http://narcissisticbehavior.net/the-effects-of-gaslighting-in-narcissistic-victim-syndrome
Please go this page and read all about Gas lighting, and narcissistic abuse patterns If this is you, like it is me, it will help you see the truth.
Sunday 8 April 2012
Where Did I Go? I was Lost in His Eyes
I was once a vibrant independent self-reliant individual. I think that is what attracted him to me.
I was going through a terrible time with my divorce and negotiating with my ex-husband. I had been the victim of a crazy crazy scenario set up by my ex-husband. After 8 years of marriage I discovered that he was not who he said he was. He was not veterinarian, but a mentally ill man who had pretended to go to school, get a job in the United States, and be a wonderful stable provider for his family. I had been gas lighted to the depths of the sea by my ex-husband, and just as I was freeing myself from those chains, the hero arrived.
I met him at work. He was tall, dark and gorgeous in every way. He was strong and handsome, and his eyes were dark pools I could get easily lost in. He smelled wonderful, and his arms felt like security and strength around me. He took me aside, listened to my story, gave me sympathy and support. All the while finding me beautiful and attractive, raising my self esteem, and making me fall in love with him. Life was not easy. He was a man needing rescue, the perfect trap for a nurturer like me. He was in a dead and bizarre marriage, where his wife knew of me, and didn't care of his involvement. He looked to me as a man that had given up on love and life, and that needed my love and attention and affection to rescue him from his abyss. While rescuing him, I was rescuing myself, or so it felt. He was perfect.
As time went on, and I struggled to help him become independent of his marriage, I put up with always being last. I put up with seeing him only on Thursdays...I put up with being told She is first, she is helpless, she needs him. I was told Marriage was just a piece of paper, and that it didn't matter that he was married. I was told that he loves lots of people, and he will always love his ex. he will always love his ex girlfriends, and he will always love me. I felt like I didn't stand out, that I didn't matter. I was pulling to have a normal life. A life where we were a family. Where we all knew love. I found myself disappearing into this bizarre compromise of a situation. A situation where I never came first or had my needs met. A situation where I swallowed the pain of being last. Sprinkled in this life were moments where I felt the most beautiful I had ever felt. Where I felt the most loved. Where I was teaching him how to love, how to feel loved. I slowly disappeared into the complications.
In the end, he ended up divorced, and living with me. I think he resented me, and he would always say 'I got divorced for you' 'I destroyed my family for you' There was no family to destroy. His ex-wife was telling me I could have him every Thursday night if I agreed to work on her neck(I am a chiropractor) The repulsion of the situation and the confusion I was lost in was too much.
He began to criticise everything. He said everything I wanted, like a family, to be married to share a Costco membership were hoops that he would not jump through. He told me if I cried that I was losing my mind. He would pick a fight and say something hurtful to avoid talking about things he didn't want to talk about. When i got sick with my MS, he would pick a fight and leave home. I would find myself alone and sick, and begging him to come home. I would feel crazy, like I had done something terrible. Every second word I would say was I'm sorry. He kept saying I am psycho, that I can't go a single day without losing my mind.
Even as I write this, I feel the fingerprints. I feel guilty. I feel responsible. I feel crazy, but the thing is, when I bounce any of the scenarios that happened to me off of any normal person, they help to clear the air, for me to see that I was abused, and that I was gas lighted.
In the end, when I was a hollowed out, insecure, scared little girl, he left me. he was with someone else within weeks, and is now engaged to her. All the things I wanted for us, all the things he would be mad at me for wanting, he is giving to someone else. I have to think what she is putting up with though. There is a path of destruction that follows this man, and no woman ever stays whole and sane and confident after a period of time with him.
I was made to question my own reality, to think I was crazy. To think I was unrealistic, undeserving and not good enough for the things I really wanted for my life. At one point he gave me a 'promise' ring. Keep in mind I was 40 years old. I never was good enough, or behaved well enough to earn the actual proposal, or engagement. In the end I was tossed away. The promise ring was just another kick, another reminder that I wasn't good enough, wasn't meeting his standards to deserve an actual engagement. The topic of marriage wasn't allowed even after I got the promise ring. I wasn't allowed to bring it up.
