No, H, I cannot talk to you because you are ABUSIVE. I talk to other people all the time, but you are a bully and an emotional abuser. I choose not to be abused any longer.
Your H makes me so angry. I'm glad you finally see how amazing you are and are standing up to him.
Definitely bring this up in MC tonight. He will try to discredit you...and I'll bet he hasn't set any goals. He will try to pull them out of his butt at the last minute, or he will have some excuse that makes it all your fault.
Stay strong!
SD
Me: 40 H: 43 H had EA from 2/06-9/06 Bomb 5/06 Piecing since 9/2006 3/2008: Boundary setting 7/2009: Boundary crossing~dropped my own bomb. 8/2010: Marriage finally on track!
To the Narcissist - You are an Object Posted Mon, 09/21/2009 - 06:17
YOU'RE AN OBJECT by Kathy Krajco
An infant in a crib is unaware of the fundamental difference between people and the other objects that revolve around it in its world. Both its mother and the mobile overhead are just objects to it. It quickly learns that when it cries, the mother-object appears and fulfills all its needs. Ooh, power!
So, it uses its vocal chords as a remote control for the mother-object.
It assumes that the mother-object exists for its sake. It quickly learns how to operate the mother-object. It pushes the buttons on her control panel largely through big demonstrations of displeasure whenever she does not anticipate and fulfill its needs in advance. She is just one object in a world that revolves around it, for it. Mark Twain delightfully reminds us of what we are at this stage of human development:
I do not remember my first lie, it is too far back; but I remember my second one very well. I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed that if a pin was sticking in me and I advertised it in the usual fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable way and got a ration between meals besides. It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied about the pin — advertising one when there wasn’t any. You would have done it; George Washington did it, anyone would have done it. During the first half of my life I never knew a child that was able to rise above that temptation and keep from telling that lie.
— Mark Twain
A narcissist remains forever such an infant. His world revolves around him. The people in it are but objects for him to use and control — existing for his sake, not their own. Like levers on a control panel or tools to be damaged through heavy use or livestock to be consumed. There to fulfill his needs and enhance his image. Beyond that, they have no importance. It never occurs to him that he owes them anything in return or that he should consider the effects of his actions on them.
An object has no feelings. It is not a person. It is not even a being in the usual sense of the word. You might grab an object like a screwdriver and abuse it by using it to pry something open, knowing that by using it this way you might break it. But you think nothing of breaking a screwdriver. Damaging that screwdriver is nothing. There are plenty more where that one came from.
The only thing that matters is what you want = getting open that thing you’re trying to pry open with the screwdriver.
That screwdriver is of no account. It would be absurd to regard it as a having a right to better treatment. In fact, it has no right to be: it exists for your sake, for you to use and abuse as you please. It’s basically just an extension of yourself, a tool, an executioner of your will, not its own.
That’s what YOU are to a narcissist.
Narcissists (and psychopaths) just use other people, all other people. Any way they please. In other words, they don’t relate to other people. Which is an abbreviated way of saying that they don’t relate to other human beings as a human being.
To relate to other human beings as a human being (i.e., humanly), you have to be a human being. You must experience your own humanity and know it. Only then can you recognize the image and likeness of humanity in others and relate to it in them as our common humanity — something we share with all other human beings, even mortal enemies. We relate to it.
Relating to it IS humanity. Otherwise known as empathy. It’s what prompts soldiers who were fighting ferociously a minute ago to kneel down and tenderly care for the enemy’s wounds. In fact, because the extremity of battle often makes it hard to switch gears the moment the fighting stops, humanity toward the fallen foe was regarded as the Christian soldier’s highest virtue. In Italian it is called pieta, which sublimely shows that piety and pity (empathy) are two sides of the same coin.
But ours isn’t the only species that relates in a special manner to its own kind. Many species of higher animals do. And it’s easy to see why: that’s how Nature keeps them from preying on their own kind (as sometimes happens, especially among lower species of animals). Even when they do fight, once one contestant for what they’re fighting over backs off, the fight is instantly over and all hostility vanishes.
So, though remembering our humanity in extreme and unnatural situations like combat may be a virtue, normally it’s no virtue at all. It’s just natural.
But it’s a learned behavior.
To illustrate: You’ve certainly seen a toddler delighted with some chick or puppy or bunny or other cute little animal you place before her. Then, on a whim, she shocks you by grabbing a stick and pounding the poor thing. The look in her eyes is the most shocking part — nothing there but fascination with the effect she’s having on it = fascination with its agony.
