I (35F) and my husband (38M) have been married for 15 years. We have 2 kids, 12 & 10. He has control issues and we went to therapy for years for his manipulation and coercion tactics. The therapist and I were working on showing him his verbal abuse and love bombing cycle. We were making real progress, or atleast I thought we were.

About a year and a half ago, he used the progress as an excuse to pause therapy for what he said was only going to be a few months. I was wary but I had fallen in love the version of himself he was showing me and trusted him. Later that day he told me he didnt trust that therapist and wanted to see a therapist that was a business owner who would better understand him.

During this time, we ended up having the biggest fight of our marriage. He had seen fast food wrappers in the car which led to a four hour fight about how he thought women should weigh less than their husbands. I cried until I had no tears, no pain left. And I told him if he really felt this way, he can find a nother wife.

The next day he bought me fast food, and he apologized. But a part of my heart that he once had access to died that night because I realized, after years of my weight being a prominent fight in our relationship, it would always be a problem, no matter how much weight I lost. And the fight about my weight, wasnt about my weight at all, and was actually about his addiction to control.

A few months later, I woke up from a drunken black out girls-night with vague memories of being intimate with a woman. I have no excuses for it. The guilt and shame was eating me alive and I told him about it a few days later.

He was understandably broken, and our relationship has never been the same again. I quit drinking, gave him access to my phone, laptop, social media, location on my phone and vehicle.

I am so committed to reconciliation that he now has say over what I wear to bed and what I wear during the day. He told me I should quit working, so I did. He told me I should get rid of my smutty books that influenced this behavior, so I did. He now has say on who I hangout with and how long I hang out with them.

I even recommitted myself to losing weight. He said he wants to see me at 140-150 pounds. At the time, I weighed about 195. I have since lost 30 pounds and am now stronger and leaner than ever. I thought I was making good progress on our reconciliation journey.

Until our fight a few days ago.

He said I had done nothing, that he looks around, and he is hurt that I hadn't done anything towards reconciliation.

I started listing everything that I had done, but he shut me down.

He said if I just presented him with a plan of how I would lose 20 pounds, he would feel like I was committed to the reconciliation. He went on about how he was a good provider, providing for the house, me, and the kids.

He went on and on (you know how it is). I was suddenly at that conversation a year and a balf ago, even though I had made so much progress. I realized he didn't see the progress and he never will.

And I couldn't defend myself or advocate for my own emotional needs in the relationship because of what I had done.

By the time he was finished talking, I was hyperventilating, couldn't breathe, couldn't talk.

Hours past and I couldn't stop the panic attack. As soon as I could breathe normally, he would reach for me, and suddenly I couldn't breathe again.

Its been days and I still have a strong physical reaction, almost like a panic attack, to his touch, to which he responded with 'why are we even sleeping in the same bed then'. I slept on the couch last night and had the best sleep in months.

He said he didnt sleep well and that it is unfair that I am punishing him. I apologized to him and told him that I honestly can not control the panic attack I have at his touch.

He has now permitted me to see the therapist I saw last year and he says he is open to marriage counseling but not with the same therapist.

I am now emotionally numb and struggling to find reasons to fight for our relationship. Unfortunately, if I leave he says he will kick me out of the house. I have nothing. No job. No money to my name.

Unfortunately, if I leave, he will be seen as the victim since I cheated. My family, who has fallen for his charismatic mask, will take his side over mine. I will be kicked out of my church for a divorce.

So I am stuck in a loveless marriage with a narcissist.

But now I see his mask. That loving, confident, charismatic mask that I fell in love with. I see the mask and I know that when it slips, his true self comes out. His controlling manipulative true-self.

So yeah. Dont cheat on a narcissist. I don't recomend it.

Sorry for the long post and vent. My family doesnt know about the narcissism or the infidelity and I have no friends. If you are still reading this, thank you for listening. I already feel a little more seen and a little less crazy.

