Coping and surviving while living with a narcissist

I have been physically, mentally, verbally, and emotionally abused by a narcissist for 32 years.

I could write several books about what I all I have endured over the past 32 years and counting.

30 years of an abusive marriage with a Narc that ended in a divorce 2 years ago. We are still living together.

We got married in 1993 and everything was perfect until he started treating me bad in 1994 when I was pregnant with our daughter. I started burning severely (down there) especially when I tried to pass urine. I had to get in the tub with cold water running to try to relieve the burning and cutting sensation I would feel when I was trying to urinate. I had to go to the ER of the hospital I worked at to see what was going on. When they told me I had herpes, I was humiliated. This is where I had to work and now several people would know. He gave me herpes! He even got th ER Dr to check him and he of course had on his private also. He started defending himself immediately, saying it didn’t come from him. I was thinking to myself, who else could it have came from then? I definitely hadn’t been with anyone but him.

When I went to my first OBGYN appointment, he went with me. He told me to ask them to check me for aids! I was thinking to myself, WHAT?!?. He knew one of the ladies that worked there through his ex fiancé. I told him no, but he made me ask them to do it anyways. So, I did. Talk about humiliation! Made me wonder who he had slept with that gave me herpes and how nasty they must have been for him to want me to be checked for aids!

I had left him several times but he always reeled me back in.

We both worked and I took care of everything, taking our daughter to school, field trips, her Dr appointments, tended to her whenever she was sick, made his Dr appointments, took care of him after his 4 surgeries on his back and neck, picked up his meds, ironed and starched all of his clothes, including his hunting clothes, kept the house spotless, grocery shopping, cooked breakfast and supper everyday, made his lunches for work. Anything that needed to be done, I took care of it, without any help from him. I had to take care of myself when I got sick and still continue to do all these things.

We used to go on family vacations with my family and his. That all came to a stop after about 8 years. That’s when he started going on hunting trips to Texas with his work and their customers for a week at a time. They also went to Florida on fishing trips for a week at a time. They did this every year and we never had another family vacation. He finally admitted to me that he would go to strip clubs in Texas. And he would go to bars and talk to other women about how bad I was to him and he said they would dance. There’s no telling what else they did.

Every weekend he would leave me at home to take care of our daughter and clean, cook, & starch and iron his clothes while he went fishing or hunting.

Some of the places he worked at, they had to count inventory which would cause him to have to work late. I finally found out that after they finished inventory, he & some of his coworkers were going to bars drinking and dancing with other women and who knows what else. He came home one of those nights about 3 in the morning and was so drunk he couldn’t even walk up the steps to our house. He had lipstick on the collar of his white dress shirt. He used to have missing underwear and missing condoms.

He used to follow me to whatever room I went to so he could continue his abuse and would block the doorway so I couldn’t get out. One day I had the bedroom door locked so he couldn’t get to me and he busted the door open and came in to continue his abuse.

Our daughter used to cry herself to sleep in her bedroom while she was listening to her daddy yelling and cussing me while we were in bed and I was trying to go sleep so I could get up for work and take her to school. The more I tried to get him to stop, the louder he got.

One morning I was headed to take our daughter, which was about 8 years old at the time, to school and I was headed to work after, I had high heel dress shoes on with a professional dress and he came from behind me and pushed me down 7 steps and I landed on the cement in horrific pain which our daughter watching. I was crying and in so much pain but I had to gather myself up and continue to take our daughter to school and go to work, cleaning my makeup up along the way so nobody would know I had been crying.

He pushed me down over a baby gate one day and the gate became dislodged from the doorway and I landed on top of it in the floor. My whole body was in pain and I thought it had broken my wrist.

He pushed me from behind one day while I was walking away from him. He pushed me so hard that my head flew backwards like I was doing a backbend and I ended up crashing into the wood footboard of our bed. It felt like my neck and back were broken.

He has thrown objects at me and punched holes in the walls. Broke things around the house.

He has held me down in the bed yelling and cussing me. He has pulled me by my legs out of the bed because I was having to lay down because my legs were swollen and I was in pain due to lupus and fibromyalgia.

He slapped me in my face so hard it made my whole head turn, and that’s when I was pregnant with our child. This happened while I was driving and was going around a sharp curve in the road. Luckily I did not wreck.

He always compares me to other women, saying why can’t you dress like that or why can’t you act like them or why can’t you treat me the way they treat their husband.

He used to threaten to shoot to kill me and then shoot himself when I told him I was leaving him.

He went and filed for a divorce in 2023, without my knowledge. I moved out and then went back within a few months because he persuaded me & I couldn’t afford to live out on my own because I am on disability. Even with the alimony, which I only received twice, I still could not afford to live on my own. He stopped paying me alimony when I moved back in to our home with him. He constantly reminds me that he doesn’t owe me anything and often tells me to leave.

He also tells me that he can find someone that will give him the attention he deserves. We are currently living together and he’s still verbally and emotionally abusing me.

