Ask Kaleah
Advice Column
The Dear Abby of Abusive Relationships
 Get Your Questions Answered on Relationships and Abuse
Should I Contact Him After All This Time?
Q. I still cannot stop thinking of him. Things, people, places remind me of him. What do I do?
I Hate this! I have worked on myself now for 1yr & 7months, and I still want to talk to him. I need help I guess. It seems so unfinished. I have had no realtionship with anyone. I stay alone, can't get close to anyone. Have friends but thats it! There are times when I feel this is all my life will be. I want to Contact him, after all this time. Should I? there are signs that I should. I 'm so confused.
A. It took me three years to get past my first relationship with a narcissist. But once I got past it there was no going back. You just need to continue to work on yourself and move forward. Don't go back because you will find yourself in the same place and having to start over.
Congratulate yourself for the time that you have put between yourself and this destructive relationship. Although you may not feel you have your life back yet, you are in the process so trust that process. Also, you say you have friends. So you are not alone and friends are very valuable at times like these. Spend time with your friends and find ways to get out and develop new friendships.
Contacting him will only set you back and I would not trust what you call "signs" that tell you, you should. Narcissism is cloaked in deception. You have find closure within yourself. You won't find it with him. Look at your own positive qualities and what is good about your life and focus on this.
Must We Forgive Him?
Q. What do you think about those who say we must forgive him? I just can't do that as I was devalued and discarded by a narcissist after 30 years of marriage. Then the cruelty during the divorce was hard to believe. A friend has told me I must forgive him in order to find happiness myself.
A. Absolutely! Forgiveness is key! But from what you are saying I'm not convinced that you understand what I mean by forgiveness. It isn't about condoning his behavior. It is about saying "O.K. I accept that you are an N. and being that you are an N. I can't expect you to act like anything different. Therefore I release the need for you to be anything different. I forgive you for being who and what you are and I forgive myself for my involvement, since I didn't know any better.
Forgiving others merely breaks the connection we have to them so we are no longer giving them our energy. When we spend our days in hatred and anger towards someone we are still feeding them our precious life-force energy.
Forgiveness is also a boundary. You can forgive but not allow the behavior in your door ever again. It is a type of release! It is releasing him to his own experience of life so that you can be free to have yours.
Too many people decide they will carry a grudge forever and that grudge is like a cancer, slowing eating away at the person who is carrying the grudge. Your grudge doesn't hurt him, it hurts you.
Granted it was horrible what he did to you. The devaluing and discarding hurts like hell and it is unimaginable the cruelty he displayed that you never knew he was capable of. But regardless of the horrors he has shown you about his true character, this is really about him not you. You don't want to give him the power to let this destroy you! Why would you want to give that to him? He doesn't care if he destroys you! In his mind, you probably deserve it.
So your power comes in taking yourself back and finding a way to get on with your life, without the craziness that comes with living in a narcissistic reality.
Forgiving the narcissist is not saying "your behavior is acceptable." It is saying "I accept you for who and what you are and now that I know who you are, I won't have anything further to do with you. I release you to your own experience of life and I set myself free to find life again, in another form."
Try that one on!
Kaleah
Is He a Jerk or Is He Sick?
Q. How do know the difference between a narcissistic and a plain A-hole. Is he a jerk or is he sick. And after all you have read, why am I the one depressed and he's doing just wonderfully?
How do I stop caring about his approval. I honestly want him to call me to try to get me back but only so I can tell him to f*** off, is that horrible? As far as he is concerned I am doing great because that is what I have made him believe, because I do not want him to know how misarable he has made me. I feel immoral for considering to move on with my life while I'm still legally married, and he knows how I feel about my morals and I think he is using that to keep controlling me. Please help me.
I do know that I don't want him back, but I want him to want me. Why do I need his approval so bad?
Any insight would help
Thank you!
A. In my experience Narcissists are A-holes! No question about it! I wouldn't waste my energy trying to figure it out. From what you have disclosed in your letter to me I would say he most definitely has N. Characteristics, but I don't have the power to diagnose. And...it just doesn't matter. The question we really need to be asking ourselves is what do we want with someone who treats us so poorly?
You hit the nail on the head when you said you want his approval. There is probably a part of you, your "inner child" that never received the approval she needed and now is trying to get her needs met from someone outside of herself who clearly isn't capable of doing so. It is a little game we often play with ourselves. We didn't get Daddy's attention or approval so somehow we developed this deep rooted feeling that we were not worthy and if only Daddy would approve of us, we would feel worthy. So we go through life looking for surrogate Daddy's, these people completely incapable of validating us, and we spend our life energy trying to get their validation. It is such a dead end course.
