Does anyone else accept that he really never loved you?

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Oct 11 - 9PM (Reply to #28)
anonymous
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Another One of His Obsessions

Wow Bodhi - I never thought about it that way but yes, I can see too where I was an obsession. Or an object, whatever. Not a partner for sure.
Oct 10 - 7AM
agnesmurphy17
agnesmurphy17's picture

Totally

I totally accept that he never loved me. My N is incapable of love. Everybody whom he notices is merely a means to an end. Mine talked about "love" all the time. Mine is a highly-functioning, professionally successful N. Only the women who live with him, or marry him, know the truth. I had the great fortune to be contacted by the woman who replaced me. The lies! He even gave her the same lines which he fed to me: "You make me happier than I have ever been in my life. No woman has ever made me happier." Seeking reconciliation with me when he was living with her--she was stunned to read his e-mails to me. My replacement was a psychiatrist. This is how good my N is. He fooled a psychiatrist for 10 months. He fooled me for about 2 1/2 years. Love for these guys is a gratification of their needs (just like a child) & mimicking what they see in films & stage plays & read in books. Mine is a university professor so he's exposed to a lot of culture and therefore has a lot of examples to mimic. And, he's done a lot of therapy--so he learns the jargon. I suppose he's fooled his therapists as well. If anybody catches on to him, he's gone in a flash. Mine knows I know the truth, so he leaves me alone.
Oct 10 - 6AM
curlygirl
curlygirl's picture

I totally accept it

Took a while to get there though. I thought because we were saying the same things to each other and were in the same relationship, that the way I felt about him was the way he felt about me. I really loved him. For me that means being concerned about someone else's welfare, being a part of their life, making compromises, building something together, accepting that there will be ups and downs and loving the whole person, despite their flaws. For him? He "loved" the rush of the chase, the dopamine hit that you get when you first start a relationship, the way I made him feel, the fact that his friends and our co-workers thought he had a "catch." And he absolutely loved knowing that he was at the top of my list of priorities. But that list of what real love means to me? Never came into it for him. That flurry of "gestures" (and he was great at them) and the hearts and flowers stuff - that was to get -his- list. They were a means to his own end and were all about what he needed. I think maybe we all do that when we're choosing a mate, to a point. We present our best selves - but it's a version of our actual "self." When there's no self, it's all an act. And when you don't have a self you can't truly connect with/love someone else. But in terms of accepting that he didn't love me - it was a very painful realization but also totally liberating. It was the only way that I could reconcile the guy from the beginning who was so sweet and tender with the monster who appeared once the honeymoon was over. I hadn't "done" anything to warrant the crazy change in behavior. The first guy was just an act and he was "acting" lovingly. As soon as I could accept that he never loved me I could start to accept that there was nothing I could have done or said to keep that "love" or bring it back - it didn't exist.
Oct 9 - 11PM
helldweller
helldweller's picture

Nicole

Ok, here's another one of my "If I had a dollar for every time" posts. If I had a dollar for every time he said, "Do you love me?" or "Will you love my forever?" I could retire yesterday. That's ALL he ever F*CKING said. And yeah, I do believe he knew he couldn't do it. Mine asked me to propose to him to "because I can't do it, honey." And I did, too. And that was the beginning of the end. Perhaps they know they are unloveable and can't believe someone loves them. And when they realize we do, it's so revolting to even them that they discard us.
Oct 10 - 10AM (Reply to #16)
Nicole96
Nicole96's picture

This is true

At the heart of it they dont love themselves so they are shocked when someone else does. "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." -Groucho Marx
Oct 11 - 11AM (Reply to #22)
jaycee
jaycee's picture

this is true

Nicole, I read your reply and it made me think of something my hN has said for awhile now, well, now that I threw him out and he lives with his whore, he said, Im so tired of everyone falling so in love with me, oh yeah, he said that. I wish women were more like me, just want to have fun, not this I love you, i want to marry you, cant live without you, im tired of it. why cant they just want to have fun. Hes sick, but opposite of what you said, hes never surpized or shocked when one of his affairs falls so in love. I think mine would be shocked if they didnt fall head over heels in love. as for him, he doesnt fall in love, i think he thinks he is, but he just gets sexually obsessed and has to have that person until he gets bored. as for me, he never loved me, but i was convenient, secure, and we had been together for over twenty years, it didnt matter that i was the mother of his children, no i was and still am just safety supply for him. i think when and if he meets someone he wants and they dont fall in love with him, he will be shell shocked.........now that would be karma.......lol Jaycee

