Hi Dawn,

it is so lovely to meet you in this space after all of this time!

It’s so true beautiful lady that Source has your back.

You are safe, flourished and nourished and provided for by choosing Source and your Soul.

Always and in all ways!

Much love to you

Mel 🙏💞🦋

It was then a friend told me my husband might be a narcissist, and I started researching. It took me a full year of watching his every move to finally get it in my gut, not just intellectually, that I was indeed dealing with a full-blown NPD. I had it completely backwards all those years: his nice guy behavior was the lie, and his abusive, raging behavior was the real him. Which was incredibly confusing for me because he is a covert altruistic narc, and could even keep up the nice guy facade for periods of time.

Once I found your blog and bought your book and Empowered Self Program I finally got the answers of how I got to this place (from the abuse in my childhood and epigenetics), and learned what I was dealing with and how narcs operate. This was incredibly important for me to understand in order to begin breaking free, coz the mind-bending and gaslighting were enormous. Thank goodness I found your work. I’ve been doing QFH every single day — haven’t missed a single day! — and the relief has been huge. I’m still hobbling on crutches toward my goal of leaving this marriage, but at least I’m no longer crawling. I have regained a lot of the inner peace and confidence destroyed by him, though life was always an incredible struggle due to the weight of emotional baggage I still carried even after 30 years of therapy, self-help books and support groups.

Leaving a marriage at my age is a daunting prospect, because I don’t have time to make up all the financial losses and give myself a secure future. Plus I’ve never lived alone, and due to the jealous and controlling narc, and my own health issues, I’ve become incredibly isolated. I will have to live in my trailer for a couple years, but I am now healed enough to know I will be fine. I am developing a belief in Source, where before I thought my place in the universe was to be punished, and this new belief in Source is a godsend (literally!) in overcoming my fears and having something to rely on as I prepare for the unknown. Things get worse when the narc knows you’re leaving, but this gets easier to handle the more I heal. I’m actually looking forward to the challenges ahead now, and am finally becoming the free, empowered person I always wanted to be but didn’t have the tools before to become. I have known nothing but abuse my entire life, since there wasn’t a single drop of love or kindness in my childhood in between the abuse, which meant I didn’t have any self-esteem or self-love, or even a single happy childhood memory to draw on while delving more deeply into QFH, yet it has become a fascinating journey into the depths of my soul and consciousness in order to rebuild my psyche on a foundation of self-love and self-belief one neuron at a time.

I just wanted others in situations similar to mine to know that there is more than hope, no matter how long you’ve been trapped in a narc marriage. It may be tougher for those of us who’ve been brainwashed for decades, but I absolutely believe now that rainbows and beautiful sunrises await us.

Also, thank you to everyone who posts here. Your experiences and wisdom about getting to the other side were what made me believe it was possible for me, too. Love and light to all of you!

You have the perspective (and knowledge this gives you) of your husband with this same abusive behavior. This gives you a strong, fresh, solid place to stand in your resolution to offer your son a strong dose of reality. I can’t tell you the details of what to do, or how to say it, or whether you might offer him a “it’s me or you” ultimatum, but what I can tell you is that once you begin to apply the principles of NARP that Melanie offers us here (might be NARP, might be reading this blog…I’ve done parts of both and both are helpful in their own ways), you WILL (if not can do so already) find something new and powerful within yourself. You can consider it “the new you,” it’s “the old you,” but with the knowledge (and power!) of what this sort of abuse is, how it works (DOESN’T work), how it can be countenanced (with calm knowledge and “the power of being your true self”) and how you will see your way through this.

Please be prepared that your son might forever break with you as you offer him a “this is how it must be going forward.” Understand that this is his decision, not yours. YOUR decision is that you have chosen a life with good, healthy boundaries, you can and do communicate these to people who are in your life (your son) and might violate them, yet, violating your boundaries simply will not be tolerated. If he changes, and you find mutual respect, wow, what a huge win. If he doesn’t, and leaves (as he must), I urge you not to look at it as a “loss,” but rather another person making a choice that you cannot make for him.

It is not YOU who fails to “maintain a boundary with him,” it is him violating your boundaries. Please, see it that way, as that is what is actually happening. It may be that you are able to communicate this to him (as a crisis point, and maybe he can “bring things back to sanity”), it may be that HE cannot respect your boundaries, and there is nothing else you can do. Please, as difficult as this is, do your best to accept this, if it goes this way. It isn’t your fault, it is HIS choice.

I know I’m leaving out details and being vague, but I do wish you the best and hope this helps.

Thank you for this excellent blog. I’ve experienced all of it with my ex husband and have done a lot of healing through many traumas with him. I have created firm and clear boundaries with him, and he’s ‘gone’ from my world. I have found peace.

However, my 19 year old son seems to be a narc 🙁 It is heartbreaking, and I swing from a denial and hope to facing a devastating truth. I cannot maintain any boundary with him (he is lying, manipulating, insulting, denigrating me, he’s disrespectful of me and the living space). He lives with me and I simply cannot change the locks even though I was there a few times but it only remains a threat.

I’ve asked him to move out, and didn’t let him come back (locked the door) a few times, when he brought me down to my knees and I feared for my health due to an ongoing stress. He was involved in some crimes even, and is a master of spinning and gaslighting, with utter cruelty and no remorse. I have been trying to explain to him the damage he’s done to me and his younger brother, but he blames me for everything, glorifying his father.

I feel I am going crazy at times and I remember his father doing exactly the same. I have no emotional charges with his father when he tries to hook me but I cannot evict my son. He doesn’t want to go to his father’s because he is in another city and I am so stuck. Can you please share some thoughts and give advice? Many thanks!

Thanx Peter, I wrote it down and now its on my fridge ! Simple and easy ways to set boundaries.🙂