Your tales live here
Dejan
I was being emotionally and physically abused by my partner. I am not one of those guys who would be typically seen as a victim: I am nearly 2 metres tall, strong, athletic, enthusiastic. However, recently I have lost a significant amount of weight; I barely laughed anymore.
From time to time, our mutual friends tried to reach me, but I never answered my phone. What they didnt know is that my girlfriend made me erase all our old friends from the contact list.
On more than one occasion I had to leave the house and sleep on my friend’s couch. I was afraid of her — she punched me so hard, resulting in my losing a front tooth.
Just over Christmas, my girlfriend’s brother gave me a Christmas present — a calendar depicting attractive women dressed as Santa’s helpers. It was supposed to be a joke. But my girlfriend got so upset that she made her brother leave the house along with my friend. She ripped the calendar into pieces.
I should have just left her.
But the issue is that we have a baby together and I am a devoted father — so I stay and suffer. I also fear her — she can do anything and everything to destroy me if I dare to leave. She has told me this on multiple occasions.
I fear losing my child. I love my child.
Because let’s be honest, who believes men nowadays? Courts don’t — children are given to mothers even when the mothers are neglectful.I […]
Russtam
A narcissist can inspire you to do better. I have a stalker. My stalker is very special — she is a narcissist. A very cruel, insecure, miserable, jealous, self-absorbed woman. She smiles a lot; her face twitches every time she produces a smile — oh how it must hurt to wear that fake facade for most of her day.
Thankfully she doesn’t go out a lot; it’s too much of a hassle for her. What if someone exposes her true nature? She hides inside her house, under her bed, and plots revenge. Health-wise, physically she is falling apart, and I often wonder how she is still among us. But then I remember that she is driven by dark forces, and I know that she will outlive us all.
The good news for me is that I will never be truly alone. The bad — she will be by my side always and forever. Why? Because narcissists never discard their supplies. I was about to use the word “victim,” but experience has taught me better.
I am no victim — I am a survivor.
For years I’ve had this person lurking in the shadows and working against me. She was so nice to me, love-bombed me, and treated me as if I was her best friend. I believed we were good — while she was up to no good.
This narcissist disliked me from the very beginning — but she was quite smart about it. She never publicly showed just how she wished to destroy me […]
Nico
I’ve been through a lot, like many others who have unfortunately dated, married, or had children with narcissistic women. The fact is that narcissistic women are some of the most dangerous creatures out there. But I managed to escape the abuse.
Just after New Year’s Eve, with help from my family and friends, I was evacuated from this abusive relationship. It was hard for me to leave her, especially since we have a baby together. But I had no other option.
Let me rephrase this – I had two options: either I would stay and continue to suffer, or I would leave, suffer, and suffer even more and then slowly heal, stand back on my feet, and be there for my son.
I chose to be there for my son – to give him an example of a healthy relationship.
Currently, I am in very bad shape, like many who have been emotionally and physically abused by narcissists. I started therapy, I thought of suicide, I thought of going back to her, I thought of going forward. Currently, I am living in my mother’s home.
The apartment that I bought is empty and I am unable to pay the mortgage – she robbed me of all the money. She wants the apartment to be sold and the money split evenly. She hasn’t invested a single dime into the apartment, and we were never married. But she still demands it. Legally, she has no right to demand any money that she hasn’t invested. “I will fight […]
Carl
Once, I believed cheating was one of the few acts which were never justifiable under any circumstances.
Life challenged that belief (and many others) during my divorce: my ex-wife had not limited herself to only one man for over ten years, whereas — thanks to my single-minded focus upon my marriage over the seventeen years that it lasted — when it ended, I found myself with few friends and even fewer potential romantic partners.
In my naivete & blind devotion, I discovered an important truth: bestowing undeserved loyalty upon another is the same as betraying yourself.
Amid the enforced social isolation of 2020, before I had even heard of the concept of a “trauma bond,” I suffered through its invisible riptides pulling me further away from shore. Before I understood the neurophysiology behind the addiction to toxic love, I shamed & scolded myself for being weak-willed & spineless: why could I not break my thoughts free from their orbit around the ever-engulfing sinkhole of her inverted existence? After nearly three years of wasted effort, I had established unequivocally that everything I poured into that void inevitably vanished as if it never existed.
Yet, my money, energy, & time flowed down the drain with maddening predictability each time her tendrils brushed against the edges of my awareness. So many nights wasted in unnecessary self-loathing, so many days lost to the unsolvable labyrinth of circular, pointless debates, the universe expanding & contracting around conversations that somehow left the cosmos with less […]
Ilija
When you speak your truth they may be frightened.
Stand fast and take heart. To be enlightened
Is in fact a heavy burden
And you’re likely to feel unsure; but to be uncertain
Is quite truly a tremendous blessing.
In not knowing we learn the lesson
And open ourselves up to a higher purpose.
Know that loving words, acts of service,
Quality time, gifts, & physical touch
Are not the only ways to express our love.
It can also be shown through benign distance.
Understanding that you then may sense
The best way to love a star-crossed lover
Is to let them choose another
And choose yourself instead. Do not waste
The pain. The stain, the bitter aftertaste,
Will fade as your light is rekindled
By the same one who let it dwindle.
To love unrequited is not your fate.
What you have to give is much too great
For one lifetime. Death itself shall not dissolve
Your soul. Use this time & life to evolve
Your potential. Close your eyes and see
The boundless boundaries all around. To be
Once again unbound is not a demerit
Nor is it wrong. All along, what you waited to inherit
You were given your first day on Earth.
