u/Clawing-my-way-out68

I asked my STBX cover narcissist husband of 20 years for a separation recently. I asked him to move back to his home state where he has a comfortable living situation available, his entire family and friends. He hasn’t kept in touch with any of his friends but they are there. Point being he would have a support system.
This came after months of what I can only believe was an endless onslaught of reverse discard. I got to the point that I absolutely could not eat, was not sleeping at all and couldn’t breathe normally when I was in the same room with him. I was having panic attacks that at times I thought would result in me being hospitalized.
He did not move out of state, but into our RV on our property. He still has to access the home for laundry and for his workout room. At first I was just grateful to have him out of the house but we are about to embark on a long planned trip for the wedding of one of our children… yes, flying to a romantic tropical island where I have to room with him.
He’s been out for about a month and I’m still unable to stabilize my nervous system. I am in therapy, on anti-anxiety meds, am mediating, starting to work on somatic and grounding exercises and I am still an absolute mess. I’m not sleeping at all, constantly on edge, can’t eat, can’t focus and am beyond emotional.
Has anyone found anything that helps with their frazzled nervous system? IDK how much longer I can handle feeling this way?

Long story short(ish) …
A month agog I asked my STBX narc husband for a separation after 20 years of marriage. This is to be a long term separation due to a number of reasons, primarily financial and to protect my college-aged son’s education (scapegoat kid whose twin is the golden child.) He refuses to move any farther than an RV on our property but at least he isn’t under same roof.
My oldest son (27 from previous marriage) is getting married next week in Jamaica and we are going. The trip was bought and paid for months ago … don’t even get me started on how stressed I am about this trip.
Husband decided to fly his mother halfway across the country to take care of his aggressively reactive (violent towards other dogs.) I really tried to keep myself together until after this trip, but the reverse discard had gotten so bad I couldn’t eat or sleep, I couldn’t even breath in his presence, I was suffering panic attacks that made me feel like I needed to check myself into a hospital. If I hadn’t acted IDK how I would have survived.
My twins and i cannot stand this woman. She raised this monster and is one of the most weirdly passive aggressive people I’ve ever known. She’s already started a few flying monkey techniques, text messages and blowing up my socials. Those things are easily brushed off but for the next 4 days she will be on my property and I fear I won’t be able to “escape” her intrusions. I have always been the person who goes along to get along and am older so have deeply engrained respect your elder issues, but ugh. The other aspect is keeping things as status quo as possible to prevent this trip from being an even bigger sh*tshow than I know it already will be. I will be discussing boundaries to set and strategies for dealing with my therapist this afternoon, but this community has been so helpful and is full of great advice so I’m asking for your best methods for handling the flying monkeys. Thank you for your input!

I’ve never suspected my STBX covert narc husband of cheating, but in recent years his flirting has become downright humiliating.
The first really mind blowing incident happened when a very attractive young waitress at one of our favorite brunch spots was doing her job. She was overly friendly but we live in a college town and I completely understand a young woman doing what she can to earn a good tip. Her name was Campbell. I do not fault her in any way and she didn’t do anything inappropriate. However, my husband was eating it up. My twins and I were embarrassed by his behavior but we mostly just eye-rolled and ignored it until the check arrived. The waitress had written a little note along the lines of thanking us and hoping we enjoyed our meal … typical, no big whoop. My husband decided to write a reply to her note and wrote, “Campbell’s service was mmm-mmm good!” He then proceeded to tell us what he wrote and thought he was the funniest, most clever guy ever. My twins and I (high school aged at the time) were mortified! We couldn’t get out of there fast enough and did so with our heads dropped out of sheer embarrassment. Having spent our lives walking on eggshells, we knew better than to call him out but wow, it was a nightmare.
The one incident that really pushed me over the edge and one of the catalysts for me asking for a separation was what happened shortly after we lost our house to a wildfire last year. We were obviously very stressed, in shock still, etc. One of my dearest friends from HS suggested we go out for drinks, a friend of hers was in a band that was playing at a local establishment. I jumped at the opportunity and was sincerely hoping to help my husband relax a bit as we navigated the biggest trauma of our lives. As such, I agreed to be the designated driver. My husband polished off 2 pitchers of beer by himself at the restaurant, before we even got to the venue. Once at the venue, he began flirting outrageously with my friend. I had already taken my seat at the table while he ordered drinks. When he got to the table he sat next to my friend, not me. Throughout the night he bought her numerous drinks and never brought me anything but the first seltzer water. She repeatedly told him she’d had enough but he kept bringing her drinks. When he went to the restroom, I helped her dump the drinks because she couldn’t and didn’t want to keep up. I was devastated and sat there in shock the whole time. Like I really think I just disassociated as I was still reeling from the shock of losing my home and everything in it and could not believe he was being so blatantly disrespectful to me. I felt like my broken heart was shattering even further.
Of course, when I confronted him he denied it. Tried to use his intoxication level to claim innocence and deny that it happened. His next move was to shame spiral, not for hurting me, but for humiliating himself. His primary focus was on how embarrassed he was that he acted like that. To this day he has never apologized as he says I wouldn’t accept an apology. WTAF? The layers to this betrayal are so extensive. He knows I’ve always been insecure about my appearance compared to my friend. She is stunning, I am average. I suspect it may have been an effort to alienate me from my friend who is coincidentally a therapist. He feels entitled and it was another ploy to devalue me. Of course, he feels I absolved because he was too drunk to remember, but I believe drunk actions are sober thoughts. I apologized profusely to my friend and she had been a huge support to me as I try to end this marriage.
Despite me pointing these things out as extremely destructive and detrimental to a marriage that was barely limping along and despite me having never behaved similarly, never even looking at another man during our marriage, he still feels like he is the victim. It is shocking and so painful. I hate to say this as I don’t want to disrespect those who have been destroyed by infidelity, I wish he would cheat. I feel like it would be so much easier to just say he cheated than go through all the manipulation, devaluation, financial abuse, and mental torture. Ugh, thank you for listening. I’m really using this forum as a safe place to work through all this. I need to be away from him so badly.

