Over the last few months, I have been untangling or untying a web of Deceit, Lies, Manipulation and Abuse. It is a process that takes place when someone has been in a relationship with a real narcissist. It is a long process and when you think you are done untangling yourself, you have only just begun.
I have seen the people call others a narcissist here and in other places since it seems to be the new flavor of name calling that people like to use. But until you have been through it with someone with this disease, you have no clue what it truly is and how bad it effects the victim on a physical, mental, and emotional range. You see, a person who has this disorder is only about themselves. They have no emotions for others, only for themselves. Their whole life is spent on how important they are and how everyone else is underneath them. They live in an alternate world. They are master manipulators that will, at first, make you feel as if you are the most important person on the face of the planet to them. They love bomb you to death until they have you caught in their web. Then slowly, they start picking you apart piece by piece.
First, they get you to start alienating your friends and family. They separate you from those people in your life that know you better than everyone. They isolate you into a 1 on 1 relationship with them only. God forbid, you want to go out with your friends to the bar for a drink after work or go out for a boys/girls day. They use guilt trips better than anyone. Once you are isolated, everything becomes about them. It is about what they want to do, what they want and how you are going to get it for them. And if you don’t, it is because you don’t love them, or you are the one that is self-absorbed. You become their meal ticket. If you buy something for yourself, you are made to feel as a bad person because you really didn’t need that thing that you bought, yet they go and get anything they wish. This could be something as simple as you purchasing your lunch at work or a soda at the gas station. You didn’t need that!! Yet they are out doing whatever they want because “they need it".
Soon after this, they start picking fights. These fights are things like “You never take me out” even though you just took them to dinner last week or to a movie, or out on a walk together. They are stupid things, just to get you to fight. And heaven forbit, you use facts, they will say that those facts are not real, and you are making them up and that it never happened. They will take the truth and distort it because their truth is the only truth that matters. They will start the accusation bombs at this same point. They will accuse you of lying to them, cheating on them, and every other accusation they can throw. (Watch for this, they are projecting what they are doing on to you.) They will start using the fancy terms of Gaslighting and Stonewalling them. Why? Because that is what they are doing. When you have your facts they will switch up the argument to something else to try and trip you up. You started talking about one thing and all of the sudden it is something totally different. They will argue in a never ending circle. And no matter what the outcome, they will never, and I do mean never, admit to any wrongdoing or apologize for anything they have said to you, including all of the horrible name calling and threats. They will tell you that they never said that.
If you are lucky enough to get out of the relationship, as some are not because they think that this person will change (which they will not change), then you have a person that will do everything in their power to destroy you. They will tell everyone that you know that you are an abuser in some way, shape, or form. They will go after your job. They will try and turn your children against you. You name it, they will do it to try and literally destroy your life. It does not matter the extent of their lies at that point. The best thing you can do is to not engage. When you stop engaging them, something clicks inside of them, and they realize they have lost all the power they had over you. They then move on to the next person, just like a parasite when it is done with the host it was using.
Now comes the work of unraveling the Web. This is a long and hard process. The longer you were in the relationship, the longer and more difficult the process. And usually, it is a process that you go through alone because people will not believe that a person is capable of doing the things that this person did. It is only those that have really been through it that know. This is a process of going through bit by bit and untying the lies, the manipulations, the accusations, etc.… It is a time when you start getting your emotions back that you did not even know you had buried because you were in survival mode. It is a time when you start to rebuild who you were before you entered this evil darkness. It is hard, it can mess up friendships and relationships because of real triggers that take place, and you are not sure why you are reacting in a certain manner, and it throws you into a complete tailspin. It will take Months, if not years, of watching how things effect you so that you can relearn how to appropriately react. Trust will never be as easy because of the damage that was caused.
But we must push forward and overcome.
We must untangle the web.
