I Think My Ex Was a Narcissist

I don’t want to be a trend or use buzzwords, but here we are

It’s 2:30 am. I’m a crying hysterical mess. I’ve been that way since the final mediation agreement with my soon-to-be-ex-husband, Joseph.

I’m walking away with roughly 20% of the equity and cash we have. Why? Because I don’t get any of his inheritance but he gets half of my retirement. The retirement that I saved for twenty years but he barely saved any because he’d rather blow it on…hell, I don’t know. Movies, toys, and Kickstarter crap. I had no idea his retirement was almost non-existent.

It’s a perfect analogy to my marriage. I didn’t benefit at all, whereas his life was managed completely for him. I’d like to think that he’ll realize all the work I did when I’m gone but at this point in our lives, I set everything up on a silver platter.

I’m starting over from scratch. I’m in my 40s and I have about as much as I did when I was 23. My career-driven, non-kid-years’ savings down the drain.

This is how desperate I am to move out. To get the fuck away from this marriage. As I worked through my psychological issues, it struck me how much of my mental anguish was from his behaviors.

I hesitate to use this term because everyone thinks this about their ex, but…I think Joseph is a narcissist. Or at least, has narcissistic tendencies.

He’s the victim

It took a lot of courage when I brought up my hurt feelings to Joseph. The discussion would start with me explaining what hurt me and it ended with me apologizing for something I did that upset him. Eventually, I learned to stop telling him when I was hurting from his actions or words.

When my son was first diagnosed with his chromosome disorder, Joseph was unemployed. His industry constantly lays people off and the only available jobs were far away. I begged him to leave his industry because it meant he only came home late at night. Money wasn’t the issue; I told him I’d be fine supporting him if he chose another career that kept him close to home and able to see his son every evening. “I will divorce you if you make me leave my industry,” he told me. Looking back, it blows my mind that I didn’t see it for what it was: a wife asking her husband to sacrifice his fickle career far away for the sake of his family who loved him and wanted to spend time with him. Instead, he viewed it as something so offensive, it warranted divorce.

During a rough patch early in our marriage, I saw through Facebook (or maybe MySpace, it was so long ago) he flirted with random women. I screenshotted them in a Word document to confront him. Joseph was livid that I saved the conversations. He menacingly told me that I had better delete that file. That’s serious mastery to turn him into the victim and me into the villain.

When I discovered the massage parlor trips for “happy endings”, I was terrified to bring it up because he would get angry at me for snooping. And that’s the biggest problem of it all; it wasn’t the massages, but my fear of his rage. I told the marriage counselor in advance that I wanted to talk about it in therapy but I didn’t know how to bring it up.

In that session, she provided the opportunity for me discuss it. As expected, Joseph flipped out. He stood up, threw some papers on the couch, made a cold comment about how I’d be hearing from his lawyers (no idea what lawyers, he doesn’t have any), and stormed out.

Later, he said it’s because I ambushed him. I didn’t give him a heads up. I replied, “Isn’t that the point of counseling? When you don’t feel comfortable discussing things alone so you wait until the session?” Yet, I was the asshole.

He made my life hell when I wanted the divorce. Somehow, because I wanted to keep the peace for the sake of the kids and my fear that his temper would lead to them finding out in a traumatic manner, I began throwing offers at him to make his life easier. Like how I’d never go after his inheritance. And worst of all: I’d do side jobs to earn the money for the mediator so that it wouldn’t come from the shared funds from our regular jobs. In essence, he wouldn’t pay for the divorce because it’s my fault for wanting it.

If he wasn’t the victim of my doing, Joseph was the victim of something else. When he couldn’t blame me for his behavior, he’d turn it around on something from his childhood. Sometimes he’d blame his low self-esteem for behaving so poorly or how he doesn’t feel like he’s good enough for me. I couldn’t continue a disagreement if he was already beaten down, right?

So much gaslighting

I didn’t even know gaslighting was a thing. I used to think that either I remembered an event wrong or he genuinely misinterpreted me. When they say that they make you feel crazy, they’re accurate. (Whoever “they” are.) I questioned myself when he insisted something had been said differently, to the point where I’d apologize and then later sob hysterically out of confusion.

Once I clued in, it made me irate.

When I begged for an amicable divorce and he had a tantrum, he yelled “this is war!” Later, when I called him out on it to the divorce counselor, he insisted that I interpreted it wrong. Joseph insisted that he said it very calmly and matter-of-fact because you know, divorce is a war. Nah bro, no one calmly tells someone that an event is war, especially when they’re already hysterical.

Joseph tried to pull the same excuse another time when angrily saying, “now I’ll have to get the best lawyer in Orange County.” Like my behavior was so egregious, he’d have no choice but to go after me despite that not once did I ever mention getting a lawyer. And he knew I only suggested the mediator because I wanted to make sure the paperwork was filled correctly.

When I brought up that it seemed unfair that he wanted me to pay 50% of the mortgage when my name was off the loan (and I became a renter), I listed out all the things I hadn’t done. I didn’t go after his inheritance, I didn’t threaten a lawyer as he did, and I took side jobs to pay for the divorce. Could he at least throw me a bone financially because I needed to buy a place?

Joseph immediately got defensive and told me that it sounded like I was threatening him by bringing up the list of things I didn’t do. Despite speaking as gently as I could, it was spun around as me attacking him.

This applied to so many areas of our marriage. How for years I wanted help with the dishes but he convinced me that it was unreasonable and it was a control tactic of mine. When I tried initiating conversation every evening about his workday, he insisted I was “rubbing it in” how much he hated his job until eventually he snapped and told me never, ever to ask about his day. It took the marriage counselor for me to learn that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Watch out for eggshells

With an explosive temper, I walked on eggshells. I’m not the kind of person who tiptoes around things. I’m known for being blunt and telling things like they are (to anyone but Joseph). If I didn’t tread lightly on certain topics, it wasn’t like it would gradually lead to an argument.