He hated my kids, and he broke me down into the most minimal requirements of spiritual life. He stole my soul. The thing that kills me, is that if he showed up here, right now on my doorstep...I would try to see the man I thought he was. I would fall into those eyes, I would believe those tears.
You see when a narcissist has stolen your soul, it seems like they are the only one that can return it to you. You want to see them, to talk to them to try to reason with them. You need just a kernel, a grain of your soul to be returned to you. It feels like you will never be you again unless they do.
I am starting my journey of recovery, to reclaim my soul, to be myself. I want to grow tho know that I am worthy of all that I wish and desire. I am worthy of love, and honesty, and monogamy. I am worthy of an engagement ring, of a promise made only to me. I am worthy of all these things. But most of all, I AM OK. I am all that I was before I met this predator. I am all that inside. I am all of my accomplishments, traits and love that I was before.
The pain of this journey is suffocating, and it is easy to think that the narcissist has everything. I don't believe a narcissist can ever be happy. I think they simply mimic what it looks like to be happy in those around them. All the things that I needed, he has instantly reprogrammed in himself and given to someone else. I sit here thinking if he had only done that for me...all would have been well. But I would be wrong to think that. I was the food. I was the source of the narcissistic energy. the more upset I was, the more off balance I became, the more I questioned my own reality, the bigger he became. The more superior he became that so by the time he left me, I was broken, a misshapen wreck begging for another chance with the `God`. With the man that held my only source of happiness - him. And he took that away.
The gas lighting continued far after the break-up when 6 months later he tried to tell me that he had been pouring his heart out to me for the past 6 months in e-mails, but that I was cruel, and never answered him. (I had actually blocked his e-mail address) The only reason he had moved on was because of me; because of me ignoring him, and being cruel. At moments I was shredded into pieces, and at others, my true self said...hey, wait a minute. You knew where I lived, You knew my mailing address, You knew everything. If you truly wanted to reach me, you would have. His new relationship was in trouble you see, so everything became my fault again. I took him back for a week or two. I became lost in those eyes. I believed the stories. He told me they broke up because all he ever talked about was me. It was my fault they broke up. So... it was my fault they were dating...and now it was my fault they had broken up. Then he dumped me again, and went back to her. Now he is engaged.
I have been manipulated, dissected and spiritually dismembered. I had given all of my soul and love to a predator that used me to become free and confident at my expense. Now I am a pain filled exterior. I am working hard to see how and why I was so taken in by this man. He was just like a Dementor from Harry Potter. If you could give a Dementor a beautiful smile, and pools of endearment for eyes, that would be my Michael. Locks eyes with you, and sucks out your soul.
It is a painful journey, this one. But I hope that through it, I will never again let a narcissist into my life. I have narcissistic radar. I have to know that my confidence, my identity is not something GIVEN to me by some other human being, but something inherent in myself.
I was ripe for the picking, and narcissists can smell a person in a struggle a mile away. While I am struggling with this healing process, I will not be shark bait. I will swim and learn to hold myself up without the help and support of anyone but myself, my friends, and my beautiful children.
I have moments of weakness where I believe the charade that he presents to the world, that all is perfect in the life of the narcissist. But the intelligent part of me knows that there will be another woman that cries herself to sleep at night and who gets called crazy, and gets called psycho. Another woman waiting to become a shell of a person, except for her, she will be legally bound to this man. She didn't get the promise ring...she got the handcuffs; handcuffs to certain psychological demise.
She is short and fat and frumpy. He is tall and model like gorgeous. She will idolise him and wonder why he is with her. He is God...and the cycle begins again. I am very tall and attractive, and I am stubborn and resistant to garbage. I was too much work. I was head strong, even as he was calling me crazy. I fought to the end. I should in the end be grateful that all I got was the promise. I should be grateful that I never met the submissive admirous standard that he needed for a wife. I will get there.
