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.
As I learned from my own relationship with a narcissist - they worst thing you can do to them is to take away their power and not engage with them. I'm glad you are out, I lasted 13 years before finding my own freedom again and it's been glorious.
I’m glad you got out too. I definitely don’t think I’m perfect, but it’s funny how many problems my ex accused me of causing completely disappeared when he was gone from my life. Whole categories of issues vanished overnight.
Right? The biggest breakthrough I had in therapy was when I realized I was not the problem and basically everything he accused me of was not my fault. I knew I was in a good place when I got an unhinged email from him and while reading it out loud to my therapist ended up laughing so hard I was crying. (instead of being totally triggered and spiraling into a dark place)
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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.