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Dear Maria,
When I met my narcissist I was in a terrible marriage and going to real estate school to start making money and get out. We became good friends in school which eventually led to an affair (he was married also). He had been with his wife for 15 years an assured me he had never cheated on her before and that he really loved me. We each eventually divorced our spouses and starting living together with our four children (two of his and two of mine) as a family.
We also ran a successful real estate business together for years. After a while I noticed an increase in the amount of criticism for everything I did or didn’t do. The first few years of our relationship I was brilliant, beautiful and a model for parenting he respected even to the point of trying to get his ex wife to be more like me with regards to the kids. I was amazing! As the real estate market slowed I was criticized for the work I was doing and told what I did to contribute was not that hard. He began to take things for granted like my packing all the kids lunches in the morning, cleaning house, doing laundry, grocery shopping and cooking. All of a sudden, I didn’t do any of these things well. I also kept a pretty busy social calendar for us and he slowly started to either withdraw or he would not be home when he said he was going to be home; often hours late and defensive when I wanted to know where he had been.
He began hiding liquor bottles in the house and with each new offense, instead of an apology, he would viciously attack me. The first time I found a bottle hidden in the paper shredder, his response was, “Nice. The one time I do something like that and you have to find it and jump all over me”. In another month, I would find another that he would then say was older than the first. There was never a sincere apology and never any remorse for how alarming this was to me. Just plenty of justification and at one point his drinking became my fault because I was so hard on him about…….his drinking! Crazy! I discovered that he had driven with his girls across town drinking Jagermeister and his initial response? “It wasn’t like it was enough to get me drunk anyway”. It was even my fault because I had kicked him out of the house that week and he was upset.
He also had a spending problem and could not stop spending on golf, expensive clothes for himself, new phones and whatever else he deemed something he “needed”. We were slowly going bankrupt and had to ask his parents for help. I begged them to send the money directly to the mortgage company but they refused and continued to send it to him to spend even though I was emailing them credit card and bank statements showing what the money was being spent on. The final straw came when he informed me we could not make the following months mortgage payment, he was going to have to suspend child support to his ex wife and he would have to tell her he couldn’t pay for their private school anymore. Later that night, he used the last of the money in our account to purchase a big screen t.v. for his office online. I was, of course, evil and manipulative for insisting he send it back. I was also much maligned for telling anyone about it. (Click the link below to read the rest of this story).
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The goal of this website is to give support to people who are facing problems in their relationship related to cheating, abuse and narcissism. I am living in Europe and English is not my native language, I wish you will excuse me if I make some grammatical errors. I have a background in neuroscience and behavioral sciences and I am currently doing brain research related to these topics in university in my home country. I decided to write in English because I wish to reach as many people as I can around the world. If you wish to read more about me, please visit page Site Overview.
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Dear Friend,
Thank you for your email. I am sorry to hear what you have been going through. You did what so many of us have done, you gave your narcissistic spouse one more chance and got back together, hoping things would be different. Please do not blame yourself for doing it. You were in love and love can make us blind to facts. In this case the fact seems to be that this man cannot make you happy. You have given him so much time to prove that he can change and be a person worthy of your love and respect. It seems he has not done that. On the contrary, his cold behavior towards you shows he is not capable of feeling empathy toward you.
 You wrote that your narcissistic ex said “That isn’t my problem, that’s your problem” when you tried to make him see the core of the problems and tried to discuss the matter. If a couple is not able to discuss about the problems in a constructive manner that is very bad news for the relationship. There is no such thing as a perfect relationship. As time goes by, problems may occur and what matters is the way the spouses handle the problematic situation. A narcissistic person is often unable to see any fault in himself or herself and so it is very difficult to try to have a decent conversation with such a person. A narcissist is interpreting all criticism as vicious attacks against him or her and is often responding with an extremely unpleasant reaction called narcissistic rage. If a narcissist ends up to this state, it is impossible to reason with him or her.
You also wrote: "There is something in me that believes if I just find the right combination of words or analogies I can help him see what he is doing". This belief is the reason why so many of us end up staying with a narcissistic person for too long, or end up going back to a narcissist after the separation. We want to experience again the warm, thrilling feeling we had in the beginning of the relationship and we refuse to believe it is impossible to return to the past. What one must realize is that what counts is this moment. So many things you wrote in your email indicate that your spouse is incapable of caring for you as much as you care for him. He does not seem to be able to take your feelings into account. If you spend years and years with a person like that, your self-esteem and a general level of happiness start to go down.
If one stays with a narcissistic person for too long, there is a great risk of developing a chronic depression. If that happens, a complete recovery and healing will take years (but even in that case it is still possible to heal. As long as there is life, there is hope!). I wish that all those who are reading this would consider their situation carefully and estimate how close they are to that thin line between blue feeling and depression. One might be depressed if one is unable to feel a genuine joy and pleasure and if one is having a constant tired and blue feeling accompanied with a lack of energy. If one cannot remember when was the last time one felt happy, that is a very alarming sign and it should not be ignored.
As I have mentioned elsewhere on this website, the brain has an incredible ability to adjust, reshape the neuronal networks and to heal. Even if your situation is really bad, you are able to turn the course of your life. (Click the link below to read the rest of this reply).
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To learn more about the way the brain is behaving in different stressful circumstances, visit page Controlling Emotions. In order to help yourself to heal, you can also visit page Recovery after Cheating.
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Warm hug,
- Maria
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Stories - Narcissism 
The blame for everything, I worked full time, so much to do to please him, yet so perfect in the first place. When I was exhausted and my sons sick begged for his help, it never came,no compassion, complete withdrawal.
the coldness!When the debt got too bad he left 8 weeks ago! He has continued to blame me for everything with kisses on the end! 'I could not understand how someone who professed to love me so much could now treat me like dirt. I would cry and beg and plead for him to put the family first, work with me and love me. With each show of weakness, his contempt for me grew and I could see and feel it'.Me too!!