No, if I didn’t tiptoe, it went from 0 to 60. In one second it escalated from calm conversation to swearing and yelling. There was no middle ground. There was never a chance to say, “I think this is getting a little too heated. Let’s calm down and then discuss it later.”

Joseph typically got angry at how I worded things. He’d yell how I should have expressed something (being the victim and all). I told him there’s no way I can remember the myriad of ways I’m supposed to word things; considering no event is the same, how would I know what the appropriate verbiage is for every sentence said to him?

One of his major gripes is my lack of immediately apologizing. If I were to accidentally stab someone, then the first words out of my mouth would be an apology. But if I’m accused of purposely doing something wrong, my immediate reaction is to provide clarification. I want to explain what my intentions were so that it’s clear that I didn’t set out to upset him or do something hurtful. Then I end it with an apology for hurting him.

That makes Joseph irate. He wants the apology first.

But here’s the thing: he constantly accused me of malicious behavior when I had the best of intent. My brain doesn’t think to immediately apologize when it doesn’t think it did anything wrong; my brain thinks, “clarify what you meant so he sees no wrongdoing.”

Maybe it’s an autism thing, I don’t know. What I do know is that no matter how much I tiptoed, I’d still fuck it up when I least suspected it.

This spilled over into our sex life. Our dead bedroom meant sex happened once a quarter. Joseph often didn’t finish, resulting in endless and painful thrusting. I never want to be the chick who prevents a guy from cumming if he’s seconds away from it. It didn’t take long before I learned never to hint or ask if he was anywhere close to finishing. It made him lose his erection and he’d flip out for putting too much pressure on him. So I kept my mouth shut, played the porn star, and cried later in the bathroom because my vajayjay was swollen in pain.

Heck, Joseph used to get mad at me for wearing lingerie. He said he felt pressured into having sex. Once he got angry because he had just finished jerking off and my timing was wrong.

No matter what, I was always the bad guy and he was the victim.

Bring on the stonewalling

I wrote about Joseph’s stonewalling in another article.

I’m all for people stepping away in a heated moment to calm down. I’m not okay with someone making a massive accusation and then walking away. It’s unfair for me to not have a chance to defend myself. If he wants to calm down, he can do it without throwing out a verbal bomb before storming out.

It’s a great strategy for control. Because he can accuse me of something that I didn’t do and storm out under the guise of, “I have the right to be left alone to calm down, why are you continuing this argument?”

Except he didn’t calm down for 10 minutes. Joseph took hours. And during that time my brain is still stewing at the last accusation, my anger brewing, waiting for a chance to address his comment.

By the time he’d be willing to talk about it, he was calm. Then I looked like the insane, irrational one if I was still angry because I stewed over it for hours. It made me seem like I was the one causing the fight.

The worst of it all

I don’t know what category this falls under or if it’s even narcissism at all, but there is one thing Joseph did the most that affected me.

He would tell me my reasons and intentions for doing what he perceived was bad behavior.

It’s one thing to get upset at me for something I did. But when I tried explaining my reasoning, Joseph yelled and told me what he insisted were my true intentions. Like the aforementioned dishes. When I begged him to help with the dishes because I didn’t have time after work and picking up the kids while dealing with dinner, he refused. I explained the logistics of having a full sink made it difficult to do things like rinse vegetables or strain pasta. Instead of believing my reasons, he continued to tell me it was because I wanted control.

In hindsight, I think every argument had this problem. If I explained my rationale behind something I did or why I said something a certain way, Joseph would tell me that I was wrong or lying. Then he’d proceed to tell me what my intentions were, like he knew my brain better than I did.

I can’t explain the psychological mind-fuck when you’re trying to convince someone of something in your brain and they’re telling you that you’re wrong because they know what you’re really thinking. How the fuck do you prove your innocence against what’s in your brain?

And yet, there was affection

Despite all of this, Joseph loved spending time with me. He was happy when I suggested watching a movie on the couch. I often called him the “heart of the family” because he wanted us to have fun together.

I used to feel awful for not wanting to do that. Now I realize my body cringed in protest because it had no interest in spending time with someone who made me miserable.

Overall, being married to someone with these narcissistic traits made me feel like I was an awful, shitty human. I truly believed that I deserved to die because I was such a bad person.

Last year, I focused on healing my childhood wounds as well as the pain of the breakup from Jon. I was long over the pain of the marriage; I mourned for 17 years, there was nothing left to feel.

But now the effects of my marriage are catching up to me. I realize how much emotional equity was lost. All the crying, all the times I felt awful about myself, all the times I was confused and wondering why I kept screwing up, and the isolation of feeling like I was bad at marriage.

I’m not sitting here wallowing in a “whoa is me” pity party. Instead, I’m left wondering how much of what I thought was part of my identity was incorrect? It felt inauthentic when dating and presenting myself as a fun and nice person. It would have felt better to say what an awful, self-absorbed, shitty partner I am who will repeatedly fuck up and make them mad.

The problem is that I’ve been stuck in the same house as him during this whole divorce process, which means all these issues still exist. Thankfully, I’m stronger against Joseph now. We get along quite well given the circumstances of living together during a divorce. In the past few months, only once have I fallen for the pattern that ended in a disastrous situation (of him yelling about the divorce when the kids don’t know yet). Otherwise, I’ve held my ground.

Despite how sad I feel for the old me of the past, I no longer take the bait. And soon I’ll be on my own without feeling like I’m not deserving of a better life.