As I sit here doing my favorite fall Sunday activity (watching my Cowboys play), I have been struggling. These past weeks have involved a lot of unpacking the baggage in my life, some baggage I didn’t even realize I had until the ending of my recent relationship. I did so much work after my ex’s affair and our divorce. I set boundaries, I worked on my perfectionist issues, I found forgiveness for my ex and was working on forgiveness for myself, and I discovered how amazing the unconditional love of God is for me. But as we often talk about in any kind of recovery, we are like onions and as one layer is peeled back, another is revealed. This layer has been so hard and if I hadn’t yet learned how much God loves me and desires to protect me, I don’t know that I could accept it.
I know that I endured abuse in my marriage. There was control, emotional abuse, manipulation, and lots of lies. I worked through the resulting trauma, but I never labeled what I endured. I know my ex had very grandiose and arrogant behaviors and needed constant validation and attention. I know I had to hide money in an account he didn’t have access to or he would spend every penny we had showing off to the outside world. And I know that he could get so cruel and mean when he wasn’t getting his way. I also fully believe that his cheating went way beyond the one affair I discovered eighteen years into our marriage. He cheated while we were engaged, I just don’t believe he could go that long in between additional bids for female attention. I have not called him a narcissist, but I fully believe now, after weeks of research, that he is definitely higher than average on the NPD spectrum. Obviously I’m no psychologist, but I do feel like twenty three years with one man does allow me some insight into who he truly is.
What I didn’t know and have discovered after weeks of reading and learning, is that not all narcissists present in the same way. Some seem very humble and vulnerable, but in reality are just the same arrogant abusive type. They will tell you the wrongs they have done and how they’ve tried to better themselves. They will talk of all the job losses they’ve experienced and how they don’t understand them and they weren’t their fault. They are the victim in so many different relationships because no one understands them and just uses them for personal gain. They seem so sensitive, gentle, and insecure and they just long for someone to finally “get them.” They make you want to take care of them and show them they are worthy of love. The connection with them is so incredibly strong because you think they are so sincere and you’ve never met anyone like that. But, just like the typical narcissist, it’s all a mask, a facade to get attention.
Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that there are very overt narcissists who are arrogant and grandiose and then there are covert narcissists who slide in right under the radar; the radar I had built to guard myself from this very thing. Interestingly enough, the same person can be both. They can present in the way that benefits them the most, the way that gets them the most validation. Luckily for me, my radar did signal to me the control and manipulation. I recognized the feeling of being on a constant roller coaster of emotions. It took me a bit to realize it felt the same to me internally as my marriage, even though the external factors were different. But I finally ended things with him telling him that I deserved to be treated better and his actions did not match his words. He did the typical love bombing for a few weeks while he worked to secure his new supply of admiration, then he stopped.
So, I am here working on healing from being with another man who has no idea how to love. I am unpacking the bags of what either draws these men to me or what attracts me to them. I have been struggling with the realization that I have never known what it feels like to be truly loved by a partner. This is why I think God waited for this layer of my onion to be revealed. I needed to know how much He loved me before He showed me the truth of my past. I needed to feel His unconditional love so that I wouldn’t slide back into the idea that I need to earn love. I needed to know I was loved before He showed me that I hadn’t been loved in my relationships. God is good, all the time.
Finding The Good 