Prior to the divorce he would go behind my back and set up court orders for the sheriff to come arrest me and take me to mental hospitals all because I was reacting to his abuse. For about 28 years of the marriage, I just took his abuse without taking up for myself. After that, I couldn’t take it any longer so I started taking up for myself by treating him the way he was treating me and since he couldn’t control me anymore, he had authority to do it for him. He would go behind my back and have court orders to have the sheriffs show up out of the blue when nothing was going on and they came in my house and arrested me and took me off to mental hospitals to be evaluated and treated because my husband had lied to them stating I was crazy and dangerous. The hospitals gave me all kinds of bad diagnoses that didn’t match who I was. They Put me on psychotic medications and would change them each time he had me sent off like this. My husband is the one that should have been taken off to be evaluated and medicated. They wouldn’t even listen to my side of the story because he had manipulated them into believing I was as crazy and psychotic.

He even had my own family & his family believing I was crazy and needed mental help! They no longer believed anything I would tell them because they believed him over me. That was very deep and dark for me because I had nobody to talk to or depend on for help.

While we were going through the divorce, he would take our house key off my key ring. When I would leave to go somewhere and return home, I couldn’t get in because he had taken my house key. This happened several times. I finally got smart and made extra keys made and hid them everywhere. He would take and hide my car keys and house key from me so I couldn’t go anywhere. I called 911 on him and they didn’t do anything to him. I don’t know what he told them because they talked to him separately. The sheriff made me ride in the back of his car to the courthouse and had my husband follow us in his truck. My attorney met us there so I thought everything would be handled appropriately. My sorry attorney ended up leaving because he had something else to do, so I had to try to defend myself to get my keys back. The judge kept telling me to be quiet and would not let me speak. He only listened to what my soon To be exhusband was telling him, which was a bunch of lies. I even showed them the bruises on my arms that were in the shape of his fingers from where he held me up off the floor against a wall. I also told them he had pulled a loaded pistol on Me before and had it at my temple. They totally dismissed everything I was trying to tell them. I had no knowledge that day that my soon to be exhusband was setting me up to be sent off again. They called this a live court order evaluation and my soon to be exhusband had them convinced that I was unstable, dangerous, & crazy. So the judge ordered me to be arrested and sent off again, just for trying to get my car & house keys back.

My husband had me arrested 3 times and hauled off to mental hospitals and my own parents did it to me 1 time because my husband had them convinced that I was dangerous and crazy and that I needed help. My mother called 911 to her house while I was living with them. The sheriff came out and assessed the situation & told my parents I had not done anything wrong to be arrested. After the 2 officers left, my parents forced me into their car and took me to another mental hospital. They told me they are just going to check you out to make sure nothing is wrong with you and then we will come back home. That was a flat out lie! They took me to the er side where mentally ill patients are droppped off at and I was not allowed to leave or check myself out because of the side of the hospital they took me to. It had 2 differnt ER's. The er staff ended up strapping me down on a stretcher by my ankles and wrists because my parents told them I was dangerous and crazy.

Those places were awful, it was like being in prison. No matter how hard I tried to explain my situation, they did not believe me.

They take away all of your rights and personal belongings and you have to do as they say or they will keep you even longer. I was already dealing with this in my marriage & then I had to deal with it in those hospitals. They didn’t believe anything I told them about being abused. They just watched me like a lab rat along with the crazy people that were in there. Making up diagnoses that didn’t fit me & putting me on psychotic medications that I didn’t need. My narc husband is the one that needs to be medicated. They only listen to the people that have you put in there.

Since then, I relearned self discipline and I say very little to him when he starts cussing and yelling at me now. I just walk to another room to get away from him.

I never thought my life would have turned out this way. I have always bent over backwards for him but he would always find something to complain about and never appreciated anything I did for him.

He also cheated on me while I was pregnant during our first year of marriage. I didn’t find that out until about 3 years ago and it was with my mother. They were having an affair. That really broke my heart when my mother told me this. I ended up having a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t believe my own mother would betray me like that! The sad part is, I had been confiding in her about our marital problems because I needed support and guidance. I was completely devastated and developed major trust issues. If you can’t trust your own mother, who can you trust?

He also cheated on me after he started a new job out of town. This is when our daughter was in 3rd grade, in her new school. I was going to divorce him but I didn’t want to split up our family & financial reasons kept me there. I know now that I made the wrong choice by staying. He started physically abusing me when our daughter was 8 years old, in 3rd grade. He didn’t care that she was watching.

He took the best years of my life from me. I am deeply devastated. He has no empathy and has never comforted me when anything went wrong for me, whether it was my job, something at home, or anywhere for that matter. He would always blame me and say I’m sure it’s your fault because you don’t know how to talk to people right. It was so depressing not having any emotional support from him.

To this very day he is still abusive to me. He yells and cusses me while getting in my face and puts his hands all in my face. He calls me all kinds of bad names and tells me I’m a worthless pice of sh**.

I didn’t realize I was married to a narcissist, until about 3 years ago then I started doing research on his behavior and recapping on the cycle that had been taking place the whole time.

Is there anyone else that has been this blindsided before?

Does anyone have any advice or comments? I would greatly appreciate any input.