Why it is so hard to move on

[notrightinthehead]

After a year I have been back to my house where NPDh now lives on his own. His girlfriend has not yet moved in. He has re-furnished and spent quite a lot on furniture, carpets, artwork, and a new car. That, while he refuses to support our youngest in her last year of education because he has no money,  he tells her.
It was painful to see all this manifestation of his selfishness. But then again – what did I expect? That he overnight had turned into an normal, kind, loving person?
He has remained the same man that he was during our time together, thinking only of himself, seeing only his needs as important, interested in enhancing his image and being admired for his brilliance, looks, wealth, good taste, sophistication.

And it got me thinking. One of the reasons why us with Co-dependent traits suffer so much from the separation and find it so difficult not to think about the PD so much, could be that our whole life revolved around the SO. They were the centre of our universe. In the beginning we were full of admiration, longing, love; then we tried to change them with all the tricks we could think of; in the end we thought about them what they had done to us- the abuse, the disappointments, the love in vain.
But what stays is, our focus was constantly on them. So when the relationship finally ends, there is that big gaping hole in our hearts and minds. A huge change for us. A big loss. No change for the NPD. They continue to think about themselves. So much easier when only the partner changes, nothing else.

One of the reasons why it might have been so much easier to think about another person than about myself might have been that I used to think very lowly of myself.  I did not like myself, thought of myself as inferior. After years of therapy this is much better now, but still, it is hard for me to know what I want for myself alone. Somehow I have lno strong feelings anymore.  I am neither really excited, happy or sad.  As if I were numb or in a constant state of shock.

I don't allow myself to get into another relationship, lest my people pleasing will start all over again and I will try to make everything right for the other person.

How did you fill that big hole? How did you come out the other side?

[Spygirl]

Hi,

I am going thru many of these same things, feelings you have.

For me, i knew i would need to move away.  So focusing on planning for MY new life has been very helpful. i had to take out equity on my home to pay for the divorce, and keep me going until i could leave. Its pretty much forced a move i wanted anyway, so no looking back for me.

I am also focusing on fixing my problems, the ones that got me here several times with different men, though this one was the only marriage. That takes up alot of time too. I am also not interested in a relationship for the same reasons. I have friends instead. Its better.

I also focus on how grateful i am that i was pushed off the cliff now, rather than later. It saved me. I can and have been changing. That hole you speak of ? I call it "MY FUTURE"
It is wide open. I can do whatever i want with it. I have so many dreams to fill it with, and am executing on them.

I have little interest in knowing anything about his life now.  Since he is no different, has no interest in improving his mental state, i pretty much know how it will go.

There will be new friends to create a new image with. New women to seduce and discard. Excessive amounts of money spent on lavishness,  booze- and probably drugs again. He will be an old, sick man someday.

Fill that hole with your dreams, make some or all of them a reality. You wont have time for focusing on him. Every day you dwell on him, is another day he still has a hold of your arm. Youre a good person, and your experience is going to help the rest of your life. The best revenge, is doing well despite everything.

[notrightinthehead]

Spygirl, you have such a wonderfully positive attitude, a real inspiration! A good idea to reframe the loss as the white canvas 'future'. 

[clara]

When I was younger, I was like you, Notright.  I had very little self-esteem, little self-confidence etc.  So when my uNPDexh entered my life he knew all the buttons to push to get me to fall for him.  And after we married, he knew all the buttons to push to keep me with him.  Without him, I didn't know who I was because I had this idea that he somehow "rescued" me and making me his wife somehow should have been purpose enough for my existence.  For years, I didn't disagree with that view, didn't even want to examine it because it was too dangerous. What if I didn't agree with him? What if I recognized his behavior for what it really was?  Deep inside, I knew he was continuing the abuse I'd grown up with, but his abuse was of the velvet-glove variety and it was hard recognizing it for what it was.  After things got out of hand (mostly because of money) and I finally left him, I felt at loose ends and had a crisis of identity because I couldn't visualize myself as having value outside of a romantic relationship.  So I got into several more bad relationships, one with a genuine sociopath, until I realized that all of these relationships did nothing to make me happy or feel better about  myself.  In fact, I only felt worse.

I took a long time to step away from my old mindset of needing a romantic relationship in  my life in order to feel fulfilled.  I had a lot of friends back then but I discounted them--doing things with them "wasn't the same."  But doing things with my various boyfriends didn't really  make me happy, either.  When I was finally able to separate the relationship from my expectations of the relationship, I started seeing things more clearly.  My problem wasn't that I wasn't able to be happy or at least content on my own, because actually I was--my problem was I didn't think I should be happy on my own or without a man in my life.  What I actually felt and what I thought I should feel were two different things.  Being in individual therapy didn't much help with my issues, mainly because I had several bad therapists, but what helped was group therapy.  Being in group helped me stand outside myself and look objectively at issues others were facing that were actually very similar to mine.  Once I was able to "get out of my own head," as it were, I was able to more accurately identify a toxic relationship and rid myself of it.  Finding self-esteem wasn't easy, but it was always there and that's one thing you have to keep in mind--the self-esteem and sense of self-worth is there inside you, you just have to locate it and bring it out.  I did this by focusing on what made me happy, really happy, and a lousy boyfriend wasn't it.  I was telling myself I was happy, but I wasn't, same as I was telling myself I was in love with my NPDexh when I really wasn't.  When I was finally able to be honest with myself, I knew I didn't even  much like him.  Leaving him was more of an unconscious act than a conscious one.  I knew I had to do something so I listened to that gut instinct rather than trying to rationalize, once again, why I should stick with him.

Anyway, that was how I dealt with it and like I said, it took me years and I'm still not quite there but the process, once you keep working at it and recognize when you're starting to backslide, gets you there little by little.   

[notrightinthehead]

Thanks for your story and your wise words Clara. Looking for what makes me really happy (instead on concentrating on what does not) - what a good idea. And then doing more of those things that make me happy.