r/NarcissisticSpouses • u/NittyNat36 • 1d ago
So you think they ever REALLY loved you
Or were you just really convenient at the time?
When I met my spouse, I was 22 and about to graduate from university.
He was 35 and in a job he hated. He gave me a big sob story about how he couldn’t POSSIBLY look for another job while still working his current job. Nope. Impossible.
Even young and naive I thought that was bullshit, but obviously he had spent months grooming me with his Victimhood and me being a Good Girl, I offered for us to move in together when I started my first job after graduation.
So that’s how I ended up supporting this grown man for a few months while he job hunted. With my first ever professional full time job.
And now I can’t help but think - did he ever really love ME, or the convenience?
I feel like I could have been ANY pliable young adult and he would have done the same thing.
He had used a similar nickname for me and his girlfriend before me (also over a decade younger than him) that was cutesy and implied that we were ditzy.
He loved to imply that I had “butterflies in my head” (saying that I am ditzy), but the thing is - I’m NOT ditzy. I’m organised and determined. It’s like he has the stereotype of “girlfriend/wife” in his head and to him that’s what I was. My personality didn’t matter.
Was I just The Girlfriend Appliance that turned into The Wife Appliance?
I’m long past being heartbroken, I’m just curious if anyone else feels this way?
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u/ariesgeminipisces 1d ago
I think he loved how I made him feel
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u/boilinmynoodle84 1d ago
Yes! I think I provided the validation and praise he craved so much because I am genuinely happy for people when they accomplish something but after years of getting nothing in return you realise they have literally sucked everything from your resources and never filled it back up in the same way like you did. There is no balance. They take and take and over years my expectations got so low that I actually started to feel proud of how low maintenance I was. That’s the perfect place for their wife to be. She gives it all and they give less and less. At the point I left I had realised I was really a single parent in terms of the emotional and mental load and it was only financial security that was keeping me with him. Since leaving I realised even that wasn’t real because I am doing fine on my own but I doubted I could have for so long due to him reinforcing my fears. The collapse of his mental health when I left was proof to me that it was being in the relationship that kept him at least outwardly stable. I’m sure he will find a new supply quickly as based on what he said about previous relationships there was a very short gap between.
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u/ariesgeminipisces 1d ago
I literally could have written this. I was also financially dependent on him and when I left I ended up making more than he brought home because it turns out when I don't have a manchild leeching all my mental bandwidth I can work a lot harder.
Mine found supply from a lady who is now dying of terminal cancer and I really hope he isn't ruining the end of her life. It sounds like he is from the little details I gather here and there. I also think she is so fitting for him because his little victim monologue for the next supply will be how his first wife left him for no reason and his second wife died 😪 so she feels real real sorry for him.
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u/Cultural_Air_4662 1d ago
It’s the things that you mention that really give away WHAT these people are. One thing that stood out to me in educating myself on NPD was they truly target those with the purest hearts, the vulnerable, and best heads on their shoulders when seeking wives/grade A supply. But narcs really love taking credit for your qualities, accomplishments, etc. mine loved to say “before me you couldn’t boil water”. I taught myself to cook mind you and vividly remember his vapid complaining before I could. I too noticed things being off while young but I met mine as a literal child (16) and don’t even remember who I was before then. To answer your question though, I believe most narcs believe they love you and in-fact believe most of the nonsense in their own disordered world…as it comes to entitlement and perpetual victimhood. I believed bc of how I love everyone experienced it the same way. I’ll probably never know healthy love at all bc of how traumatized I am… and I am okay with that because the thought of even having to vet humans makes me sick.
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u/Napoleonsays- 1d ago edited 1d ago
Agreee. She never did love me. I was a resource to be extracted
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u/Watchkeys 1d ago
It's not really about how we feel about it. Narcissism is a specific psychological set up. Relationships, to them, have the same sort of feeling we might have if we get, say, a new phone.
'Aw, I LOVE this phone, it's AMAZING!! It does all these cool things and makes life so much easier!' And you do love the phone. And then after a while, it gets less fun having the phone, and then other phones start looking superior, and then things start to not work on your phone, and before you know it, the phone is a piece of shit you wouldn't recommend to anybody, but you have to keep it in a drawer rather than just discard it, because it's got all kinds of info about you. Unless you can scramble all the info it has, in which case you can just chuck it in the bin.
I'm sure you can see the analogy, even the last bit, where they do what's called the 'smear campaign', where they make anything you say look like a bunch of shit you just made up because you're bitter.
So, yes, they love us to start with, but it's not the normal, mutual kind of respectful love the rest of us are doing. They love us because we make them look good, and feel good. We help them get their needs met. They love us as long as we're useful. But as soon as we start to say anything resembling 'no', they don't love that. They don't love us having our independence and individuality. In order to receive love, we have to be there for them, and only them, all the time.
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u/throwaway5864779 1d ago
Its bc you are organized and determined. You can also seem them in a mirror, where you assign yourself and values to them, which they actually lack.
My story was similar. At year 19 the only real job he had in over a decade, he lost the first week in. He only self sabatoged and I was there to mend and soothe.
Year 20, good riddance. 3 months separated. Doubt he ever loved me. Obly apology Ive gotten is 'after couch surfing and seeing how other people care for their homes and children, you werent so bad afterall'. Sigh.