Boy does this all sound familiar--I laughed when I read:

>>they perfect the ability to say nothing in lengthy, Castro-like speeches.<<

Ain't that the truth!

Betty, thanks for this post. I always felt that one of the greatest principals of the narc's life was postponement, and that he was incredibly threatened by any attempt at decision-making. The few times he actually gave a speech about us it was when his attempt to postpone everything was being threatened. Whether I was trying to find out when he had a free weekend to book a getaway for us . . . or trying to figure out if the house was going to be finished before my lease was over . . . or trying to make him understand that I was almost infertile and we needed to make a decision about a baby . . . from the simplest thing to the most profound, decision-making paralyzed him, and he responded to my attempts with bizarre, meaningless speeches about nothing.

I sometimes look at his life and realize that everything he's done has postponement as its dynamo. He went from wanting to get married, have children and live together to the most unsettled life one could imagine, with ten thousand strings dangling. He told me once that he could not propose to me, as much as he wanted to, because he couldn't be responsible for making a decision. I had to do it, because then if it didn't work out, it wouldn't be his fault. He has told me that he really doesn't want to adopt his foster child, that he would prefer to be his legal guardian until he's seventeen (before which time the narc will be dead, obviously). When we sat down for the last time two weeks ago and i tried to have THE conversation he's promsed to have for three years--about staying or moving on--he could not sit still, was sweating, and kept clutching his head and almost hyperventilating to the point where I had to cradle him in my arms and say, "ok, that's ok. shhhhh." like he was a child.

I remember the decisions I've made in my life--the big and small ones--and a part of the sorrow of life with the narc was how none of that was there. I realized what big part of love that is: decision-making together, and that most of what hurt so deeply was his insistence on making his few decisions on his own. He decided to be a foster father on his own, he decided who was going to care for him, he decided I wasn't moving in, he decided we weren't getting married. I remember the joy of my ex husband and i when we decided we both wanted to get married, the ecstasy of deciding we wanted to have a baby right away, the joy of choosing our house together, planning our children's schooling together. It's one of the most wonderful experiences in life when your will meshes with another person. The narc was absolutely horrified that this was going to happen, and when it started to happen he completely lost it and did everything in his power to stop it.

My exN would often refer to things I would say to him (always in response to the many hateful, hurtful things he would say to me) as "weapons" that I would use against him. I think this might have been just one more form of projection for him. Before this relationship with him, I had never heard of words being referred to as weapons. I NEVER, NEVER had such horrible word fights with anyone in my life. I had never used words to purposefully hurt anyone in my life.

One thing that I'm absolutely sure of now, in the aftermath of this horrible experience, is that if anyone ever says anything half as mean as he often did, or ever uses the angry, hateful tone once that he so often used with me, I'm running like hell!

This is one of the aspects that other people who haven't experienced a narc just don't get. And I'm very disturbed by the fact that it became something I just accepted in the relationship and eventually engaged in.

This was just one more validation for me. Thanks so much for posting Betty!