Narcissist

I married a what?

by Crystal Lucas

Discovering that you are married to a narcissist is rather Earth shattering. Especially when you didn’t notice it for a long time.

That’s been my life…

The discovery still keeps rocking my world and I find myself bound in moments of grief so raw. Grief over what I thought we had vs the reality. Grief over the real love I felt and the dreams of the family we built.

Women are often the memory keepers. We build photo albums and capture the moments to be preserved. We tend to hold the memories in our hearts. But when you discover that your married to a narcissist you start to question all of these memories.

Was he always a narcissist, or did it happen gradually? When did you give over the control? When did you allow yourself to be so manipulated?

Some of these question’s wont ever be answered, and others don’t need to be. Finding peace in your heart to accept what is and move forward with healthy boundaries is a must. I still have some days where the tears fall randomly or out of the blue. I still question and I still wonder why. I am allowing myself the time and space to grieve but I am also moving forward.

As a caregiver my natural reaction is to take care of everyone else around me. I spent an entire marriage taking care of his needs above my own. I spent my days doing for everyone else and forgot that I should come first in my world and everyone else secondary. I can’t possibly take care of anyone else properly if I am not taking care of me. Getting divorced has shown me all the ways I failed to take care of me, and all the ways I allowed him to belittle me. All the little ways I wasn’t important in his world are huge red flag warnings for narcissistic behavior.

I chose to believe him and doubt my inner voice. I chose to believe every time he told me that the people he worked with didn’t like how he was affectionate with the women he worked with. How he was a hugger and he wouldn’t ever cheat on me. I chose to believe each time he came home and belittled me for not feeling well and then would go to his room and stay there for hours without having any interaction with his kids or I. I chose to believe that he just was having a hard day, or that it was stressful being a cop and he deserved time to decompress.

What I didn’t do was take stock of the facts and evaluate how these actions were all bad for me. How my health was declining because I wasn’t being supported, loved and cherished. How my stressful day at home with 4 kids several animals and the mounting weight of taking care of all household finances, running my own business, homeschooling 4 kids, planning field trips and trying to do it all on a miniscule budget was effecting every aspect of my life.  I will forever be grateful for the fact that I was able to raise my children. That they are the people they are because of all I did to raise them mostly alone because he never participated. I am now learning to balance my needs with theirs as we all go through this process. My kids have been an amazing support and I for them.

Together we are forging onward to new dreams.

The Journey Begins

by Crystal Lucas

My name is Crystal and I hope that you will join me in the telling of a tale full of woe and joy, as many good stories are. This story is my own Journey through what I thought was an average marriage, and now an average divorce.

I will share my laughter and my tears. As well as perhaps a few funny stories along the way.

In the beginning everything was as it should be, young couple deeply in love get married and start a family… Somewhere along the way we lost sight of who we were individually. I don’t even rightly know where his mask fell away and I started making excuses for his poor treatment of me. His lack of involvement with the kids, or his complete lack of communication on matters that are important in a marriage.

I went along raising my kids and doing the best I could trying to make a failing marriage work.  I ignored many of the red flags of a classic narcissist and attempted to keep life normal for my kids. We went on field trips alone and created co-op’s. The adventures we had alone, my 4 kids and I were amazing! Then I would come home and listen to verbal abuse or worse the silent treatment at night when I would come to bed.  I would internalize that it must be something I did, or worse wasn’t doing.  I see myself as a strong woman who has overcome a lot of adversity in my lifetime, I never saw myself as an abused wife. I didn’t see the mental abuse as abuse. I didn’t notice the gaslighting, or the million little ways he controlled my thinking. We always walked on egg shells trying to make sure to not set off the barrage of negative that would stream from him. The few good days in between all the bad made me believe that we were getting through and surely everyone must have hard times in a marriage.

In public and to friends and coworkers he always talked about how much he loved me, how great I was, how fantastic he thought it was that I stayed home with the kids and homeschooled them. He always talked about me to everyone else, just never to me. He didn’t want me he wanted a paper cut out puppet who did what made him look good.

I remember the first time I discovered his infidelity and I thought I must not be meeting his needs, that’s what we women are taught. If we don’t do enough for the man he will stray. It’s never about him and his insecurities or his lack of integrity, only about us and what we must not be doing for them. The truth is I went above and beyond in every aspect. I ignored my own health, the red flags and the constant decline of different areas of my body until it got to be so bad that I sought advice form my chiropractor. 8 years ago she told me I have every classic symptom of Fibromyalgia.  Fibro is a beast and there are so many different ways people suffer with this disease. I began reading. I tried to understand because at least that would give me an idea of what to expect. It made it worse. I felt bad physically and was emotionally so exhausted that I never had a moment’s peace. He did nothing to help, if I needed a massage he grudgingly would rub for a few minutes and then he would either want sex or roll over and say he was tired and was going to bed. He never attempted to lighten my load of “mom” work, or ease the daily struggle of homeschooling through the pain.

There are days I find myself angry at all I allowed in my life. I am working towards healing, towards forgiving. It’s a journey full of tears as well as new hopes and dreams, one I look forward to sharing with anyone who wants to read it.

I am learning to let go of my fears and embrace my new life. This summer I met my brother and we camped together. I was just starting on a journey that would make me feel like my old self, before fibro set in. I have had a life long fear of heights and I avoided doing things because of it. My brother helped convince me I could climb down this mountain to see this beautiful waterfall, Soco Falls. There were ropes to give you something to hold onto but the ground was slick. I was terrified but did it! I kept going. Each foot in front of the other, slowly until I was at the bottom. Standing there looking around I was in awe. I managed to climb down this mountain to see this beauty. During our camping trip we ventured to two other falls, each beautiful in their own way but none as monumental as this one.  This is my inspiration now, and the first picture on my blog is of this climb. I now know I can do anything, one step at a time and I hope to encourage you to do the same.

 

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

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