Jaycee

Oct 11 - 11AM (Reply to #23)
Nicole96
Nicole96's picture

isnt it both?

well they are not shocked on the surface because that is the game they play right? The facade, the act, all of it is to secure love/ attention/supply. So yeah if that fails they are devastated and shocked because that is all they put energy towards. if they fail at that then they fail at the most important thing in their life... but at the same time they also deep down dont want people to fall in love with them. They dont want anyone to get too close.
Oct 11 - 1PM (Reply to #24)
jaycee
jaycee's picture

isnt it both

you are right nicole, it is both, they are so twisted they dont know what they want, they want the love and attention and especially the supply, yet, they dont want the responsibility of someone loving them, its all a game to them, they live their lives playing games, it is so sad how they destroy lives and move on and not even care, but at the same time, they dont move on, they haunt us like ghosts and vampires and monters in the night, i wish i could wake up and not feel a thing for my hN, as he is so deranged and toxic he is destroying every part of my life, in every way known, because i am letting him. i wish i could just hate him and move on and never feel an ounce of his pain, nor ever have a memory of him again.......too bad i have two children with him, he will always haunt me because of that. Jaycee

Jaycee

Oct 10 - 1PM (Reply to #17)
Briseis
Briseis's picture

Ah, I hadn't thought of this

Ah, I hadn't thought of this one either. The evidence of my love for exNarc did not make him feel BETTER. It made him feel CONTEMPT for me. Each gesture I made of loyalty and endless patience to stick by him? I thought I was telling him I LOVE YOU. But in his twisted Narc brain he heard me saying "I am a bigger loser than even you."
Oct 10 - 8PM (Reply to #18)
Tinker
Tinker's picture

Briseis

OMG, Briseis, this is exactly it. saying "i love you" to these guys is the kiss of death. i wrote it again tonight, telling him that true caring and love is rare and should be valued. he dropped me in a second after 2.5 years. this is painful, but i've been through this before and i can't let it cut my knees out from under me. we grieve like this is a real relationship because it's real to us. but we use the wrong words, and to them, we're just history. N's are crazy people who cause so much discord and pain.
Oct 10 - 10PM (Reply to #19)
Susan32
Susan32's picture

Why I was afraid to declare my love

Briseis has it painfully right. Her words struck me to the core... because THEY ARE SO TRUE. For the ex-Psych professor, my declaration of love DID lead him to treat me with absolute contempt, worse than ever before. Declaring one's love is always risky... it can lead to rejection. After 4 years, I FINALLY told him. For me, it was release. I thought that after 4 years of testing, I would be ready to say it. I declared my love... only to be lectured endlessly. Then the ex-P flaunted his fiancee. I was jealous, not so much because he loved her more than me... but I assumed she had declared her love for him, and wasn't punished for it. A year after the D&D, he and the OW had twins and were married. "We use the wrong words, and to them, we're just history"-The ex-P would CONSTANTLY lecture me to the point of tears, lecturing me about my "inappropriate behavior" and it was an overwhelming experience. It made the disappointments in high school look like volcanoes letting off steam, but with the ex-P, it was Krakatoa. I was afraid he'd reject me. And he definitely did. It was like he LIKED it that I was in love with him... but HOW DARE I SAY IT!!!!
Oct 10 - 10PM (Reply to #20)
kiwi10
kiwi10's picture

susan

you poor thing, i'm so sorry that you had to know some other woman told him that and that he didn;t react the same way. i doubt they are happy though...
Oct 10 - 10PM (Reply to #21)
Susan32
Susan32's picture

Married and happily ever after???

