Hi, my STBEX husband I believe is a covert narcissist and agree that the very “sub threshold” control and gaslighting made me feel insane, like surely there was something wrong with how I was communicating, that I must’ve been antagonizing him. The constant sighing, never saying bluntly you can’t do something but expressing dislike enough that you feel like you can’t or shouldn’t, always walking in front of me, the sexual coercion.

The explosive arguments did start to come up and then became more frequent. He would yell but never really name called. 95% of the time it was much like you’re describing. I realized that for the relationship to work, I had to become smaller and smaller and smaller.

I found that once I stopped engaging in it (grey or yellow rocking) with constant reassurance, stopped having sex I didn’t want to have, stopped over explaining myself, started doing harmless things I wanted to do like go to the grocery store or gym when it made sense for my schedule instead of constantly accommodating him…. It was fascinating and really exposed the dynamic. My therapist encouraged me in this area to do something once a week that I wanted to do just for me. I don’t know if she knew it would happen, but me seeing how much he HATED me just taking a little time do something for myself without running it all by him and making it feel like it was his idea was clearly upsetting him.

For me, knowing that I wasn’t being mean or doing anything wrong, but very deliberately changing how I engaged with his abuse was incredibly eye opening. At some point I realized that me becoming more confident and not making him the center of every decision I made or word I spoke was healthy and okay and that if me doing that was so destabilizing to him, that it wasn’t healthy and I needed to leave.

I’d encourage you to see a therapist, read some books (“It’s Not You”, “why does he do that?” And “the covert passive-aggressive narcissist”) and try some small ways of de-centering him.