What is better

Started by LightofGold, December 05, 2019, 03:19:09 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

LightofGold

Just a thought I've always had that is partly the reason I'm struggling to leave my Narc partner.  Would it be right to leave a Narc who lives with you and doesn't own a house or have enough money for rent? There possibly could be someone else they could stay with, but if leaving them would devastate them and destroy their life, is it right to leave and ruin another person's life just to get your life and freedom back? Or would that be heartless? Ive been wanting feedback on this thought for a while. I hate the idea of being selfish just to make my life better and easier, but at the same time, how much misery is worth it?

Poison Ivy

You are not responsible for this other person's life being ruined (if that happens).  The other person has chosen to attach himself or herself to you, probably mainly so that he or she doesn't have to work and take care of himself or herself. The other person is responsible for his or her own life.

GettingOOTF

#2
My BPDxH has no job and no where to go when I eventually left. His helplessness and my sense of obligation was mostly what kept the marriage together.

I see now that he cultivated that helplessness so I wouldn’t leave.

I worried he’d end up on the streets or dead. He found a job and shortly afterwards another woman who now takes care of him like I did.

You are not ruining his life by saving yours. And the way I see it is that is about saving your life. Everyone walks a different path, but I found that I had to be true to myself and reclaim my life instead of living to save someone else’s.

I look back on my marriage and I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know what it was about me that thought it was acceptable for a grown man to live off me, unemployed and without any means of his own for years and years. I have worked very hard on this in therapy. I see the role I played and I see his manipulations very clearly now.

Your narc partner will be fine. He will try to convince you otherwise and you will feel guilty but once he sees you are serious he will pick himself and find someone else. It’s how he’s survived this long and it’s what he knows. He will be fine. So will you.

capybara

I think we all here feel that obligation to care for the pwPD(s) in our lives. What I have seen setting boundaries with my uPD mother is that after all the pushback, she just finds a new way to satisfy her needs. And that can be painful for me - it makes me feel unimportant and rejected.

With my BPDH, I truly believe that the relationship was slowly destroying me, without healing him. He will have to decide what work he wants to do on healing himself. Maybe I was helping him in the final months, when I started setting boundaries. But in the end I couldn't be in the relationship any more.

I think therapy has helped me a lot.

Kat54

I agree with the others. I understand that feeling you are hurting someone and you feel a sense of responsibility but its your life also and you deserve happiness. It took me a very long time to get the point of thinking of myself; realizing I was not going to survive if I stayed. He literally was sucking the life out of me.
Good luck to you, push yourself out of the comfort zone and make boundaries and be better to yourself.