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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.

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Dear Friend,

Thank you for your email. I am so sorry to hear you have suffered for so long with this kind of a person. It is very good that you have gotten an actual diagnosis: A professional who has met your husband has told you he is a narcissist. You no longer need to wonder what is wrong with your husband, you actually have a name for the problem. This makes things a bit easier for you when you no longer need to blame yourself of your dysfunctional marriage. There was nothing you could have done better, the problems were created by your husband's behavior. Please read this article if you have not done so already: How to Leave a Narcissist - Advice and Support.

You said it is so hard for you to understand how someone can be totally unable to experience empathy. I felt exactly the same way when I was together with my narcissistic partner. It is so hard for those of us who are capable of empathy to understand how someone can be so cold and uncaring towards others, and especially towards those he or she claims to love.

It is hard for us to understand what is going on in the head of this kind of a person, because empathy and caring for others around us is something that comes so naturally to us. One way we can begin to understand what is going on in the head of a narcissistic person is if we imagine someone who is color blind and hence unable to see color X. How could we describe color X to someone who has never seen it? It is very difficult.

However, there is more than this in the case of a narcissistic person. If you are a color blind person who is unable to see color X, and someone tells you it is not a good idea to use color X to paint the walls of your home because the color is very radical and might make some of your friends who visit you to feel uncomfortable in your home. if you are a smart person, you should be able to understand it is not a good idea to use color X to paint your walls. In similar fashion, even if you are unable to experience empathy, if your spouse tells you he or she is feeling very bad if you behave in a certain way, you should be able to alter your behavior in such a way that the spouse does not have to feel bad. Why narcissistic people cannot do this? Unfortunately the inability to feel empathy is often accompanied with another harmful behavioral trait: Selfishness.

Narcissists are often quite selfish and self-centered people. In a way this makes sense: Empathy serves as a "break" that is preventing us from hurting people around us with our behavior. If you are unable to experience empathy, this kind of a "break" does not exist and hence it is easier to hurt others. Unfortunately evolution has favored those individuals who have been selfish. For example, during famine selfish individuals do not share their food with others (they may even steal the food of others), instead of helping others they only care for themselves and due to this they do not get weakened by the famine as much as those individuals who are less selfish and share their food with others. In this case selfishness provides selfish people better chances of survival during difficult times. This kind of natural selection has resulted in increase of the genetic combinations in population that promote selfish behavior.

We all have a certain amount of healthy selfishness in us. However, most of us also have the ability to experience empathy. Empathy serves as a "break" that prevents us from being too selfish. In narcissistic people, this "break" either does not exist or has greatly weakened when compared to normal people.

Dear Friend, You have been married to your husband for almost 40 years, practically your whole adult life. Your husband has become an integrated part of your life and the thought of him suddenly disappearing from your life is very painful, comparable to the death of a close family member. Even if someone is being cruel to us, that does not prevent emotional attachment from developing if that person in the same time is the closest adult companion in our lives, as our spouse often is.

There is a condition called Stockholm Syndrome, in which a captive becomes emotionally attached to the capturer despite the cruelty of the capturer. This happens because the capturer is the only contact the captured has, and we humans have an in-built tendency to bond with people around us (without this tendency to bond, it would be impossible for any kind of a social structure to form).

Dear Friend, I am not saying that you might have Stocholm Syndrome, I told you this example just to help you to understand why you find it so hard to let go of your narcissistic husband. You have bonded very strongly with your husband, and even though he has done horrible things and betrayed your trust in so many ways, you still feel attached to him. Your feeling is very natural. If you did not feel the way you do, there would be something wrong with you.

You now have two choices. You can either remain with your husband, or you can leave. I wish to be fully honest with you: It will be hard to leave. You said yourself you still love your husband. That feeling of love is most likely caused by the emotional attachment and routine. If you think of the behavior of your husband, could you imagine loving someone who behaves like that if it was not this particular person (your husband)? I think not. You are not in love with this man, you are in love with the image you created of him in the beginning of your relationship. Your husband has been in your life for so long that it has become self-evident for you that he is there. You do not truly love this dishonest, cheating person who clearly does not care for your feelings. Instead you are emotionally attached to the routines of your life, and your husband has been part of those routines for the last several decades. It is important not to mistake the feelings of emotional attachment for love.

If you allow yourself to think you truly love this man, you can use your love as a "justification" to stay with him. Many people feel there is some kind of a glory in sacrificing their life for someone they love. But to sacrifice one's life for a narcissist is merely tragic, far from glorious. Dear Friend, I wish you will not allow your husband to influence your life in a negative way any longer. You are the one who makes the decisions. Do not let your husband control you. You can choose your own destiny.

It will help you to break free when you know that the emotional pain you feel due to separation is very natural and that it will pass sooner than you now think. I have never heard of a person who has managed to break emotionally free from a narcissist and afterward wishes he or she would not have left the narcissist. On the contrary, these people are often amazed that they were able to stand mistreatment for so long and say that they would never return to that suffering again.

Dear Friend, if you wish to leave, do not be afraid to do so. You are much stronger than you think. You do not deserve dishonesty, cheating and mistreatment. You deserve to be happy. To read more about how to break free from a relationship with a narcissist, see page How to Leave a Narcissist - Advice and Support.

Please write to me anytime you feel like it. You are not alone.

Warm hug,

Maria