If you do not change direction...

[Still Waters]

...you may end up where you are heading.

So here I am, 5 months after my W left me, and I've started on the road to a D. I thought I would hold out until the summer, but I don't think I have the stomach for that anymore.

There isn't much to update from when I lasted posted a month or so ago. My W still refuses to work on our M, and she still refuses to commit to being faithful. At the end of the month she's moving into a new apartment (her 3rd in 5 months), and she wants us to split our stuff up. Up until now, she only took most of her clothes and a few basic items.

I had been pitch black dark for about 2 months, and during that time she only contacted me once. An email on my b-day which said "happy birthday" and nothing more. Then earlier this month she emailed me again to tell me that's she's moving into a new place and she wants us to split our stuff. Then she asked how I felt about a divorce.

I told her that if she still didn't want to work on our M, and that if she was okay with ending our M by having an affair and then doing nothing to try to rebuild our R, then I wanted a divorce. I also let her know that I had zero interest in remaining friends with her. I told her that I would be civil, but that the people who I consider my friends treat me better than she has.

Turns out what she wants is a legal separation. In my state, the only no-fault D option is to file a legal separation agreement. After one year, that agreement can be converted into a divorce. The only other option is a fault based divorce. And guess who's the only one at fault here? Here's a hint: the one who committed adultery.

So, like so many people on here, I'm the one who has to clean up her mess.

Her narcissism and sense of entitlement has just gotten to the point where it makes me sick. She still tries to push off some of the blame for the A onto me. I'll admit that I wasn't the world's greatest husband, and that I let my work consume me too often, but one thing I won't do is accept that she was somehow justified (in anyway whatsoever) for having an affair. And her wanting a legal sep shows me even more how she refuses to accept blame. She even said that she doesn't like the fault option because it's so one-sided and only tells my side of the story. Well, dear, you had an affair. You committed adultery. And when people do stupid, destructive things they have to deal with certain consequences.

I always felt like there was a battle going on inside my W between her narcissistic side and her good side. Well, it looks like the bad guys won.

So I've had to ask myself, why in the world do I want to be married to a narcissist? To someone who doesn't really feel empathy? To someone who wants her spouse to be little more than a mirror mirror on the wall who always tells her that she's the fairest of them all?

And besides, now that my W had an A and I know about it, I think she knows that I'll never be that mirror on the wall anymore. It's like she can't stand people knowing that she has faults, which shows that she's really afraid of true intimacy.

The problem for me is that she wasn't always like this. The narcissism was always there, but it wasn't as bad as it is now. It's like her ego slowly blew up like a balloon over the years. But I look back to how she was before, to the woman I fell in love with, and I miss that woman. But that woman appears to be long gone.

So the question now is, D or legal separation. We don't have kids and we don't own any real estate. So there aren't very many financial considerations. It's more a matter of what I want. Do I want to hold out hope for a year that my W will turn around? Or do I want a clean break? No easy answers in DB land.

[Puppy Dog Tails]

I always felt like there was a battle going on inside my W between her narcissistic side and her good side. Well, it looks like the bad guys won.

So I've had to ask myself, why in the world do I want to be married to a narcissist? To someone who doesn't really feel empathy? To someone who wants her spouse to be little more than a mirror mirror on the wall who always tells her that she's the fairest of them all?

And besides, now that my W had an A and I know about it, I think she knows that I'll never be that mirror on the wall anymore. It's like she can't stand people knowing that she has faults, which shows that she's really afraid of true intimacy.

Whoa, waitaminute . . . who hijacked my thread????

SW, ARE WE MARRIED TO THE SAME WOMAN???

Puppy

[DCBHM]

I think there needs to be a separate set of principles for DBing people with diagnosed/suspected personality disorders...

[Puppy Dog Tails]

I think there needs to be a separate set of principles for DBing people with diagnosed/suspected personality disorders...

OK, I agree. We can call it "Run Very Fast!"

Who wants to moderate?

[Kimmie Lee]

I could not agree more.

You cannot DB a Narcissistic or a Borderline. It just does not work and Borderlines are one of the scarier personality disorders I've seen.

And for those of you who think you can love someone out of their insanity, save your breath. I have spoken to my C at great length and there is no way in hell that these principles will be of any use with these BPD's, NPD's, etc. They are sociopaths at their very cores.

[Still Waters]

Yeah we need a "Run like Hell!!!" thread for anyone who is married to a narcissist.

The problem is that narcissism is tough to detect, even for a therapist. They tend to be attractive, successful, and charismatic people, so they're easy to fall in love with. But deep down, they're incredibly insecure and they make terrible spouses because they can't see past their needs. They make you feel like you are the sole problem of everything that's wrong with your marriage, which in turns makes you feel bad, but you really don't understand why. In fact, you start to believe your spouse, which often sends you into a depression. Which of course makes your narcissist spouse want to get away from you. They don't feel empathy, so they won't rush in to save you when you fall into that depression. They'll simply take it as proof of how lame you are, and use it as justification for them to have an affair.

I'd be interested to see how many WAS's have some level of narcissistic personality disorder. How else can you explain their willingness to cause so much pain and suffering to their families while they run off and have affairs? It's a total lack of empathy, which is at the very core of NPD.

[Still Waters]

And I agree with Kimmie. Every therapist you talk to will tell you the same thing. In a relationship with a narcissist? Run!

Because you can't really teach someone empathy. Just like you couldn't teach me NOT to empathize with those around me.