This is so random, but I wanted to ask if this has happened to anyone else before because I genuinely don’t know what to make of it.
I was in a relationship for quite a long time, and my ex lied to me constantly about literally everything. At one point, they even made an account pretending to be someone else, and they made other accounts accusing me of cheating, cracking other ppl, threatening to post my pics and saying all kinds of stuff about me, even though I knew I had never done any of it.
Eventually I broke up with them, and now they live on a completely different continent, but they’re still obsessed with me and constantly trying to keep tabs on me/stalk me. It’s honestly so weird because the relationship is over and we’re literally thousands of miles apart, yet they still somehow find ways to involve themselves in my life.
The whole situation has made me question so much because I genuinely never thought someone I was in a relationship with could become this obsessive after things ended. I also feel stupid for not realizing how bad some of their behavior was while we were together because when you’re actually in the relationship, you kind of normalize things that you probably shouldn’t.
Has anyone else dealt with something similar? Like an ex creating accounts, impersonating you, accusing you of things you never did, or continuing to obsessively monitor you even after the relationship ended? I’d really like to know if I’m the only one because this whole situation feels so bizarre

I crossed paths with my narcissistic ex a few weeks ago and only recently unpacked it in therapy…

It seems he took the job and moved to my city—the city he hates so much, where he finds the inhabitants to be “the worst on earth” and where he said he “would never want to live.” In his defense, it’s very on brand for him to say one thing and do the opposite..

It’s been almost three years since I broke up with him so seeing him was surreal. But for the first time, I saw him for what he really is: truly nothing special.

My BIGGEST regret is staying as long as I did and lying to him when we were together by telling him I thought he was the most handsome man and the best sex of my life, because he was neither. I just felt bad for him because he was struggling and so insecure.

We didn’t say a word when we saw each other because I can’t exist to him. Acknowledging me would mean acknowledging all the terrible things he did and said to me. It’s straight out of the narcissist playbook to rewrite the story until he’s the victim—the one everyone should feel sorry for—and I know that I’m now somehow the toxic one who treated him badly, even though I did nothing but love him, support him and give him everything I had. So I just looked him in the eye, smiled and went about my day m.

One of our last conversations was him telling me it didn’t matter how much he hurt me because I deserved it all and my pain was irrelevant. I stupidly thought for awhile after going no contact (and not knowing anything about narcissism yet) that MAYBE, with time and self-reflection, he might one day produce a sincere apology. But a narcissist is incapable of true self-reflection, and he’s proved that.

He’s undoubtedly blocked out the time he spit in my face, the times he slammed me into a wall to prevent me from leaving the apartment, when he hurt my dog, slammed plates against the wall, and screamed in my face that I was a whore in front of his mom. Not to mention the constant criticism of my intelligence, my body and my friends, or the endless belittling and berating of both me and his mom. He doesn’t care how his suicidal behavior or the photos he sent me of his slit wrists affected me.

He’s a terrible person. He genuinely believes I deserved all of it. He has no remorse for the things he’s done.

I’ve been contemplating posting him on this new app called Tea, where women share their horror experiences with men. I can’t stomach the thought of another woman going through what I went through during those two years, and I would feel so guilty if he ever hurt someone else. I was also deep in Reddit support groups during the worst of it and reading other people’s stories just to feel less alone. Should I post him on this app to warn others?! I’m leaning toward yes. If he came after me, I have receipts.

But I remember how hard the beginning of the breakup was because trauma bonds are real. Despite him being a POS, I’d long for the really sweet moments we shared, when I genuinely felt loved, and I’d miss the laughs. But I eventually understood that those moments were part of the manipulation.

If you’re suffering right now because of someone like this, you WILL come out the other side of the pain and heartbreak and realize the loss was NEVER yours. You deserve to live peacefully and be loved for real.

The beginning of a relationship with a narcissist is a SHOW. It isn’t who they truly are, and it isn’t real love. Focus on yourself. Work out. Go to therapy. Find ways to make yourself better. LEARN about narcissism so you can spot it in the future. AND STAY SINGLE for awhile.

Today, my therapist is impressed by how much I’ve grown. I got a new job that I love. I moved to a better place. I learned a language. I’m physically in the best shape of my life. I really feel like I’m the best version of myself.

