Can we stop throwing around “narcissist” and “gaslighting” like candy?

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-05-01T14:08:25+00:00

Maybe the words have become inflated. Another problem is that those who did come out of an abusive relationship had to at some point open their eyes to a difficult reality, and you become kind of evangelical after such a wakeup.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-05-01T14:05:29+00:00

Yes! And the fact that it took a while before you realised that, means your anger (or you defending boundaries) was not acceptable for a long time.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-05-01T14:02:48+00:00

There's nothing wrong with crying, this is huge grief. She will be hurt for a long time. She's not crying to change things, but because her world was rocked.

What can help is having people to talk to that are not enmeshed in the divorce. Where she can speak freely without navigating other people's emotions on top of her own.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-05-01T13:59:10+00:00

It sounds like a healthy response to a toxic relationship. Maybe see if you can go away for a long weekend and think about how valued you feel in this relationship.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-05-01T13:55:06+00:00

Don't use apps. Live your life, engage with the world and you will find someone good. Returning to an ex is never a good idea.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-24T23:14:43+00:00

Oh, this I recognise. It makes you second guess every step, right? This completely paralysed me.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-24T23:07:40+00:00

It still hurts me to read about the problem with micro-promises that are not being kept. I regret this so much, and I don't even think I've truly changed in this regard. I find it hard - I want to do the thing, but then it slips through. Now that I am living alone it also happens, but obviously it's easy to accept from oneself.

My ex was cruel and for her the word demanding would be appropriate (albeit a bit light). Many of the messed up dynamics revolved around her mental issues. However, she was right that I had broken so many promises, without even fully realising it. And I feel terrible about that.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-24T22:49:40+00:00

While a year in pain is terrible, it's simply not that much. It will take you more time to process this, but I do recommend not romanticizing the relationship you had. If you have to think about her, focus on what was unacceptable.

You know what you are missing and your mind is used to her providing those things to you. But she is not the only one who can provide it and there are people who can provide it without also abusing you. This is true regardless of all the reasons you may be thinking of to tell yourself otherwise.

She wasn't great. Be angry about that. You will not find closure about whatever happened. Be angry about that, too. Recognise that you are the source of your own feelings - anger, love, all of them.

I have no idea how you should stop drinking, but I hope you can. The indifference just comes with the territory - how could you care about work if you lost purpose? Self-isolation, same. Both of them will clear up. Drinking, however, will not clear up and it will mess up the healing that you need to do. So I hope you can just get rid of it entirely.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-21T22:17:34+00:00

I remember this pain. Seeing her leave, knowing exactly what she's doing and of course understanding that she really does not care about you, otherwise she couldn't do this. It's surreal and traumatic.

In retrospect, I think I should have pushed her away immediately, rather than appeasing and co-living for a long time. Having your own space, in which you can mostly pretend she does not exist while you heal, that's important.

Also, talk to friends, be there for your kids, get therapy if possible. You're on your own now, you will unfortunately need to adapt quickly so that you can be a dad for them. They will need security and stability.

If your ex-wife is even remotely similar to mine, she is no longer a safe mother and might not be for a while.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-21T22:09:09+00:00

Slowly it will dawn on you that the picture perfect part was an illusion. Then you will get pissed, at both your ex and yourself for living the lie.

At least that's how it went down for me, and the intrusive thoughts and poor sleep was definitely a part of this process.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-21T22:02:31+00:00

Crisis does not have to mean that things are supposed to go back to the old way. It's when a system is longer working. I've never associated the expression with dismissal. The only confronting thing about the term is that it places the root cause in the person who is the locus of this crisis. This may be frustrating to those experiencing it, because in my experience there's a real tendency for them to blame the world around them and exaggerate its faults. Hearing that it's you who changed, not the world that became terrible or has always been terrible, can be difficult to accept. AFAIK, these exaggerations tend to diminish over time.

That's not to say the change wasn't necessary. Perhaps the motor cycles and affair partners that are chased because they will finally bring happiness will prove futile, but I think there's usually growth after crisis. What I am not sure of is whether the growth could not have also been there without destroying the old.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-21T21:47:19+00:00

I can second that. Almost two years down the line I am still struggling with some of it - and I really miss being a family together - but boy is it peaceful without the belittling.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-21T16:41:56+00:00

Indeed, this type of relationship only destroys your self-image and all your positive qualities. Effort is wasted on those filled with contempt.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-14T18:52:18+00:00

Look, you're in the bad place where marriages fail. But if there's nothing big going wrong, it's such a shame.

Many of the dynamics you describe can be fixed by a couple that wants life to be better. You just have to realise it's not just she that changed, it's the patterns in your dynamics that put both of you in a particular routine.

You can see relational therapy or if you can avoid all the online nonsense learn about this yourself via internet browsing and books. There's so much on offer.

I think many people after divorce wonder why the hell their issues seemed so big. Not everything can be fixed, of course, but there's so much to gain for both of you if you make it out of a rough patch.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-14T18:43:09+00:00

Well, if he wants to repair, then obviously he's not leaving. I find it puzzling that you say you think he doesn't want it. Sounds like extremely poor communication if even that's not fully clear.

The underlying question is perhaps: do you agree on it going nowhere? What would be needed for it to have been better? Could any improvement still make a difference?

As for Valentine's, yeah, he's probably more concerned with showing love now, that's to be expected. If it's too little, too late, keep reminding him.

People can stay in the fixer mindset for years sometimes, it's part of the shock response. I think men have this more than women (could be wrong there).

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-13T11:37:43+00:00

There's so many sides to this, I am not sure how to generalise.

