The Death of My Narcissist

jaybird,

Hi. I am just going to take a stab at your question. I think your family and friends are not 100% correct, but also not 100% incorrect. Many of us get away from the abuser, but find it takes a long time before the threads of attachment completely wither and fall away. Even after a year of no contact you are still recovering from the chaos, lies, abuse, manipulations, lack of sleep, and over active fight or flight responses you may have had to all of it. The psyche takes time to reconcile what we THOUGHT we were experiencing, with what we WERE ACTUALLY experiencing. And since these were VERY different, OPPOSITE in fact, it takes a considerable amount of time for the mind to affect our emotions regarding our experience. This means we can have lingering ‘feelings’ for our abuser. So, this IS kind of Stockholmish.

It took me longer than one year to stop having ‘fond’ feelings for my abuser.

The good news is he is gone, and cannot ever hurt you again. At some point in your healing you will no longer have these fond feelings for him. You just won’t. At some point you will just feel nothing about him, except maybe a bit of pity.

jaybird- I agree with slimone. The good news is he is gone.

SG

Hi jaybird,

I have another suggestion. I have no idea if it’s right or not, but I’ll just toss it out there anyway.

Often when people have been abused, they wish and hope that one day, some day, their abuser will “come to their senses,” realize what they’ve done, and apologize or try to make amends to the person they’ve abused. I’ve heard of this happening with an abusive parent for instance. The abused child will grow up, perhaps become estranged from the hated parent or write him or her off as a “lost cause,” but always harbor the hope (subconsciously perhaps) that one day there will be a reconciliation.

Years later, the parent dies, as parents usually do before their children, and the adult child feels an overwhelming grief for this parent who always treated them so badly. Why so much grief? Typically because it’s not just the death of a person, but the death of a hope: that that longed-for reconciliation is never going to happen now. The luckless adult child is finally forced to grieve for the reality that he or she never really did “have a mother,” or a father–not one who truly loved them as a parent should–and never will.

I realize this narcissist was never your “father,” but is it possible that something similar is happening with you? Even if you were thoroughly done with the guy, did you ever hold out a hope that in some way he really did “love” you, and one day he might start to “feel” what he’d done, and try to make some kind of amends for it? The fact that he’s dead means that’s never going to happen. You never really did have a “lover”–not him, at any rate–not a “lover” in sense you need to be loved and cared for in return.

I wonder if it’s any consolation that if he wasn’t a loving person, if he was incapable of “love” in the nurturing sense, that despite how badly he treated you, at least he did “need” you and appreciate you in some way. Otherwise he would never have bothered trying to get you back.

Incidentally you were very mysterious about the circumstances of his murder. It was a robbery “at least on the surface”??? A street mugging, a home invasion, a bar fight? A shooting, a beating, a stabbing? Why “on the surface”? Do you suspect he was really killed out of revenge for something bad he’d done to somebody in the past? Do you think his own chickens were coming home to roost?

jaybird- It is good to feel your feelings. What you feel you can heal.

Here is a meditation on grief:

Grief ia a wilderness and there is a way to which it will always call you back. Remember how sad you were? And you will go back but you will be stronger and you won’t stay as long.

Hi jay bird –
( sorry that this post is long, but I hope it will be helpful to you )
I’ve been thinking a lot about your situation and have finally come to some ideas that might prove helpful to you. In the meantime some of the other participants have given some wonderful replies and extremely truth filled insights. So I’m just going to ad some of my thoughts: I think that if any person who had a significant place in one’s life is murdered, this would be a huge trauma to deal with. It goes against the grain of our very species and our most basic of instincts, and it would fill us with horror. Secondly, you also have the abusive situation to still sort through both with your reasoning and your emotions. Even if someone has gone No Contact, the abuse leaves a heap of confusion and overwhelming emotions that takes time to resolve. So you are dealing with two huge traumas that are entwined because it is about the same person. So my advice would be to at present focus on getting the abuse part resolved as your priority. It would be too overwhelming to try to deal with the murder aspect at the same time. About your feelings of loving him even though he treated you abusively. This is a question that comes up again and again with survivors of psychological abusive relationships. It perplexes everybody! So when you brought it up , I really pondered it deeply. Yes, the Stockholm syndrome I think is part of it, in which, from what I understand, describes the reaction of prisoners, who end up loving their captors. But here is something that I came up with that may or may not relate to Stockholm S. – what I think is that there are 3 ways and means by which a person would want to exit a relationship: the first would be the case when the person sees their partner say or do something that is so disgusting and repulsive to them that the connection gets immediately severed in disgust. The next type of ending would be that the partner irritates and irritates and the person tries and tries to deal with issues that just don’t get resolved and finally they just get “ fed up “, and the emotional connection gets severed. The third is the abuse cycle. With intermittent reinforcement, the abuser is sometimes loving and charming and at other times cruel and mean. But it is not consistent and the recipient of this gets confused and hopes that somehow the loving one will emerge and that love will overcome. So love and hope are very present. The victim doesn’t perceive that there is actually a cycle ( like the cycle of violence in domestic abuse cases ). Then, somehow, the victim gets some wisdom through books etc, and comes to realize that they need to exit the relationship and they do. The problem is that the love is still very much alive as opposed to the other examples. That’s why going No Contact can be such a huge challenge. Perhaps it takes awhile for the level of emotional maturity to catch up with the wisdom. From what you described, you were going through this process and doing very well with it. Regardless if your ex is on this plane of existence or not, you would still need to go through your process. As I said, I think you are doing exceptionally well in this especially difficult and traumatic time.
Blessings

jaybird – Even though you were away from him, and you knew he was bad for you, him being murdered is still an emotional shock. Perhaps you can reframe the incident as a way to continuing to process all the emotions related to your involvement with him. You were with him for 7 years and away for 1 year. I’m sure there were still emotions related to particular incidents, particular lies, particular betrayals, and yes, on your part, feelings of love. Just let it rip. If your friends don’t understand, that’s ok – do your crying privately. Think of it as purging him from your system.

Jaybird– There have been some people in my life I wished dead – or at least severely punished – for the way they treated me and others, but I’ve never actually experienced that. Sadly, most narcissists/sociopaths continue to live life unscathed. I can understand the shock and conflicting emotions you must be feeling. Spending 7 years with someone who made your life miserable, then a year recovering, you are still experiencing the emotional betrayal and self-blame that comes with having such a person in your life. You are just barely crawling back into the light and accepting the truth that it was never your fault, that you deserved and still deserve so much better,that there are good and honest and true people out there. You are still thinking about the relationship and the person and – if you are like me – still wishing him bad and evil things, fruitlessly. To suddenly have that happen – to realize he got what he deserved – would certainly put me in a tailspin. Donna is right, though — you have got to get into a headspace where you can process all the emotions – horror (no one deserves murder), guilt (did my hatred of him make this happen?), ambivalence (thank God that is over), relief (he can never hurt anyone again). This is going to take some time and work and a lot of tears in your pillow, door slamming, plate throwing, talking to friends – or the wall, which ever listens best – and self-affirmations. You are free and have been for a year, so acknowledge your bravery for leaving, your stamina for surviving, your amazing soul for staying strong. Let his life and death go. It now has no power over you. Sending lots of healing vibes your way!