Leave Before the Narcissist Attacks Your Weakness

The day my husband took me down

I pull into our driveway and whisper to my husband, conscious of our three boys in the backseat.

“You need to get out of the car,” I say. “I can’t take you to my sister’s like this.”

It’s my nephew’s eighteenth birthday.

As usual, my husband won’t do anything he doesn’t want to do. He insists on watching a football game at a friend’s house. I barter a deal and we go for an hour.

But in that short amount of time, he’s gotten wasted.

He leaves the car and angrily throws my diet coke can at it.

He yells while hitting the hood and hurling other things at us.

I am furious, my children are crying and frightened and so am I.

“Mommy,” says my son. “Please make Daddy stop. Mommy, Daddy is scaring me.”

I stand outside the car, body shaking, and yell a word my children have yet to hear me say, “You’re an asshole!” My husband hits the garage door button but he is so intoxicated he forgets. He turns to race towards me, and his six-foot-three frame slams into the top of the door as it closes.

Blood drips from his head.

He won’t let me near him so I follow him to the bathroom.

The bleed is so bad it looks like a crime scene. I’m scared to leave him since I haven’t determined the size of the cut. I call my friend’s husband. He takes over and I leave.

The entire thirty-minute drive my hands continue to shake.

My children and I arrive two hours late for my nephew's dinner. Everyone is seated around the table. My sister is annoyed because the food has gotten cold. I make my apologies and we move on to celebrate.

While doing the dishes, I confess the events to her.

“Colleen!” she says. “I feel terrible for getting upset with you. Why didn’t you tell me what had happened?”

“I didn’t want to ruin his birthday,” I say.

The next day my husband leaves for work.

The blanks are beginning to fill in. I am confused he was able to get blindsided in a little over an hour’s time, not to mention he wasn’t an angry drinker. It turns out they were doing shots in the basement.

My husband returns that evening with an attitude. I’m in the kitchen making dinner. I can’t bring myself to look at him. The words that exit his mouth stun me and reignite my fury.

“You should know better than to provoke a drunk person,” he says.

“There’s the door,” I say. “One thing I am extremely knowledgable about is alcohol. You don’t blame the person drinking Diet Coke for your bad behavior.”

He continues to be shameless and unapologetic so he lives with his aunt and uncle for three months. I regret ever letting him back in the house but he had no history of this. I thought it was an isolated event.

I have never told anyone what happened to me during that time.

For weeks, I would get up and get my children off to school.

And then I would crawl back under the covers.

I had never known this type of hopelessness. I felt a troubling depression. A childhood wound so deep I hadn’t realized the extent of its existence. My father had been an alcoholic. He was a lover, not a fighter, what I call a lampshade alcoholic. He was not mean or abusive.

But I do have a couple of memories I would rather forget.

I had sworn I would never repeat history.

What my children witnessed overwhelmed me.

I couldn’t erase it or take it away from their sweet little beings. My son’s words haunted me. His tiny voice scared of the man who should protect him. The event played over and over again in my mind.

My boys’ innocence was lost in a lousy moment.

I was reduced, weakened as I had never been in my life.

It was the intersection of a little girl and an adult woman.

I didn’t understand Narcissism. I hadn’t yet heard the word or my husband’s diagnosis. I didn’t grasp a narcissist will target your Achilles heel as a way of punishing, controlling, and manipulating you.

A narcissist will make your worst fears come true especially if you anger them. I had just told my husband I was lonely and unhappy and thinking of leaving.

I was strong enough to speak my truth and walk away. He knew it. I had done it once before after eight years of marriage. But I had given him little warning that time.

And with age and money, the narcissist in my life had grown more threatening.

The bully who would torment me, cat and mouse, fox and hen style.

The narcissist would assert his dominance.

Because a narcissist is an expert at control. They will weaken you to assure their power. To cement their ability to continue to manipulate you. Clipping your emotional wings slowly and surely.

My husband understood what would take me down.

And he used it against me as a good narcissist will.

It didn’t stop that day.

It ignited a troubling continuing series.

One that just added an additional layer to the existing narcissistic cycle…alcohol. It wasn’t constant. I wouldn’t have let my children experience that because I had no tolerance for it from my childhood. But I repeated history nonetheless. Because my kids have a few memories they would rather forget.

My husband will tell people I kicked him out multiple times.

Both true and untrue.

I said, “Address what’s bothering you with a counselor or leave.”

Three times he chose to walk out that door while my children stood beside me and cried. I thought it was a midlife crisis. I thought I owed him the benefit of the doubt since he had no history of drunken bad behavior.

But I didn’t understand narcissism then.

Or how weak I would become.

Before I was strong enough to leave.