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I posted here a few years ago trying to get though an extremely painful breakup and didn’t find any of the advice to be helpful. In hindsight it wasn’t helpful because my ex was a cluster B narcissist.

Not sure if anyone is familiar but a relationship with a real narcissist but it goes love bombing, devalue, discard. And that’s exactly what happened. One day she was plotting our marriage the next she seemed to hate everything about me until she coldly ended things with a text. It left me without closure and without self esteem. It’s taken me ages to recover and in truth I’m still hurt a bit.

But I also now feel sorry for her. Her mother is over domineering and still pulls her strings, she was molested as a young teen and a widow (who she had a extremely rocky relationship with). I think she’s unable to be happy. She can fake it but deep down she’s the saddest woman I’ve ever met.

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Yes most of us are 'familiar' with diagnosing exes with Narcissism.

 

Very familiar, infact just search the term narcissist here and brew up a pot of coffee because you'll have plenty to read.

 

Youre angry, youre hurt, you went through a breakup that was traumatic to you, thats your truth.

 

You do not need to feel sorry for her or even give her an ounce of energy, she is living her truth. Whatever that is, your energy towards her wont change anything. If you need to devalue her to heal, so be it, but going down this road of diagnosing just keeps her front and center in your mind.

 

This road will not help you heal. Please reconsider it.

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I can feel you because I was married to a man with a narcissistic personality disorder. He could only love himself. There is a lot of information about it on Youtube. Sam Vatkin has videos about it. and he a self proclaimed narcissist and advises that the best thing you can do if you are in a relationship with with one is to get out of the relationship ASAP. There is also a lot of information on how to heal from the breakup from one on Youtube as well. Watching those videos helped me. I ended it with him, but I was still sad about it because I knew he did not love me although I did love him. I just got tired of beating my head against the wall.

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I posted here a few years ago trying to get though an extremely painful breakup and didn’t find any of the advice to be helpful. In hindsight it wasn’t helpful because my ex was a cluster B narcissist.

Not sure if anyone is familiar but a relationship with a real narcissist but it goes love bombing, devalue, discard. And that’s exactly what happened. One day she was plotting our marriage the next she seemed to hate everything about me until she coldly ended things with a text. It left me without closure and without self esteem. It’s taken me ages to recover and in truth I’m still hurt a bit.

But I also now feel sorry for her. Her mother is over domineering and still pulls her strings, she was molested as a young teen and a widow (who she had a extremely rocky relationship with). I think she’s unable to be happy. She can fake it but deep down she’s the saddest woman I’ve ever met.

 

The bolded is your problem, right there. Not the content of what you write, but the fact that you are still focusing on her, and your "sorrow" for her, and your story about her.

 

Your story has become that you had an ex who was a narcissist.

 

While no one here can diagnose whether this is or isn't the case, we can try and help you break your pattern.

 

The only way to get over this is to shift the focus onto yourself: why did you fall in love with a narcissist? Why did you stay involved? And why do you continue to stay involved?

 

And yes, you continue to stay involved, even by posting this topic, but especially via your bolded statement, which is all about her. What about you? What was it in your life, childhood probably, that caused you to feel that the only form of love was by loving someone who can't be loved?

 

Only when you do that sort of deep soul-searching, especially helped by therapy, will you be able to pull yourself out of this, and stop asking questions about her, but rather, have thoughts about you, and your own future with someone who will love you as you deserve to be loved.

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But don't you see? By coming back here to "update", you're still giving this woman your energy.

 

If you truly were over it, you'd be blasé. You'd be indifferent. You wouldn't even have the desire to write about her.

 

This isn't an update, but it's you staying in this story, this "I'm so sorry for her because she's been through all this bad stuff, but she was a narcissist to me".

 

And yes, I'm extremely familiar with the pattern of lovebombing, etc. I have pages & pages of my own threads about it here. I've had to do a lot of work, via therapy, tons of reading, and just time, to move past it. For me, it was uncovering childhood patterns that were keeping me stuck. What is it for you?

 

I'm not trying to beat you up, I swear. I've been there. I get it. For me, what I'm still working on, well over a year later, are my own lifelong patterns that brought me to that point, and how I can permanently un-stick them. It's via therapy, books, friends, boards, etc. But my ex himself? I couldn't care less what he's up to, or why he is the way he is. It isn't about the ex anymore; it's about us.

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I was deployed to a combat zone and after I got back from a mission which was always a bit nerve wracking and stressful she’s always be there to make me feel better and give me hope. It made me feel really close to her so all her talk of fate/love etc.. really hit home. I’m not sure anyone can really understand that but it made her part of my war memories. So when she fully disengaged suddenly it was confusing and crushed my self esteem which was complicated by the fact that I was still dealing with the war part.

I also have an issue with trying to save and protect people so when she laid out all her issues it made me invest even more.

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What road? I’m not devaluing her, I accepted what she has told me herself many times.

I’m not angry anymore. I have decided not to let her drift in and out of my life like she’s done since the break.

 

You just posted that you pity her and that she is unable to be happy and the saddest woman you ever met. Now I’m no therapist nor am I an expert on any of these labels if I were to guess what devaluing would be defined as that would be it.

