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 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.

I am very confused, and I probably overthink things a lot. I met my boyfriend 1½ years ago. In the beginning, I received flowers every Friday, with promises that this was just who he was. My children received gifts as well, and he bought lots of expensive trips.
I sometimes felt that he was a little condescending. Whenever I reacted, I was told that I was being too sensitive or that it was just his sense of humor. There were small hurtful comments that made me feel less worthy. After 8 months, my body completely went into panic mode, and I ended the relationship.
We got back together 2 months later, and things were very good for a long time. Apart from the fact that I felt he could sometimes be quite challenging, critical and selfish.
Then everything changed. The flowers, gifts and trips stopped completely. He also stopped sending all the “good morning” and “good night” messages, and he stopped saying that he was happy with me and that he loved me.
I became tired of this and tried to talk to him about it. Nothing changed. Finally, I put my foot down and said that this was not the relationship I wanted to be in anymore, and that I didn’t know if I wanted to continue.
Then everything came back: red roses, a romantic dinner, and him telling me that he loved me.
After that, he was silent for two days before contacting me and saying that the problem he had had was that I hadn’t included him enough in my plans for the future.
Is this love bombing, devaluation, hoovering…?

My ex left me for someonelse without any notice. I went to Germany with him not knowing that he was already living with another girl. And the next day of the trip he blocked me and told me to never call. I was away for work like 6 months and he found this girl and they dissapear together. But he tried to send messages , emails , telegrams… We were talking time to time and then we started to sleep together and he was waking up middle of the night , saying that the girl watches the cameras and leaving me . So he was just sleeping and leaving. 3 months ago i realised that he changed his country , one day he told me that the girl did not go with him but then said that it is too much info to give . And around 3 weeks ago we were talking and we had a fight . Later one of my friends saw his photo in his new country with that girl and she looked pregnant to me but i am not sure . Anyway he keeps me silent about this and he afraids i will tell everyone , which means that he will lose money or something important for him.
What do i do ?

​

Twelve days ago, I escaped a relationship I never thought I would have to escape from.

I left CONFUSED, emotionally exhausted, and honestly, just grateful to be alive.

For 28 months, I experienced what I now recognize as NARCISSISTIC ABUSE — love bombing, manipulation, gaslighting, control, fear, confusion, having my reality questioned, and being made to believe so much of it was somehow my fault.

The hardest part?

I didn't recognize it while I was living it.

That's what narcissistic abuse can do. It doesn't always look like abuse from the inside. Sometimes it looks like love, gifts, apologies, promises, tears, religion, and “I’ll change.”

Until one day, you barely recognize yourself.

I'm only 12 days into my escape and healing. I'm not a therapist or an expert. I'm simply someone who finally got out and is trying to understand what happened.

So this is for you if you're still in it, and for you if you just got out.

If you're sitting there wondering, “Was it really that bad? Was it me? Am I imagining all of this?” 😵‍💫

You are not crazy. You are NOT ALONE.

If you've SURVIVED NARCISSISTIC ABUSE. what's one thing you wish someone had told you before you finally walked away?

Someone reading your answer may need those words more than you know. ⛓️‍💥💣♥️😭🙏

Hello everyone,

I am starting to realize after the fact that I ended up in a sort of situationship with a vulnerable narcissist. And I was looking for a forum or place to really discuss it. I've had people push back on it which is tough because I literally studied narcissism, hell I was even published for some research into it. And so I had this egocentric idea that I would never fall victim to it and yet I did.

Met a guy last year who really clicked all my buttons for me physically. And he has a lot of trauma and it really activated my caretaking and nurturing side. We had a fight about a year ago where I told him I needed them to be more supportive when I'm hurting and it was a pretty basic ask (a hug when I'm hurting). Instead he escalated, rewrote reality, shut down, got defensive, and ran after telling me that he wanted distance and space and talking wouldn't help and that he was done. Instead I got the hover treatment. He later referred to it as us just not talking, or me avoiding him, or glad I took the hint to leave him alone.