My STBX cover narc husband has never defended me nor our kids and I’m wondering why that is.
Once we were at a family event (his family) and his criminal addict sister got in my face for things I had no control over. She was mad that her father took her house key to give to us (we were visiting from out-of-state) so we didn’t wake my in-laws when we got home. I wasn’t even aware it had happened but somehow it was my fault. A perfectly normal thing to do, no less. Secondly I had exposed her daughter’s (let’s call her Jill) smoking to my MIL. I had been told to go find the grandkids for a photo. I found Jill smoking outside with numerous family members. Jill said, “I’ll be there when I’m done with this cigarette.” Jill was of age and was sitting alongside other family members, including siblings of my MiL. Imagine my surprise when I get back to place we were meeting for photo and was met with gasps when I said Jill would be there as soon as she was finished with her smoke. I had zero clue that Jill’s smoking was a secret. My MiL freaked out as my FiL was in hospice with lung disease.
Next thing I know my SIL is in my face screaming me about this stuff asking me if I thought I was better than her, etc. I feared for my physical safety and thought she was going to punch me before another family member (not my husband) intervened. I’d so been looking forward to the night as I was at SAHM of 4 young kids who never got to go out. My MiL was babysitting and I had a night free of worries, until my SIL ruined it. She proceeded to follow me around the whole night trying to pick fights with me. I tearfully asked my husband to call her off and he said, “She just acts that way when she’s drunk.” UM, a) she’s always drunk, 2) I don’t deserve this and D) I’m your wife and I need your protection! I’ve never gotten over this one, obviously!
Another time a group of angry drunk men came at me in a parking lot because I honked at them for their erratic driving. They followed me into the parking lot, got out of their car and came at me calling me names, etc. My husband bolted leaving my teenage sons to step between me & these men. WTAF? By the time the near altercation ended, my husband was waiting in line at the restaurant. Seriously!
He wouldn’t stand up for his children either. Once his mother body shamed my daughter who was in 4th grade, bringing my daughter to tears. I was livid and told my husband he needed to talk to his mother, tell her to apologize and never speak to our daughter that way again. He refused with his typical line that his mother was the sweetest person and never meant for her comments to be taken that way … um, she’s horrible and one of the most maliciously passive aggressive people I’ve ever known. Wouldn’t even defend his child and managed to gaslight us both. I should point out that my daughter now struggles with an eating disorder that nearly hospitalized her and left her without a period for over a year. Despite being jaundiced, malnourished and dehydrated with the estradiol levels of a post-menopausal woman (she was 18 at the time) whose liver and kidney functions were failing, my husband told me I was making a mountain out of a molehill, she was technically an adult and could do what she wanted and that she just needed to eat more, it wasn’t a mental illness … I could go on and on.
Ugh! Rant over but does anyone else have a narc in their life who would rather cower in a corner than defend their wife and children against bullies, even if said bully is their mother?

