08/10/2024
Why do we stay so long in a narcissistic abusive relationahip when we know it’s bad for us?
We stay because the person we met in the beginning seemed like such a perfect match - we had the same values, goals, enthusiasm for life and the future. But then, it’s a slippery slow moving slip towards being with someone who is negative more often than positive, disrespectful more often than respectful, hatred more often than love, and mean more often than kind. About the time you come to the conclusion, “it’s time to walk away”, the narcissist will reemerge with the actions and charisma of that person we met in the beginning by how he interacts with his family, your family, friends and even total strangers. At those moments, there is such glimmers of hope as you can see that person you were so aligned with and you think that he will start to morph back into that person you were planning to spend the rest of your life with and your flooded with all the intense emotions of pure joy that you were going to live a high vibration loving life with them as its possible to get back to how it was in the beginning. However, you don’t see or accept that these experiences are nothing more than dangled carrots to keep you from leaving the abusive relationship. You will waste years of your life in this toxic cycle of abuse by the narcissist where you are put on a pedastal, devalued, discarded over and over and over with each cycle getting a little worse. By the time, you know your soul can’t take one more devastating blow from the disrespectful talk, constant criticism, silent treatment, gaslighting, withholding any love or affection, you don’t even recognize yourself in the mirror. You went from being confident, high achieving, happy, full of life and most of all immense self-love, that you are now looking at the person in the mirror as deeply depressed, hatred for themselves, not good enough, ugly, and any other negative emotion you can thing of. At this point, you have disassociated from your feelings in order to survive complete collapse of your light and soul. It’s too painful to experience at once so our brain beautifully saves us by dissociating where you almost feel like you are standing outside your body looking in when the painful verbal/emotional abuse starts and even when you experience happy events. That’s the thing about abusive partners, they arent abuse all the time and they know how to create really, happy and meaningful movements so it’s the alteration between bad/painful moments and great/uplifting moments that doesn’t let you see the pattern and to accept, he is the bad/painful version that knows how to pretend masterfully the great/uplifting moments. So, we look at a shell of a person in the mirror and you continue to endure as you have become addicted/dependent on a brain chemistry level from the surge of oxytocin/elation during the great times and depression/pain during the bad times. But, the thing is, now there are so far and few in between times that are great that you are just frozen surviving day to day. Then, you reach a painful crossroad - do I continue and my soul and essence dies today or do i fight with everything deep inside of me and say F this crap as you hang onto the last fiber within you that is that confident, self-loving, take no s**t person you once were - and with the strength of God - you are going to save your soul and finally walk away knowing it is just the beginning of the longest journey back to home within. It’s at that pivotal moment that you experience peace as the chaos of trying to fix things is no more, that the self-hatred/blame is no longer all consuming and there is finally freedom - freedom that is almost palatable because you have lived like a prisoner for so many years that you never let anyone see or even know about the abuse. We hide the abuse because we don’t want to see the disappointment in their eyes when you choose to accept the abusive behavior of your partner because you couldn’t give up on the fake future. Eventually, we leave but it sadly takes years. 💜
