I married a narcissist: Part one

The question that changed everything for me.

“You are married to a very nasty man and you need to leave immediately.” It’s the only phrase I can reliably say in a half decent South African accent because it will be forever emblazoned on my brain.

I had gone to my first marriage counselling session — alone — because I couldn’t figure out why my relationship felt so different than in the beginning. Why I didn’t feel able to inspire the same kind of love in my husband as I did when we first met.

In that moment my brilliant counsellor, I think, dropped all her professional boundaries and just told me what I needed to know. She wasn’t going to dance around the situation, helping me explore my relationship with my parents for months on end before giving me a hint that I was married to someone who was emotionally and psychologically abusing me.

No. She too had been married to a narcissist. A man who had gaslit her and cheated on her, and in that moment she dropped her guard and became less of a therapist and more like an Aunt, who was just sharing her life’s wisdom with me. I’ll be forever grateful to her for that.

But I’ll also never forget what it felt like for someone I instantly felt I could trust, to pull out the pin and throw a grenade into my life. For the whole rest of the session, and for several days following that revelation my head was swimming. I was in turn, afraid, in denial and paranoid. I started to check for signs that I was being surveilled in my own home. Where there cameras and recording devices around? Had he put a tracker on my car? Did he know that I now knew that he was a narcissist?

And between the grenade and the paranoia, something else. Something I never expected: Shame. I never knew until that moment how harshly I had judged divorce and those who got divorced. That wasn’t meant to be me. I was special. I had chosen the right man and our union was forever. We definitely weren’t going to be part of the statistic: 42% of marriages end in divorce in the UK and over half of these fail in the first 10 years.

It was the shame that made me think the craziest thoughts. (Yeah, crazier than “Can he hear my thoughts now I know he’s a narcissist?”) Thoughts like “getting divorced is shameful enough. I’ll stick it out for 10 years. That’s a respectable length of time to be married. Then we’ll get divorced.” Thoughts like “I’ll fulfil my life with my friends, my dogs and my career. I’ll just keep my marriage ticking over in the background.” (As long as I was successful enough and not becoming overweight or complaining, my husband would have never left me — I was his narcissistic source.)

Thankfully, after these bordering on insane, self abusive thoughts had subsided, a question appeared in my mind. “What will your 60 year old self say to your 30 year old self?”

To expand, a vision of my future self, 30 years down the line, would come to me. She would be lying in bed, the morning sunlight dancing across her face as she roused from her slumber, in her bought and paid for Brooklyn brownstone. She ran a successful coaching and speaking business and was an author several times over. She had much of what she desired in her life. But next to her lay a husband, 14 years her senior, ageing ungracefully, having systematically drained the life out of her as he drained the love, energy and finances out of her too. He had spent the last thirty years riding on the coat tails of her success, her fame, her wealth, her status. He had gotten his dream of living in New York thanks to her. She would slip out of bed quietly, so as not to disturb him — so she could take some time for herself alone, to try to recoup her energy, to connect with those friends she loved so dearly and her beloved fur babies. She would sit at her marble kitchen island sipping a cortado, and she’d look down at her aged hands and think of her 30 year old self. She’d think “Why didn’t you leave when you were young? What were you so afraid of? That you wouldn’t be able to start again? Why have you given your life to this person? Why have you given your opportunity to be loved and have a family of your own — if you so wanted — away? How can you coach women to leave abusive and unsatisfying situations when you’re too scared to leave your own— don’t you feel like a fraud?”

I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t let 60 year old me down like that. I knew in that moment that I would rather feel ashamed and alone and like a failure for a few years in my early thirties, than look back on decades of my life and regret everything I had chosen to sacrifice, for fear of being divorced and judged.

Tomorrow would have been our 4th wedding anniversary. I’ve been separated from my husband for around 18 months and our divorce was finalised just over 9 weeks ago, at the time of writing. I can tell you that I feel no shame about getting divorced. I feel no shame about choosing a better, more honest, more loving life for myself. I feel no shame about speaking about my codependency and my experiences with narcissistic abusers. I feel no shame that I was brave enough to do something that terrified me and live to tell the tale. I feel no shame that I picked myself up, figured out my life and got myself into a situation where I could support myself and leave. I feel no shame.

If you are stuck in an abusive situation and shame holds you back from speaking your truth to whomever can help you get out and get safe, take my story as an example of someone who has walked the path before you. Reach out, organise your shit and for the love of all that is sacred, leave while there is still life in you. No. Shame.

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My online codependence recovery course: Lovingly Fierce is out now. Find out if it’s for you, here.

