Rediscovering Ourselves

"I will never understand why I gave him Carte Blanche to lie; manipulate, embarrass, insult, use me, play head-games and take him back after each assault. I mean besides the OW every other deviate, self-serving, disorder was glaringly evident. I'm not stupid, I took notice of each wrongfull action and deed and treated him like a spoiled child. At first I would try to make reason, discipline, punish and break-up over and over again. But like a rotten child that you just seems to get stuck with, he eventually wore me out. I ended up giving in and with each infraction lowered the bar of expectation."

"How can we love someone we don't even like most of the time?"

"My gut instinct never let me down..going against it however, has cost me dearly."

"It's sure easy to tell the ones who are still stuck in the 'danse' with their abusers from the ones who are genuinely interested in healing, detaching and moving on."

"In looking back, my greatest transgression and offense are the LIE's and justification I told myself. It was so utterly out of character for me. Being a very competitive person I know one of the reasons I got hooked in the game is because I really-really HATE LOSING! I tolerated more and more during each hectic event and convinced myself it was well worth it to win in the long run. In the end, it not only justified but my actions, but reinforced and was testiment to the fact I was getting as WACKED as him!"

'I saw my therapist today. I told her my N left a message on my work phone that he is no longer seeing his current NS...She didnt even bother to ask..she said very sternly "if you go back to him you will die...either you will he suck you dry and kill you emotionally, and if that doesn't work, he will take you physically"......she wasn't kidding. She said he is very dangerous. So why can't I shake in my shoes and say she is right? (my best friend worries he will kill me too)...."

"It is cataclysmic to realise that to get out of this horrible situation, one must look at oneself. It made me so angry. HE is the sick one. Why do I have to do all of this self work? HE broke all the rules, all the trust and made my own issues come to the surface. Why is my only solution to explore my own weaknesses? I felt angry and resentful at this. Of course, being that I was depressed, I turned the anger inward and pointed a finger at myself.

"They only succeed when we acquiesce or comply with them."

"One thing  a therapist told me to do when I was wanting to leave was to take steps at setting myself free. She told me to get my own banking acct., look at apts to live in, to find a job, to begin to imagine life without him, and to take actual steps to break free. This really did help."

"This helped me. Remember all those things you saw in him at the beginning? Write down a list of all the good qualities you saw in him. Now if you can understand he was "mirroring" things for you. He was behaving in a way that would be pleasing to you in order to win you over and later manipulate you, then it might help to know that these were your good qualities that he was reflecting back to you."

"When I stepped back to look at it, his behaviour was like something on a Jerry Springer show."

"I tried relentlessly to salvage a relationship that stripped my dignity and self worth."

"He has the disorder and I don't. The problem is his. Looking for what's the matter with me is almost like trying to furnish him with an excuse."

"I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I met him... part of me did die, but this feels more like hell."

"I kept wondering when the fog would lift. It has lifted. He consumed a fifth of bourbon one evening last week and all the crazy-making word salad began. With every word he uttered I was able to label it as projection, mirroring, gaslighting, etc. I did not rise to the bait but quietly let him ramble on despite his best efforts to engage me in N supply. When he finally retired, I journalled the evening. I can now see through the fog and begin to heal. I'm not crazy. It's not me. The journey has just begun and time will tell where or how it ends."

"Honey, get a fixer-upper house and ditch that fixer-upper guy."

"He'd bring me lasagna with homemade noodles made from scratch & a raspberry cheesecake he made himself. He researched a lifelong health problem I had indepth. (No one had ever done that for me). He got me a cell phone & spoiled me.  He'd leave me romantic text messages on my phone. He was talented, could cook, make furniture, could fix anything. He even fixed my sister's starter on her car in record time. There was nothing he couldn't do. He was amazing. He also asked me to marry him. He'd tell me I could do no wrong. I told him to remember he said that because just before I left him 2 years later. I couldn't do anything right. He had us all snowed."

"Here's a psychologist's advice: Suppose you could go back to the very first days when he was becoming abusive - no matter how long ago that was and knowing what you know now, what would you tell that earlier "you" to do?"

"It is so hard not to take what they do personally, after all, we have given our heart and souls to them."

