Key Points

It can be difficult to explain narcissistic abuse to someone who has never experienced it.

People will have a hard time understanding why you stayed after the abuse began or how you got into this situation in the first place.

Even though you are the victim, some people may blame you or minimize your suffering.

Many people who have experienced narcissistic abuse at the hands of a partner have a hard time explaining their situation to people who have never experienced anything like it. They are often asked some of the following questions:

What is narcissistic abuse?

Why did I put up with it?

Why did I stay in the relationship for so long?

Everyone will have their version of the answers to these questions. However, it can be difficult to explain what happened and why over and over again. My clients’ dilemmas have led me to write a general explanation for them so that they can adapt to their situation, print it out, and distribute it to their loved ones.

Note: In this post, I use the terms narcissist, narcissist, and narcissistic personality disorder as shorthand for someone who qualifies as a narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis. I am using male pronouns in the example below, but this can be applied to all genders.

General Definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder

My partner (or ex-partner) has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This means that although he may portray himself as very confident and capable, he is insecure about his self-worth. This doubt causes him to seek perfection, validation from others, and high status in an attempt to reassure himself that he is special and stabilize his fluctuating self-esteem.

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People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder lack emotional empathy. This meant that my partner didn’t feel happy for me when I succeeded at something (unless it reflected positively on him) or bad when he hurt me.

The combination of these two things—his difficulty regulating his self-esteem and his lack of genuine empathy for others—made my partner extremely selfish and preoccupied with his own needs, even though he generally tried to hide them. Instead, he went out of his way to project an image of whatever he thought would make him look impressive to others.

All of this made him hypersensitive to negative feedback, easily offended, and very aggressive toward me when he got angry.

At the beginning of our relationship, he was very interested in me and attentive to me. I didn’t realize it, but his “understanding” of me after I flirted with him made him feel powerful and special.

Once we were together, that feeling went away. He started criticizing me and telling me what I needed to change. He became very controlling and would punish me by yelling or coldly withdrawing whenever I didn’t do things his way. He also blamed me for everything that went wrong, even when it was his fault. I started to fear him after he threw the TV remote at my head.

Things got worse over time. He didn’t care that he was abusing me (no emotional empathy) and he wanted to hurt me because belittling and abusing me made him feel powerful and better than me, which boosted his self-esteem. Our entire relationship from the beginning was about using him to make himself feel better about himself.

By the end of the relationship, I felt like a broken, confused mess.

At the time, before I learned about narcissism, I couldn’t understand why I was being abused by someone who claimed to love me. It took me a long time to realize that I would never be able to please him, and we would always fight because he was a narcissist and incapable of having a normal relationship.

Even though I know this now, it still took me a long time to recover because I truly loved him and believed him when he said he loved me and that we would be together forever.

Summary

It can be difficult to explain narcissistic abuse to people who have never experienced it. They often feel confused about how you allowed it to happen when you didn’t see it coming and why you stayed in the relationship after the abuse started. Some people may think you’re exaggerating. It’s especially hard to explain when your narcissistic partner can project an image of being intelligent, calm, and caring. Ultimately, you may have to accept the fact that some people simply won’t be able to imagine how much you’re suffering or how badly you’ve been treated.