This blog will help with my journey. I hope it might help in yours.
I was going through a terrible time with my divorce and negotiating with my ex-husband. I had been the victim of a crazy crazy scenario set up by my ex-husband. After 8 years of marriage I discovered that he was not who he said he was. He was not veterinarian, but a mentally ill man who had pretended to go to school, get a job in the United States, and be a wonderful stable provider for his family. I had been gas lighted to the depths of the sea by my ex-husband, and just as I was freeing myself from those chains, the hero arrived.
I met him at work. He was tall, dark and gorgeous in every way. He was strong and handsome, and his eyes were dark pools I could get easily lost in. He smelled wonderful, and his arms felt like security and strength around me. He took me aside, listened to my story, gave me sympathy and support. All the while finding me beautiful and attractive, raising my self esteem, and making me fall in love with him. Life was not easy. He was a man needing rescue, the perfect trap for a nurturer like me. He was in a dead and bizarre marriage, where his wife knew of me, and didn't care of his involvement. He looked to me as a man that had given up on love and life, and that needed my love and attention and affection to rescue him from his abyss. While rescuing him, I was rescuing myself, or so it felt. He was perfect.
As time went on, and I struggled to help him become independent of his marriage, I put up with always being last. I put up with seeing him only on Thursdays...I put up with being told She is first, she is helpless, she needs him. I was told Marriage was just a piece of paper, and that it didn't matter that he was married. I was told that he loves lots of people, and he will always love his ex. he will always love his ex girlfriends, and he will always love me. I felt like I didn't stand out, that I didn't matter. I was pulling to have a normal life. A life where we were a family. Where we all knew love. I found myself disappearing into this bizarre compromise of a situation. A situation where I never came first or had my needs met. A situation where I swallowed the pain of being last. Sprinkled in this life were moments where I felt the most beautiful I had ever felt. Where I felt the most loved. Where I was teaching him how to love, how to feel loved. I slowly disappeared into the complications.
In the end, he ended up divorced, and living with me. I think he resented me, and he would always say 'I got divorced for you' 'I destroyed my family for you' There was no family to destroy. His ex-wife was telling me I could have him every Thursday night if I agreed to work on her neck(I am a chiropractor) The repulsion of the situation and the confusion I was lost in was too much.
He began to criticise everything. He said everything I wanted, like a family, to be married to share a Costco membership were hoops that he would not jump through. He told me if I cried that I was losing my mind. He would pick a fight and say something hurtful to avoid talking about things he didn't want to talk about. When i got sick with my MS, he would pick a fight and leave home. I would find myself alone and sick, and begging him to come home. I would feel crazy, like I had done something terrible. Every second word I would say was I'm sorry. He kept saying I am psycho, that I can't go a single day without losing my mind.
Even as I write this, I feel the fingerprints. I feel guilty. I feel responsible. I feel crazy, but the thing is, when I bounce any of the scenarios that happened to me off of any normal person, they help to clear the air, for me to see that I was abused, and that I was gas lighted.
In the end, when I was a hollowed out, insecure, scared little girl, he left me. he was with someone else within weeks, and is now engaged to her. All the things I wanted for us, all the things he would be mad at me for wanting, he is giving to someone else. I have to think what she is putting up with though. There is a path of destruction that follows this man, and no woman ever stays whole and sane and confident after a period of time with him.
I was made to question my own reality, to think I was crazy. To think I was unrealistic, undeserving and not good enough for the things I really wanted for my life. At one point he gave me a 'promise' ring. Keep in mind I was 40 years old. I never was good enough, or behaved well enough to earn the actual proposal, or engagement. In the end I was tossed away. The promise ring was just another kick, another reminder that I wasn't good enough, wasn't meeting his standards to deserve an actual engagement. The topic of marriage wasn't allowed even after I got the promise ring. I wasn't allowed to bring it up.
