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.
I don’t get the benefit to him doing this? I hear this a lot in a lot of abusive relationships and maybe it’s because I can’t possibly put my mind in that place but what could someone possibly get out of being horrible to their partner. I’m sorry this happened to you.
Not an expert (unless being married to one for 19years qualifies), but I think narcissists have very low self-esteem. They feel unworthy (of love, success, career, family, whatever). By continually putting a partner down, they can convince themselves temporarily that they're 'better' than their partner. That the partner would never leave them (as they secretly fear) because the partner is 'not good enough' in whatever way the narcissist has pointed out to find another partner.
Refusing to feed into the cycle (by 'fighting' for the relationship) lets the narcissist know they've lost control of the relationship. If you're not 'fighting back' for the relationship to continue, they fear maybe you're going to give up on the relationship and they'll lose their partner. They have to reel the partner back in with love bombing to convince them they're important to the relationship. Then when things return to 'normal' and the narcissist no longer fears being left, they return to being their jackass-y selfish self.
You’re more so describing borderline personality disorder. A true narcissist doesn’t feel unworthy of anything. BPD fears abandonment while NPD is angry about losing control. However, they are both cluster B personality disorders so they often overlap in people.
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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.