen to begin with. I feel a lot of blame and shame.

This afternoon is the reason I am back to Day 1 again. My phone rang as soon as my lunch was over and I was back to work. It was a Facetime call from him. I am horribly embarrassed by how fast I jumped up and took the call. It was just programmed in my body to do so. “I better answer because he’ll make a big deal out of it if I don’t”. Tomorrow our daughters’ class (well the entire 2nd grade) is going on a field trip and he’s chaperoning. He told my daughter that she could ride with him and his daughter a few weeks ago, so he said that he was reaching out in order to make sure that that was still okay. I said, “she’s already expecting to ride with you, so that is fine” (I TRY to keep the kids out of it as much as I possibly can although I did tell my daughter earlier this week that she could ride with whoever’s parents that she wants and that her teacher could assign her to someone else if she likes. She said she still wanted to ride with him, so I accepted that). He then asked if I was going to be packing her a lunch because he wanted to bring her and his daughter a lunch. I just said “Yeah, that’s fine”. And basically that was it.

I talked to a friend about the phone call, and she said “It was nice of him to do all of that”, and I told her that his every move is calculated. Everything is a part of a bigger agenda.

This is just one of his ways of love bombing me in a personal way. With the kids. Him doing this, and reaching out and offering to get my daughters lunch is just his way of trying to deflect from how he hurt me. It’s a way of saying I should be appreciative and happy that he is treating my child like his own. This would normally appeal to me in a way that would make me want to engage and reach out. Normally, this would do exactly what he was expecting which is for me to praise him and forget about being hurt. “Maybe he DOES love us because he’s so nice and thoughtful to do this even though we’re not in a good place right now.”

NOT THIS TIME.

Last updated May 07, 2023