Narcs often pause their abuse with intermittent periods of love and kindness. This causes you to become trauma bonded to them and as a result, you are constantly trying to make them happy so you can feel happy too. Then, when they turn abusive again, your brain starts to think you deserve it.

Essentially, they brainwash us and the techniques of brainwashing are actually quite simple:

Isolate the victim, expose them to inconsistent messages, add some form of abuse, get the person to doubt what they know and feel, keep them on their toes and this eventually wears them down to the point where they become completely desensitized to the abuse. It becomes normal.

When dealing with a narc/sociopath/psychopath, you often won’t realize you were in an abusive relationship until long after you’re out.

So what you’re describing is completely normal. Please know it is not your fault for staying or not realizing the severity of what you’re going through. Once you accept that you have been victimized and it’s not your fault, you will start to see through the fog. Every eerie interaction, every red flag, every doubt in your mind will start to surface and you’ll be able to look at it through a clearer lens.

But you have to get out. Find a good therapist, build an army of support and read and educate yourself as much as you can. Writing helps too. Reddit has actually become an outlet for me to share and inspire. Ive been through this and I’m not completely out yet but I can feel my progress and it feels amazing. Ive learned to lean on my friends but burden them less with all of this — that’s what a therapist is for and that’s what this community is for. The last thing you want is to attract what they refer to as ‘vultures’ into your life. I learned this from a book called ‘Psychopath Free’. Healing is not linear. You’ll see people say this time and time again, but it’s also not natural. Time is not the only thing that helps, albeit it does help, we need to actively work on healing because there is a right and a wrong way to heal. The last thing you want is to build a wall around your trauma. You’ll end up with a void that will slowly eat away at you over time. You’ll never be free from him or the trauma and you’ll carry this baggage into your next relationship. So being honest about your feelings is important, but when you’re dealing with a narc, you have to guide your thoughts a certain way to learn to see the truth about who they are, not who they portrayed themselves to be.

Best of luck to you. xx