It Was Good

and you’re not crazy.

I think that sums up my most recent thoughts in the recovery process, but I went a tad further and wrote things out on the flight to Nashville last weekend since I’m trying to get better at sharing my process and the annual renewal fee for this website just hit my bank account.

The Something Was Wrong podcast meetup/live recording last week and although we had no idea what to expect, it was incredible.  During the second half, I had the opportunity to sit in the audience and feel their engagement.  I kept asking myself, “how did we get here?”

Conversations I’ve had both online and IRL with women who’ve had similar experiences with narcissistic or sociopathic individuals continue to cement a very simple truth in my mind:

There WERE good times with that person that were probably really, really damn good.  

Internet armchair experts can put their thumbs to work all day long declaring the red flags I should have seen right away.  Thank goodness, because without their constructive input, I never would have taken a good hard look at things and asked myself what I could have done differently!  I enjoyed my life and MYSELF when this tall man dressed in a red suit holding a pitchfork showed up at my door and asked if I wanted to lose it and see myself as worthless.  I said when can we start?!

Until you’ve been gaslit, it’s extremely hard to understand.  I can see why people write the whole thing off, especially after hearing about how I “allowed” my dog to be treated.

Back to the main point…

Quite a few people I’ve spoken to say that they feel stuck for the sake of their children, or because the signs of abuse aren’t publicly visible.  “Outwardly he’s a good person,” I’ve heard or read multiple times.

A quick overview of my good times:

• He had an uncanny ability to read my thoughts and discern my feelings.  This wasn’t a surface-level connection.  I have a decent poker face (my coworkers can attest), and he called me out to an eerie degree. Being read like that is hard to ignore or resist.
• He gained access by discovering what mattered to me, big and little things, and making them matter to him.  He’d research and educate himself on whatever it was so he could talk about it with me.  Would blow up my phone about them.  (I know now that he had zero interest or care for many of them, and spoke against them later.  This is something people like this do when wooing someone to control them rather than simply know them; because they lack empathy and therefore an identity of their own, they create one based off who they think that person wants them to be.  In extreme cases, I’ve read stories of sociopaths learning how to portray appropriate emotions based on depictions they see in movies and on TV.  This lines up disturbingly well with situations I noticed, though I’m obviously not qualified to diagnose him.)
• There were certain daily routines he started from the beginning that he never wavered on, even near the end.  (It made staying grounded while disentangling and walking away extremely confusing and difficult.)  He started the mornings with prayer, even if it meant sending me a message on Voxer from work in the Bay Area while I listened on my commute in Sacramento.  He also never failed to open all doors for me, including his car, and always cooked me breakfast when we were together.  He knew my love language was “acts of service.”  (Later on, when things were worsening and I was a basket case, his acts of service were making my emotions extremely difficult to sort out.  On the outside, he was a saint to me.  I loved him and he OBVIOUSLY loved me – he showed it much more consistently than I “showed” it to him with grand gestures. I began thinking our misunderstandings must be rooted in a weakness or fault of mine somehow since he continued to give and give.)

It’s not like I expect someone to cater to my every need and want, so I was resistant to the doting… but you friggin’ bet the attention to detail was charming! Even when it got irritating, it was still disarming.  (Only later on did I start to feel weird and sense hidden guilt trips for things I’d never asked of him to begin with.)

• He was extremely generous with his resources and compliments.  To this day when I do my makeup certain ways, I’ll have flashbacks to times he noticed those changes and complimented me on them.  Hair, outfits, everything- he never missed a beat and I could actually ask his opinion on something knowing he’d be honest while still making me feel beautiful.
• The night we dropped the L bomb and said we loved each other, we didn’t technically say it.  We’d spent the night in an Irish pub in Seattle, sipping Jameson and talking about family, telling childhood stories.  We talked about places we wanted to see, and why, and we laughed so much.  Later, when the thought crossed my mind, I went quiet for a moment.

           He looked at me for a moment, then a soft expression came over his face as he said, “Me too.”

During this season, chemicals are bonding me to him and altering my brain, making it increasingly difficult to see clearly no matter how intelligent or discerning I might be. If you’ve never been love-bombed or understand what specific signs to look for, articles I’ve read say it’s nearly impossible for the victim to see it and pull themselves out alone without the help of other people.  This is why isolation vs. community involvement is a big factor here.

That was a very basic version of why I kept going and didn’t run for the hills when little things shifted.  I believed that charming, selfless man would come back… he was just under some stress today.

Or tired.

His toxic work environment was taking a toll.  He just needed to get out.

His family was placing big burdens on him.

He was stressed again…

Maybe because of me.

I added much to his life.  Weddings ARE expensive, after all.

I might be crying and feeling like dead-weight a lot lately but he’s MOVING for me, and juggling everything ELSE he does!  (Including but doubtfully limited to: texting me as 2 friends (a married couple with kids) that he’d completely fabricated since week 2, and seeing other women at the same time via different dating apps than he’d said he’d been on when we met.  I was just over here trying to plan a wedding in 3 months determined to do it with a fraction of a normal budget.)

I didn’t realize I was subconsciously waiting for things to get back to normal after the wedding.  For the good times to come back.

(There were too many blinders on at that point to recognize that life will ALWAYS throw curveballs testing the patience of myself and the person I’m with.  Stress is never an excuse for insults and back-handed compliments- those should be followed with a genuine apology.  Otherwise it just reveals a lack of character.)

The more conversations I’m having with people in similar situations, the more amazed I am by their resiliency and strength.  Holding on to hope, whether for their spouse or for the sake of their kids, many stay.  They use the good to outweigh the bad, especially if there are no outward signs.  No bruises to show for their huge act of leaving and tearing their family apart.  Nothing to make an escape outwardly justifiable to the public.

… or to justify a divorce to their church.

(I don’t know if I’m ready to post my thoughts on church leadership that encourages anyone to remain in an abusive marriage.  Calling them accomplices in the oppression of a victim and pointing out that they’re devaluing the victim’s life in favor of the abuser’s might get me some backlash and I’m just not ready or qualified to enter that ring.)

Physical abuse is evil, but emotional abuse is insidious as it hides, especially with gaslighting involved.  A gaslighting victim is fed just enough truth to make them more accepting of a lie, like hiding a dog’s medication in a treat.

So.

Your confusion and brain fog could very well be the result of cognitive dissonance caused by your brain attempting to sort out two opposing realities.  It wreaks havoc on your mind, emotions and even your physical body.  It can start to manifest as headaches, aches and pains, fatigue, a lowered immune system, etc.  Your body is exhausting itself, constantly on edge/in fight-or-flight, trying to figure out your footing and what is up vs. down.

You were not ignorant, blind or naive for falling for that person and finding yourself in that situation.

That’s all, folks!  Happy Tuesday from Tennessee!