Dear MKnox,

you are very welcome,  I am glad this was helpful to you. I’ve watched Dr. Ramani’s videos, she really is a great expert, I’ve learned a lot about narcissism and other mental health issues from her.

I am going to accept that they will never do the right thing and give up on any line of thinking in that direction. I will not wish he will give me closure or try to seek it out because I know he will not. I will not try to have any contact with him or his parents. If I see him I will go in the other direction and I will not seek him out in any way. I will write this letter and give it my friend and then put this in my past be done with it and just work on healing myself from this terrible trauma. I will realize that he doesnt win and I am not helpless because he will always be a monster but I can get well. My mantra will be success is the best revenge if I ever start thinking about it. I will work hard to heal.

This is such a beautiful resolution for your own healing! You may even print it out and put it on a visible place, so you can always remind yourself when in doubt. If you stick to these principles, you’ll definitely be able to get stronger and heal from his abuse. Truly, you aren’t helpless and you can get well, and you don’t need absolutely anything from your abuser to get better. Your healing is in your own hands, and you can do it, with the help of those who truly care about you.

I am praying and rooting for your healing as well. Best of luck to you, dear MKnox!

Dear MKnox,

I was also saying true closure comes with both parties communicating and being on the same page, and i feel what I am doing is different from true closure because both parties are not involved.

True closure – I guess this would mean both parties agreeing on what lead to the breakup and remaining friends after the breakup – is rare even in less toxic relationships. The party that is left behind is often angry at her partner and think they betrayed them. The party that initiated the breakup lost empathy and understanding for their partner, or may feel guilty that they don’t love them any more. None of that is really conducive to dialogue and landing on the same page. So even in less toxic relationships, there is rarely “true closure”, the way you define it.

Amicable separation, with partners separating as friends, usually only happens when both parties have found new partners and both want to leave the relationship. All other scenarios lead to a more or less uncomfortable separation, specially for the party who is left behind.

What I am trying to say is that amicable separation is very rare. But what’s good is that amicable separation is not a precondition for true healing. Numerous victims of abuse have healed without their abuser’s apologizing. And numerous women (and men) in non-abusive relationships have healed after the breakup – even if the other party wasn’t on the same page as them. So the notion that “true closure” is only possible if the breakup is amicable  – is not really true. True closure is possible with proper healing and processing. You don’t need the other party for that.

As for the letter, I wouldn’t leave it on your friend to decide about its destiny. It’s too big of a responsibility for them. You would need to decide for yourself whether you want to send it or not. My advice is not to, because you’ll still be hoping for some reaction, and if the reaction is bad, you’ll feel even worse.

My advice is to write the letter and give it to a trusted therapist, as a way to express yourself and have your voice heard. With time, you can start speaking out and writing on the issue of narcissistic abuse, helping other women as well.

Dear Felix,

I feel regret because i know i’m smart enough to take that major….

This’ll be my bachelor degree for the rest of my life… and people in my country will view me as someone lazy who gets an easy bachelor….

Well, if you truly believe you are smart and capable of more, and you would like a higher degree, you still have the option to go for further training, such as MBA (when the situation with covid improves).

This is my final degree because i decided that i“ll not take masters after discussing with my parents….

After discussing with parents, we decided that i shouldnt take masters, along with the part time jobs and try living on my own… and i agree with it… we discussed for three straight days….

What made you change your mind regarding Masters and everything else? Is it just the current situation with covid or something else?

Dear MKnox,

I hear and understand your pain. And I see you are also very conflicted: a part of you still wants your abuser and his parents to hear you out and show you some empathy, even though another part of you knows it won’t happen. Here is the rational part of you, understanding what happened and that you won’t really get closure from them:

I think it was a big mistake unmasking him in the end and trying to stand up for myself and demand the respect of being able to have a voice and receive closure.

Its all lies and contradictions and manipulation and gaslighting.

How could someone do this to another person and just not even care? Much more i think he WANTS to destroy me and gets pleasure from my pain. Its just so devastating.

And here is another part of you who is confused as to what happened, because she wants to hope that it wasn’t all that bad:

With this relationship I have no picture, I have no understanding.

I can never truly understand the truth and it drives me mad that i cannot.

When I could put my finger on what happened and finally say this is it, You are a narcissist or worse a sociopath or psychopath I at least had some understanding and logically I can know this is the truth but emotionally i just cannot understand.

The emotional part is your inner child – the little girl that was hurt by her parents and cannot understand it because how could they hurt someone they are supposed to love. She is still looking for their apology, she still believes that if she wrote them a letter, they would finally understand and stop abusing her. And maybe even start loving her. Only you aren’t hoping to get it from your own parents, but from your ex and his parents. But the wound fueling your longing and your hope is the same: the wounded little girl who just wants her parents to finally show compassion for her, because it’s unbearable to think that they don’t love her, when she loves them so much and has even forgiven them for their abuse:

And god if your the kind of person that would read all this and hear the victim say they just want to forgive and have a voice and have closure and move on and be done with this and still try to hurt them then youre a truly evil person and i dont think thats true. esp of his father.