"My ex N had no right to treat me the way he did, but I let him. I am seeking recovery now for my codependence and am on my way to a life of freedom and learning to love me for who I am."

"I lost everything but my sanity eleven months ago, but today I can assure you that your life will go on and the dreams you think are shattered are in reality nightmares that you awoke from."

"Nothing we did warrants what we got in return."

"All too often when some people are removed (abused, tossed out, leave or abandoned) from an abusive relationship, they simply go right back into it. The two go round and round and round and round.....  Very childish, very dysfunctional, very 'sick.' I think we all give it the old college try for a while, but sometimes the enmeshment is willingly self inflicted and a continual life pattern. These relationships go on until somebody stops it - usually the sane person."

"So, can you actually win what is best for yourself and your children against an N - absolutely. Can you get out of the darkness, chaos and confusion, the arguing etc?  Again, you can. The best way for both my daughter and myself was having no contact with XNH for almost 6 months. It takes alot of willpower and determination to break the bonds but it is well worth it. When I look back at the last 12+ years of my life and my daughters there was darkness all around us. It is so good to be back into the light. It is so good to be on the path to me again."

"Abandon the N, don't look back, keep going."

"A year into the relationship he was physically violent. It was so awful. He kept saying he loved me so I found it so hard to figure out why he should want to hurt me. When he had sobered up the next day he said he was so sorry and it would never happen again. He cried and begged me not to tell anyone. I stupidly forgave him. I think I just hoped that one day he would just be the lovely side he had to him and not the cruel side."

"If you stay, you will have no life by the time they get done with you!"

"There's really no nice way to say that continued contact with your abuser will undoubtedly make you look as crazy as he is."

"I lost myself and my purpose in life, and I became a victim, and eventually as sick as the abuser, by allowing myself to be pulled into an elaborate manipulation.

"I had this little sixth sense that was kicking off in the middle of the night waking me saying something with this man is not right. I thought I need to run and run fast but for some reason I kept feeling drawn to him."

"Even when it wasn't about him, it was about him."

"I look at the behaviors of a N and see myself: I am special and deserve the best, Push me/Pull me relationship, Silent treatment, Withholding, Blaming, Controlling. Then I have a "reality" check and realize that my behaviors are in REACTION to his behaviors, not the CAUSE of his behaviors."

"As for the N I was involved with, well, after what seemed like a long hike to the top of a mountain, I can honestly say there is NO going back. I'm finally OVER it. I still have my reminders of the N's venom, but I feel as though I am in control of my life again. It has been sooooo damn hard to get to this point and I could not have gotten here without maintaining NO CONTACT. You are far stronger than you realize."

"I never in my wildest dreams thought anything could be this painful."

"As the relationship begins to have problems we begin to take the responsibility for fixing them. One by one, we shoulder more and more of the responsibility of the problems in the deteriorating relationship and find ourselves frantically trying to pick up each loose string and hold it all together...until eventually we blame ourselves for the failure, and every little issue that takes place. The Narcissist is all to happy to oblige you in putting that responsibility upon you."

"No one will ever treat me with so little respect again."

"I hear so many people on this board struggle with the fact that they have a hard time giving up their niceness in order to deal with N. Many people on this board say that they WONT give up being nice to N because it is just wrong to not be nice. I am a nice person, but when it comes to N... nice hurts you. Nice had a lot to do with getting me into the relationship and probably had 90% to do with why I stayed in it for so long. Ns take advantage of nice. You've got to stop being nice to them... they just gobble it up and then spit it back at you. Stop it... it is how he gets to you."

"My niceness kept me with him for YEARS. if only i had known what i was dealing with. I was playing by a set of rules that included courtesy, kindness, care, and love. The P was playing with a set of rules that only Ps live by.  cruelty, manipulation, control, and brutality. i've never seen the niceness issue addressed so clearly before. I think it is a critical bit of information. Ps exploit our big hearts--again and again, till we're nearly dead. It's a fact. We have to be aware of it."

"I think I am the most cold hearted b**ch here when it comes to xnh. Funny thing is, I am a very compassionate and hear from others all the time how sweet and nice I am. What I am saying is that lack of compassion for xnh has nothing to do with compassion in other areas of my life and just because you make yourself callous to one person, does not mean that that callousness spreads to other aspects of your life."