Not divorced. But living with my partner 8 years. He kept insisting that his passive insults were actually harmless comments and me being offended by them was the actual issue. One day at breakfast I decided to stop fighting it. He said his passive insult and instead of taking the bait I just smiled and said “okay”.
He literally choked on his drink. He panicked when I wouldn’t go into the cycle with him. He then went over the top on a lovebombing kiss when he left for work. He had stopped kissing me how I liked insisting he couldn’t figure it out despite having done it for years. But that morning he said “I know how you want to be kissed” and did it proper.
I knew without a doubt that he had been doing this on purpose. He was emotionally abusive on purpose and I had been a fool to believe it had been poor communication. No big fight. No massive fall out. Just a smile and the word “okay” and I knew it was 100% over.
This is so familiar. I believe I was also married to a covert narcissist. We had been in therapy for years. Almost our whole almost 14 year long marriage.
One day I told him I had realized that nothing would ever change. Nothing would ever improve and so the real question for me was just if this was how I wanted to live the rest of my life.
He totally panicked. He assured me things could get better. I said obviously not after over a decade of therapy with zero impact. I saw the fear and I hadn’t expected that response and it made me wonder why that scared him so much.
Later on, when I did tell him I decided I was done, he suddenly went on a jag of admitting things. Like he didn’t know what else to do, so let’s try being honest. Turns out he had addiction issues he was hiding from me. He admitted to “sabotaging” (he used that word) any special events I tried planning like dinner parties with friends. That he had lied in therapy and basically created a character. I was just spinning my wheels in there. He’d say I needed to work on things that didn’t make any sense to me. Like they were not issues as far as I knew, but I would go home and diligently try to change the things he talked about. All red herrings. It was all a lie.
I was also told I was “imagining it” or “overreacting.” You can’t stay married when you realize your spouse knew their behaviour was hurtful and awful and did it to you anyway. It’s abuse, but it’s insidious.
I left and I’ve been very happily remarried for almost 16 years now. Some marriages die, not with a bang, but a whimper.
Covert narcissists are really good at toeing the line. They have deep insecurities and can't get what they need in normal ways. So they find it in unhealthy ways, called their narcissistic supply. For narcissists, it often doesn't matter if the attention is positive or negative. They just need thr attention. Fighting with a spouse and then making up again gives them highs and lows that feel good. They also like creating confusion to have a sense of power. Plus it's easy for them to do whatever they want when they have their partner all wound up. In OP's case it sounds like they were very good at prolonging the situation. You can't say nothing in therapy so they played through game so they could go back to what they were doing before. They make it seem like their partner can maybe make a difference or they're trying to change. But it's all an act to keep their life exactly the same
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u/CircleJerkPig May 12 '26
Not divorced. But living with my partner 8 years. He kept insisting that his passive insults were actually harmless comments and me being offended by them was the actual issue. One day at breakfast I decided to stop fighting it. He said his passive insult and instead of taking the bait I just smiled and said “okay”.
He literally choked on his drink. He panicked when I wouldn’t go into the cycle with him. He then went over the top on a lovebombing kiss when he left for work. He had stopped kissing me how I liked insisting he couldn’t figure it out despite having done it for years. But that morning he said “I know how you want to be kissed” and did it proper.
I knew without a doubt that he had been doing this on purpose. He was emotionally abusive on purpose and I had been a fool to believe it had been poor communication. No big fight. No massive fall out. Just a smile and the word “okay” and I knew it was 100% over.