Becoming a 3rd me

[Associate of Daniel]

Since uNPD exH left over 10 years ago, I've thought of him as being 3 seperate persons.

The nice one I fell in love with.  The sullen, non committed, non communicative one I was married to.  And the abusive, manipulative one he now is.

I've just now realised a parallel with my own personality. (Although I don't think "personality" is the right word.)

The naive but confident musical girl I was when I met him, the frustrated trying to survive wife and ex wife that I am, and the confident, healed woman that I'm now trying to become.

I watched another of many (oh so many) YouTube videos about narcissism the other day.  There are so many people who produce these things - I'm sorry that I can't remember which one this was.

They basically said that when we pick up the pieces after narcissistic abuse we cannot expect to revert to being the same person we were before it occurred.

It seems obvious.  But something clicked for me.

Before going out with my uNPD exH, I had reached a reasonably high level of music performance qualifications.  I enjoyed it all. And I've been thinking I should go back to that.  I dip my hand in occasionally but nothing to the level that I was.  And I've been struggling to understand my lack of motivation in that area.

I think a lot of it is that I've lost a lot of the skills and knowledge that I had, and with that confidence.  I've also lost confidence being in crowds due to Covid. And there's the overall thing of priorities now having changed.  I'm a mum.  My beautiful boy is my priority.

I'm now thinking, I don't actually have to go after the music again.  I'd like to.  But I'm older now.  I don't have the physical or mental stamina I did 25 years ago.

I should just reinvent myself entirely, if that's what it's called.  Maybe I should become a writer.  Don't we all want to write a novel some day?

So the 3rd version of myself would be very different from the 1st 2.

I don't know if I'm making much sense really.

AOD

[escapingman]

You make perfect sense, this is what Narcdaily (Andrew) talk about all the time. There are 3 versions of us, the one before the narcissistic relationship, the one during the relationship and then the one after. The best version is the one after. You can't go back to the naïve happy person you were before, if you did and did not learn anything during the relationship you would just fall into another abusive relationship. I can already see how the abusive relationship have changed me and how I am dealing with situations in a completely different way that I would have done in the past (being version 1 or 2 of myself). I am not at all in my 3rd version, but I am reinventing myself and finding new purposes. For example, a very simple reinvention is that I am now growing a beard, obviously not something for you AOD, but you get my point.

Keep at it, and don't let you narc ex get into your head.

[JustKeepTrying]

This makes complete sense to me and is something I too have been struggling with.  Integrating the past me with the wife of a narc me and the current me - hopefully to form a wiser, kinder, gentler more loving me.  I applaud your courage AOD

[Stillirise]

I totally understand this.  When discussing my healing process with others, I often say I feel like a 3rd gen, new and improved version of my old (pre marriage) self.