All the while, keep in mind, I thought it was me. I thought I am not sexy enough, smart enough, pretty enough…he would tap into my deepest insecurities and reduce me all in an an effort to make himself feel better. He would tell me that he did not want to kiss me, did not want to make love to me, did not want to be romantic with me sometimes right after doing theses things. I lived in the land of confusion and at times thought I was losing my mind.

Then when I would push my narcissist away…and I would have to push hard…he would come running back. “Let’s try again…”, he would say.

16 months. And now all that I have left is my shattered self esteem.

Thank you for the blog and the insight.

The letter quoted below…

————–

Carla,

There were many ways you used to reject me. There were weapons you used in dealing with me as you continually waged relationship seperateness. You thrived off of the relationship that you could manipulate through rejecting me as your partner. You used a variety of ways to reject me with. Typically there were non-verbal abuse techniques such as ignoring, passive aggressive tactics, and inciting me, so that I lost that comfortable footing we should have had in our relationship. In most relationships it is ok to argue and have differing opinions with your mate, I kept in mind this was not the case with you personality-wise. You must always felt that you should be in control. Even when I talked to or was to be with members of the opposite sex. You were given YOUR liberty.

The one method you used to reject me was one number one that hurt me the most. And that was not being upfront and committed adultery without my permission and benouced to me beforehand.

The tools in dealing with your methods were similar to what you used on me. When you choose to ignore me, I walked away, I would then open up to you and I would talk to you when I felt like it. I did this to not buy into your abusive technique of controlling the conversation. I would simply just walk away, go to the computer, leave, and do not engage you again until you wanted to talk. With my body language I would be saying something like, ‘You see I do not want to talk, I respect your choice and I will talk to you when I was ready.’ Since I was not engaging in your dance you felt you were in control and would will break down and talk to me again and be open and upfront and honest. The key was to wait it out.

When you tried to engage me in an argument, of which you known the inevitable outcome will be to reject me and my opinion, is simply not to voice an opinion. I told you that I appreciated your idea, and left it at that. I did not engage in further conversation regarding what you wanted to argue about. I simply said you are probably right, and left it at that. You were validated, and I haven’t agreed with you. The key here was I was using self control. I had to remember at times you were acting like a spoiled child that was about to have a tantrum to which I do not engage.

Another technique I used, and I used sparingly was to rage, I mean RAGE. When you yelled, I yelled more. I could not use this tactic very often, I used it only in cases of emergency. I would go nuts, what ever you did towards me, I did it back at you. You were afraid, very afraid of being rejected to your core. When I raged this triggered this feeling.

You was a difficult individual to be in relationship with. You were my mate, my lover, and even some my of children still to this day call you ‘Mother’. Unfortunately you looked like another person on the outside, but I had to remember you were different. I can not engage further in a relationship with someone who suffers from bi-polarism without changing my ground rules. You are unlike other people, I could not use the same rules that I could use with a normal relationship. I learned now I would have to use different rules. This will not make my relationship with you any easier or even improve it, but it may make my time with you more bearable.