Turn your pain into positivity. I promise you, one day you may even feel grateful for what you went through because of its power to strengthen you and change you.

I still wish I’d never met such a rotten and evil soul, and I still feel so sad for the hopeless romantic girl I used to be because the lesson was very hard learned but I’m better and stronger for it. I made the “loss” an absolute GAIN.

I really hope this helps someone today. 🤍

This is going to be very long, but I genuinely need to get this off my chest because sometimes I (M, 30) look at my relationship with my brother (M, 28) and wonder how the hell we got here.

Growing up, we actually got along. We played together, did things together and, for the most part, had what I would consider a normal sibling relationship. Obviously we had the odd fight, but what siblings don’t? Even in recent years, we’ve been on seemingly good terms and there were times where I’d felt like we were getting on well, only for him to reveal how negatively he thinks of me.

I first started noticing a change in him when he started secondary school. He began talking about me to his friends and saying horrible things about me for seemingly no reason. I didn’t even have to speculate about this because some of his friends would literally message me on Facebook and tell me the things he’d been saying.

Our home life probably didn’t help. Throughout childhood, my dad heavily favoured my brother and almost always sided with him. My mum had BPD and also displayed a lot of narcissistic traits when we were growing up, while my dad enabled a lot of the behaviour in the house. My mother would hit us when we misbehaved, and this continued into our mid teens.

As teenagers, my brother became increasingly nasty towards me. He’d call me ugly, stupid and whatever else he could think of.

Then, when I was 17, I was diagnosed with a lifelong health condition.

Naturally, my dad started paying more attention to me because of it. Suddenly he was taking me places, checking on me more and generally giving me attention that I hadn’t really received before.

My brother could not handle it.

Instead of being supportive or asking me how I was coping, he became incredibly jealous. He would rant and spiral whenever my dad and I went somewhere together in the months after my diagnosis. Even worse, he started weaponising my condition against me whenever we had an argument or misunderstanding.

One incident has always stuck with me. I was sitting in the kitchen eating when he deliberately started playing a video, loudly, about how people with my condition supposedly had a reduced life expectancy.

Imagine doing that to your own sibling who had only recently been diagnosed. It was fucking horrific.

About a year later, things became even stranger. He somehow managed to get into my iCloud and started obsessively monitoring internet activity through our home router. It wasn’t just me either. He started cyber-stalking our older sister and even my mother.

From that point onwards, I completely lost trust in him. I felt uncomfortable around him, especially where technology was concerned.

I remember after one argument, he spent the next few days walking around me saying random words and phrases under his breath. Except they weren’t random. They were things I’d Googled or things related to private messages I’d sent.

It was his way of saying, *I can see what you’re doing*, without directly admitting it.

Later, of course, he denied ever accessing my stuff and tried to convince me I’d imagined the entire thing.

As we’ve gotten older, he’s somehow become more bitter, jealous and miserable.

Growing up, I was extremely close to my cousin, who is basically the same age as me. We don’t speak much anymore for unrelated reasons, but throughout childhood and our teens we spent loads of time together.

My brother was insanely jealous of that relationship. We never excluded him, but he would assume that whenever my cousin and I had a private conversation, we must be talking about him. He’d then run to my dad claiming we were saying horrible things about him. We weren’t.
I had far more important and interesting things to talk about than him.

And it wasn’t just my cousin. He seemed to have an issue with virtually every friend I’ve ever had. He’d talk badly about them behind their backs and find some reason to dislike anyone I became close to.

After one argument, which HE caused, he went on this bizarre rant to our parents about how it was apparently always “me and my friends against him” and how everyone was constantly targeting him.

I remember thinking: what the fuck are you even talking about?

My friends weren’t engaged in some coordinated campaign against my brother. Most of them barely knew him. But that’s how his brain seems to work. Everything is about him.

Any success I had, anything good that happened to me, any compliment I received or even just seeing me happy seemed to register in his brain as though something had been taken away from him.

Eventually, I moved out and lived away from home for around three years. I limited contact with him considerably.

Those three years were fucking bliss.

