In the past few days, I have been wondering if my H shows signs of covert narcissism before MLC...
I saw a post on the Facebook group where someone was asking about the "Runaway Husbands" Facebook group (by Vikki Stark). Vikki's work was what I first encountered after BD, but it never really sit well with me. It was an initial relief to read and hear that many people suffered from "Women Abandonment Syndrome" (which could also be "Spouse Abandonment Syndrome" of course, seeing that there are a lot of male LBSs, too), but I actually had a hard time being in the Facebook group, because most women in there, who're active commenters or posters, seem to push towards narcissism. They actually scared me because every time I would share a bit about my story, they would say that I hadn't seen the worst of my H yet, and that it's rather impossible that he's "nice."
So, I felt pushed to adopt the theory that every runaway husband is a narcissist, overt or covert, maybe passive-aggressive instead of really malignant.
I struggled to accept that. And so, after too many pushes from the women in there, I left. I didn't feel heard or seen. I just felt pushed into some kind of club of angry women who're just bashing their H's, even many years after BD. But I did make some friends in there, and those women all doubt that their H's are narcissists.
A little while ago, I was trying to read "The Passive-Aggressive Covert Narcissist" by Debbie Mirza (also a tip I got in the Runaway Husband's Facebook group), but after a few chapters, I had to stop. Although, I could definitely recognize some of the behaviors in my current MLCer, I couldn't really match it with my H as I knew him before MLC. But then again, his mother, my MIL, is definitely, without a doubt, a passive-aggressive covert narcisssist and my FIL has always enabled and is still enabling her. My H was always abandoned by his parents in that way: he always needed to emotionally accommodate my MIL and my FIL would always choose my MIL's side and never stand up to her, which left my H in a very lonely and vulnerable position. And this dynamic is still going on, even though my FIL has terminal pancreatic cancer now. Now, I believe it's even worse, because my FIL just doesn't have the strength for confrontations, and he made my H promise that he would take care of my MIL after he dies. That's my H's worst nightmare! My FIL just does not know his own son and for my H, it's the ultimate powerlessness, not being able to put up a boundary.
My H was always bad a putting and maintaining boundaries. My MIL is a master in emotional blackmail, in the most subtlest ways.
And yet, even though I can see now that my H truly struggles with putting up boundaries, especially toward his parents — and it's way more obvious now that he's in MLC and I can see how he's so avoidant of any confrontation with me, too — somehow, my H always got what he wanted during our marriage. But his demands went nowhere near what my MIL always demanded of him in those passive-aggressive ways.
Yet, the projections my H puts on me are all about being controlling, demanding, not supporting him, etc. And I'm like... when was I ever like that? My H is the dominant one in our relationship and it's usually about what he wants, and in my experience, I always had to somehow "ask permission" or find ways to do my thing without getting in my H's way too much. In the end, I was the most social (and I am again now!) person in our marriage and I drew all the people into our life, but maybe halfway in our relationship, when I started to struggle with anxiety and burn-out, the tables turned, and I became "the wife of" instead.
It's really dawning on me now that my H might have always had some of those covert narcissistic traits. But it's definitely not malignant. It seems to be more of a reaction from his CEN, a way to cope and probably also to reenact what's familiar to him (his dynamic with his parents, and especially with his MIL).
There came a time when I worked through my own issues and I started taking care of myself more, putting myself first more, and that's exactly when my H started to pull back and started to have issues with how I became, because the dynamic between us changed. And then again, he still got his way most of the time until BD. I really felt isolated and disconnected from most people around me in the year leading up to BD, and I couldn't understand why. And now, over three months after BD, I finally feel like myself again, not just "me" from the relationship before MLC started, but "me" from before I even met my H (I was 21 when I met him) and how I was in the first years of our relationship, until that started changing.
I haven't had a shred of anxiety since the most extreme emotions passed. Of course, I sometimes have a bit of fear of the future, because the future is still uncertain (but always will, right?), but the anxiety I used to feel and what spiraled me into a full-blown anxiety disorder years ago, and I had a short relapse in 2022, is gone. Just gone.
And now I can't stop wondering: what does this mean?
Where has this anxiety gone? Did I internalize something that wasn't maybe mine?
Is he actually a covert narcissist, even from before MLC, but was he just good at hiding it?
Why did I change the way I did halfway through our relationship?
Was the anxiety linked to fatigue and exhaustion from always having to walk on eggshells, how subtle that might've felt at times?