Picture an adult instead, and you are watching a psychopath or other narcissist.
The narcissist feels entitled, and when he is thwarted, he acts out, just as young children, who are supremely narcissistic, act out. “Think of a toddler raging against an object that won’t do what he wants,” says [forensic psychologist J. Reid] Meloy. “I have this image in my mind of a 2-year-old squeezing a puppy’s feet. He’s attempting to control the animal’s behavior, and probably deriving some pleasure from that.”
— Hollow Men by Stephen G. Michaud
A little child does this because her person-ality isn’t fully developed. Her sense of person-hood isn’t differentiated so that she distinguishes between your personhood and hers. Between that puppy’s living soul and hers. She’s so brutal because while pounding Puppy she feels no pain. All she feels is powerful. So Puppy might as well be a nail she’s hitting with a hammer.
This is why parents must closely supervise that little child, especially when vulnerable animals or other small children are around, and teach her that other living beings have feelings of their own and feel like she would if someone did that to her. She must be taught to respect other living beings as beings in their own right and to empathize with them.
For whatever reason, psychopaths and narcissists never learn.
How could they? They identify with their image — a work of fiction — not their true selves. So, they don’t relate to themselves as human beings. They don’t know the human being within. They don’t know human being. So, how can they recognize humanity in others? How can they relate humanly to human beings?
The narcissist doesn’t conceive herself as of our kind: What god with nothing but contempt for mere mortals does? So, expect no more regard for your feelings from her alien mentality than you should expect from an extra-terrestrial who abducts you to use as a specimen for an experiment. No more than a lamb should expect from a wolf, a mouse from a cat, a baby seal from a killer whale, or a cockroach from you.
In other words, narcissists relate to us as predators do.
And so perhaps they are right: they are NOT of our kind, humankind. For, except in primitive species, predators don’t prey on their own kind. Because they identify with their own kind. They like their own kind. That affinity makes predation unthinkable. What use of force we observe among the members of a species is limited to what’s necessary to protect individual interests and goes not one step further.
True, narcissists and psychopaths are not the only people who can turn off their humanity. All people can turn it off like a light-switch, thus becoming guilty of inhumanity. In fact, Man’s inhumanity to Man is an age-old theme of literature, and history is full of examples of people turning off their human sensibilities en-masse, as during the Holocaust or the Inquisition. What makes people with narcissistic personality disorder (and psychopathy) different is that they have theirs turned off permanently for everyone but themselves.
And everyone means even their own children. Narcissists are as unfeeling toward whomever they abuse as you or I are toward a spike we are pounding with a sledgehammer. This is a hard truth to accept.
The good thing about accepting it is that there is no hating such a person. You can’t hate what you can’t relate to. You can no more hate a narcissist for being a narcissist than you can hate a snake for being a snake. You don’t take it personally when a snake bites you. Don’t take it personally when a narcissist does, either. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t anything you did. You were just there, that’s all. Handy.
Hi SB, His response isn't that surprising at all - he sounds scared - and he's probably aware that he's losing control of the situation - and so he went out of his way to try to put you back into the role he needs you to play.
My STBX said the exact same things to me after our MC sessions - and I mean the exact same things - she accused me of distorting reality, of putting on a show, of not being myself, of being manic depressive (and needing meds), and on and on and on...she did something that you have to be careful NOT to do - which is, she tried to define and label me - as a way to try and control me (or at least maintain the status quo).
Yes, your H's actions are abusive - and his behavior is abusive - but be careful about falling into defining and labeling him - since that puts us dangerously close to taking on abusive habits ourselves.
As I've mentioned before, I don't think MC is a good call for your situation - there's just too much individual work to be done for you and your H - and right now only one of you is willing to do that.
From my experience, narcissistic abusive partners just cannot separate themselves from the abused partner enough to see that they are different people - and that the abused partner/spouse has a right to his or her own self and own determined agency.
His reactions - his words - speak to why I think it's so important for you to focus your energy on you and your kids - with you as the priority. I think your time would be better spent asking yourself what it was about you and your own needs, questions of self, etc, that brought you to this R/M - and what it is you needed to work through by being in this type of R/M. Which is not to say I think you should revisit your past and spend years in therapy trying to figure out what might have happened when you were three or four years old - rather, I think you might be able to discern a pattern from your relationships with men that will help you break out of that pattern - and work more effectively toward your stronger, healthier self.