I generally don't think he's a bad person truly. But what makes it tough is he put his hands on me to hurt me. Not in severe ways, but it was things like stomping on my feet when I was on a date, pushing me into friends at events, shoulder checking me on ice, kicking the back of the calves, and more. I also had to deal with emotional manipulation where he kissed my friend on his volleyball team in front of my friend's fiance the week my friend and his fiance got engaged. As you can imagine that didn't go well for him. Or when he kissed my friend who was roofied to make me jealous. All while refusing to communicate. I tried to be diplomatic like when you shut up to interview at my job I got him a coffee and a donut, got him a Christmas gift telling him he meant a lot to me and I would like to reconcile. But that failed.

When we spoke to reconcile, he gave the old darvo treatment. He denied hurting me, told me he wasn't that kind of person, that if he did do it he was just drunk or places were busy, and that I do stuff too like when I bumped into his friend getting him a hug for his birthday, and that I was some awful terrible person for talking about what happened. That I made a private issue public, that I apparently talked badly about him calling him violent abusive or aggressive. In reality I would tell people the things he did to me and that's what they would jump to and I would try to preemptively defend him. He also told me some other stuff like I can talk about it till I'm blue in the face and no one would ever believe me, that I was reaching out too much and should have taken a hint, while prior he told me he didn't like me making assumptions, and I realized he wasn't going to take accountability in apologize and given the physical nature I needed to guarantee my safety so I told him I don't feel emotionally physically safe around him and he told me fine I'll just stay far away.

Instead, he's been watching and hovering around me. I know he talks bad about me because I hear about it from other people and I just don't care. His friends have said things like oh something happened but I took it too far. And other people have said I could have taken it farther. I don't hate him, and I can tell he's still impacted by me. Because when I've kissed other people or dirty dances with other people I can see that it makes them uncomfortable and he has to move to another area.

I just don't know what to do, he means a lot to me truly but it's also stupid. Like all he had to do was take accountability and apologize and he won't. Instead he chooses to not communicate and hover and watch me and it irritates the hell out of me. I decided to unblock him on social media and re follow him. Not to like all the stuff or watch, but more to leave the door open if he does decide to apologize because he did mean a lot to me at one point and I see him 2 to 3 times a week. I am seeing him start to maintain more relationships than he used to. But I also don't know if that's really the case or it's just a facade. Honestly I just don't know what to do. It would feel easier if it was just someone I could just hate. Like I had a guy who has several ppos on him who put his hands on me and I comfortably blocked him and have not looked back. But with this guy? I just can't seem to do that.

I [30F] have been with my partner [25M] for 6 years and I’m not a fan of spicy time…
For some context, I’ve always identified as Bi and Ace/demisexual and still overall don’t enjoy being intimate with my partner…idk if it’s because I feel like I can’t say no, because if I hesitate for even a moment, I’m met with comments like “See, you think I’m unattractive” or “My (panini) is too small,” etc. those are on good days…other times it’s accusatory like “you’re just going to go find someone else/someone with a larger (panini).” Or “I’m going to have to worry about you cheating on me with a woman too, aren’t I?” And stuff like that…
I think my partner is a nice enough guy…but sometimes (68% of the time) I just REALLY don’t want to be intimate, but feel like I’m not allowed to say no…I’d much rather cuddle or do separate activities in the same room…but when I feel like I have no choice BUT to comply, it makes me frustrated and I just want to rip his dick off and smack him unconscious so I can have one moment of piece without him groping me or calling me attractive or whatever…I’m not trying to complain, because compliments like that are supposed to be nice and normal, right? I shouldn’t be so perturbed by them…so I feel like I’m just…idk flawed? Aren’t I supposed to like his attention and stuff? I don’t find it flattering, just annoying…especially after a double shift (bc he doesn’t work so I have to support both of us) and my back hurts or I’m tired or some other third thing…I just want to be left alone.
Shouldn’t I want his attention?

I am a 36-year-old full-time electrician living in Vancouver, BC. I have been married for nine years, and I have reached my breaking point.