Instead we need to be going deep within our own psyche to understand that little child within and learn to give her the attention and approval she seeks. It needs to be enough that we tell ourselves we are good, kind, loving, beautiful, and worthy and not accept anyone into our lives who do not treat us as the beautiful people we are. It is up to us to screen the people who get to be a part of our lives. He is the one who is unworthy of you! His treatment of you has nothing to do with who you are and everything to do with who he is. So stop seeking approval from him and instead focus on validating yourself.
As far as your issue of being legally married to him. I would take the steps necessary to end that marriage and then you truly are getting on with your life.
How can you distinguish between bipolar disorder and narcissism?
Q. How can you distinguish between bipolar disorder and narcissism? My husband claims he is bipolar (someone dropped that word around him) and I believe that he is narcissistic. Can he be both?
A. Narcissism is a personality disorder and bi-polar is a chemical imbalance that can be controlled with medication. However people with bi-polar can easily have very narcissistic traits. Your husband can easily be both, which is common.
I don't think it is as important to define the disorder as to define the treatment you are experiencing. If he is displaying narcissistic behavior that is destructive to you, then you have to take action to take care of yourself, regardless of what he says his problem is. I was with someone who was diagnosed as bi-polar who displayed narcissistic characteristics and even when he was on medication he was very difficult to live with. A diagnosis, of any kind, is not a license to abuse.
Can an Inverted Narcissist Get Better?
Q. My mother was a narcissist and every relationship I have been in is with narcissists. I have been doing research and I am an inverted narcissist. I fit the entire criteria! Its extremely terrifying for me as I feel empty without a narcissist in my life but crazy with one. I just want to be and feel healthy, whatever that feeling is. Can I feel? Will I every really feel like normal people. I have always been different, shy, closed off, indifferent, isolated, alone, used. Is it easier for the inverted type to get better?
A. I don't see inverted narcissism as being much different than co-dependency. A co-dependent is dependent on someone with a problem such as alcoholic, sex addict, drug addict, workaholic or perhaps someone who is mentally ill or personality disordered such as a narcissist. If you see yourself as an inverted narcissist it only means that narcissism is your drug of choice, or the type of disfunction that you migrate towards because it is familiar. Like any co-dependent you can change the way you relate to others by focusing on your relationship with yourself. You can read more about this in my article "Are You An Inverted Narcissist?"
Why Can't I Move On?
Q. Why I am still thinking about him so much? Does he still have some kind of connection to me forever? I want so badly to move on with someone new. I Wonder! I have made it this far. Is there something wrong with me ? Maybe your experience with this could help, Why do I still Miss Him ?
A. I know we often feel there is something wrong with us and to be honest, I can't answer that question for anyone. Feeling like there is something inherently wrong with us is called "Shame." We are often dealing with core issues of shame that have to do with never feeling good enough or feeling that we are bad in some way. A relationship with a narcissist will normally trigger those feelings of shame within us thus provoking our wounded inner child.
So although the narcissistic behavior of our partner can be very cruel and abusive, we continue to engage in the relationship often in an unconscious attempt to get approval or acceptance from the N.. The N. could very well represent someone from our past who we need approval from and never received it. We often continue to pine away for the attention and approval of the N. long after the relationship is over because there is something deeply unresolved within us.
The solution is to do everything within your power to stop focusing on the N. and bring your focus back to yourself. You have to give yourself the approval, attention, love and acceptance that you need. You can't look outside yourself in the N. relationship or any other relationship to get your needs met. The power you seek comes from within you and this is where you need to focus.
The N. simply opened a very big can of worms within you; a Pandora's box. This can be a gift if you use it right. Narcissistic abuse can be a catalyst for change.
Why do you still miss him? I don't believe you miss who he really is. You miss the dream, the illusion and the parts of yourself that you feel you lost in the relationship. You also likely are looking at him to somehow heal you and restore you back to a place where you can feel good again, like you did in the beginning. But he can't do that for you. You have to do it for yourself.
Is He Content?
Q. In your book " Web of Illusion", towards the end you say that your ex-boyfriend believed he was entitled to your house, and a woman pining away for him etc. does that mean he is perceived to be a good man and content with all that he has, and has made it because he felt entitled to it? C.M.
A. If you are asking, does he perceive himself to be a good man...Yes, I believe he does. What others perceive, I don't know. Is he content with what he has? It is really hard to say. I'm sure he believes he deserves what he has but I would imagine it is never enough. I imagine he will strive for more and more and do what is necessary to get it, even if it means using people.
Now the real question is do I care? At first I was very angry and upset about the whole thing, as we all are at the beginning, but I came to realize that what is truly mine, by divine right, will come to me and nothing is truly lost in the mind of God. I do believe in the "Law of Karma" or otherwise known as "The Law of Cause and Effect." This means what we do to others will come back to us ten fold, whether it be good or bad. I'm not wasting my energy wondering whether he is content or happy. My focus needs to be on my own happiness.
K.
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