Can you be Friends with your Narcissistic Ex-Partner?

I certainly could have had the opportunity been afforded to me but, after we broke up she refused to entertain the notion of even being associates.

When we split up, she was saying some scenarios that were simply not the truth in an attempt to justify her behavior. Whenever I would attempt to correct something that was not correct she would immediately say she didn’t want to argue with me and she would end the discussion. She was impervious to anything I had to say

Given the way she acted when she broke up and the planning she had in place — I think she knew she was being out of line in the end. Ignoring me for a week then demanding that I do something for her — even the most entitled can see that is an unrealistic thing to expect of someone else. She was bent on treating me worst and worst until I left her. I think that was her strategy so that way she could play victim.

I was going through a bit of a mental health crisis at the time as the typical narcissistic script goes. When the mistreatment got more overt and I wasn’t breaking up with her she then used a disagreement of ours and saddled me with the crazy label as her justification to leave. Of course, everyone knew I was going for counselling and they knew of my growing depression — crazy was apparently not hard to sell. She had been working on that for months I would later find.

My entire life was her family and the day she slammed the door on me people that I thought were good friends that would be there no matter what, suddenly were as ice cold as she was and they would not answer a message, nor a phone call. It seemed like I was the only one that didn’t know what was going on in my life.

It wasn’t until months later when speaking with her brother in law who finally felt bad enough to break the silence and give me his thoughts on the matter that I even started suspecting the scope of what my ex had done. He had said something along the lines of ‘you hadn’t participated or did anything with the family for so long, how long did you think that would go on before she had enough.’

It was in that moment that it felt like the movies where the person realizes the extent of the deceit and the extent that they had been fooled. I realized she had been working her family against me for a long time before the breakup. She had been preparing them for the split. She knew that they all liked me and that it would look bad for her to just leave me, so she had to make sure they were well prepared,.

The world narrowed and suddenly I had all of these memories of thing that seemed off to me at the time, but that I shrugged off as inconsequential. Like when the parental alienation was being embedded and she punished her daughter for wanting to stay at my place by making her do homework that wasn’t due yet and she made her do it until 3am then get up at 5 for swimming. I found out after the fact that she was punished for not doing her homework at my house and that it was urged she doesn’t stay here to make sure she didn’t have to go through that again.

Or when i came to the rink and her niece was downstairs and I took the short way upstairs to where they were sitting and by the time I got there her niece was already there with them and she looked wide eyed and sheepish. In that moment I didn't think much of it but after the fact when recalling it I believe that they were having a bash fest and her niece didn’t want them to be caught by me as I originally wasn’t going to come to the game. So her niece ran the length o the rink and double backed on the upper level to beat me to them in order to warn them that i was there.

It all came together — the effort, the stories, the character assassination to make it so when she closed the door — nobody would open it again.

So, could I be friends with my narcissistic ex? No. Anyone that would work that hard to sabotage and hurt you just to avoid looking bad was never my friend and will only do it again the minute they need to or if she sees some other benefit in it.