 

And I’m fine.. I just happened back into the forum so I figured I’d add an update to what brought me here in the first place.

 

You just wrote that you’re still a bit sad.

 

I was deployed to a combat zone and after I got back from a mission which was always a bit nerve wracking and stressful she’s always be there to make me feel better and give me hope. It made me feel really close to her so all her talk of fate/love etc.. really hit home. I’m not sure anyone can really understand that but it made her part of my war memories. So when she fully disengaged suddenly it was confusing and crushed my self esteem which was complicated by the fact that I was still dealing with the war part.

I also have an issue with trying to save and protect people so when she laid out all her issues it made me invest even more.

 

You have definitely been through a lot and I’m sorry for that, yes it’s probable you attached to her more than normal given your expieriences, that doesn’t make her a cluster B narcissist. Your attachment to her explained as her mental illness tricking you into being unable to let go releases you of any responsibility, but honestly based on your posting history it appears you were quite addicted to her. Because she’s a narcissist? I don’t know, but you were a willing participant each time you went NC you’d go right back, you’d break up and you’d be back to square one then you’d do it again over and over and over again. Like LHgirl eloquently said, you can’t fix her but you can figure out what attracted you to the drama.

 

It seems you’re on that road, you recognize the timing of your connection, while you were active duty combined with some childhood issues that can explain your addiction to making it work with her and your attachment, very logical and very fixable, but her being a narcissist, that does nothing to help you, having pity on her, besides a brief, false ego boost does nothing to help you. In fact it does the opposite since it is false healing you just keep trying to get that high, so you read more you talk about it more. You write about it more until you’re consumed by it and you’re stuck. You get to keep her on your mind and it’s not your fault. Win/win! That’s why diagnosing exes is so popular.

 

I’m so sorry all this is happening Tom, I hope this is just a brief visit to the anger/bargaining stage and you will move past it. You deserve to take the baggage off your back.

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I guess I should add.. she reappeared in the fall after a long period of no contact. Long story but it definitely set me back a bit. 2 months of nc this time which I’m not breaking.

 

My ex reappears every couple of months too. Yes, I've blocked him everywhere, but he'll find a way, via a mutual acquaintance, or he'll ask someone I'm friends with on social media to show them my profile.

 

But because of the work I've done, it's all very....meh. I don't even post about it, because it's just a bunch of mindless, meaningless stuff. In the early weeks and months after our breakup, even one word from him would have set me back, but these days, it's not even worth telling anyone about.

 

You have to do the work, deep within yourself, to figure out why this causes you so much angst, after all this time. You could go years of NC and still stay stuck in this. It would be helpful to go into some therapy with the express desire to get at the bottom of these patterns, deep into detailed childhood stuff, or else you will have this reaction 10 years from now.

 

I promise I know exactly how you feel, honest. I'm still not at 100%, but it's the remaining percentage for me, not about him, if that makes sense. I'm still working on my own mess, which I realize is a lot bigger than just my ex.

 

Once you realize that, you'll realize that your ex is just a symptom of something much bigger. It's like a headache masking a tumor.

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I tried therapy a few times and I really didn’t find it too helpful. I left most times thinking either they failed to understand or that it was me connecting all the dots.

If it comes off like I’ve paused my life, I haven’t. This has lingered but it’s not crushing anymore.

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I mostly mention this because I feel it explains part of why it was so hard. It’s not normal to go from 100 to zero in a day. Usually relationships fail over time and the end makes sense even if it hurts.

 

Tom, you can’t speak for her. You have no idea what’s going on in her head or what thoughts she had before breakup. YOU were at 100, you have no idea where she was at. She’s wrong for dragging things out and playing games post break up, but you have to take some responsibility for your wellbeing. Unfortunately lots of people do crap like keeping an ex for ego hits and safety nets as they move on. It’s terrible and cruel to do and it’s a huge slap in the face but now you see you have to be responsible for your wellbeing, do not keep putting your heart in the hands of someone who has proven she will break it.

 

And please let go of this belief that she went from 100 to zero. You’re trying to make sense of someone else’s actions. That’s as useful as a third nipple.

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I tried therapy a few times and I really didn’t find it too helpful. I left most times thinking either they failed to understand or that it was me connecting all the dots.

 

Of course it would be you connecting the dots. Therapists are facilitators, not some carwash where you go in one way and come out feeling sparkly. The best therapist in the world can't do your work for you.

 

As for 'good' advice, what constitutes that for you? If you want us to enforce the idea that you've been harmed by someone else, we can do that. But what's the value to you? Believing ourselves to be harmed by any relationship that ends is a choice that stunts our own confidence in our ability to learn from experiences and navigate future relationships better than we had before.

 

You can make that choice if you want to, it's not against the law. It just won't buy you anything helpful in adopting resilience as a life skill. It sends a message to your own psyche that you are at the mercy of other people's bad judgment. That's the opposite of building confidence in your own capabilities.

 

We must each decide how we will use our experiences, and there's no learning value in blame. Self examination of our own contributions to any outcome is the best teaching device to build confidence in our capacity to navigate forward. It's a decision.

 

Head high, and choose wisely.

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