I've read here of women who've been married to Narcs/Psychs for 10-25 years. So, it's not like the lightbulb suddenly goes off after the kids are born and it's over. Yeah, it was like 3 months after I declared my love, got hectored about it endlessly... then I met the girlfriend. She had just moved in with him. It was heartless, and I took him to task for it, saying that NORMAL men mention if they already were taken (he thought that as my teacher, he was above such rules) It was the first time I declared my love... I had waited for 4 years, patiently, and all I got was venom and abuse. I HOPED the OW was a Narc herself, so at least she could take it (and dish it out) Narcs sometimes end up with each other. Ask my mother. BOTH her parents were Narcs.
Oct 9 - 2PM
onwithmylife
onwithmylife's picture

Nicole

i spent over a decade and a half with mine and he use to say Ilove you,I realize in hindsight he was just mimicking the words of me, that they had no real depth and he once confessed he did not love his first wife nor me,they SIMPLY do not know what love is and never well, barring some major epiphany and that will never happen. they have huge self loathing issues so how can they love another person? IT is the toughest thing to work through and God knows it took me close to 2 years after the D and D to work with that and only with the help of this board, i simply did not want to believe it after putting my heart and soul into making the relationship work and I turned myself into a pretzel. Lets put it this way everyone in his whole family liked me a lot so instead of feeling proud and good as a normal man would do, he was jealous and envious, because they liked me as much if not more than him.Some point YOU will have to realize it was all an act and inside these people there is a dark monster, the one they really are, not the one you fell in love with, it is a tough pill to swallow but that is the only way you will move on and it does shake your world..................I like Lisa's suggestion of writing down the good man and the evil man traits as part of a eulogy to the man to put into better perspective.
Oct 9 - 2PM (Reply to #14)
Nicole96
Nicole96's picture

speaking of eulogies

he wrote this for himself last year. when he was feeling "puffed up" Here lies ******, beneath the earth his genius and tremendous worth were envied both by friend and foe although the latter numbered low unrivaled virtuosity outshined only his modesty so ponder, let your smile glow upon the peerless man below. oh and should i mention that even though he would say this is a joke... this hurt b/c it was right around the 3 year anniversary of my younger brothers death... the exact time of year we had written his eulogy together.
Oct 9 - 1PM
jaycee
jaycee's picture

I have accepted he has never loved me

I absolutely have accepted that my husband of twenty four years has never loved, yet, this doesnt negate in anyway shape of form the fact that i am devastated, and I did truly love him. I had no choice to accept the unacceptable, as it is only fact, someone who loves you, doesnt cheat on you, devalue you, discard you, and lie to you.......that is not love.......that is convenience and a narc playing on the heartstrings of a loving kind woman. that is a narc doing what he does best, putting little effort into anything and having no regard for another...........everyone is different, but i do know my hN never loved me......and it hurts like hell.........and it hurts worse now since he is giving someone else the illusion of his love......because thats all i ever got, an illusion..........Jaycee

Jaycee

Oct 9 - 2PM (Reply to #11)
Nicole96
Nicole96's picture

In a way it is ok?

I know he is pretending to love another... pretending that he can love period.... but it is almost comforting to know that no one will get the love i worked so hard for. If he didn't love me (or the others before) then i now know he never will. That is his loss right!? On this board and through out the NPD literature the good news is that WE find out that WE CAN LOVE. So if we work at it we will be ok... they will not.
Oct 10 - 1AM (Reply to #12)
gettinbetter
gettinbetter's picture

yes I must say I am a little

yes I must say I am a little comforted by it in a weird way as well.
Oct 9 - 1PM
TNR1
TNR1's picture

Ns live in the moment...

I don't think it is a matter that he never had a feeling that would have equated to love, but you have to remember that Ns do not have any empathy. It is like a 5 yr old who says "I love you". The reason the 5 year old loves you is because you give them what they need or they are afraid of losing you. It is the same with the adult N. Unfortunately, what works for a 5 yr old, doesn't work so well with an adult, which is why Ns struggle with relationships.
Oct 9 - 2PM (Reply to #9)
Nicole96
Nicole96's picture

This is a good point

I need to remember to try to view him as a child... think how a child thinks it definitely makes more sense.
Oct 9 - 1PM
Briseis
Briseis's picture

