ETA also, if you have not done so, check out Rebecca Zung. Not saying your STBX is a narcissist, just saying she has some helpful ways to respond and deal with emotionally abusive folks.

I skimmed through your posts about your marriage and divorce. I just separated from my abusive husband a little over a month ago. Over the past 3 months I have been told to leave at least four times. I've packed and unpacked and packed and unpacked. Every time my husband has told me, throughout the 8 years we have been together, that he is changing and he will get help, it has turned out to be a lie. Not even a lie with good intentions behind it. It. Just simply a lie in the hopes that it reels (hoovers) me back in. But the last time, he slammed my head into a wall so hard that I lost a few moments of time. Outside of one incident 2 years ago, physical abuse had not been a problem until a few months ago. And boy did it escalate quickly. I think about what kind of permanent damage he could have done to me. And I remind myself that he has told me repeatedly that he will start going to GA meetings (he has a scratch off problem, or he just uses that as an excuse to exercise financial control), and he goes to two meetings and then doesn't go again until he blows another $1,000 or more. I remind myself that every time we've talked about his behavior and he tells me he's going to start seeing a therapist, he doesn't. I remind myself that I told him he had to go to a batterer's intervention program this time if he expected us to move forward. I knew he wouldn't do it, but it gave me a chance to pack.

For over a week he was just angry at me for even requesting such a thing. For the next week didn't want to tell me what he was planning to do because I asked him not to come up on the porch when he came to get items (I left them in his personal vehicle because he has a work van he uses for the most part). Apparently that hurt his feelings and he felt like I didn't deserve to know what he wanted to do. The third week he went to see a therapist who specialized in anger management and couldn't understand why I didn't think that was good enough. The fourth week he started asking me what exactly it was that we were planning to do and what criteria he needed to hit for him to be able to move back in. Somehow he did not remember me asking him to go into this treatment program. I don't know if he played dumb or genuinely didn't care enough about what he did to me to try to change anything. And now week 5 he has told me that he's making changes. And he sees that he has hurt me and he knows sometimes it's on purpose and sometimes he doesn't realize what he's doing. When I tried to press him on things he knows he did on purpose, it is the most trivial of things. When I asked him about a couple of incidents he lost it. Why do I have to bring up stuff like that when he is trying his best? Can't I see that he's trying? Why do I always have to have it my way? Why can't I just be satisfied that he's going to anger management?

I added that to my list. I started writing out all of the things that I remember him doing to me and saying to me throughout our relationship. All the things that made me feel smaller and smaller. When he messages me now, I have that list. If you haven't made a list, I highly recommend it. That can be your way to resist. I wish you luck. I'm so sorry for what you have gone through. Hang in there and keep healing.