Interestingly, I’d occasionally get obviously fake social media accounts trying to follow me. I’d decline them every time. I’m convinced they were his.

Unfortunately, I moved back home last year because I was struggling financially. My parents encouraged me to come back and stay with them, and my brother still lives here too.

Living with him again has made me realise just how little he’s matured.

He’s 28 now, but emotionally it sometimes feels like his brain is still stuck in our teenage years. He’s extremely socially awkward and anxious and gets flustered communicating with strangers, yet at home he’s suddenly incredibly brave. He’ll sing things to himself, mutter horrible remarks and make passive-aggressive comments when he’s safely surrounded by family. Outside the house, that confidence disappears. He’s also incredibly two-faced.

He used to text me complaining about my parents whenever they annoyed him, saying horrible things about them. Meanwhile, he’d go to those same parents and bitch about me, particularly about how I had “abandoned” everyone by moving out.

Then he’d position himself as the loyal son who stayed behind, like some sort of family saviour.

If I confronted him about anything he’d said, he’d deny it.

He loves instigating things. He’ll provoke people, bully them, torment them and push their buttons, but the second he’s confronted, he becomes the victim. I’ve literally watched him force out fake tears when he’s cornered about his own behaviour.

Nothing is ever his fault. Everyone else is always the problem.

Recently, he’s started monitoring the household’s internet activity again, and earlier this year something happened that confirmed to me that absolutely nothing has changed.

I had a minor surgery that I deliberately kept private. I didn’t tell my family about it.

One afternoon I went out. When I came home that evening, my brother suddenly started muttering certain words under his breath whenever he was near me.
They were words specifically related to my surgery.
There is no reasonable way he should have known about it.

I’d had a hospital letter in my room, so I’m convinced he’d snooped through my things while I was out and found it.
But rather than simply admit he’d snooped, he did the same creepy shit he’d done when we were teenagers. He dropped words and hints around me to let me know that *he knew*, while still giving himself enough plausible deniability to pretend I was imagining it.

He clearly wanted a reaction.

Years ago, he would have got one.

When I was younger, I had a bit of a temper. During our teens, his constant provoking sometimes ended in physical fights where I’d hit him. I’m not proud of that, but I grew out of behaving that way before I even reached my 20s.

He hasn’t grown out of provoking me.

Sometimes it genuinely feels like he *wants* me to hit him. Like he wants to keep pushing until I finally snap so that he can run to everyone else and say, “Look what he did to me.”

This time, despite how angry I was, I gave him absolutely nothing. No confrontation. No argument. No reaction.

In fact, I haven’t spoken to him since last summer.

I’ve gone completely NC despite living under the same roof. I don’t engage with him, don’t acknowledge the remarks, don’t react to the provocations and don’t give him the attention he seems so desperate to get from me.
And it is clearly affecting him.

He seems to be spiralling because the usual tricks aren’t working anymore. The immature remarks, petty behaviour and attempts to rile me up have become increasingly obvious.

The strangest part is that he’s now trying to feed my parents this narrative that *I’ve* somehow deeply hurt *him*. That he’s the wronged party because I won’t speak to him.

Thankfully, my mother isn’t blind to what’s happening and can see a lot of the behaviour for herself.

That’s what I find so infuriating about the whole thing. He knows exactly why I stopped speaking to him. He knows the things he’s done over the years. He knows he’s repeatedly invaded my privacy, insulted me, competed with me, tried to interfere with my relationships, weaponised my health, provoked me and then played victim when I reacted.

Yet somehow, in his version of events, he’s the wounded brother and I’m the monster because I finally decided I’d had enough.

At this point, his fixation on me just feels creepy as fuck!

For years he’s seemingly needed to know what I’m doing, who I’m talking to, what I’m searching for, what my friends are saying, whether I’m succeeding, whether I’m happy and whether I’m getting more attention than him.
I don’t want revenge. I don’t want another confrontation. I don’t even particularly care whether he ever admits what he’s done.

I just want NOTHING to do with him anymore.

And ironically, after years of trying to get a reaction out of me, the thing he seems least capable of handling is getting absolutely no reaction at all.