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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.
Slowly the frustration built and I began to lose my mind. 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. I began to lash out and say and do really drastic things to try to get him to realize where we were headed and how much he was hurting me. He not only refused but continued to berate and attack me for being so “negative and hard on him”. My only saving grace was that we had been in marriage counseling for some time. He ceased going when the pattern of having to admit to screwing up over and over again began to emerge. He also refused to fully read or apply any of the books and skills she gave us. Eventually she became primarily my counselor and he loved it because he thought I needed to be fixed. What she eventually told me was that I needed to learn about narcissism and as I did and we discussed it, I began to really see the pattern of initial idealization the devaluation and the complete lack of empathy. It, of course, did not make it any easier to leave. We separated earlier this year after a physical altercation. We did not speak for months until he showed up on my doorstep with birthday cards for my kids and fell apart. He said things I had dreamed of hearing him say. We had more conversation and then, unfortunately a brief reconciliation. I believed for a while that maybe he had learned what he had taken for granted and wanted to change. This went on for a couple months but in the end anytime the talk would turn to why we were where we were, there was little to know accountability on his part and still no remorse for destroying our family, our marriage and gambling away everything we had. Our last discussion involved my telling him he really disappointed me. His response? “That isn’t my problem, that’s your problem”. I pointed out that it actually turned out to be all of our problems and it destroyed a family. He still doesn’t get it and I am beginning to realize he never will. I still need to get over him and that makes me mad at myself. I am an attractive, intelligent and capable woman but I can’t let go even though I know it is futile. 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. How can I end this? __________ 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. __________ 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. To learn more about the way the brain is behaving in different stressful circumstances, visit page Controlling Emotions.  Dear Friend, it sounds as if you have truly tried everything you possibly can to make your relationship work. Unfortunately your partner was not able to do the same. That is not your fault, please do not blame yourself of the fact that your relationship did not work out. You did the best you could, but as they say, it takes two to tango. Your spouse's cold comments ("that is not my problem, it is yours" etc) show what kind of a personality he has. Your narcissistic spouse refuses to see anything wrong in himself. Your spouse refuses to take the responsibility of the relationship in an adult way. It is impossible to have a balanced, harmonic relationship with a person like that.
I understand that you miss your spouse and feel you still love him strongly. It is a horrible thing to do to let go of the ones we love. It is even harder to admit that our marriage or our relationship was not "perfect" and that it failed. It is very important that you understand and accept the fact that the failure of the relationship was NOT your fault. It was out of your hands. You are not to blame. When you realize that this was the only possible road (separation) you could have chosen in this situation, you will start to recover. Dear Friend, if you had stayed together with your narcissistic spouse, your life would have evolved to a much worse direction. There is no right combination of words you could have said to this man to make it work. Loving and caring behavior should come on its own, not triggered by a carefully chosen and tactically presented words. You deserve so much better than a person like that who cannot give you the respect, love and companionship you deserve. In the end it all boils down to love. Do you believe that a person who is behaving this way truly loves you? Could you behave this way towards the person who you love very strongly in your heart? I believe your answer is "no". Your narcissistic spouse does not love you the same way you love him. This does not mean there is something wrong with you. I believe your narcissistic spouse is simply not capable of putting another person as a priority. He will always think of himself first. He simply does not care about other people enough to take them into account. You would not want to spend the rest of your life with a sad, empty character like that, would you? I know you feel right now that you miss your narcissistic spouse and you wish you could do something, anything to make things work for the two of you. Please read this article of Controlling Emotions to understand what it takes to recover after a tragedy like this. In order to help yourself to heal, you can also visit page Recovery after Cheating. Dear Reader, please leave your comment regarding this story to comment section at the end of this page. You do not need to log in to leave your comment, just write down your thoughts and type in the security code. If you feel this story has touched you and you wish to say something regarding it, please do not hesitate to send a comment. Let's help and support each other. We are all in a similar situation. Warm hug, - Maria If you wish to submit your own story and get feedback and support for your situation or if you wish to contact me for any other reason, click
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