“You lack empathy,” says the psychologist. “It’s a critical deficit.”
“Why do I care?” asks my husband. “If some guy I don’t know loses his job, or a dog falls through the ice on the evening news.”
Our marriage counselor has given us a test to take. My husband is referencing two of the hundreds of questions we’ve answered. We’ve been going to therapy for months.
The results lead me to ask myself a question.
One that initially tormented me.
One I’ve now made peace with.
Did I waste my love on a narcissist?
It’s a fair ask. It’s a question that anyone who falls prey to ‘love and leave’ a narcissist ponders. It doesn’t seem fair. It seems as if we’ve lost and wasted years.
It seems as if the narcissistic illusionist has cheated us.
And they have.
We deserve to be truly loved.
I had to reconcile I was never loved by a man. At least, not the man I chose to marry. At first, I attempted to do this pragmatically. An alcoholic will always choose a drink over the person they love. It’s an illness.
A narcissist will always choose themselves.
It’s a disturbing personality disorder.
This explanation didn’t completely satisfy me.
It gave narcissistic personality disorder a degree of sense. It extracted a bit of the disparity. It allowed me to take some of the emotion out of an emotionally abusive cycle. The months of joy with a covert narcissist, interrupted by cruelty and chaos.
But I still felt I had wasted decades.
I was never loved.
I couldn’t make peace with it.
The realization filled me with emptiness.
After my husband’s diagnosis, he refused to return to therapy.
Our psychologist marriage counselor sent me home with two books. One was about living with narcissist personality disorder. The other was about living with a passive-aggressive personality.
It’s the combo that defines a covert narcissist.
I continued in marriage counseling for one, an oxymoron to be sure.
I was tired of the confusion.
The narcissistically manic exchange of charm and cruelty.
I struggled to make sense of my marriage, my situation, and my choices. If my husband wouldn’t seek help, I would. It was the beginning of a long, personal journey of self-exploration.
I would spend more than a decade in the counseling and research of love, relationships, and narcissism. I would leave behind my work as a marketing/PR consultant, freelance journalist, and business columnist.
I would become a relationship columnist.
I would continue to struggle with decades of lost love.
I reminded myself what I knew about being the child of an alcoholic. My Dad did love me. At least, as much as he was capable of loving anything or anyone. It was his illness that prevented any type of healthy love.
A narcissist did love me.
At least as much as he was capable of loving anything or anyone.
Or possessing anything or anyone.
But narcissistic personality disorder prevented any type of real, or healthy love.
This was logical, maybe even a rationalization. But it’s not completely without merit. It explains a disturbing disorder while taking away some of the heartbreaking casualty.
My question still haunted me.
Did I waste my love on a narcissist?
I had loved a man.
Never knowing he had zero ability to love me.
During this time, my father-in-law passed away. He was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. He was deeply caring and empathetic. I was close to him. I loved him and appreciated him.
I watched my mother-in-law.
Her behavior troubled me.
Nothing seemed to be about him. Nothing was about losing the love of her life or her best friend. Nothing was about what a wonderful man he was. Nothing was about how she could inconceivably go on without him.
Nothing was about the pain of her children.
It was all about her.
What was going to happen to her and who was going to take care of her.
“Oh my gosh,” I thought to myself. “I don’t know what is more tragic, that this man left this world not being loved. Or that he never knew he wasn’t loved.”
Because he only saw the best in her.
He excused her behavior.
I was so incredibly sad for him.
He deserved to be loved.
It was a turning point in my journey of having ‘loved and left’ a diagnosed narcissist. A man who was diagnosed as a narcissist on the severe end of the spectrum.
Narcissism is a cruel disorder.
A narcissist can leave us traumatized and tormented.
But we got out. We escaped narcissistic personality disorder. We didn’t lose love. We gave it freely to someone who didn’t know how to absorb and return it.
When we lost my father-in-law, I understood something.
My cup is half-full.
Only a narcissist made it half-empty.
I’m free of a narcissist. I’ve received a long overdue emotional education. I am not, none the wiser. I recognize I wasn’t loved, and I abandoned the man with no ability to do so.
This alleviates the question.
Did I waste my love on a narcissist?
No.
On the contrary, I get a second chance at love.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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