sadly this is an example of what happens when you ask for help from within a locked bathroom, from within a narcissistic relationship, seeking “an ear” for help from a “friend” who i realise shared a whole psychologist’s library of personality traits with the great manipulator.
i was asking for help in a delicate way. I had to be delicate, I had to delete messages the moment i’d sent them – I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t reading them. he had put spyware on my phone and inflammatory messages from certain others who were onto him was like pouring fat on a fire and while I was the one to burn, they were the ones he threatened on more than one occasion to kill, and I believed him. So I protected them as much as I was protecting myself.
I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t say anything without writing it in code, which I tried and in their frustration at me, in their lack of any comprehension of what was going on, they just didn’t get. because I couldn’t say anything, those friends i was hoping to save simply did not see anything except that i wasn’t there for them. all they could see was a two way street when when I didn’t even have a mapped road to travel.
with or without death threats, when you leave, or if you choose to stay, it will happen: people will excise you from their life, it hurts. but these aren’t your people.
you just can’t be “normal” or convenient for them. what they don’t see is that you’re already on empty. your life in an abusive relationship is not normal. when you push back, it’s already too late. it was always too late…they were always like this. you’re already the bad person…they cut you out, delete you, you’re just too hard, not the fun being they’d projected you to be. and unfortunately they contribute to the toxic soup of living with a narcissist.
i had two such reactions from people i had given my all to; it left me isolated and frightened to seek help for another 6 months, thinking i had no one and that i deserved “to lie in the bed i’d made”. maybe they’re right, most certainly they believe they are right from behind the safe viewing platform of their own circumstances and experiences. they’ll likely never read this and never know of the death threats made if i kept contact with them. those people knew that my message services were tapped. i had asked them to contact me via email only, but that request went ignored.
there are two sides to every story, and all the stories in between from the spectators in the sidelines. my response in the message, too, appears rather passive aggressive, i’m aware. that’s a stung person reacting to a rejection for a request for help, rather than responding, snapping the last lines of communication when the message wasn’t received, and there’s more to the backstory regarding my brief “friendship” with this person, which will be in a future post.
for anyone reading this who is seeing this from outside a relationship that looks abusive, please know that when you tell a person, “just get out” and “you’ve made your own bed” (apart from the fact that just getting out can be impossible/statistically the most dangerous time for the abused party) you are in fact colluding with the abuser and you are complicit in further isolating the person who is experiencing the trauma and gaslighting from the abuser.
you are, in fact, doing the gaslighting as much as the abuser is gaslighting, and as much as the abused is already gaslighting herself/himself.
i know it’s frustrating to see. exasperating. but your words, such as these, are not only useless, they can make a dangerous situation downright deadly especially if the abuser sees your words because he has access to his partner’s messages.
how can you help? educate yourself. read, listen, supply resources, suggest therapy. be there. hold space and listen to the spaces in between. keep an ear out for code. and know that the person you care for is in a supremely delicate situation.
i’m not here to blame people who don’t understand the situation and other people are not beholden to any of my follies and i don’t expect them to get it if they’ve not been in my situation…but aside from the obvious fact i wanted no harm done to these people, i could not physically or mentally be there for myself, let alone be the present comfort and support to someone else in that moment, or the terrifying and trapdoor quicksand moments leading up to that ask for “an ear”. i was in survival mode and seeking a very urgent lifeline that was denied to me due, in part, to simple ignorance. and also due to plain old spite, in this case.
and to “just get out” … that’s what i was asking an ear for and it took me almost year to do [if you count my reactive responses to being stalked online]. because once a narc gets their hooks in, it’s a delicate and dangerous process to disentangle yourself. and if you believe you’ve arrived at that place where you think you have no one, that adds to the isolation, which is precisely what the abuser wants/
departure point 