You said you’re not projecting your parental issues, but unfortunately, you are, because it’s the little girl who needs that closure. She cannot get it from her parents, so she is desperate to get it from his parents, specially his father. Can you see that?

I know if they did the right thing, it would make healing a lot easier for me.

You make your healing and recovery dependent on the abuser and his enablers. Do you see how it lowers your chances of healing?

Closure not a thing you can give to yourself. Closure involves both parties being on the same page.

Not necessarily. In some cases, e.g. in the case of rape, should the victim wait for the abuser to apologize and only then move on and heal?

Closure is having that full picture of what happened in the relationship and being on the same page together about what happened.

The first part is true: the victim needs to have the full picture of that happened without excusing the abuse. The second part isn’t true: you don’t need the abuser’s apology in order to heal. A rape victim doesn’t. She could wait her whole life and never get the apology she is hoping for.

Apologies and forgiveness are there and both can move forward knowing how to grow from it.

What if the abuser doesn’t want to grow from it?  What if he doesn’t even admit that he did anything wrong?

All I can do is give myself understanding and information and learn to heal from this and it will take so much longer and leave more wounds than if they did the right thing.

Again, the first part is true: you can and should give yourself understanding and information and learn to heal.

The second part isn’t true: it won’t take much longer to heal, and it’s because you won’t depend on their apology – an apology you might be waiting for the rest of your life. It will be much quicker and less painful if you stop waiting for their apology and give yourself closure.

I know it’s hard for you, because the little girl inside of you is still waiting to be loved by her abusers… but if you want to heal, you would need to give love to that little girl. You don’t need to do it alone though – a good therapist can give you the compassion and understanding that you long for and deserve.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Tee.

Dear MKnox,

you are welcome. I understand your bitterness and disappointment in people.  You say:

I want to believe in the good in people so badly. I wanted to believe he could get better, could do the right thing, that his parents could do the right thing. It is hard to accept that some people – even whole families – are just utterly rotten to the core.

You wrote earlier:

I feel so helpless. I cannot understand why his parents would not only be so cold towards me and not show any empathy but also enable him and lie for him. I cannot understand why they don’t apologize for their son. Why will they intervene to hurt a victim but they won’t to get their psychopath son help or make him take responsibility for his actions? I wish there was a way to get through to them that they helped to destroy an innocent girl’s life. I wish they would read this. I wish they would know I don’t want revenge. I wish they knew I am just an innocent victim and I only want to be treated with respect. I want apologies and answers. Will that never happen? Will they never reach out to me and apologize or anything? I am in so much pain and they don’t even care? How could they just coldly destroy someone’s life?

I will make an assumption here, it’s just an assumption and it may not be true, but could it be that what you are hoping to get from his parents (empathy and understanding) is the same you were hoping to get from your own parents, specially from your mother (and the rest of your family) who perhaps didn’t have empathy for you when your father abused you?

I had similar thoughts when I was much younger: like, how is it possible that this person doesn’t like me?? I couldn’t believe they don’t like me! Much later I realized that it’s not so strange that someone wouldn’t like me, what’s strange though is that my own mother behaved as if she didn’t like me. That’s kind of incomprehensible.

In your case, it’s kind of understandable that his parents don’t have empathy for you (since they are protecting their son). Your surprise and outrage at them might stem from your own family having no empathy for you – which is truly incomprehensible and enraging.

Does this sound true to you?

Hi Felix,

I make six figures, I live in a nice area, I drive a nice car, I can hold a conversation better many, but women are not looking for that

So what do they want? 7 figures? Perhaps you live in a posh place like Beverly Hills, where the appetites are insane?

My ex-wife, who is sweetest person I ever met, on a dime turned into a monster whom I did not recognize.

What has she done? From what you’ve described so far, you said she wasn’t materialistic but there were other issues.

Dear Felix,

So i wont be judged as a person who has a “weird” personality right, only because of that pic?

no, you won’t. If you would post such pix regularly, or all the time, people might think it’s weird. But one such pic is harmless and as I said, it’s fun.

I’ve been continuing to do my physical exercise every evening, although sometimes i feel lazy to do it, but i still force myself to do it…. I only feel motivated on the first few days and the rest are me forcing my laziness to do workout, but i never missed a single day since i start doing exercise.

Good! Most of the people feel resistance before workout, myself included, so you’re no exception. But the question is whether the resistance will win, or the desire to make some progress will win. You can introduce some versatility into the exercises, so that you don’t feel bored. And you can gradually increase the weight, or increase the number of repetitions (of any exercise, not just weightlifting) – this will give you a sense of accomplishment. This also answers your follow-up question:

I realized that i’m a person who needs to feel accomplishment everyday to convince myself that i’m capable…. But how can i do that, it’s not like there’s something to achieve everyday right?

Yes, there is. Doing workout everyday and slightly increasing the performance can give you a sense of accomplishment.

As for the “taking masters issue”, luckily i’m able to calm my mind after overthinking on how much i messed up, i hope i wont get triggered again until the situation on my city is better.

