My Experience of Covert Narcissistic Emotional Abuse: Part 2
Messing with my Perception of Reality When you have a strong sense of self-esteem, confidence, worth, and value, it is much more difficult for others to manipulate what you believe is true and how you feel and think. Individuals with low self-esteem and self-worth are most susceptible to being brainwashed or, worse yet, radicalized, because their perception of reality is more easily manipulated. In my experience, emotional abuse is similar in that it first needs to damage your sense of confidence and worth before you are more susceptible to the other element of covert emotional abuse that makes you question your reality. As I discussed in Part 1, my experience of covert narcissistic emotional abuse from my ex-husband over a nearly thirty-year period was extremely effective at eroding my self-esteem, confidence, and sense of worth and value. The emotional abuse tactics that made me question my reality didn’t show up in my experience until we had been together for at least five years. But once they did, the tactics became increasingly more effective. His constant blame game, passive aggression, projection, and gaslighting slowly stripped away MY perception of reality and replaced it with HIS perception of reality. His “Blame Game” In hindsight, I now realize that my husband’s needs, wants, and feelings were always the casualty of my incorrect behavior. It was a never-ending blame game that I wasn’t aware of that was being played. Eventually, all I knew was that I felt ultimately responsible for my husband’s degree of happiness. Over the course of our marriage, I became increasingly consciously and unconsciously attuned to his needs, desires, and wants and changed my behavior as needed to ensure his happiness. This is the covert narcissist’s goal so that they can avoid any responsibility and project the blame onto someone else. This kept me busy trying to fix things that were not even my responsibility to fix – and it was crazy making. My husband’s eyes, he was always the victim, could do no wrong, and was quick to blame me for whatever went wrong. It was Always My Fault It was my fault in the little things, such as blaming me if he didn’t get up early enough to do his work, because I liked to sleep in, and at the time, he did too. He wouldn’t come out and say he blamed me, but he would say something like “it’s disgusting that we don’t get up early” or “why do we always have to sleep in?” It was never “it’s disgusting that I don’t get up early” or “why do I always have to sleep in?” It was always “we”. As a result, I felt that I was responsible for getting up early on my days off, so that he would too. In his mind, he was the victim of my sleeping in. It was also my fault in the bigger things, such as when my parents visited us. Whenever my parents visited us, my husband would complain about how my parents made our home feel hostile, and he despised their visits. My parents live a four-hour flight away, so when they did visit two or three times a year, they stayed for about 10 days each visit. During those visits, my husband was VERY noticeably distant, grumpy, and clearly put out. It was so routine that I promised myself never to evaluate my marriage when my parents visited. My husband claimed that my parents didn’t respect him and were antagonistic towards him. I would ask for examples, but he could never give me any. My parents were the opposite of antagonistic in that they followed his most important rule when they visited. They had to stay in the guest room, in our home, from ten at night until eight in the morning. And my parents, I’m sad to say, followed his rule to keep peace in our home. Once I understood how covert narcissists claim the victim status and project their behaviours onto others, I finally understood the degree to which my husband projected onto my parents the hostile environment that their visit created. It was his hostility, his lack of respect for them, and his antagonism towards them that he projected onto them, while claiming he was the victim when they visited. And I was the problem, because I loved my parents and wanted them to visit. My parents’ visits were the only thing I would not give up in this marriage. I felt a great deal of guilt and trepidation every time my parents came to visit, because I knew it made my husband so upset. I had no idea how to fix the situation because I didn’t understand the projection and blame. All I knew was that my parents were cordial to my husband, stayed out of his way, and followed his extreme bedtime curfew rule. I Could Never Say Anything “The Right Way” Another difficulty in our marriage was my husband’s way of twisting everything I said into being my fault because of the WAY I said something. This way, he was always the victim because of what I said. If only I had asked him to do something using these words, or asked him this particular way, he wouldn’t have felt attacked or guilted into something. It got so bad that after a few decades, I stopped asking him for ANYTHING because I inevitably always asked or said it in the wrong way, using the wrong combination of words or phrases that he preferred. Because of this, my husband always said he felt attacked or made to feel guilty and often called me passive-aggressive in our conversations. He always argued, why didn’t I just clearly state what I wanted, instead of trying to twist him into a guilt trip. I could never say the right thing. I was Passive-aggressive I tried so hard to understand how I was being passive-aggressive