My Invisible Prison
While I was married to my covert narcissistic husband, I was living in an invisible prison that I was not aware of. I thought I had freedom. I had the freedom to spend money as I pleased, go out with my family and friends, come and go as I wanted, or take vacations with my family. But I wasn’t truly free. An overt narcissist may manipulate and control these kinds of freedoms, and many women suffer from this kind of overt control. My heart goes out to them. But a covert narcissist manipulates, controls, and steals your freedom in a far more subtle way, over the years, or in my case, decades.
Through my husband’s covert narcissistic emotional abuse that destroyed my self-worth and value, his increasingly successful control and manipulation tricks, and my fear of his narcissistic rage, I slowly lost my most basic fundamental freedom to be “myself”. I unknowingly lost my freedom to think, feel, act, and believe how I wanted.
My loss of freedom didn’t happen at once. It was like the boiling frog analogy, a slow degradation over two and a half decades. I had no idea I was living without the freedom to be myself until AFTER my husband moved out and I was no longer in that toxic, malignant, invisible prison. And in all honesty, I did not understand what true freedom was until after I healed my trauma from the emotional abuse, and embraced the truth of my Soul.
The Love Bombing Dating Years and Getting Married
During our early dating years and the love bombing phase, I felt free to be myself, and I believed that my husband, then boyfriend, loved me for EXACTLY who I was. He encouraged me to share my feelings, beliefs, and thoughts, and I believed that he respected and valued my feelings, beliefs, and thoughts. In hindsight, I can see now that this was the love bombing phase, and he was only PRETENDING to love me for exactly who I was. Unfortunately, I believed him. Even when my future husband started to correct my grammar or table manners a bit too obsessively, I never felt a loss of freedom in any way – just an annoyance at constantly being corrected. I still felt free to be myself, in my thoughts, beliefs, actions, and emotions.
When I got married at the young age of 22, I felt even more freedom in my life. Not only had I moved out of my parents’ home, but I was now married, living my own adult life. If, after being married, my husband started to restrict my financial freedom, or time with friends, or freedom to come and go as I pleased, I would have been able to see that loss of freedom that was going on in my life. But as I said, he did none of those things.
Wanting to Make My Husband Happy
When I married my husband, I loved him and wanted to make him happy. This is a normal part of a loving relationship. He was interested in English literature, so I wanted to be interested in that as well. He was an atheist, so I decided not to bring up any discussions about my religious beliefs, and I went to church alone. I made these kinds of changes in love, not out of fear. But as the emotional abuse continued and worsened, and my sense of self-esteem and worth dropped, I was more easily manipulated and controlled.
As a result, I started to unknowingly live my life more like how my husband wanted me to live. I was no longer living my life fully, true to myself, as I wanted. With his control and manipulation tactics on top of my low self-esteem and worth, I had become his puppet, and he was the master puppeteer.
The Slow Erosion of My Freedom
Being a covert narcissist, my husband lived in fear of losing control, so it was his priority to control and manipulate me to behave and act in ways he wanted that supported his narrative in life and provided him with narcissistic fuel. There were two main parts to my losing my freedom. The first was eroding my self-esteem and worth, which made it much easier for him to control and manipulate me, and the second was my most basic fear of his narcissistic rage.
Losing My Self-Esteem and Worth
As a young woman, I believed that the sky was the limit for my future. I had healthy self-esteem and felt good about myself. Of course, the compliments from my then-boyfriend, unexpected gifts, and romantic gestures didn’t hurt. And although he relentlessly corrected my grammar and more subtly corrected my table manners, it was balanced out by the previous love bombing behaviors.
When we married, I noticed that the loving attention and sense of emotional connection he had given me during our dating years had dramatically decreased. Being married now, the love-bombing was completed, and my first year of marriage was emotionally difficult for me. Over the next two decades, the ongoing hidden attacks on my self-esteem, such as subtly reminding me often that I had no idea what it meant to work as hard as he did, insinuating that I was lazy, or that my wanting to help a woman’s charity was a waste of time, pulled me down.
The constant, subtle, and not-so-subtle comments, insinuations, and actions hurt and eroded my self-esteem over the years, and I was unaware of the impact it was having on me. The silent treatment, emotional withdrawal, and conditional love only confirmed for me that I was unworthy. I did turn to self-help books to work through my perceived personal issues and shortcomings, but even then, my husband implied that self-help books were a useless endeavor.
