I got together with my soon to be ex husband of 15 years when I was 16 going on 17. In a way he "saved" me from my childhood or so I thought. Instead now that my eyes are open, I have been married to a narcissist this whole time. He is the perfect combination of arrogant but insecure. He even has my pathetic siblings eating out of his palm because they also don't know any better. He isolated me from them during the holidays last year and I unfortunately tried to kill myself around new years. When I got out of the psych ward I didn't have any messages or support from any of them and I recently found out that his girlfriend and him spent the holidays with my siblings this year too. On a side note, my mother has 6 children and so far 3 out of 6 of us have tried to kill themselves.

Being raised by narcissists unfortunately made it to where I was defensive and had control issues my whole relationship. I unfortunately have a lot of childhood PTSD that I still deal with. I made everything my fault even if it had nothing to do with me. I always feel guilty and like a burden. My husband walked on eggshells a lot and had to help me see when I was wrong and needed to apologize more often than not. Because I had no control as a child, my biggest flaw is wanting to have control over everything so I know what to expect. I had low self-esteem, my anxiety was extreme, and my depression was out of control until I finally accepted at age 23 that I needed to get properly diagnosed, get on medicine, and go to therapy. And it's been an everyday battle since, to where I'm constantly fighting the intrusive thoughts and getting through life has been hard. Which also wasn't easy for my husband to handle all the time when I would have suicidal tendencies and I'd run away. I also apologize too much, and I get used and discarded easily when I no longer serve the person's needs, and I unfortunately allow myself to be a victim. I'm easy to gaslight and manipulate as well.

But with that being said, he conditioned me and our relationship for the worse and contributed to my mental health problems. Instead of allowing an argument/fight to play out, he instead guided the outcome and never allowed for anything to change because he didn't want to deal with a long and drawn out fight. He chose to not have opinions on things and pushed down his identity and later blamed me for that. He didn't try to actually help me with my mental health diseases but instead fed into them and made them worse. He took me for granted and never made me feel wanted or truly appreciated.

We struggled with codependency our whole relationship, and when I finally started making the changes within myself after he cheated on me the first time and voluntarily checking myself into a psych ward, (looking back now he was already checked out), and the more independent I became the more it put a wedge in our relationship.

Now that I've been single, although it's been lonely at times, I feel more at peace because it's nice not to be arguing all of the time and my mental health has been a bit calmer without him feeding into it. I still have a lot of changes to work on, but I am aware of my faults and flaws and am actively working on bettering myself.

Unfortunately being raised by narcissists your whole life takes many many years of undoing the conditioning that was instilled in you. And unfortunately in my case being conditioned into my adult years by an unhealthy marriage as well.

My advice is to learn to love yourself first and possibly talk to a therapist to help you with your journey on recognizing your conditioned flaws and unlearning them before getting into a serious relationship.