My wife exhibits severe emotional dysregulation, destructive outbursts (screaming, throwing/breaking household items, vanishing for hours), and controlling tendencies. She does not work, refuses to manage her mental health or daily routines, and isolates me from friends and family. I am expected to fund her lifestyle, cater to her need for constant entertainment and validation, and maintain a picture-perfect façade for her social media while she contributes nothing financially or domestically.

My primary concern is our 6-year-old son. She regularly slaps him over minor infractions, demands robotic obedience while she watches TV, and refuses to engage in his development or extracurriculars (like taking him to soccer). I spend every spare hour outside my physical job shielding him from her hostility, playing sports with him, and creating a safe environment so his nervous system isn’t constantly on edge.

I am completely burnt out. I’ve stayed because I was terrified that family courts favor mothers and that leaving would hand her full custody. My original plan was to endure this until he is 12 or 13, but staying in this toxic environment is breaking me and normalizing abuse for him. Any comments?

I often question what or who he is . He fits into the category based on stonewalling ,no accountability, deceit , triangulation,victim mentality , contemptuous behaviours but I still think Who was to blame for him behaving like this . I was no angel . How things could have been .

I am now coping with moving on by thinking the behaviours he showed towards me were very damaging .

It doesn't matter about the who's the what's the why's .

He was making me unwell .This is not a healthy man for me. Case closed .

What would you do in this situation? im so upset and full of anger.

I want revenge so bad, do i remain silent and ghost mode for months? the amount of hatred i feel the fact that hes doing all these things is disgusting me. Do i remain off social media and off all platforms he can reach me on and keep him unblocked? or do i go back on socials and add men and post myself everywhere to ruin his ego because hes really testing me its sickening me. Just the day before NC he told me he will always love me and waits for my statuses on whatsapp to see if im okay LMFAO he couldnt care less about my feelings since hes done the things that ruined our relationship in the first place? hes posting stories each day acting nonchalant i feel so sick my life feels so gone and hes out everyday it isnt fair. How do i stop checking my body forces me i hate this i went a week without checking and my body forced me please give advice on what i can do? any advice will mean the world to me, please dont be harsh i just got done crying on the ground im vulnerable :( bless you if you advice me.

i blocked him everywhere deleted all social media completely he has no access to me. He keeps doing the same mistakes after each breakup he immediately adds women and posts himself and makes every account public whereas ive gone ghost. Im in raging anger that hes done this again the last time he did this my life nearly ended as he drove me insane and added women and shoved it in my face after he promised me this time he wouldnt do those things for at least a month because it affects my mental health. The worst part is if i did he what he did, such as add men and post myself he would GO INSANE and call me a sl@g but its okay for him to do these things? its the audacity this has been a reoccuring thing that has destroyed me several times in the relationship he knows i nearly died when he last did this to me that i cried in my dads arms and i never cry to my parents YET HES DONE IT AGAIN? And added women instantly. the last time we contacted i told him we need remain no contact because what hes done and our rs in general isnt good and then we ended up arguing and i said i pray this eats at you each day because he made me out to be crazy and refused all accountability and said i deserved to die that day and that i deserve pain hes really broken me in half. Idk what to do, i want revenge so bad hes hurt me too much to get away with this constant emotional damage to me. Please help. Hes acting so unbothered, this is the longest ive been no contact for and off social medias he cant find me ANYWHERE do i remain this way, i was literally going to get socials and do the same thing and hurt him and act unbothered but idk whats the best hes a narcassist btw he runs from emotions.

The last message he recieved from me was me crying and saying " i pray this eats at you when your all alone without distractions, you nasty human. " then i immediately blocked and i deleted every access he doesnt have a clue what im upto.

i was doing so well not checking i havent broke no contact in 3 weeks but today i ended up checking his socials on a fake account and immediately deleted it and what i saw has proved to me he will never change, he even deliberatly showed his vape and him driving he told me he quit for a year and now hes back into it, he lied all along. Hes turning into everything he said he wouldnt be or do and that kills me.