The Hurricane of Narcissistic Abuse

An unnatural disaster

It’s called the “honeymoon phase.”

That period of time in an abusive relationship when the narcissist will switch back to their charming self after being not so charming to a victim. This can be a return to the love-bombing stage, or what a victim may believe is the narcissist’s true self — the person a victim first met when they were swept off their feet and fell in love.

This is what I call the eye of the hurricane. And I remember it well.

At the beginning of my relationship and eventual marriage to a man who would later be diagnosed as a narcissist, the waters were calm as I enjoyed his overwhelming attention and passion. There were a few tropical storms (aka: red flags) in the beginning that made me question his intent and his character, such as when he was fired from a previous job for sexual harassment, when he lived under an alias to stay in the country, or when he would suddenly rage at me or my young son before later apologizing for his outburst.

These were small storms, however, that only kicked up a little wind before disappearing behind the clear skies of his changed behavior and what I believed was remorse in his apologies.

Over the years, when his emotional abuse of not only me but our children escalated, I became trapped in a cycle of bad weather. The storms grew in intensity to the point where I prayed for the eye of the hurricane to arrive so I could recover and catch my breath, knowing that I wasn’t out of danger by any means but at least could rest for a moment before the remainder of the storm hit.

This is the reason victims may stay years, decades, in an abusive relationship with a narcissist.

“The honeymoon phase lures the victim into a place of acceptance and tolerance for the narcissist’s behavior. They think, ‘It really wasn’t that bad,’ ‘I can do this,’ or ‘they didn’t mean what they said.’ And so they stay in the relationship.” The Exhausted Woman with Christine Hammond

Narcissists have an uncanny ability to keep a victim immobilized and continuing to accept their abuse through tactics such as gaslighting, love-bombing, hoovering, and normalizing. They are master fishermen and know exactly when and where the time comes to throw out a line to a victim — who might be starting to pull away — and reel them back in.

So the cycle continues.

And a victim’s very existence soon becomes trapped within the life of a hurricane, with the calm of the eye giving a false sense of relief and hope that maybe this time we’ll be in the clear, followed by the eventual return of the winds that rip hearts and homes off their foundation.

Until soon we are surrounded by the rubble of what once was, and the illusions we gripped like a lifejacket during the worst part of the storm have been ripped from our arms.

This devastation is often the starting point for victims to reassess, reflect, and realize that with nothing else to lose the only option left is to begin again from scratch. Sometimes we must make this decision on our own (choosing to leave) or sometimes we have that decision made for us (being left).

Either way, once we stand among the debris of a life stolen without our consent (just like a hurricane, a narcissist takes no prisoners), what we do next will determine the outcome and the success of our road to recovery and healing.

Do we begin the process of rebuilding right where we’re at? Using the same materials we used before to construct a life that remains in the well-traveled path of previous and therefore future storms?

Or do we scoop up what little we can salvage and remove ourselves from the danger zone, using new materials to construct a life that we always deserved yet which couldn’t survive in its previous condition.

This is the choice I had to make all those years ago and it is the reason why today I no longer fear the hurricanes because I’ve built a life that is far removed from where they strike. Though I never chose to have my previous life devastated in the form it was — a life stolen from me and my children by a narcissist who destroyed everything in his path — I did have the agency to choose afterward how I would rebuild.

So I chose love. I chose boundaries. I chose hope and strength and self-worth.

I chose myself. I chose my children.

But above all, I chose to learn from the lessons of my past that initially put me in the hurricane’s path. At the time, after leaving the house of my abusive father when I was eighteen, I believed that life was meant to live within the storm. I believed that I wasn’t worthy of anything more than what the calm and stillness the eye of the hurricane provided.

Now that I’m far outside the realm of this unnatural disaster of what is narcissistic abuse, now that I’ve replaced the straw and built my new house out of bricks, and now that I heed my inner warning signals when they whisper that danger may be near, I no longer have to pray for the eye of the storm to arrive so I can rest because I’m no longer caught up in the monster itself.

And can I just say, the weather is just beautiful here?

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