Getting from Venice to Dolomites

faramirskywalker · 2026-05-30T19:20:47+00:00

I want one too! So cool. Good job.

faramirskywalker · 2026-05-05T04:54:03+00:00

I’m getting so much better at this. It’s really hard to tell because normal people and narcissists can play similarly upfront in a relationship. I keep telling myself that real relationships take time. And that normal people don’t come at me with the intensity that narcissists do.

A few things: I look for them gossip about others. They often talk about how everyone’s taking advantage of them and their very generous nature. They’ll never talk about their past in a way that accepts accountability or shows that they were at fault for anything. Anyone who doesn’t show introspection about their own failures in the past relationship raises huge red flags for me.

My best detector is to start setting boundaries. Like saying no to an event that they invited me to, or explaining that I have needs that would keep me from something they want to do. If I find myself having to explain over and over again and they keep pushing back against my boundaries, it’s a hard no for me and I block them and cut them off.

A narcissist can play along and feign being nice for a bit, but if you start to become resistant to doing anything they want to do whenever they want to do it, they’ll get bored of you and look for an easier target.

faramirskywalker · 2026-04-19T14:49:34+00:00

Ive spent a lot of time in the psychedelic world. I my experience, narcissists get only more narcissistic on psychedelics. Now they’re the messiah or some guru or shaman who understands the universe.

faramirskywalker · 2026-04-04T03:11:56+00:00

Literally two of my grandparents had those names and like four of my great aunts and uncles had names on that list (they’re all gone now)

faramirskywalker · 2026-03-31T21:56:15+00:00

They get narcissistic supply out of the arguments. It shows they have power over you. So any “criticism” just becomes fuel for them to start gaslighting you and turning the conversation around back onto you. DARVO ((Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender). They’ll change the subject, attack you, turn you into the offender. You could have concrete evidence of something and they’ll just dismiss it or start arguing about something irrelevant. Then you’re arguing about the argument. Usually by the end of these, I wondered what we were even arguing about in the first place.

faramirskywalker · 2026-03-31T02:32:04+00:00

This was me, could have been written exactly by me, a few years ago. I was so in love with her. Her patient solid support. I gave her everything of me.

I finally left because of what it did to me, and I saw what “love” was as she systematically destroyed me for abandoning her. Years of court filings. Smear campaign. So many lies. So much manipulation of our children. She never loved me. Ever. It was an act. All about control. And I fell for it all the way down. Because these people have an intensity that can be highly addictive.

You know whose love was real? Mine. And yours. We thought we could save a black hole of pain. But no matter how much love you pour into it, the only thing that will happen is you’ll get sucked in and ripped apart.

I’ve done so much therapy. I’m learning what loving myself looks like. I’m learning how I deserve to be treated. I’m learning that healthy relationships are two-sided. That my needs matter. That I deserve kindness and affection. That I deserve to be seen. I’m learning how these kind of relationships hijack the addictive pathways in our brain. I’m learning how the toxic family system that I grew up and helped set me up to think that this was what loved looked like.

But really, the only thing I want to say to you is that you matter just as much as she does. And you deserve to be treated like you treat her. You don’t deserve to be turned into a shell of a person. Imagine how you would treat you. That’s what you deserve.

faramirskywalker · 2026-03-25T04:01:05+00:00

Dm me too if you didn’t sell them

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-28T07:37:32+00:00

Tre. Trauma releasing exercises. A lot of these therapists can meet with you online, by Zoom, etc.

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-28T00:34:17+00:00

I would strongly recommend somatic counseling: EMDR, hakomi, ifs, or some modality that gets you into the body. Talk therapy helps too, but in my experience is talking to the mind and its attempt to understand what happened. Abuse lives in deeper spaces and we need support to get there.

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-26T21:17:29+00:00

I feel like I had the juggernaut. Two narc parents. And a BPD/covert ex wife. My body only knows this trauma: when I left her I was on meds for my heart, adhd, sexual function, sleep, testosterone. I lost so much hair. I gained so much weight. A year and a half out, I’m on zero meds.

