I felt this overwhelming need to TELL my husband what was going on with him, or what was lacking in his personality, for a long time after I first understood what was going on in our relationship. I still do. I think I tried telling him in so many ways and for so long to be helpful. I wanted to get him to see what was wrong so we could work on fixing it.

Bad idea. Honestly, I don’t know what the best way is to try to get someone you love to see the light once you have been enlightened. I know all my words before I knew I was in an abusive relationship were completely wasted on my husband, so why would he be interested in anything I would have to say about him after I knew what was going on? Apparently I wasn’t thinking clearly. 

Once I found out about narcissism, my whole world changed. Instead of the fog of confusion I had lived in for years, there was a reason and a potential diagnosis for what had been going on in our marriage. We just needed to take the appropriate steps moving forward.

Things began to make more sense the more I learned. I felt narcissism was a problem I could solve. I could fix him! I could fix us!

Wrong. What seemed so simple to me was met with steadfast denial and blame shifting from my husband. I tried to gently point out in the moment the ways he was emotionally unavailable for me or when he gaslit me or deflected blame onto me or belittled me. I even scripted out what he could have said. I gave him grace. I allowed for mistakes. I told him I didn’t expect him to be perfect. I just wanted him to try. 

He would not try. There was an excuse for everything. Nothing was ever his fault. He felt attacked. I was nagging him. What about me? What was I going to do to get better? If blame was assigned, it was at least 50/50, not mostly his issue. He insisted I was the real problem.

I tried everything I could think to do over a course of 12 months. We tried marriage counseling. That was a failure. I begged and pleaded. I laid out my wants and needs. I got angry. I cried. I communicated better than I ever had throughout our marriage. I didn’t give up. He had to come to his senses at some point, right? So I pushed on, learning all I could about narcissism.

I read a great book, So, You’ve Been Called A Narcissist, Now What: Doing The Work To Ens Patterns of Narcissistic and Emotional Abuse by Dr. David Hawkins. Dr. Hawkins was the only person I could find on YouTube that had a comprehensive program to help change a narcissistic relationship. I read the book in about a 24 hour period. I made notes all over it. When I finished, I sat with the book on my lap and finally felt the first glimmer of real hope for our marriage. 

We could do this! It would mean a lot of hard work and dedication, but I had watched my husband throw himself into many challenging circumstances and do the demanding work for our business. Why wouldn’t he do this for me, for us? He loved me, right?

That same weekend I read the book, and still riding that emotional high of having a plan for our marriage, I checked his texts on his iPad. I felt so sure he would respect the ultimatum I had told him about no contact (besides actual work things) with two of his employees. If he continued any sort of relationship or communication with them outside the office, I would leave. My boundary was that I would not play second fiddle to these women anymore. It was me or them, he couldn’t have both. 

Before you think, Hey, you shouldn’t be snooping on his texts without him knowing, I will also say that he told me I could look at his text messages anytime I wanted. He told me he was an open book. He had nothing to hide. 

Well, the snooping wife got burned this time. I opened up the app on his iPad with a heart full of hope and closed it with a heavy heart. He had text both women the day before and neither text chain, on his part, had anything to do with work. 

I was devastated. He knew what I needed from him to remain in our marriage. He knew I had been clear that I would be done if he continued to contact these gals outside the office. One woman didn’t even work for us anymore and he had sent her flirty texts! 

My Truth: He had made his decision and I couldn’t trust him.

That was a big pill to swallow. I was actually more angry with myself for thinking I could trust him than I was with him. Why did I keep trying? Why did I think he would actually try too? That was our trauma bond flaring up on me there. It did that. It was kinda “our thing.”

So, I mentally started to tap out of our marriage that weekend. I tried to stop caring and took an even bigger step away from our marriage. When I confronted him about the texts, his excuse was, “We were separated.” Seriously? It’s fine to text those gals if we are separated? Well, that told me all I needed to know. 

The holidays came and went that year, things got better for a little bit, then they got worse. I still kept my boundary in place and didn’t yield. I remained cordial toward him and stayed at our house alone in the bedroom while he slept in the basement. 

At the one year mark, almost to the day of my Day of Realization, I tried one last time to throw a Hail Mary pass to my husband. I sent him a link for a marriage recovery center in the state of Washington. They offered a two- or three-day marriage intensive program and specialized in narcissistic abuse recovery. I followed Dr. Hawkins on YouTube and had read a few of his books, including the one that gave me hope in the first place months before. Dr. Hawkins ran the Marriage Recovery Center and he seemed tough. He stood up to the narcissists and helped them see the dysfunction they caused in their families. I told my husband I’d go with him. I was willing to try if he was.

You know what he said? First, he told me the link I sent him didn’t work. After I called BS on that one, he then told me, “It seems they only work on the husbands there. What do they do to fix the wives?”

I kid you not. He was dead serious. 

My Truth: My husband didn’t want to fix our marriage. 

I needed to finally, completely absorb that answer from him, no matter how much it hurt. 

We were each sitting in our own cars with the windows down in the parking lot of our office building during this conversation. It was a Sunday night and it was raining. I gave him a sad smile and told him that was my last straw. I’d get going on my part of the paperwork for my attorney and get the divorce underway. I was no longer interested in trying to save our marriage. 

The truth is, narcissists won’t change. Mine wouldn’t, or maybe more accurately couldn’t, change for me, for our kids, or even for millions of dollars. He was that stubborn and set in his belief that he was in the right and I was in the wrong. I had tried so many times in so many ways to get him to try. He had answered me every single time with the same answer, I just hadn’t wanted to accept his answer. Again, that was our dumb trauma bond that wouldn’t allow me to let go. 

So, now I sit with the information my divorce attorney needs from me on the table beside me. They are my visual reminder that I can’t fix us. We are unfixable and that’s ok. 

There’s something better out there for me. I have no idea what it is, but it’s definitely not staying in an emotionally unsafe, abusive, narcissistic marriage. 

I hope my new future involves a happier heart, warmer weather, and maybe a cat.