Going to MC will just distract from that endeavor - since MC, just by its nature calls for a dialog,and it puts you in the position of having to interact with someone who just cannot respect you as a separate person with her own valid points of view - and her own valid, independent self.
All that said...I have to add that the process of extricating myself from an abusive relationship took a long time - I was just so accustomed to being in it - to defining myself within its parameters - that I did not know how to be outside of it. During one of my most difficult days a friend (who went through something similar) told me that leaving an abusive relationship can be much harder than leaving a non-abusive relationship - since abusive relationships tend to get the people involved a lot more tangled into one another...and finding oneself in that tangled mess - and pulling one's own thread out of that sticky web can seem impossible and intimidating....but it can be done.
I think you're on the right course...just keep staying true to yourself - no matter how much he wants to make you doubt yourself.
Thank you everybody- Good thoughts to keep in mind. I'll let you know how it goes. I have my IC appt scheduled on Thursday, I'm sure I'll need it anyway it goes tonight!
Hang in there, Sweetie. Your h will not change. Please know that you are not crazy, your h is. He will try anything to drag you back down in the mud.
Don't feel the least bit bad about getting healthy. In fact, I would just tell that C that you never liked the lifestyle, you only did it to please h, it disgusts you, makes you feel like dirt, you will never do it again, and that is that! No more discussion, there in nothing to discuss. END OF STORY!!
And Bunny, I think you know that your h will never change because swinging is a core value of his. It is too ingrained and he will not stop bullying you.
His core values were never the same as yours, so you must get away from him. Please, just move out.
Just like a lousy alky, he will get progressively worse. An alcoholic should be kicked to the curb, and so should your h.
You have no reason to feel bad, you are trying to save your own sanity.
I’m not sure what to make of this counselor. I’m not real happy with him. I’m glad I have an IC appt. tomorrow.
First off, H did not have a list of goals ready. He just didn’t do it since we didn’t talk about it or anything. The MC did ask him if it was possible that he didn’t because he had no interest in working on the M, or maybe too busy at work, etc. Since he didn’t have any, we discussed my goals.
Goals 1 and 2: H reiterated that he might consider dropping the swinging if he was happy again in our marriage but couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t want to resume it later. Big red flag here- Swinging is NOT something you pursue when you’re unhappy in your marriage, it’s for when you are in a SECURE marriage and both parties wholeheartedly agree.
Goal 4: H acknowledged that we had previously discussed him seeing a sleep therapist for his chronic insomnia. He just has to get off his butt and do it.
Goal 5: IC for both of us went unanswered.
Goal 6: GAL as a couple and individually went unanswered.
Goal 3 was the focus of last night since improved communication can help with many of the other goals. We discussed the issue a bit and the MC had us do that listening and repeat exercise for a while. He said that often he gets frustrated and then condescending when talking/arguing with me because I don’t give him any indication that I understand what he’s saying. I don’t get that- what’s his definition of “indication of understanding”? Agreeing with him? I pointed out that there should be a way for H to disagree with me without making me feel like an idiot in the process. Some other communication issues were also brought up, but those were minor.
I also mentioned the convo with H from the night before- what H said about that not being the real me at the previous session. He responds with, Really? So H would like to see you that open and honest more often? H- Yeah, that is what I would like to see. B********T!!! H and i were talking after we got home and he said he felt ambushed that first session because I was so organized. How does "i felt ambushed" get turned into "that wasn’t the real you. You're not that good"? So it had to be that if he felt ambushed, he had to lash out and knock me down. It’s not my fault if he wasn’t ready himself- he knew the appointment was coming.
He asked if I had been working on these issues for the last 7 months with the IC, why didn’t I clue him in on it? I didn’t have an answer for that one.
H did notice I looked like I felt emotionally beat up at home afterwards. At least he was correct in that observation- I still feel drained from it.
He doesn't want to be married to a woman with feelings, that can think for herself. He wants a real life blow-up doll, that does what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. With no questions, no life of her own, no feelings.
It's who he is. It's time to let him go. You are not what he wants, he is not what you deserve.
Big red flag here- Swinging is NOT something you pursue when you’re unhappy in your marriage, it’s for when you are in a SECURE marriage and both parties wholeheartedly agree.
Define what a secure marriage would mean to you?
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
