Key Points
Recovering from a narcissist can be more difficult than other relationships, in part because of the self-criticism that follows.
Letting go of a narcissistic ex may be temporary, but it also re-engages the narcissist, which is what he wants.
Developing self-compassion is one of the keys to recovering from a relationship with a narcissist.
“How do you get over this? He proposed to me, made love to me, and told my widowed mother she would never worry about me again. We exchanged vows in a wedding he paid for. I didn’t realize that he had to control every detail, including my dress and my weight. It became clear in no time. I tried and tried, but the control was terrible. After six years, I had no children, and I wanted to break up with him. He went crazy. He sent my church elders “proof” that I was a whore. But he was the one who betrayed me. “It took two wasted years and a lot of money I didn’t have to get rid of him. How can anyone trust me after this?” — Jocelyn, 36
“My lawyer and I were waiting for her to be reasonable, and of course she never was. I’m angry about the time wasted, the pain I caused, and the money wasted. “I know it’s not good for me to hold on to this experience but I can’t let it go, you know?” — Lee, 42
With few exceptions, women and men who have been in relationships with a narcissist express similar thoughts and feelings about their exes. I understand this from a personal perspective because I have found recovery difficult, too. Although I no longer have emotional interest in my marriage, the 18-month divorce did a lot of damage. This question got me thinking about how to recover from losses—especially separations from intimate, important relationships, especially those that last a long time and involve marriage and, if dissolved, divorce.
Obviously, some recovery is about taking the initiative—either you or the person who left you—and all that entails. The reason you were left or decided to leave also matters. It’s one thing when you grow in one direction and your partner grows in another, and it’s another thing if there was some kind of betrayal, like infidelity, or you discover your spouse is a secret addict. The course of the divorce also matters: Does it confirm that the person who left you is the one who Does the picture reveal the person’s basic decency and familiarity with you, or does it reveal a complete stranger to you, like a knife-wielding figure, or someone you thought you knew but didn’t?
I asked Dr. Craig Malkin, author of Rethinking Narcissism and a blogger on this site, to weigh in on why it’s so hard to recover from a relationship with a narcissist.
“People with narcissistic personality disorder are often in a constant battle between wanting you and keeping you away from them. This means they’ll creep back into your life after a breakup—even if it’s just sending a demeaning text (“You need to get your head checked!”) or asking an infuriating question (“What did I do to make it so bad?”). It takes two people to end a relationship, and many narcissists refuse to leave without a fight. The translation? Constant re-traumatization. No wonder so many of my clients panic when they see an email from their ex.”
That’s why recovering from a narcissist is a different story altogether. In a previous post, I wrote about what you need to know when you’re divorcing a narcissist—which isn’t a pretty picture, by the way—but I didn’t focus on emotional recovery. When you divorce a narcissist with whom you have young children, emotional recovery may not be possible immediately because the legal battles after the divorce continue. Here is what one woman, now a mother of two teenage children, wrote to me:
“I was married for 5 years, and then separated from my husband almost 12 years ago. The divorce has continued, meaning that after the divorce was finalized, he has been torturing me and the children for the past 12 years. I have had two custody battles with my husband, and I have lost countless amounts of money. I could go on and on about this. Yes, I blame myself for being so stupid. I realized it almost immediately after the wedding. Yes, I am angry. He has made my life a living hell. I have worked on dealing with him for years. I have an amazing therapist. No, I have not been able to move on, because as long as the children are under 18, I will have to deal with the evil. There is no evidence that the abuse will stop after the divorce. The only difference is that he does not live in my home.”
What Makes Narcissistic Recovery Different?
Everything you thought was good about humans is contradicted. Every idea you had about loyalty, experience, and honesty is denied. Every idea you ever heard about marriage, love, and partnership is silently crushed. Every idea you ever had about human connection is destroyed by the behavior of the narcissist.
Separation and divorce are always painful, but leaving and divorcing a narcissist is something entirely different, and believes how recovery usually works. For example, research shows a correlation between increased self-esteem and growth after a relationship that was perceived as low-quality and self-limiting. This means that recovering from a relationship with a narcissist should be a walk in the park. Why isn’t it? Because it lacks the Casablanca Effect.
Yes. I gave it a completely unscientific name; you could also call it the “We’ll Always Be in Paris” moment. Remember the scene in Casablanca when you (the audience) and Ingrid Bergman think she’s staying with Humphrey Bogart, but he tells her she has to get on a plane with her husband? I looked at him and asked, “What about us?” “And he said, ‘We’ll always be with Paris.’” And while their experience in Paris—when he couldn’t help but feel the pain of being abandoned—was lost through understanding why she left him, that experience and the love he felt were restored.
In many relationships that end, after the screaming is over and what Daniel Gilbert calls the psychological immune system (which allows us to remember all the not-so-great things about our ex instead of crying) is activated, there comes a moment of calm and detachment when we’re ready to start over. Yet the “We’ll always be with Paris” moment comes when you remember some of the good times—and are okay with the memory. You can take a picture of the two of you without cringing and maybe even smile.
That doesn’t happen with a narcissist.
There is no “We’ll always be with Paris” moment because Paris—every promise he made to you, every moment you spent together, everything you thought about your relationship and connection—was “bombed or burned to the ground.”
You don’t recover from lost love or even a failed marriage, you recover from war.
“Severe trauma” is a word used by many survivors of narcissistic relationships, and it is apt, as is the military term “scorched earth,” which I used in conversation with my attorney to describe my ex-husband’s legal maneuvers.