From no other source pours your self-worth
And dignity. Your identity need not be defined
By the past you left behind.
A far better future awaits you, dear.
Falling down, you shall rise without fear.
Edhar
Mr. Perfect, I am not, nor ever will be.
When my emotions are triggered, sometimes I yell at the people I love, and it takes me several minutes before I give them the apology I immediately know they deserve. My sense of humor is occasionally offensive & immature.
I’ve been known to fart in the car after hitting the window lock to punish my sons for not doing the dishes the night before. I constantly forget the birthdays of friends I have known since I was five.
My omelets still fall apart in the pan one-third of the time (okay, two-fifths).
But I am Mr. Sincere Effort. My grandfather always said, if something is worth doing, it is worth doing right, and I applied this mantra to my marriage. I didn’t excuse myself from the domestic responsibilities. I did the grocery shopping & the cooking. I made the arrangements for holidays, birthdays, camping trips, vacations, & special occasions. I bought the picture frames and hung the family portraits in ascending chronological order along the staircase in our home. I did my best to make decisions together, to view marriage as a partnership of two equals, and always create an environment where my wife felt comfortable speaking her mind. I valued my wife & my family and did my best to express that in every way I could.
I took breaks when I had to, made mistakes because humans do, and sometimes pouted more than a grown man should, […]
JoeX
I once pushed my wife out of the car. This might trigger an emotional reaction, especially from someone who has been a victim of abuse. You might be tempted to conclude I am an abuser, a monster, deserving of punishment, in need of psychiatric evaluation & counseling, and my opinion is not worth hearing.
That I had made several respectful requests for the hitting & hurtful words to stop, warned her repeatedly that I was losing my patience to tolerate her behavior, and informed her that if it continued, I would pull over & ask her to get out.
Does it matter that when she chose to continue, and I pulled the car over, I gave her time to exit, only resorted to physical force when she refused to exit & continued attacking me and made every reasonable effort to avoid causing any injury to her person & belongings in the process?
Perhaps you would still be disinclined to excuse my actions; after all, I was not in any real physical danger. Would your judgment be as harsh were the genders reversed? Would a woman in my situation be considered to be in real danger simply on the basis of the man’s superior size & strength, or would she be judged the same? When does defending oneself from abuse cross the line of reasonable self-defense to become criminal behavior, and is this line drawn differently for men than it is for women?
I ask these questions because they […]
Jo_shua
A young child is born. Nature has seen fit to equip this child with an incredibly adaptive & effective system for recalling every experience they have ever had, summarizing all of this information, and delivering it to their consciousness in microseconds: this system is called emotion. However, like every system in the human body, it is prone to dysfunction & failure when subjected to more negative input than it can withstand.
From an early age, the child endures neglect, abuse, & random, unpredictable behavior from its caregivers: moments of tenderness & kind words interspersed with violence, vicious insults, & withdrawal of affection, with no apparent correlation between the child’s actions and the resultant treatment.
The child’s emotional system cannot integrate with the rational conscious mind; the developing intellect cannot make sense of the conflicting input. At times, the child feels affection, comfort, & love from one caregiver or the other; but other times, the child feels hatred, abandonment, & pain from that same caregiver. Yet evolution has programmed one thing into the child: being abandoned by their caregivers means death. Regardless of how poorly one or both caregivers treat the child, the child feels an imperative need to maintain a positive relationship with them; this need will diminish as the child matures, but so profoundly is it written into the core that it will never truly fade completely.
If one or more of the caregivers are primarily physically available, but emotionally distant or neglectful, with only occasional episodes […]
Lesley
My childhood was one of abuse so frightening that I shut down emotionally to survive. When I was 17 years old, my mother agreed that I could be married to a man, four years older than me, who had been my boyfriend for a year. I wasn’t asked if the marriage was what I wanted, and I had never learned that I could actually have, or state, feelings about any situation relating to me.
Two days after the marriage my husband and I were sitting at home when he suddenly began screaming at me incoherently. Grabbing me by my hair he dragged me out of the room, still screaming at me, and threw me outside, shutting the door behind me. We were living with his father, which we did for the first nine years of our marriage, and it wasn’t until his father came home from work four hours later that anyone came to look for me. I had crawled into the back seat of the car in the carport and was completely numb emotionally, unable to formulate any decision as to what I could do. This set the pattern for our marriage.
As is often the case in such situations, my husband controlled who I could see, how much money I was given for the household needs and what was acceptable behaviour. Anytime I transgressed, the screaming and throwing out of the house, whatever the time of day or night, was repeated. I learned to walk on eggshells, saying little and […]
Andreea
4 AM phone calls…
This is what I’m living now …
I’m guessing is okay to feel so much pain much. But is not.
I am drowning in my own tears.
I don’t know how to escape the spiral of madness l but I have hope there is a cure somewhere out there.
Where? In Paris? In Prague? In Buchurest? In me?
I don’t know. I will find my way.
I heard someone say to me, we are crossing the bridge of troubled waters. I feel can’t swim.
How does that feel???
Hard. Nah, that’s not the right word. It feels like I am burning from the inside.
I’m tired.
I don’t care anymore.
I genuinely believe life starts with yourself.
I need help, and I asked for it. I didn’t see this coming. There is still authenticity in this world. Love doesn’t have to hurt. But it’s killing me now.
I am not judged for the first time in my life by my new family of choice.
But I still judge myself.
Today, I want to jump from the bridge, because I am caught in a storm that I cannot control.