Wreckage of a Narcissist
Survivors often find themselves in a situation where they were out for a nice Sunday drive on this smooth highway with the sun shining, the birds chirping, and everything seemed like it was going well. Things were on track and the future was looking bright.
Then, they felt a bump and they shakily lift their head up and realize that highway wasn’t smooth — in fact, they weren’t even on a highway at all!. They were dreaming! 75 mph dream. First they try to wrestle control of the car as they scramble to get both hands on the wheel.
Suddenly, out of the blue being dropped into this new frame of reference scared the hell of them and when they reached for the wheel the found themselves in a big fish tail barely able to hold the car on the little dirt road they found themselves on.
Its at this point that many survivors can’t hold the wheel anymore and in a tragic spectacle their life goes flipping end over end finally crashing down after 8 flips with the whole thing being a smoking burning wreck that they barely recognize as their life. The slow recovery back to being healthy begins for them the minute that car stops flipping.
This is very much what it feels like in at the point of the breakup after you’ve been devalued. Its that sudden. You’re living life and everything seems like it's going according to plan when suddenly you’re head bobs and you realize you’re asleep so you wake up and you find yourself in the most surreal circumstance imaginable.
The discard is literally like the moment of waking up and you’re desperately trying to get your careening life back under control but its fishtailing all over that road. If you’re lucky you can keep control of it and survive the relationship without much more than a close call occuring.
Most survivors however, end up in the ditch or rolling their car and watching their life and identity be shredded in front of them with zero control and zero say over what happens.
After the narcissist walks away that car is destroyed and that survivor has a long way to go to get even close to being back where they were before that relationship began. It's a long journey through therapy and learning before they are ever ready to drive a car again. Some never will again. They swear off driving forever.
It is the same as the car crash when they become unpredictable in that jarring way that they flip into this cold and unfeeling, contemptuous shell of a being of which you thought you knew so well and intimately. Its so hard to grasp at this point because they still look like that person, and sound like that person, but you never thought that they could be so cold and uncaring and even hateful toward you.
Here is the thing that most survivors don’t understand for a long time after the fact. They have two things going on at one time. They have the life that they are living with you when you get up and have breakfast together and they also have a second inner narrative running in their head which has these dark thoughts that are angry and contemptuous toward you.
In the beginning they suppress these thoughts consciously and willfully because they know that if they let those thoughts take root then its over. You think things are going well because outwardly that is what they are showing you but inwardly the toxic darkness is beginning to bubble and churn and the devaluation has begun. You just don’t know it yet.
This is where they give up on the relationship and realize that you aren’t the person that they built up in their minds. You are someone completely different and they hate you for it. How dare you trick them like that — meanwhile you’ve maybe changed a little bit as the relationship settled into a life routine but you’re still the same person you were before.
You can go a long time with that bubbling hatred stirring around in their brain. At this point they are constantly doing one math equation — ‘by keeping this person around am i getting a benefit great enough to continue or is it time to execute plan B?’
When their exit strategy is used — it has been planned for a long time. They’ve made arrangements to have you removed off of ownerships without you knowing about it, they have things transferred into their name as advice from the tax person ‘for some tax reasons’ etc.etc.
They will go a year, two years of this being nice to your face and getting you to work like a dog for some scrap of affection or approval. The fact is, a year or two ago they already decided you had to go.
All of this time in between has been about them positioning themselves to get everything and to be able to leave you in 30 seconds or less. In my situation I found evidence going back as far as a year of her starting to make arrangements to root me out of her daughters life. Its all premeditated.
This is the kicker — during that year you’ll be working hard to try to get the relationship back on track. They will say that they are working on it but they aren’t. Pay attention to the effort — if anything they are sabotaging looking to create those fights and they will treat you worse and worse.
You’ll stick around through it and they will lose more respect for you and more respect for you and it will be punishment after punishment until you finally snap and they call you the crazy problem and everyone believes it because of the immense pressure you’ve been under trying to save the titanic from sinking.
If you’re like me you’ll go through period of agreeing to anything hoping that it will get them back to the table to work things out. Don’t do this. Don’t agree to anything you know is not true.
If you agree things are your fault they aren’t coming back to the table — they are going out and showing everyone the text message where you agreed it was your fault. It's all strategy at this point. Their heart left the building at the point of devaluation which could have been as far back as years ago.
At the point of the split you’ll experience the strangest thing in the world. It will be them leaving and their decision to leave but they will come at you like they are the ones that are heartbroken and they are the ones that were done wrong and taken advantage of. It will be ruthless and it will be damn near impossible to prove anything to anyone.
They are that good at the art of playing people and people are that naive that they don’t bother checking into anything — they believe the easy story which is the overgeneralized and dismissive narcissists story.
Your story is so convoluted with funky words like gaslighting and long woven nefarious misdeeds that you are dismissed and then they get the pity for having to deal with you so long.
This is why people say just to disconnect and accept things as they are. Its because before you even know you are in a war their nuclear birds are moments away from taking you out. You never even knew you were at war.
The sky goes white and you’re blown back from the heat and the powerful detonation of total mass destruction of your life, your identity, and when you ask why you will be greeted with nothing but silence.
There is a nefariousness in their self serving laziness that is blood boiling frustrating — but give up on any notion of revenge because the case is already built against you. You’re Done before you even start.
They’d love nothing more than take everything from you and then have a restraining order put on you. That would make their day. Can you feel the rage boiling in you ? I still can sometimes and it's been a couple years.