Hi Carol,

My heart goes out to you.

The truth is there is no ability to have boundaries that produce healthy genuine and honest treatment with pathological people.

Our only true solution is detaching and going No Contact or very strict Modified Contact and having the space to heal ourselves.

I’d love to help you do this, the first step to start getting clarity, relief and your power back is here: https://www.melanietoniaevans.com/freecourse

I hope this helps, and sending you healing, solution and breakthrough.

Mel 🙏💕❤️

It’s so true Richard,

We have no control over what we know people need to do!

We can only do the healing ourselves.

Mel 🙏💕❤️

Thanks Melanie, I am currently on day 11 of receiving your 16 days of e-mails, and intend to join your webinar soon, once I have finished an important work project I have to complete by next week. I would like my xgf to do the same, because she needs to heal too, but I think personal accountability (as opposed to blaming me) can only come with acceptance of that need to heal her inner wounds. And mostly, she denies that there is anything wrong with her. This too is, I believe, a symptom of the grandiosity of somatic narcissism. And I recognize, sadly, that the rescue cannot come from me, she has to rescue/heal herself.

Richard

Oh gosh Richard,

There is only one way through this – to heal.

I’d love to invite you to connect to my transformational healing processes. I know they can help grant you clarity and relief https://www.melanietoniaevans.com/freecourse

Mel 🙏💕❤️

In a 3-yr relationship, which has been the most intense and passionate of my life, bringing the best and worst of intimacy between a man and a woman, I have suffered extreme verbal abuse (and some physical abuse) from a beautiful woman I now see has definite traits of somatic narcissism.

I was struck by this comment you quoted in “Mary’s story” in an older blog entry, ““Why is it that when your children are around, it is like I don’t exist?”. This is exactly what I have been accused of, because of the limited time I have wanted to spend alone, or away, with my children (I am widowed, and my daughter, who lives in another country, has taken on a role as guardian of the family memory and, to an extent, as subsconscious replacement for my late wife her mother. This caused my ex-girlfriend to accuse of me of allowing my daughter to behave as “another woman” and of not knowing how to define and limit her role to obedient/subservient “daughter”). Any contact I have with other women, and sometimes even men, is seen as a potential rival to whom I, in her mythology, am drawn to like a moth to a flame.

Added to the problem of her controlling jealousy towards my daughter (and others) has been my instinct to appease, rescue, and to be the white knight catering to every need of my princess, because she has fears of abandonment as a result of her life history (she was herself widowed at an early age, 40). In not setting boundaries, in choosing to lose my power and love of myself by trying to please her (and pay for everything, even when that has got me into debt which, logically, I should not have taken on) I have made things worse, to the point that I sometimes wonder if I am not the abuser – because I have allowed her to believe in her expectations of me, equating them to promises, and then have not fulfilled those promises, because of my own fears of commitment. It is also true that on occasion, when I was with my children, I simply ignored her rage and did not answer her calls, thus triggering her abandonment fears.

I am tortured at the moment, because I made a very reluctant decision to end the relationship and go “no contact”, but I desperately miss the intimacy, the potential for sharing the late years of our lives, and the good times, while worrying that there is no-one else who will ever match the good, the passion, and the sheer life force she has in her. She too wants no contact (she has not stuck to it rigidly, but almost), and says she wants it to avoid further hurt.

Melanie, what do you say when there are two people like this, perhaps each one with their PD traits, affecting the other? It feels to me like a double dose of narcissism, but I may just be beating myself up about it, based on her guilt-tripping me as part of the somatic narcissism cycle.

Hi Sam,

You are very welcome.

It’s more than likely a Hoover attempt … and what is so important in our healing journey is to let go of absolutely all questions and everything that is about ‘them’.

That’s the freedom where our true emancipation lies.

Keep up the great work.

Mel 🙏💕❤️

I’ve gone No Contact for the last 3 months and slowly healing. What puzzles me is why she has recently (after I went No Contact ) started calling my parents quite regularly and even sending them money which she never used to do.

What game is she on now?

Hi Megan,

With all peoples treatment of us if we buy a drink or not it is up to us to navigate that.

And please know there are men that can pay for drinks who can treat women poorly!

I personally believe for myself having equal power and responsibility is healthy, rather than feeling ‘kept’ or ‘dependent’. And where does that end? Is it just drinks or dinners or all outings?

It’s lovely at time with my partner when he picks up the bill and does something lovely for me. And I reciprocate the same as well …

Mel 🙏💕❤️