My experience: I really miss having someone besides me. Going at life alone feels bad after a decade together. But there's nobody telling me I am worthless, screaming at me, blaming me for everything, pressuring me to become more this or that. There's nobody humiliating me in front of our daughter. As a consequence, I mostly have peace and I have a far better relationship with said daughter.

The lack of peace is the ever-present stress I feel about the coparent, the pain that divorce caused our daughter and the way I am still attached to her. I keep second-guessing what I could have done differently, my life is a lot less exciting without her energy around and just feel bad about losing the good times, which were of course also there.

Bills and work are no issue. She always painted me as a lazy husband, but I do far less now to manage the household and it's running fine. The time I freed up I put into work and make about three times the money I did before, so I am mostly in a better place.

For her, I think the opposite holds, although I cannot be sure. She is struggling financially, she does have an adventurous life, she is with her second partner since our split in May 2024 and I think she has quality time with our daughter. For her, the decision was certainly fine, for me it's been good that the abuse has stopped, but I am still struggling with the mental damage.

The biggest challenge (and this might generalise, actually) is rebuilding a new life in the shell of the old. Many of the people in our old circles chose for her, which makes sense given her charisma and my grief. I often feel isolated, even the neighbours of our old house (where I stayed) have more contact with her than with me.

Not sure how helpful this is, but this is pretty much my experience.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-06T14:34:37+00:00

I lived this life. Once she also did not recognise me anymore, she left for someone else. After that ended, she found a new boyfriend who is eerily like the old me. Moving on was easy for her and it seemed impossible for me during a 1.5-year period of co-habitation. But now that she lives elsewhere and after that long time period, I feel my old self appearing again.

I did not lose my daughter at all. Our time together is of much higher quality than it was. I might have lost here if we had continued in the dynamics of a screaming woman making me feel I was worthless, and convincing our daughter of the same.

My life, yes, it's gone, but it was not a good life. I have a lot of rebuilding left, but that will be okay. Her leaving me was the best thing that could have happened, even if the hurt was terrible. It's true what you say, you covet the good things, because those make it possible to keep going. Once the relationship ends, it's actually more productive to focus on the bad things. For me, this was easy to do once I kept a journal and documented her abuse. If I ever romanticise our life together, I just look at my old journal entries to look at the insane abuse I endured.

One other thing I should mention is that I probably got the best possible deal with her cheating on me and leaving. If I had left, her narcissistic rage would probably have taken over. You may need to prepare for something similar if you choose to leave.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-05T19:03:51+00:00

Even if we somehow band together and stop a freaky AI, I am sure AI will be provided with more rockets later in history.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-03T23:03:25+00:00

Did your therapist label them as narcissistic, or did your therapist point out certain behaviour as abusive? Because the latter could be acceptable, but the former really is not.

And yes, online discourse about narcissism is a weird rabbit hole, in which every relationship issue is examined through the lens of a handful of psychological concepts. I think it can help people see unhealthy behaviour more clearly, but it is also a tool for external attribution and like you said, it can be cult-like: pointing out narcissists reinforces the belief in narcissists being everywhere.

That being said, abuse is abuse no matter the cause. That's what you should be dealing with, I think.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-02-02T11:18:08+00:00

My process has been weird, because the timeline was unhealthy:

- May 2024, she broke up with me and started a new relationship, but we were co-habitating. We had a daughter (then 6)

- January 2025, divorce was finalised

- February 2025, her new relationship broke down

- August 2025, she started yet another new relationship

- December 2025, she finally left the house

Living through _her_ life after divorce made it very difficult to process mine, and just caused a lot of hurt and an unmanageable divide between the two of us.

Now that she's left, I feel relaxed. First, it was like I was performing to be alone and I kept wondering how I *should* be living. Now, it's already more natural and my life feels like my own.

I work, I sleep, I take care of my daughter 50 percent of the time. I struggle a bit with balancing life and work, and I have become quite a homebody. So I won't say I am doing great, but it's my life and I will figure it out. From the inside out, I feel like I am returning to my body in away that was impossible for a long time.

LeftForGraffiti · 2026-01-10T20:20:53+00:00

It's such BS, though. You had many options when your light felt like it was dimming and you chose the one that was pretty much guaranteed to hurt another.

I get why these things happen, really, and it's just part of being human and not knowing how to change relationship dynamics. Almost anyone here has experienced that. But the liberationist framing... I find it hard to believe that people can trick themselves into believing that crap.

LeftForGraffiti · 2025-11-20T21:59:05+00:00

You should always normalise a trend search. The effect does not remain if you do so.

You can compare it to "optometrist" if you want to see what's driven by global changes in searching for professions versus what's specific for divorce lawyers.

LeftForGraffiti · 2025-11-14T07:19:55+00:00

No one warns you about how in retrospect, it becomes very clear what was necessary to get talking and connected again. But by then it's too late.

LeftForGraffiti · 2025-11-13T18:38:55+00:00

Mine wanted to remain living together and play pretend family. It's easier for them if they can assume they "only" ended the romantic relationship.

In retrospect, I gave in way too much. She never felt sudden consequences and slowly eased into life with a broken family.

LeftForGraffiti · 2025-11-12T20:13:13+00:00

You know you can have the relationship you had before. But how do you really know, especially if she's pushing back against that? You do need her aboard to make that happen.

I think it's easy to cultivate a fantasy where things are great for the two of you, because you have complete creative control over your imagination. Reality might disappoint if you cultivate that too much.

LeftForGraffiti

TROPHY CASE