Trying to regain intimacy

[IsleOfSong]

SoT for the win! What a thoughtful, compassionate post.

Years ago, I was confiding in a therapist about my lack of intimacy with my wife. The therapist helped me let myself off the hook by putting it succinctly: You can't cuddle a tiger. Though my wife blamed the lack of "action" solely on me, deep down I knew that it was my unease with her, thanks to the unfillable void of her needy, judgmental PD mind, causing all kinds of rifts between us. Our lack of intimacy was a symptom, not a cause.

It all comes back to our bad habit of letting them set our pace. Once we stop running everything through their self-focused filter of what's acceptable, we can reclaim our independence — and their power over us falls away. While I'm still with my wife, increasingly I just do what I want — she's going to express displeasure at some point anyway, so I might as well be true to myself. And if she walks (which I think is highly unlikely), then so be it.

You can get there too.

[zad7242]

Wow, thanks to all of you, but especially SoT and Isle of Song at the end of the thread.

  SoT,

  Thank you for sharing and certainly no apologies needed! What I'm really thinking about now, is how when you first referenced "control", that word did not resonate with me. But now, I'm thinking about how sex is just one of the areas where I believe my wife "moves the goal posts" on me. I never thought about why the goal posts are moving but of course can easily be about control. A big non-sexual example of goal posts moving, is a couple of months ago, in part based on advice I received here, I made an agreement with my wife that I would no longer share our marital struggles with my family and any mutual relationships, but in exchange I would be clear and firm about my general right to seek support from a therapist, clergy, my friends, and support groups. She agrees in theory but now her issue is that I must be lying to all these people, so the support is invalid. As I've mentioned in a previous thread, she threatened divorce if I didn't get a brain scan which she was convinced would prove I had NPD. When that didn't happen, she said I must have gotten the wrong kind of scan and lied to them about my symptoms. When the psychiatrist told me I probably have mild depression and meet some criteria for ADHD, my wife now uses those to explain why I am the mentally ill one causing all our issues. So, the progression was: scan will show you are a narcissistic psychopath > scan was invalid to begin with > scan did show you are very sick with depression and ADHD. By the way the psychiatrist did not feel like either condition warranted medication. Thank you for your wisdom and well wishes SoT, best to you!

Isle of Song: I've told my wife it's hard to hug a porcupine. Your last post hits me center mass. Thank you.

[square]

I think the subject resonates with all of us, and while there may be very different things going on, ultinately we've all experienced the loss of intimacy and connection due to any of various obstacles created by disordered personalities.

I have no doubt that it's the human condition for us all to feel some shortcoming here, but with disordered personalities it reveals something fundamentally wrong.

I think even if our stories are different, there is a foundation in common. We wish for a connection that simply can't be obtained. And its lack pervadesvm into the rest of the marriage - loss of trust, loss of vulnerability, loss of joy, loss of care, loss of desire, loss of feeling valued. Loss of being known.

[MaxedOut]

Moving goalposts. Yeah. When you understand that the stuff isn't about the purported stuff it's easier to see and understand things. And easier to regain some autonomy. And isolation/relationships with others is a super common area. We come at it from a non-PD mentality of weighing a point and the distress things seem to "cause" our mates and decide whether we can agree to something. Often it was a stretch and pitting their needs ahead of ours. But saying we do agree, we then come to find out it's not enough. Over and over again.

Understanding that fundamentally the demand/request is about filling a thing that can't be filled that way makes a big difference. The insecurity, shame, desire to control, fear/anxiety, worry about how others see them, fragility in PDs can't be fixed or filled because we stop hanging out with that one buddy. Or because we stop running the ceiling fan that could fall and harm everyone. Or avoid talking about things.

Of course. It seems ridiculous to think it would.

So what happens? The agreement causes short-term easing of the internal distress, demonstrates our loyalty/love, etc. But does is fix a core wound? No. That tension builds up again and finds a new point of focus. They all make some sort of sense. And issues are legit or have reasonable stuff at the core. But we will not be able to assess that from within the PD's framework and worldview.

That leads to brain scans and isolation and even that doesn't fix the thing. And resentment, anger, and frustration with us. When I better understood that is dialed down the temperature in my reactions and took the air out of many of the demands.

That gave me space to get better in touch with my values and be able to think about issues raised that seemed to have truth or validity to them in a non-PD context (including things like "if the roles were reversed how would I feel" "what would this mean for me?" "If I am not behaving how I would like, why?").

I can see you are already starting to have some of this clock into place like realizing fear and rejection are playing a role for you when it comes to intimacy (totally get that, as many others here have mentioned these traits are safety/intimacy killers).

Similarly, my SO would complain about me not opening up or saying when something was bothering me. I realized, while I had had some issues with that in prior relationships, it just plain was not emotionally safe. I knew I usually regretted it in prior years. But getting some understanding of control and motivations helped me understand better that it wasn't just about reactivity,  it about control, about shame, etc. And to be at peace with a reasonable stance of not continuing to open up to a person who was not safe to do that with.

[SonofThunder]

Thanks for the well wishes zad7242

Imo your description of the goalpost moving is great insight into your event progression as you describe.  Your ability in mindfulness, to rise above and look down from end to end, tying events together over time to determine what you believe to be a foundational motive for your PDw, is excellent. 

That has been very helpful for me also in noticing the always changing expectations of the PD, as well as the accompanying hypocrisy. Imo, both of them together reveal great truth. 

Imo, since the situation is always changing on us with a PD (expectations raised, blame-shift, new issues created, many others), then destination is not the goal for the PD.  If a current situation fizzles out in available manipulative methods for the PD to move the goalpost, a new situation will be created or multiple ones will occur simultaneously, keeping at least one active.   

If destination then is not the motive for the PD, then imo it's about their never ending journey. The PD burns a great deal of fuel and imo, PD manipulative control across many facets of the life we share, continues to put gasoline in their draining tank.

Imo this is why we see a PD go into panic mode when the non gets off the drama triangle and stops cycling the IDD back to the idealization stage through compliance. The PD then digs their desperate heels deeper into devaluation and then eventually combining with discard, in the panic to put fuel into a tank now approaching 'E'.

Again great insight on your part to connect the timeline dots to potentially discover a foundational motive.  In addition, there may be the very real variables in play that Bloomie mentioned, which makes the situation much more difficult and complex. 

SoT