Because I do recall always being so fatigued, like never really feeling as myself, always feeling some kind of heaviness, but it is hard to discern if that was because of my H slipping into MLC, or if it was already present before that. They do say that if you live with a narcissist, you're never really "yourself," never really feeling quite "right." But you think it's you. And my H definitely often made me feel like it was me (I was the one not wanting sex, I was the one with the anxiety, it was my drama, I wasn't bringing in enough money, blah blah, blah).
Now I truly wonder: who was my H, really? Just like with children who can't look at their parents and see them for who they really are until they're all grown up and start to reflect on those dynamics, I sometimes feel like I was maybe also in some kind of denial, because I might have been thinking it was me, and my H didn't really work on stating it wasn't me... I don't know... I might have been an easy victim to blame, so that he could potentially feel better about himself, because we both struggled with feelings of low self-worth. He was just better at externalizing it, and I was a master at internalizing. Match made in heaven!
The more I grew and built my sense of self-worth, which I really did in the past years, the more I became a threat to his comfort zone... that's what I believe.
Still, it's hard for me to think my H is a potential narcissist, but maybe that's because the only narcissists I've known in my life are more overt or, like my MIL, quite malignant. I mean, my MIL tries to be very subtle and is passive-aggressive, but it's still obvious. Most people can see it if they get to know her a little bit. She's very immature, emotionally. She acts like a child with tantrums at times to get what she wants. She puts words in your mouth all the time. And she can't even hide how much she is gossiping behind your back (she really hates me, but acts all friendly to my face, to then gossip about me to everyone she meets, whether they know me or not).
My H, on the other hand, in my experience, is someone who's quite dominant and has his ways of getting what he wants, and he has a lot of anger within himself (the stress he radiates is really tangible at times, and some people at work are afraid of him). He can sometimes be a bit of a bully if things don't go his way. But he actually doesn't put people down overtly. He doesn't really gossip much. He seems to be genuinely caring about people, but he lacks the skills to set and maintain boundaries, is very avoidant and people-pleasing (but then that will put him in conflict with himself, resulting in anger towards himself, because he then realizes he should've put a boundary up).
I don't know. I get so confused.
Even now... there are definitely narcissistic traits now with his MLC persona and the monstering and the lack of remorse and the selfishness.
But... even now, he still seems to genuinely care in those moments of clarity and if you're enabling his current fantasy, he will be the nicest and most caring man you probably ever met. (-> but this also sounds really narcissistic, lol... if you enable a narcissist, they can truly be nice, but it's because you're working in their favor, not because they're really interested in who you are. You're just still useful to them. And I stopped to be useful, I guess, because I didn't enable my H as much anymore... * sigh * I'll probably never know what's really going on underneath that thick skull.)
I want to believe that he's just a victim of CEN who now became a perpetrator going through MLC, until he integrates the parts of himself that need integration.
Who will he become then? I don't know. I wonder about it.
Will I like that person who he will become? Or will he get stuck in his current persona and spend the rest of his life like his MIL does (but I'm sure she always had the traits)?
Will he still want things to go his way? Because even though my H was a caring and empathetic man, he still was someone who knew how to get his way. Will I be willing to accept parts of him that were part of the old relationship still to be there in the future?
So. Many. Questions.
And I know it's impossible to answer. I'll just have to wait and see. And... I remember Acorn's words very well: NO EXPECTATIONS. At all.
It might never happen, that I get to see my H as a changed person. Or it might.
Just some thoughts... hehe... feels good to express them. Now I can let go
Edit: I just remember that my H is actually really bad at maintaining friendships. He always has this expectation that people will come to him. If they don't, he will have issues with it but not necessarily take the initiative to connect. I'm sure there's also a deep fear of rejection.
Me, on the other hand, never had issues maintaining friendships. I'm usually the one who reaches out when it's been too long. People appreciate it. I don't fear rejection as much as abandonment (which is a whole other level of rejection like you're existence isn't validated, not just rejected). But working through my mother-wound of abandonment, I learned that I'm worth love and friendship and that abandonment really reflects on the one who's abandoning, not the one who's abandoned. It doesn't stop me from connecting with people now. My world is growing so big now, with so many people in my life I feel a connection with (what a relief after being so isolated in the years before BD), but my H's world is becoming very, very small, because I'm not in his life anymore drawing in all the people. Now he's confronted with his issues of truly connecting with people.
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Me & my MLC man