I think this is about the

I think this is about the hardest thing to admit to ourselves. Maybe it is THE hardest. But nothing moves forward if we're still in Dreamland. My exNarc told me he loved me DAILY. Not just "I love you, Kim" but as part of a sentence, "I just love you so much that I had to get this for you." "The love I have for you just blows my mind." Daily. Especially toward the end. In the last few months, when I was detaching and waking up to what he was, I'd shoot back "You don't love me. You NEED me." I wasn't exactly sure where that came from. It had stopped feeling like love a long time ago. And from my current vantage . . . he never did love me at all. I was completely fooled for almost seven years, I believed he did. I know I loved him, I know that for a fact. Narcs cannot love, not even a smidgen of what you and I "normal people" know as love. Narcs can only NEED. And looking back . . . how I mistook his NEED for love made me revamp my idea of love in a big way. I didn't have a very good idea about love to begin with. What it feels like to be truly loved. I thought being loved was being put up on a pedestal, admired as deeply sexy and attractive and that a person who really loved me would not want to be away from me for one second. They would hold onto me for dear life. They would revolve around me like a planet. They would rush to comfort me, and avoid ever doing things that would upset me. They would treat me as I thought I deserved to be treated. That AIN'T love. That's enmeshment. But it's touted as "love" by movies and TV and vampire books (among others). If I want to dissolve myself into another person, that's NOT love. That is invasion.
Oct 10 - 1AM (Reply to #7)
gettinbetter
gettinbetter's picture

They mimick the dramatic

They mimick the dramatic love that they see in the movies. Atleast mine does. They do not feel it. They have to see it. What do they see in the movies? Lost love, conflicted love, the love that can never be. Tragic love. The stuff that keeps us riveted in a movie. They truly believe that that is what love is that its just one big dramatic longing something that can never be. Conflict
Oct 9 - 5PM (Reply to #6)
Playedwithfire
Playedwithfire's picture

Spot on B! This really makes

Spot on B! This really makes sense. my exh's abusive mother never hugged or said I love you to him. So how can he return that to someone else. He turned "I love you" to be I love contolling you and "I love you" into I like abusing you. Same goes for how I thought he would be the greatest father ever because he didnt have one, but in reality how do you be a great father if you didnt have a role model of a father figure in the first place? Playedwithfire

Playedwithfire

Oct 9 - 1PM (Reply to #2)
blueeyes
blueeyes's picture

yes i do! it makes me mad tho!

Nicole, I can relate to your anger. Even ur quotes of his were also sent to me by my H! Its so sad we got used! Breises is right, they are incapable of love! Its all about him. They will push their kids out of a buffet line if they are hungry!
Oct 10 - 2PM (Reply to #3)
Jessica74944
Jessica74944's picture

Accepted 75%

It's been really hard for me to believe he truly didn't love me. I think just like the first comment said he loved me as much as he possibly could. I don't believe he is 100% narcissistic, more like 75/25. So 25% of him loved me. That's also the 25% of him I loved 100% and was willing to deal with the other shit to keep. So for me it is accepting that I deserve more than that. I also completely agree with the statement that "he hates himself so in turn he looks down on you for loving him." My exN has told me over and over again how much he hates himself. I know part of it was to hear me tell him all good things and how much I loved him but that's only because he lacks any real feeling of self worth.

Pushed too far
Why was I pushed at all?
It’s as if you stood right next to me
Only to watch me fall

Oct 10 - 2PM (Reply to #4)
Nicole96
Nicole96's picture

This is so confusing for me.

I dont know if i should believe he did have love for me or not. I dont know what it easier to accept either.
Oct 10 - 3PM (Reply to #5)
Jessica74944
Jessica74944's picture

Neither is easy. Everyone'e

Neither is easy. Everyone'e relationship is different even in similar circumstances. After reading some of the others stories and common things Ns say I took that and applied it to my relationship. Things he said and did that no one else really mentioned and thought to myself is that a narcissitic characteristic. My exN would show me his vulnerable side and sometimes admit how horrible he has been to me but that was usually short lived. Even though I have accepted that he is incapable of loving me as much as I love him, I'm still not "over" it. Hence the present terms of love. I still love him and I'm scared I always will to some degree. I have to consciously make myself stop thinking about him. So if anyone knows that magic answer to make all the heartache and uncertainty go away please let us all know!!!

Pushed too far
Why was I pushed at all?
It’s as if you stood right next to me
Only to watch me fall