This is what codependency feels like

This is what codependency feels like.

Like a trapeze artist swinging high up in the air, searching for something else to hold onto.

Like a small boat in the ocean that has lost it’s anchor.

Like a ballon that has slipped the hand of the child holding it.

Codependency feels like free fall, being terrifyingly untethered, always searching for an anchor.

Our anchors are people, places, pets, things and life situations — jobs, relationships, businesses.

When we don’t have an anchor we seek one out. It never takes long. We are expert emotional manipulators. We know what a single person, or a whole room needs from us and we give it. We’re good at that too — giving. Giving until there is nothing left of us and we become bitter and resentful.

We are simultaneously loving, caring, compassionate, generous and on the surface happy and chill. We are also manipulative, scheming, controlling, hyper conscious and often secretly highly strung, needing everything to be just so, on our timeline.

We define ourselves by what we can give to and do for other people. We outsource our happiness to others. We live vicariously through their joy. So it follows that we would become experts in provoking that joy (ever heard someone say “I’m a people pleaser”?), because it feeds us.

What works even better for a codependent is being able to “fix” someone. That’s why we often end up with addicts or bad boys or weirdos that our friends never could quite get their heads around.

For people who thrive off the definition of who and what they are in relation to others, there is no greater satisfaction than sobering up a drunk or taming a serial cheat or giving a nerdy / awkward / shy person a physical, social, emotional and PR makeover.

That’s where the control piece comes in. We want to fix and change and mould the people close to us, into what we think is good and correct. We have a fundamental lack of self esteem and yet we think we know best.

You see, we also have this gross (always gives me the chills when I think about it) simultaneous superiority / inferiority complex. Secretly, to ourselves, we think we are better than everyone else, and we try our damnedest to show it but never say it. We give more and are better than most at pinpointing exactly what needs to be given because we can emotionally read people as though they had an instruction manual pinned on their forehead. We often will also sacrifice great chunks of our time, energy, even money to learn a new skill or improve an existing one so we can deliver what is required and provoke the emotions we want from others like a pro.

How does that manifest? Perhaps like this…

Your team loves cake. You spend most weekends and way too much money at the grocery store making culinary masterpieces to take to the office on Monday. You don’t even like cake that much, but God does it feel good to watch your gooey fingered colleagues grin with delight as they scoff down another batch of of your fudge brownies.

Your crush loves hair metal. You spend hours a day boning up on Spotify and Genius and Google finding out the names of the bands, where they’re touring, their classic albums and the lyrics to the songs. You manage to get 2 tickets to a long ago sold out gig, at an insanely inflated cost, but, really, it was no big thing!

Everyone thinks you’re amazing! You do too. You planned it that way.

And the inferiority part? Despite this outward facade of awesomeness, inside we feel we are fundamentally worthless unless we are either attached to, achieving or orchestrating something successful. Something outside of ourselves. We are excellent at doing and struggle horribly with being.

We are kind and controlling.

We are generous and manipulative.

We are both victim and perpetrator.

This is what codependency feels like.

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My online codependence recovery course: Lovingly Fierce is out now. Find out if it’s for you, here.

How do I know when it's time to go?

How do you know when to leave your abusive / addicted / narcissistic partner?

Many people will try to answer this question for you — well meaning friends, concerned family members, strangers on the Internet — but they can’t. Only you know the answer to this question. The trouble is when you’re stuck in an abusive situation with an addict or a narcissist you’re being gaslit and having your sense of self degraded on a daily basis. Some days you don’t even know what you want to eat, never mind how or when to make one of the biggest, most heart wrenching decisions of your life.

I know, because I was there. A marriage counsellor told me to get out as soon as I could. It took me another 18 months of figuring out what was happening, dancing around the situation, testing him, learning about abusive relationships, being in then out, then in again. I even left once for about 6 weeks. I packed my things while he was away at work, tucked my full-to-bursting car around the corner and drove to stay with a friend 300 miles away the next day — fur babies in tow. I came back though, on the promise of change, always the promise of change. But I think I knew that was the last time.

I’m happily divorced now, but I always say to people who ask that no one gets married because they want to get divorced. Certainly no one who is genuinely in love with their partner imagines that’s how their marriage will end. So before I could end my marriage, I had to know I had tried everything. I had to know I’d given it my best shot and it simply wasn’t going to work. I could only meet him half way, and if he wasn’t willing to (or couldn’t, in the case of a narcissist, it’s just not how they’re built) walk the other half, I was out.