My STBX covert narcissist used to make every single morning miserable and I never understood (still don’t) why. I worked in education and knew that having a bad morning could negatively impact the entire day, especially for kids. He would wake up grumpy, start meaningless arguments and just be in such a foul mood that we’d all head out the door relieved to be away from him but in bad moods as well. I tried my best to keep things upbeat for them and was constantly apologizing for his behavior. I have so many text messages of me trying to right the atmosphere for their days it is sad. Now that they are in college I am so grateful they don’t have to begin each day under his dark cloud but I’ve never understood why he behaved that way. Mornings were definitely our prime walking on eggshell times. And of course recently I got the ultimate projection comment from him that I’m always the negative morning person. Yeah, because I wake up to you and only you now! But in reality, I am never the crappy morning person. This is one of those narc things that I truly don’t get. I’m watching a show right now where the dad came downstairs in the morning and he was chipper, high-fived his son and the whole family started their days with happiness and it just broke my heart that my kids didn’t know that from their dad. I’m still very much in the “why did I ruin my kids’ childhoods by staying” phase. I really hate myself for laying this burden of disfunction on them because I really didn’t realize it wasn’t me or the kids or job stress … he’s just a sanctimonious, narcissistic a-hole. It took me 15 years of not understanding what was happening and another 5 to accept that no matter what he was never going to change. I feel like I’ll spend the next 5 years breaking free from him and repairing the damage he caused me, our kids and our relationships and I worry that my kids will fall victim to the same horrific patterns I accepted for all that time.

Anyone with celiac disease have tips or experiences they’d care to share regarding Sandals Ochi? We’re going next week for oldest son’s wedding and daughter has CD. Thank you!

My STBX covert narcissist husband gave me a pretty common pet name when we first got together over 20 years ago. It is “babe,” very generic, not creative or personalized but it wasn’t long before I realized he let that word “slip” when talking to or addressing others … his mom, our daughter, friends, family, etc. It always bothered me but I felt petty when I would get annoyed that he just threw it out to everyone he knew. It has taken me this long to realize it was just another tool he used to devalue me. Now that we are separated, he keeps using it whenever we have contact and it crawls all over me. Anyone else have a narc in their lives who uses “your” pet name with others?

My covert narc (we are separated, living on same property) has a dog that he values above anyone or anything else. No big deal except said dog is dangerously reactive, mostly to other dogs. We’ve tried 2 different trainers and she is maxed out on Prozac dose yet she still attacks other dogs. Our lives have been dictated by this dog. After we lost our home to a wildfire last year, he obtained housing for her before me … to the tune of a $10k trailer and $40k truck to tow it. We have 4 other dogs who have all been brutally attacked by this dog. Our teens and I have been put in danger by trying to pry this dog off others despite an elaborate system of locking other dogs away and texting endlessly to move dogs about house and yard. She has broken off her chain and attacked neighbor’s dogs while their owners are walking them. In our prior home we didn’t have a fence due to HOA and I insisted she be kept on a chain while outside. We always stayed outside with our dogs but twice she snapped the chain. It’s a miracle our neighbor didn’t file a lawsuit. I have discussed behavioral euthanasia with our vet, trainers, kids and husband … everyone but husband believes strongly that BE is the only option at this point. He refuses.

We are all attending my son’s wedding in Jamaica next month. It was a long planned trip and despite being separated, we are attending. I wish he would stay home with his dog but he paid for the trip. I secured a trusted friend to dog sit my 4 dogs and tried to offer no-contact solutions for this friend to tend to his. He did not like my suggestions and decided to fly his anorexic, extremely frail 72 year old mother half way across the country to tend to his dog. His mother does not have dogs and has no experience with normal dogs, much less a reactive, isolated, anxious dog. This woman has broken her foot 4 times in the past 18 months. She is in no shape to care for this dog for 10 days. I am terrified for her safety and cannot wrap my head around this whole new level of selfish behavior. I will not be able to relax on trip waiting to get word that his mother has gotten injured either by the dog or by her own volition. I have expressed my concerns as strongly as I can while maintaining a grey rock stance. Can anyone tell me why someone would literally risk the safety of his “loved ones” over the demise of a dangerous dog who could destroy us both emotionally and financially??? I’m at a complete loss. I am open to suggestions.