Here are four reasons why someone is likely to have a hard time recovering from a relationship with a narcissist, as well as four things you can do to help enable recovery:
- Nothing was ever as it seemed.
This is so important because what seemed like it was about two people was about just one person—the narcissist. Once you’ve internalized this banal truth, you’ll find yourself reconsidering what you thought was going on between you and what was going on. That’s painful enough, and it goes straight to the next point…
- The Misery of Clear Vision.
The red flags that people always talk about—the ones that no intelligent person like you would miss—appear like poppies in Flanders during a breakup, when everything you previously missed or had been hidden from view suddenly comes into view.
As Malkin notes: “One of the most confusing experiences we can have when discovering layers of lies is that you end up questioning your judgment about everything, especially if you have a partner who covers their tracks by trying to convince you that you are ‘crazy’ or ‘paranoid.’”
I found this more devastating and painful than anything else—realizing that I reached out and was led down the garden path. Connecting the dots and seeing how you were able to collude with the narcissist’s efforts to control and ultimately defraud you makes you relive emotional moments over and over again, which doesn’t help you move forward.
- You feel like an idiot.
Those of us who struggle with insecure attachment—unfortunately, the least likely to recognize a narcissist in the first place—also tend to fall into the trap of destructive self-criticism, attributing something bad in your life to fixed, enduring character flaws, rather than seeing it as a series of mistakes or missteps that anyone could have made. It’s easy to fall into self-criticism in the wake of an encounter with a narcissist. You might think, “Only someone as stupid and naive as me could have fooled him,” or “There’s something wrong or missing in me that I just didn’t see who it was.”
This kind of thinking is a serious impediment to your emotional recovery.
It’s one thing to take responsibility for your mistakes—making a decision to please your partner, hesitating to leave when you knew you needed to, giving yourself a second, third, or fifty-third chance—but it’s another thing to beat yourself up for reaching out in the first place. Women who criticize themselves are more likely to ruminate and fall into a repetitive cycle of thoughts, which also hinders recovery.
As Malkin notes:
“Self-blame is shockingly common among people who have left a pathological narcissist. If you tell yourself you’re the problem, all you have to do is change and you’ll finally be free of the pain. This is a helpful tip: “Self-deception when your partner has no intention of changing, and it completely erodes your self-esteem.”
- You feel completely helpless.
A narcissist organizes himself by feeling powerful and in control. To do this, he needs someone to push him, which is why it’s impossible to stop the narcissistic train. When you’re deprived of agency in one important arena—when you’re on the defensive and unable to act proactively—it’s very difficult to maintain emotional balance and control in other parts of your life, except in superficial ways. Yes, you get out of bed, do your job, and pay your bills, but most of the time you’re on autopilot. This hinders recovery—as do financial anxiety, fear, and a host of other unpleasant feelings.
4 Things You Can Do to Speed Up Healing
Recognizing how deeply traumatic and distressing your experience was is an important first step. One woman wrote to me:
“You should take care of yourself as if you were recovering from a really serious illness. Surround yourself with positive things. Try hard not to let your anger, resentment, and pain destroy you. It will eat you up and turn you into a big ball of rage. When you go through this level of betrayal from someone you thought you could trust with your life, it cuts you to the core. I made a conscious decision to get through this with willpower. I decided to rise above the ashes and come out the other side stronger and with dignity.”
You can use specific strategies to try to get out of this emotional rollercoaster and make sure that the experience is not shaping you in ways that hold you back, without putting on rose-colored glasses or denying the pain. I am not a believer in the saying “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
- Use calm processing.
When you think about the events and experiences you’ve had in your relationship, ask yourself why you felt that way, not what you were feeling. Research shows that understanding your feelings will allow you to label them more accurately and manage your emotions more effectively. Try to see events from a distance or imagine that they happened to someone else. All of these techniques that help you distance yourself—and make sure you ask why—can help you stop reliving moments and prevent emotional flooding.
Numerous studies have shown that journaling and writing about experiences helps you develop a greater understanding and a more coherent narrative of life events, but be aware that writing about a divorce or breakup seems like an exception because it can send you into “hot” processing mode.
- Personalize, don’t generalize.
People get bitter and contemptuous because they take lessons from one person’s wrongful behavior and apply them to all people—or all men or women. If you hear yourself saying things like “all men are control freaks,” or “women will do anything to get what they want,” stop and remind yourself that you’re talking about a bad apple, not an orchard.
- Practice self-compassion.
It’s easy to find yourself hosting the pity party of the century or immersing yourself in a sea of self-criticism. Instead, work on developing self-compassion, which Kristin Neff describes as a three-step process:
First, instead of judging yourself, be kind and understanding. Instead of berating yourself for being stupid enough to get involved with a narcissist in the first place, be kind and understanding of how you mistakenly thought this person was someone else.
Second, see your experiences not as unique but as part of the larger human experience—meaning that anyone can find themselves in these circumstances. As my grandfather used to say, you are not the first or last to live an imperfect life.
Third, be aware of your painful feelings without being overly sympathetic to them. She uses the popular word “mindfulness.” I find it most helpful to keep the idea of calm processing in the forefront of my mind—allowing yourself to be fully aware of your feelings while maintaining enough distance so that you don’t relive them.
- Take the right path.
If you’re unfortunate enough to be involved in an ongoing conflict with a narcissist, resist the urge to engage and respond, especially if you’re in a custody battle. Don’t respond to the bad talk, and keep a record of it. Criticizing him publicly will make you feel better temporarily, but it also gets you back into the loop—which is exactly what the narcissist wants. If you don’t engage, the puppeteer won’t be able to pull the strings.