My Addiction to Bringing Back the Man I Married
This slow erosion of my self-esteem and worth made it easier for my husband to control me and manipulate me. I had been thoroughly love-bombed. I truly believed that the man I fell in love with and committed my life to in our marriage vows was somewhere in there. Because he randomly surprised me over the years with kind, loving, romantic-like gestures, bringing back the wonderful memories of the love-bombing phase, I was addicted to trying to bring back the man I married.
With my low self-esteem and a desire to be worthy of his love and attention, I found myself unconsciously and consciously hypervigilantly observing his behaviors. That is how he controlled me. Not just with the usual tactics a covert narcissist uses, but my desire to please him, make him happy, and bring back the man I believed I had married. I learned that he liked things a certain way, such as the placement of the dinner placemats on the table, and I set the table as he preferred. He disliked kitchen doors being left open, so I became diligent about closing them immediately after getting what I needed.
These are little things, but over the years, they added up. In my desire to bring back the loving man I had married, I came to believe that my husband’s needs, likes, wants, desires, and so on come first. I wasn’t forced to do this; I fell into this mindset. I had given some of my freedom to think, act, feel, and believe as I wanted, to become more of what he wanted instead. This was essentially how the first decade of my marriage went.
Losing More Freedom to Avoid My Husband’s Narcissistic Rage
The second decade of my marriage was based more on my increasing anxiety and fear, which robbed me of even more of my freedom to be myself. With my deteriorated self-esteem and his control and manipulation tactics, the increasing fear of his narcissistic rage cemented my loss of freedom.
As our marriage progressed, so did the brutality of the devaluation stage. The compliments, kind gestures, and romantic acts became fewer and farther in between. I was no longer motivated in my behavior to make him happy or bring back the man I married. It had become about avoiding his unexpected narcissistic rage. My husband was becoming more grumpy and angry over the years, and I experienced his anger more and more. On many occasions, I was met with his rage very unexpectedly, and I had no idea what I had done to deserve it.
For example, on one occasion I mentioned to him that he may want to change his towel to a new one, because it was smelling a bit moldy, and he lashed out at me yelling “are you saying I smell?” and I could see the rage in his eyes, his body was threateningly in my personal space, and his hands were clenched into tight fists at his side. His rage was so visceral, and I had no idea what I did to deserve this response. I was afraid of what he would do next. Fortunately, I was so shocked and scared that I immediately apologized for saying anything about his towel. I know my body immediately shrank in fear, and I quickly reassured him that that was not what I meant.
By the end of my marriage, I was living every day in fear and anxiety. That is not freedom. It was walking on eggshells every day to prevent upsetting my husband. By that time, his predominant emotion just below the surface was rage. Everything I did, thought, felt, and believed was about preventing his anger from exploding at me. It was exhausting.
At that time in our marriage, the last third of our marriage, the best part of my days was when he was at work. I had that physical freedom from him when he wasn’t home, and I was my happiest. At least during those hours, I did not have to worry about everything I did or said. But, again, it wasn’t real freedom. It was like outside yard time at prison. I was still in a prison.
Beginning to Break Free
The beginning of my breaking free was after our last marriage counseling session. After I found out about his six-month affair, he agreed to marriage counseling. In our last session, I was in tears, sharing my devastation and sadness in our marriage and my uncertainty of whether I wanted to even fix it anymore. Our counselor could see my emotional devastation, and I remember when she turned and asked my husband how he was feeling about what I shared, and he said, “I’m fine.” He acted as if I had been discussing dinner plans. He was completely blank, not bothered by my emotions, and it was in THAT moment that I realized my marriage was over.
Taking Back More of My Freedom
As terrified as I was, I used the next six months to start researching divorce, how to survive financially, and I told my parents and closest friends about the affair and our unsuccessful year of marriage counseling. Even more importantly, I began to take back some of my freedom.
I didn’t realize it then, but when I stopped trying to please him, make him happy, or do what he wanted, I was gaining some freedom to be me. I stopped thinking of myself as married, I stopped wearing my wedding ring, and I stopped acknowledging my husband when he left or returned home. I stopped keeping the house in perfect order like he expected, and I stopped worrying about cooking meals for him. I had hoped that he would comment, or say something about the state of the house, or lack of supper meals, because I so very much wanted to tell him to “divorce me then”, but he never did.
