I have an interview this month to work in the floral dept. What is it like? Could this job help me get a better paying floral job in the future? I understand working at ShopRite overall may not be great, but I am in desperate need of work, and happy that I might get to at least work with plants.
I'm not certain that my bf lives with NPD, and I know none of us can really diagnose him, but over the past couple months I have felt like some realities of the relationship are coming to light for me. He comes from an enmeshed family, and while he isn't very attached to them, he does exhibit enmeshed traits himself, but the whole family also shows signs of severe narcissism. I'm not sure how much crossover is there with enmeshment/narcissism. The following things have me reconsidering the relationship:
- His empathy is extremely low. During the earlier stages of our relationship he was so patient and nurturing, but now that he is comfortable with me, he has a hair-trigger defensiveness that is starting to feel exhausting to me.
- He believes, with passion, that if someone upsets him, in any way, he has every right to make them uncomfortable. Anything from cutting him off while driving, to me having a bad day and being a little cranky. He once admitted to me in the past that "since he treats me so well the majority of the time, he knows it's bad, but he feels justified hurting me sometimes." If I bring this up now he will claim he never said this.
- He assumes everyone, including strangers, are paying attention to him/that everything has to do specifically with him. Ex: he might go to pull into a parking spot, but maybe someone drives into it from the other side. He will become irate for a while that "that guy knew I wanted to park there and still did that."
- I used to explain to him that defensiveness is really bad for relationships, and I would appreciate if he would work on it. He would understand and want to work on it. As time has gone on, now he tends to just debate the meaning of the word "defensive" and conclude that we can both have different definitions of it and my definition is wrong.
- If I ever try to explain that he did something, big or small, to upset me, I get responses like: "you do horrible impressions of me", "I would never say that", "are you sure about that?", "but I wouldn't do/say that."
- Any level of discomfort I experience gets turned into a problem. Ex: I'm sitting on a pool noodle in some water, we are cuddling, somehow I'm sitting with my feet in the air, he holds my ankles, I begin to tip back and get nervous because I don't want my head under water, I say "let go of my ankles", he's not letting go, I get scared and say "let go of my ankles let go of my ankles!", to which he replies "Jeeeesuss!! I'm going to go ALL THE WAY over here, if you don't mind... God!" Looking at me the entire time like I am a huge bitch.
- He will insist that because I have one opinion or sense of humor, I am not allowed to have an opinion or not like some other type of humor. Ex: I make jokes about/enjoy Law & Order SVU, but I don't enjoy listening to podcasts where men talk a lot about porn or objectifying women. He knows I don't like these podcasts, and will often just not play them around me, but other times he will play them, knowing full well I might ask him to turn it off, and then it becomes "you find X dark humor funny, but you don't like THIS. I just find that FUNNY. Its FUNNY." This is his indirect phrase for essentially saying 'you're nuts.'
- Over the course of our relationship he no longer seems to feel anything if I cry, and has even gotten annoyed with me at times for crying.
- Reconciliation is becoming harder and harder. Recently I lost my patience with him in the middle of the night because he went to sleep drunk and moved around a lot, and when I asked him to go sleep on the couch, he had an attitude with me, even admitted he was making fun of me when I asked him to please be nice. (Every snide comment he insists they are "jokes".) I got really upset, and told him he's an alcoholic. The next day, and into the next four days, he played the withholding dance with me and basically punished me for saying something he didn't want to hear. When we finally "reconciled", his overall attitude began with "you said some seriously mean things to me!", but by the end it was "the things you said never bothered me, I knew you were just sleep deprived." That immediate switch felt eye-opening.
- He can not handle basic requests/life reminders. Ex: I ask "can we wait to talk until we find our seat on the plane? I feel overwhelmed", he replies angrily "Oh right because talking is BAD." - I let him know he left the door to the bathroom with a cat litter box in it closed when he left for work, he replied "I didn't, but thanks", "I know I didn't do that because I would never make that mistake", "I would NEVER speak this way to you", all over a simple reminder of a natural mistake.
- I once tried to explain to him that invalidating a person's emotions consistently can slowly, unfortunately, become emotionally abusive. He became enraged, claiming that I was "calling him an abuser", and broke up with me. This was earlier in the relationship and I begged to get back together. Now, with trying to mention his habit of drinking, anything I say about it is an "extremely mean thing to say."
- He is extremely negative overall anymore. Any time we watch TV it's "that guy sucks", "f*** this guy", "she's ugly", "I like that guy but I don't like that guy". He also has this idea that he is a Very Good Person and tends to categorize people into good or bad. We have gotten into situations in public where he feels wronged by someone and has to take it out on them by saying something mean they can overhear, and if they confront him he denies it. The worst incident I can remember was when he held the door for a mother and her young daughter, who seemed to just be absorbed in enjoying one another's company. The mother didn't thank him, and he feels she owes him this just because he did something nice, so he, loudly, called her a c***. Thankfully she did not notice.
I love this man, but I am trying to be realistic about this. We just moved in together 3 months ago, and it feels like even more empathy is gone. I'm very attached to him, and when the relationship is good, it's good. The easiest relationship I've had, actually. This last "reconciliation" though has me up at 3am making this post, because, after the fact, I realize that any issue I brought up got turned onto me. He recently ignored me to my face, acted passive aggressive all day, and was generally making me very uncomfortable. When it came time to talk about it he would not listen to me at all, demanded I listen to his timeline of events, and when he got to the day where he was acting that way, he twisted it around and claimed I was being "tough" that day. All I did was mostly avoid him and ask him to help move a new bed frame into our room that night.
He used to be so emotionally accommodating that experiencing all of these gradual changes has been heartbreaking for me. I thought this was the person I might grow old with. Now I really don't know, and I know I am attached to him to an extent where, even with all this crappy behavior, it will be very hard for me to leave. I am telling myself that I'm going to use this next year, till the end of our lease, to seriously evaluate the relationship. No more rose colored glasses. If I really do decide to end it, I have to start thinking about it rationally now, in order to mentally and emotionally handle it. I'm also feeling upset because my prior relationship was with someone who was like this, and I am feeling like, how did I let myself get sucked into this again? I'm really sad and would love to hear from people in my same boat. <3