Why You Struggle To Move On From The Narcissist

Everyone tells you the narcissist should not be the person you should focus on when healing from their abuse. It’s you that you should be focusing on.

In the beginning, I was so focused on what he did to me. I was bruised emotionally from the love bombing. I struggled to accept that this person who had given me all these gifts could not feel empathy. I was struggling to process that the “I love you” was the phrase he used to pass time to begin controlling me. The late nights on the phone were used as fuel to isolate me from others. The things he complimented me on soon turned into what he least liked about me. The lovely written cards meant nothing.

Who knew that the horror stories of how he treated women in the past would soon be the same way he treated me? Who knew that the stories he told me of the things that women did to him in the past were a reaction to the actions or the damage of his gaslighting?

I remember jokingly saying to him, “Stop telling me stories with cliffhangers,” not knowing that cliffhangers were a narcissist tactic. He wanted me to continue to guess and create my assumptions and view him as the victim. 

I later found that the true story was nowhere near his version of events. Indeed, he was the villain and not the victim. And this story or chapter in his life would place me as his next prey. I soon found that the love of my life was nowhere near as innocent as he portrayed.

The times he told me it was love at first sight were untrue. There were times he told me he had never found a woman like me. Truth be told, he probably found many like me—loving, caring, pretty, and with big dreams. His plot was to lower their self-esteem and make their dreams his own so that he could profit from them. I would never know something that I thought could be so beautiful would turn into a nightmare. A nightmare that would leave me picking up the pieces of my broken fairytale.

You see, I craved him. I craved his touch. I loved him oh-so much. But truth be told, when a narcissist has damaged you, if you focus on things like this, you will never heal.

Unfortunately, that is another tactic. This tactic will keep you confused. You will continue to question should I have left. Maybe I should go back? Maybe it is not as bad as I made it seem? 

You have to get tired of this roller coaster.

The abuse from my narcissist has forced me to look deeper within. Now I ask myself, “How did this ever happen to me? How did I fall prey?”

Because of the cognitive dissonance I have experienced 

I know now that I have grown accustomed to his ups and downs. My life was full of childhood trauma. 

His behavior appeared quite normal and quite acceptable. And I indeed felt if I tried to fix the problem, I could fix him, that in return, that would fix us, that indeed deep down, I wanted our love to fix me. 

Because of my childhood trauma, I realized I was and am lonely. I crave reassurance, affirmation, and high self-esteem. His phone calls and constant attention substituted that for me. I want to be loved and to be appreciated. I wanted to be validated, and his gifts and the overflow of compliments temporarily did that for me. I was isolated and didn’t know who or what I was for so long. I didn’t realize the little power I had and my self-esteem. He was sulking it all in for himself. So my mission today is not to focus on his loss but to focus on me.