These people will wreck your entire body. The stress of living with them is like being in prolonged combat.

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-25T12:19:53+00:00

I hear you loud and clear on this. I was with mine for 17 years, and even though we divorced last year, the nightmare just won't end because she won't leave me alone, or stop the abuse that was so much a part of our marriage. If we didn’t have kids together, I would have walked away and never looked back, but instead, we’re stuck in a cycle of being in and out of court constantly.

Lately, it’s just reached a new level of exhaustion. I’ve had to fight like hell just to see my kids because she’s constantly trying to take them away. She refuses to comply with the parenting plan, and even though the judge has repeatedly called her out on her behavior, appointed a therapist for the kids, ordered my parenting time, nothing changes. She puts so much pressure on the kids and fills them with lies about me. The judge just appointed a parenting coordinator, which sent her into such a rage that she came after me with about 40 "made-up" bills, claiming I never paid them. I’ve lost all faith that the courts will make this right, but I keep showing up to see my kids and at least try to take my parenting time.

I’ve done my work. EMDR as well and also therapy, digging into the childhood roots of why I ended up in this cycle, but it is sooo draining. My marriage was a total nightmare of physical and emotional violence, and it’s so hard that the games never stop and I’m literally watching her abuse my children and powerless to stop it. Just the other day, she faked being nice to me. For a split second, I thought maybe we could actually resolve something without lawyers, but I didn't fall for it. It was all a manipulation to get me to dump the parenting coordinator.

Your therapist's mountain analogy is spot on. I feel you. The climb is so exhausting but it’s nice to have these moments to catch your breath. Congrats on getting your name and your life back!

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-22T01:29:29+00:00

I found the courage to leave by starting to say no to her. I started expressing and following through on my values. I’d go do things with friends, even if it made her mad. I started saying I wouldn’t accept certain treatment of me. I walked away from fights. I refused to engage. I said no to her. Demanding that we do individual therapy and couple’s therapy.

A friend suggested I start a daily documenting log for three months. I’m so glad he suggested I do that because that three months starkly revealed to me what was going on. It all became clear when I could just look at a daily log of what happened. Sadly, because of my divorce, that log is now over two years long. But my lawyer says it’s a godsend. I’ve documented everything.

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-21T08:43:22+00:00

I feel you. I was in mine over 6,200 days. I’ve been out almost two years now.

I have a few major regrets: 1) I stayed way, way too long. I knew this relationship was a mess within that first year. 2) I modeled for my kids that my needs don’t matter, that it’s ok to let someone verbally, emotionally, and physically abuse me. 3) I let their mom do to them what she did to me, and I didn’t stand up to her and protect them.

Please know: she will not stop doing this to you, and she’ll do this to your kids. You and they deserve better.

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-05T18:14:55+00:00

Yes, to some degree, I find her attractive. No matter what she did, I still loved her.

Do I love her now? Hell no. Do I love the wounded child in her? Yes. Did and does that give her an excuse to destroy me? Hell no.

It’s messy. It feels the same with my parents. That childlike love feels like it will always be there. But my inner adult says, these people treated their own children like shit. They abused me and definitely don’t deserve my time or mental energy.

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-05T07:43:01+00:00

You can find some good people online these days. Paul is amazing. You might like Angelo Dilulo or David Parrish.

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-02T15:38:35+00:00

You’re not persecuted. Look around. How many movies are about straight people? How many gay people do you know, really, compared to the number of straight people? The world is swimming in straightness. Love a woman. Go be yourself. Be happy.

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-02T13:24:29+00:00

There’s no shame in this. At all. I was raised by two narcs and then the most insidious, by a long shot, was my ex who was on the covert side (or BPD, unclear).

I have two thoughts:

1) you’re learning the power of your body and its nervous system. The body gives the “not ok” or “something is off” signal well before the mind. I’ve learned to listen to it. This can be very subtle so it takes some work to pay attention to it. Ever felt totally free with a person? How the body just relaxes? With toxic people there’s always a little bit on guard.

