Healing After Narcissistic Abuse: My Story

By nature, I am a fighter. I am fair. I go by the rules. I am independent. I am empathetic. I am honest & loyal.

By nurture, my learned behaviors, either modeled for me or self-adopted through my survival response, I am a people-pleaser. I am co-dependent. I’m a care-taker.

Both my nature and nurture traits are a very big part of my story. Some of these traits are exactly what the Narcissist looks for. They target the empath, the loyal one, whom they see as weak. Some of these traits, the fighter, the fair, independent and honest ones, are the ones that, once you’ve been hooked in, lead to you becoming the narcissist’s enemy.

My first marriage was to a man 13 years my senior. I met him at a time when I was young and impressionable and had no real direction in life. My parents never discussed the topic of going to college and I was coming up on my senior year in high school. I just assumed that the next step was to get married.

Looking back on that marriage, which lasted 15 years, I can now see how it set me up for what was to come. The blessings were my two daughters. One of the lessons that I didn’t learn the first time around were that actions speak much louder than words.

Maya Angelou once said, “When a person tells you who they are, believe them!” Well, I subscribed to that for a very long time, however, I have learned through my experience that it isn’t always true. Many times it is, but if someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is doing the talking, you had better look very closely at their actions. If their words and their actions aren’t congruent, they don’t walk the talk, then you may have some real soul-searching to do.

When I met my abuser, I was coming out of my first marriage, but I was still married, and so was he. I began working at his place of employment and he immediately began zeroing in on me with his charm and flirtatious tactics (FIRST RED FLAG). He continuously asked me to kiss him, stared at me from afar with flirtatious eyes, followed me around like a puppy. He called me at home, pretending to need to talk to me about some ridiculous thing at work. For a long time I turned down his antics. All of his charm and constant attention became irresistable to me. Eventually, he wore me down and I gave in.

The love-bombing began! This was the hook that kept me in this relationship for nearly three decades. He swooned over me. He wrote me, literally, hundreds of love letters declaring his undying love for me, how desirous of me he was, how I was his soulmate, that he wanted to be with me forever, and on and on. Every morning when I woke up, there was a note. When I opened the cupboard, there was a note. When I pulled down the covers, there was a note. You get the picture! I saved every single one for the entirety of our relationship. That was how much importance I placed on his word. I believed him! I was hooked!

I’d never heard the term “love-bombing” but this was exactly what it was. I thought to myself, this is amazing. This man absolutely adores me. He loves me more than I could possibly imagine. I met my person.

The Love-bombing was a seductive (Seductive Narcissism) tactic that was used throughout our relationship to create a trauma bond by hooking me back in after periods of devaluing me, which I will elaborate on in future posts. The important thing to realize is that this overly excessive display of “love” and “affection” does not come from a healthy place. It was his way of securing, and keeping, his “supply”, someone to adore him and feed his ego. And I, being oblivious to what was actually happening, fell for it, hook, line, and sinker!

The trauma bond that was created kept me praying for the return of the man I first met, and believed he was. He said kind things, he talked to me with respect, he doted on me, he desired me, he wanted to be with me forever and would do whatever it took. His words were empty to the core, but those were the words that I held onto for three decades.