He hated my kids, and he broke me down into the most minimal requirements of spiritual life. He stole my soul. The thing that kills me, is that if he showed up here, right now on my doorstep...I would try to see the man I thought he was. I would fall into those eyes, I would believe those tears.
You see when a narcissist has stolen your soul, it seems like they are the only one that can return it to you. You want to see them, to talk to them to try to reason with them. You need just a kernel, a grain of your soul to be returned to you. It feels like you will never be you again unless they do.
I am starting my journey of recovery, to reclaim my soul, to be myself. I want to grow tho know that I am worthy of all that I wish and desire. I am worthy of love, and honesty, and monogamy. I am worthy of an engagement ring, of a promise made only to me. I am worthy of all these things. But most of all, I AM OK. I am all that I was before I met this predator. I am all that inside. I am all of my accomplishments, traits and love that I was before.
The pain of this journey is suffocating, and it is easy to think that the narcissist has everything. I don't believe a narcissist can ever be happy. I think they simply mimic what it looks like to be happy in those around them. All the things that I needed, he has instantly reprogrammed in himself and given to someone else. I sit here thinking if he had only done that for me...all would have been well. But I would be wrong to think that. I was the food. I was the source of the narcissistic energy. the more upset I was, the more off balance I became, the more I questioned my own reality, the bigger he became. The more superior he became that so by the time he left me, I was broken, a misshapen wreck begging for another chance with the `God`. With the man that held my only source of happiness - him. And he took that away.
The gas lighting continued far after the break-up when 6 months later he tried to tell me that he had been pouring his heart out to me for the past 6 months in e-mails, but that I was cruel, and never answered him. (I had actually blocked his e-mail address) The only reason he had moved on was because of me; because of me ignoring him, and being cruel. At moments I was shredded into pieces, and at others, my true self said...hey, wait a minute. You knew where I lived, You knew my mailing address, You knew everything. If you truly wanted to reach me, you would have. His new relationship was in trouble you see, so everything became my fault again. I took him back for a week or two. I became lost in those eyes. I believed the stories. He told me they broke up because all he ever talked about was me. It was my fault they broke up. So... it was my fault they were dating...and now it was my fault they had broken up. Then he dumped me again, and went back to her. Now he is engaged.
I have been manipulated, dissected and spiritually dismembered. I had given all of my soul and love to a predator that used me to become free and confident at my expense. Now I am a pain filled exterior. I am working hard to see how and why I was so taken in by this man. He was just like a Dementor from Harry Potter. If you could give a Dementor a beautiful smile, and pools of endearment for eyes, that would be my Michael. Locks eyes with you, and sucks out your soul.
It is a painful journey, this one. But I hope that through it, I will never again let a narcissist into my life. I have narcissistic radar. I have to know that my confidence, my identity is not something GIVEN to me by some other human being, but something inherent in myself.
I was ripe for the picking, and narcissists can smell a person in a struggle a mile away. While I am struggling with this healing process, I will not be shark bait. I will swim and learn to hold myself up without the help and support of anyone but myself, my friends, and my beautiful children.
I have moments of weakness where I believe the charade that he presents to the world, that all is perfect in the life of the narcissist. But the intelligent part of me knows that there will be another woman that cries herself to sleep at night and who gets called crazy, and gets called psycho. Another woman waiting to become a shell of a person, except for her, she will be legally bound to this man. She didn't get the promise ring...she got the handcuffs; handcuffs to certain psychological demise.
She is short and fat and frumpy. He is tall and model like gorgeous. She will idolise him and wonder why he is with her. He is God...and the cycle begins again. I am very tall and attractive, and I am stubborn and resistant to garbage. I was too much work. I was head strong, even as he was calling me crazy. I fought to the end. I should in the end be grateful that all I got was the promise. I should be grateful that I never met the submissive admirous standard that he needed for a wife. I will get there.
This blog will help with my journey. I hope it might help in yours.
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