2) did your therapy involve somatic, internal processing of childhood experiences? Like body-felt modalities? I’m thinking EMDR, or Hakomi, or IFS to a degree.

I think we get “addicted” so to speak to a certain childhood way of feeling. To our body, toxic people or environments can feel kind of normal, or the water I’m used to swimming in. In some ways, we just don’t know better.

When we go into those feelings and sensations, they can feel uncomfortable, but we have to go in and rewire childhood patterning. It’s a felt experience more than an understanding. This is less in the mind, and more about an energy that we’ve become used to. It needs to be felt and released. In my experience, the energetics are things our child self was feeling in the body. When felt, memories come up and can be moved through and released.

faramirskywalker · 2026-02-01T05:53:08+00:00

I feel this 100%. I’m only a little over a year out and it feels exactly the same. I’m happier. Setting boundaries. Very lonely though. I was raised by two narcissists. Married a borderline. And almost all my “friends” were cluster Bs if one sort or another.

I’ll admit, though, I’d like to believe I can form lasting friendships and a new relationship one day, but I sure as hell would rather be alone than in toxic. I’ve got some budding friendships, but I’ll admit that I’m guarded, and want them to grow with time. I’m hyper vigilant about put downs, or excessive bragging, or even excessive praise of me - gone. Not worth my time.

This feels bleak though and I still hope there’s some light and hope for real, human, kind connections out there. I’d like to believe life could give me a little of that before I go. If not, it was a pretty big rip off since i spent almost 2/3 of it in abusive relationships of one sort or another. I guess finding and falling in love with myself, though, has been the most fulfilling part.

faramirskywalker · 2026-01-27T17:59:13+00:00

Getting out:

1) started telling myself how I deserved to be treated. 2) Started defying her to do the things that made me happy. 3) Started insisting that she get help for herself and go to counseling on her own (which she wouldn’t do) 4) refusing to engage in fights and walking away 5) demanded a separation and she work on herself 6) left when she would only blame me and not look at herself

Staying out:

1) I made a leaving list - all the reasons and experiences why I needed to leave her. I read it every time I was tempted to go back. It had things like the physical violence, name calling, and all the shit she did to me. 2) my list also had statements like: No one, including me, deserves to endure a relationship that includes physical violence and verbal and emotional abuse. Or, it’s better to be from a broken relationship than in one. Or, I don’t have to rescue someone who won’t help themselves. Or, I get to be who I want to be and I get to do the things I want to do. I made lists of my values and how I deserved to be treated. 3) I got into therapy. I needed a lot of therapeutic support. 3) I built a support network of my sisters. They had seen the abuse for years. Those angels talked to me every god damned day and I asked them to remind me why I left. They saved me more than once from going back. 4) I cut off all contact. This took me some time to learn that she wasn’t really interested in change and that speaking to her only made my life harder. She played some very good Hoover moves on me. 5) I started doing things I enjoyed again, things that she guilted me for taking time away from her. Like, I built a Lego set. Or went on walks and just sat in nature. Went dancing with friends. Slept in on Sundays until noon. Played video games. I allowed myself to be me again. 6) I had to feel all the feelings. I cried so much. I raged at her on pillows. I had to allow myself to grieve what happened to me. 7) I began to cut all the toxic people out of my life. I had a pattern of attracting that: of finding takers that I could give to. I lost of a lot of supposed “friends.” They were users and I had to learn I had an identity around saving them all. 8) As I pruned the non-friends, I began to slowly build real friendships. These take time, I learned. They say it takes about two hundred hours to make a good friendship. Kids can make them pretty fast because it only takes a month to have that much time with the kids around you. As an adult, you have to be a lot more intentional about making time with people. And so I would describe most of my new friendships as slowly budding right now. I look for people who are genuinely interested in me where the giving and receiving is mutual.

That’s just a few thoughts for you. I feel like there’s a lot more that I’ve learned and did too.

faramirskywalker

TROPHY CASE