Glad to hear that. Yeah, right now your options are limited in terms of study abroad, but as we’ve discussed before, you can still take a language course or anything that will give you a sense of accomplishment and making progress. So, workout plus learning Chinese could be the two things that you do daily, that will give you a sense of accomplishment.

I’m like a lost kid in the middle of a large crowd, where everybody walks because they know their destination and i’m just standing there watching them move…. Why do other people are able to know what they want but i can’t?

Some of them just follow their parents’ or society’s expectations, without questioning it. They might do it ambitiously, specially when they are young, because they want to meet those expectations. Others might be following their own dreams, maybe because they know themselves better, and also because they had more supportive parents, who saw them as capable and encouraged them to achieve things. We’ve talked about this before, I’ve explained why you might be lacking ambition and why you are afraid of failure.

In order to grow from a kid to an adult, you’d need gradually become more and more independent of your parents. One way (1) is to build a sense of accomplishment – which you’ve started already, and you can improve it further by e.g. taking some online courses that you like. The other way (2) to become more independent is move out from your parents’ house and live alone. The third (3) is to find a part-time job when the covid situation improves. The fourth (4) is to study abroad, etc. We’ve talked about all this before.

For now, you can’t do 2, 3, or 4, due to covid, but you can do 1. So keep doing and expanding 1, i.e. things you can do from your home.

As for starting flirting with this new girl, I don’t think it’s a good idea, since you only know her online, and only because she sold you some stuff. She told you she is very busy with her studies and her own business, and she replied late to your messages. You can potentially try once more, to start casually chatting with her and asking some personal questions, and see if she gladly replies or she is reluctant. But the best would be to wait till covid restrictions are over, so you can meet in person too.

Dear Akansha,

I always told him that he is selfish but I guess being selfish is not always bad. In this case, however, he did make me feel small. When I dug deeper into our issues and owned up to my mistakes and issues. He let me stew in it. He never took responsibility for anything. It was all my fault and you see I was so blind that I didn’t even question him. My whole point was to take ownership of my mistakes but do you think it’s possible that it was just me?

Of course it wasn’t just you… but he blamed you, and because deep down you felt unworthy and unimportant (your original childhood wound), you actually believed him. You believed it was exclusively your fault, and that you need to change, not him.

When my ex told me that “you are the important thing” I actually felt bad. I was like so I am important and a spiritual person since I try to understand why people do what they do. I didn’t want to give power to that thought since then I would have been chuffed.

Because of your original wound, you didn’t believe you were important. No matter how much he told you that (in the beginning of your relationship), there was still a part of you that didn’t believe it.

But still, he made you feel special, important and beautiful – everything you’ve craved since childhood – and you completely fell for him. You opened up to him like to no one before (I never opened up to anyone like this), you bared your soul. You thought he was “the one” – because he gave you what you craved for. And you became needy and clingy, I guess like with no one before – because you couldn’t afford to lose “the one”.

Unfortunately he exploited your openness and vulnerability:

He used to tell me I am not expressive and when I started doing that he abandoned me. … I even shared it with my ex after we broke up and explained the reason why I was the way I was. And he just used it to quote the reasons he didn’t like me then.

Maybe he liked your old self: the cheerful, put-together, strong self, in whom he saw a mother figure. And he despised your needy and clingy self (the little girl inside of you), who came out of hiding because she thought she was safe with him. Once she came out, he’s hurt her badly. She tried to please him, to do everything to make him happy, so he would stay…

And a part of you is still hoping that he would come back (at least when you wrote your first post, you were still hoping, you were still in love with him). That’s the little girl who still believes he is her savior, her prince charming, who will give her the perfect love…

By now you probably know, at least on the rational level, that he is not the prince charming… and that there is no prince charming – you need to save yourself. You need to give yourself the love and appreciation you’ve been craving for.

—

As for karma, I don’t know what to believe about it, but what I know is that we repeat the same experience until we learn the lesson. I don’t think you did anything wrong with your previous ex, and specially not that you suffered in your latest relationship because of something you did in your earlier relationship.

Maybe I am suffering for that suffering I might have caused him. He is a good friend now and I have talked to him about it. He says he didn’t know why did he act the way he did but I was clearly not honest in telling him my feelings have changed when he was trying to reconcile. I just told him the reasons it cant work.

So your previous ex was emotionally unavailable, wouldn’t talk about his emotions, you felt lonely in the relationship… and eventually he left you. No wonder your feelings have changed – you probably entered the relationship with some hopes and expectations, and your feelings have probably changed because he didn’t meet those expectations. Your feelings might have changed while you were still in the relationship, and that’s why you let it go so easily: you didn’t fight for him when he broke up with you.

Two years later, when he contacted you again, seeking reconciliation, you probably still felt the same – you fell out of love long ago, and there was nothing he could say or do that would make you fall back in love. Am I guessing this right? Is that what you feel guilty about – that you didn’t tell him something like “sorry, don’t even bother because I am not interested any more”?