I always day dreamed of having that partner in life whose souls recognize one another as home. I can't truly say I've felt that connection with anyone. This especially holds true to me. I've watched thirty three of my parents and grand parents marriages that exceed 45 plus years each of marriage before their husbands passed. I could be capable of such, I mean after all if we believe this will work then we'll do what it takes to make it work with obedience. No one told me nor taught me how to love myself and I realized through this process I hadn't been loving myself like I should of.
To discover that the person you married and devoted your life and love to is not only lying to you he's a narcissist, your struggle is he'll bound. I've learned that I was codependent and right on target with his narcissism to make for a bad situation. It's simply that I lacked a healthy relationship with self looking back going from one relationship to the next. There was barely enough time to heal from my previous relationships abuse. What was wrong with me why was I as most codependents prone to put others first before their own needs. This is unhealthy!
Ironically my husband was displaying behaviors of his bipolar but I identified him as a narcissists. Narcissists also have an unhealthy relationship with self. They put themselves above all else. They use others toward their own ends and exploit relationships without feelings of guilt or remorse. They push blame off on others and are unable to see their own part in wrong doing. All things that I was experiencing on a regular bases.
Looking back its easy to see how codependents and narcissists can gravitate toward one another. It is like two pieces of the puzzle coming together. One is the easy mark for the other but the connection is much deeper. As I read I learned that your unresolved childhood traumas will show up in your relationships as adults. Here I was being the codependent submissive my mother was with my dad and he single minded, hypersexual, emotionally unavailable person hell bent on making money.
As bad as it sounds it's true, during one of our routine arguments about his cheating ways he yelled "Bitch I needed a mother to treat me like a baby." in my mind I was like whoa, where'd that weird shit come from? I read there are familial links to this interaction. If you have one parent who is narcissistic you are likely to become either codependent or narcissistic yourself. If you have two narcissistic parents the same holds true. In this case I realized it then but was too busy being codependent to be proactive about my situation. How much of this was his bipolar, poor childhood experiences of mine made me sympathetic to him and his manipulation.
Once I begans to recover from codependency, I was able to begin setting boundaries and although I'd never feared him I could finally stand up to him armed with knowledge that I was not the reason for his mistreatment of me. Despite the many times he tried to break it off it was difficult for me (maybe all humans but him) to conceive of someone who is totally bereft of the ability to empathize and learn from previous mistakes. The primary mistake I made was to giving him the benefit of the doubt because it is so hard to fathom someone could be so selfish and unyielding and love you. Thus the dynamic began.
The good news is although it took a while to fully understand that my husband (narcissicist) lacks that ability of compassion, which defines us as humans. Stop blaming yourself if you're in this type of situation it's them not you. They are stuck in their own world of non blame and hence are pathological unable to change. How can one change if they are unable to see that there is anything wrong with them? Easily, leave them be it's not your job. His inability to see what's wrong alone exhausted me. He was cold, unempathetic and detached. I was codependent.....key word WAS!
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