I was ready for more freedom, but I had no idea how to get it or what step to take next. I didn’t want to leave our home for my daughters’ sake, and I had no family living close by to help me out. One particular evening, while in my car in a parking lot, I broke out into tears, as I was feeling heartbroken and trapped. I cried to the Universe, saying that I had no idea what to do or how to leave this broken marriage. It was then that I completely surrendered the “how to get out” to God.
The very next morning, my husband approached me and told me that we needed to discuss our marriage. That was when he told me he felt it was best if he moved out. I could not believe what I was hearing! When he told me his plans to move out, I hid my joy the best that I could. I think he was genuinely shocked at my quick agreement, as I am sure he was expecting me to beg him to stay.
It is now clear that once my husband found out I was seriously looking into divorce, he realized that his “gig” with me was up, and he no longer received narcissistic fuel from me. Little did I realize that was my way to freedom. I no longer provided him with any narcissistic fuel. Over the next few months, he secured new narcissistic fuel with a new girlfriend and was then ready to move out. I was so grateful he wanted to move out.
My Elation on Moving Day
For 24 years of marriage, I slowly, unknowingly lost my freedom to be myself, and then all of a sudden, I was physically free of him. The day my husband moved out, handed me the key, and I shut the front door as his U-Haul truck drove away, my body registered an intense physical sense of freedom. I screamed with joy at the top of my lungs, and I jumped up and down in PURE ELATION! (I was grateful that my daughters were not at home to witness my elation, because their father’s moving out was challenging, especially for my youngest daughter.) I honestly could not contain my joy at that moment!
For the first time in decades, I felt completely free of his physical presence, and I LOVED IT! For me, real freedom began when I was permanently physically out of the presence of my husband, and my understanding of true freedom, to act, think, feel, and believe as I wanted to, grew from that moment on.
I’ll admit it, the house got messier. Kitchen cupboard doors didn’t always get closed – certainly not immediately. The placemats on the table were not aligned perfectly. But the girls and I enjoyed our supper meals again, as they were lighthearted and talkative instead of uncomfortable and silent when my husband was home. I started putting sticky notes up all over my bedroom walls and bathroom mirror of uplifting quotes – something I would have never done when he lived here. This was the physical freedom that I cherished and enjoyed experiencing.
Embracing My Freedom
While I was living with my covert narcissistic husband, I had very minimal freedom. When he left me, I was no longer under his DIRECT AND CONSTANT control, manipulation, and influence. I no longer had to worry about pleasing him or avoiding his anger. That was gone. What was left was a slow discovery of myself again in what I wanted, thought, felt, and believed.
I felt freer to think what I wanted, as he was no longer around to influence me in how I thought. I was freer to express my emotions and to feel whatever I was feeling without his judgments or his devaluations. And, I began the real spiritual journey of discovering my beliefs and my values, without his direct and indirect influence on me, consciously and unconsciously. I had to be out of that invisible prison to begin to truly discover who I was and who I wanted to be.
Discovering My True Authentic Freedom
Now, eight years later, I truly realize that freedom is even more than that. The freedom I feel today is far beyond what I felt months after my husband left. I have discovered a freedom to not just be myself, but a freedom to live as my Soul intended. It is moving beyond the power my husband had over me, and even beyond my personal/ego power, to ultimately finding my Soul’s authentic power to live my life with true freedom.
What is freedom? True freedom is the ability to live freely without fear and embrace all of life with love. Spiritual freedom is an inner liberation in which you are no longer confined by others’ beliefs and opinions about you, your ego, or your fears. This inner liberation enables you to be true to yourself and become aligned with your values, beliefs, and personal choices. You are committed to your authentic truth of who you are. Without the fear of others’ opinions, criticisms, values, or judgements, it is the freedom to chase your dreams and follow your heart’s passions.
That is freedom to me. Freedom isn’t just the freedom to be you, but to go beyond you – to embrace your Soul, and to live your true self, and your inner truth. It was a long journey to get to this point in my life. And for others, it is a much shorter journey, as everyone’s journey is uniquely different. But taking the journey to find and embrace your true, authentic freedom is worth the effort, no matter how long it takes.
In an emotionally abusive, covert narcissistic relationship, the journey begins when you decide enough is enough, and you decide to reclaim your freedom. Are you ready for that first step?