So I cannot tell you the answer to your question but I can do these things:

a) Tell you my story. Check out my profile and read my stories of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

b) Give you a list of questions to ask yourself to try to help clarify some of the answers you are so desperately seeking when you want to know if it’s time to leave. That list is below…

Ask yourself these questions. The answers may not come straight away. You may need to ask them every day until you get clarity. You might want to write them down somewhere. But the answers must come from you. You are the only one who can know when it’s times to go, and you are the only one who can make that move.

1. Is this what I want from my life?

2. Do I honestly think he / she / they will ever change / love me as I want to be loved?

3. If the answer is yes, how long will that take? Am I willing to give up that much of my life to find out?

4. What will I do if they don’t change?

5. How much more of myself do I want to give to this relationship?

6. Am I more afraid of being alone / feeling untethered than I am of staying in an abusive / draining / unfulfilling situation?

7. What else in my life suffers when I stay in this relationship? (My energy? My other relationships? My work? My body? My self worth? My finances?)

8. Am I constantly looking for advice / someone to tell me to leave? Am I hoping the next person I ask will have the magic bullet that makes me trust them and take their word and give me the courage to go?

I hope this list helps. I hope you get the clarity you need to move into a happier and more fulfilling stage in your life.

You deserve real love and connection.

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My online codependence recovery course: Loving Fierce is out now. Find out if it’s for you, here.

Narcissists feed off all your emotions - good or bad

Why you feel drained in relationship with a narcissist, all the time.

It took me quite a while (like about 30 years) to figure out that narcissists feed off of all your emotions, good and bad. I mean technically they are still human beings so of course they would prefer your good vibes, but if they can’t get those, any emotional response will do. They just need to be fed.

Narcissists in their younger lives experience some form of trauma — it could be anything from an emotionally unavailable parent to addiction in the family, to a teacher that belittled them, to physical or sexual abuse — which triggers a deep shame response in them. The depth of the shame response and the lack of cultivated resilience (which would otherwise have been developed with the help of healthy supporting emotional structures — family, guardians, mentors) triggers the need to cut off that part of the emotional body.

I envisage that the shame creates a blackness, and if the emotional body matches the physical body in stature and shape, the blackness is pushed deep down into the gut, and that part of the body is sealed shut. The aim of the narcissist is to never have to access or deal with this pit of shame.

The issue with shoving all your shame and perceived darkness away is that human beings are creatures of contrast. We are not only one thing, always. We must experience both sides of all things to fully understand and contextualise our own existence. We cannot appreciate sweet if we have never tasted salty. We cannot fully appreciate joy if we have not experienced pain. And the extent to which we can feel and experience one thing in life opens up the potential to experience it’s equal and opposite force just as deeply.

So when you lock away all your deepest pain, as narcissists do, you equally cannot access your own positive emotions, that are created and truly come from within. Narcissists can absolutely respond to stimuli — pride at a promotion at work, or satisfaction at a new car. They can also mimic emotions they have seen other people express, such as happiness at a wedding, but they cannot feel true inner joy, contentment, pleasure or peace. They can only leach these feelings from others. Narcissists specifically go in search of people who are emotionally open or vulnerable — such as codependents, empaths, intuitives and highly sensitive people. They fit together like a hand in a glove. Codependents and empaths need to feed and narcissists need to be fed. Codependents and empaths need to heal and narcissists have a wound that can never be healed.

So if you find yourself in relationship with a narcissist you have become their source. They cannot draw power from their own inner source because they cut that off long ago. They can only draw power from outside themselves. It’s like your neighbour tapping into your electricity supply because theirs got cut off and you’re left wondering why your bill is so high every month.

When you become the source for a narcissist what you must realise is that they draw their energy from your negative emotions as well as your positive ones. If you have ever been in a relationship with a narcissist you will notice that when they cannot illicit a good response from you, they will simply do more to provoke a bad one. Rage is not as pleasant a drug to swallow as love, but it is as potent to the narcissist. Because narcissists cannot access their emotions, they cannot feel empathy, so they care little for how damaging it is to make you angry, miserable, rageful, bitter or scournful. They will either simply manipulate you back to an equilibrium with them or they will discard you for a better, less worn out source.

When you understand this, you can finally understand that the only way to be released from narcissistic abuse is not to try to heal them, or love them more, or try harder, or be kinder, but to get out. Your pain feeds them as much as your love and joy. You cannot kill them with kindness. They eat it up. You cannot scream them into submission. It recharges them all the same. A narcissist wants whatever you have to give, with nothing offered in return.

The sanest thing you can do is unhook their supply completely and get out.

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My online codependence recovery course: Lovingly Fierce is out now. Find out if it’s for you, here.