The longer you are away from them the worse the CD and idealization gets

27 posts / 0 new

#1 Jul 17 - 1AM

Arwen

The longer you are away from them the worse the CD and idealization gets

Is anyone else finding this to be true? That as many months pass without seeing N or having contact, he becomes idealized in your mind? Have a hard time remembering all the bad, horrible, abusive things he did and said?

#2 Jul 26 - 8PM

Brooke1

Arwen

I think thats pretty common.It happens with drug-addiction too.candy-coating the past.... Its shocking how many times i'de forget how he was.That amnesia thing used to happen to me everytime i had a good day with him.My mind couldnt exept that it wasnt some kind of magical new start that would bring a whole new hope to our relationship.Those good days with him i clung onto so hard,keeping my fingers crossed that "we will be ok now." My friend told me to write it down every time he does something hurtful because,she says "you always forget".So i did. I have probably at least 50 pgs of writting i did about things he said,and his behavior and lies and all kinds of stuff to prove to myself and remember that he doesnt love me. Its helped me alot,and stopped me from calling him alot of times. After writting so many things,you only need to write so much before it becomes obvious by whats on paper infront of you that they dont care.

#3 Jul 27 - 6PM (Reply to #24)

Arwen

Indifference...yeah, when I

Indifference...yeah, when I write the list it helps me a lot as well. Or sometimes I see things that make me think of his evil deeds and I am reminded of who he is. I have come to see from other deaths in my family and friendships that when people are gone for a long time they almost become "legend" if you know what I mean. And when people who we loved are dead we really don't like to think ill of them. So this bodes the question...now that the N is dead to me, was the N my family or friend? Yes, he was family in a way...very much part of my own dysfunctional family in a long line of narcs. Why do I want to protect him and all o them even in death?

#4 Jul 31 - 3PM (Reply to #25)

Brooke1

"Why do i want to protect him and all of them even in death?"

I guess because,no matter what,even though they are hurtful--we love them. Maybe its because they're broken, and just because its in our nature to love,and we've open ourselves up to them. I would much prefer to be angry at my ex than to have to be sad,and to feel for him. But i cant help it, i AM sad,and Do feel for him. They are sad stories,and its hard to exept that they dont care.

#5 Aug 1 - 10PM (Reply to #26)

Arwen

Indifference,I am so sad that

Indifference,I am so sad that I have felt this way my whole life. Starting with Dad. They talk such a great game these narcs but never walk the walk - ever.

#6 Jul 26 - 12PM

Sparrow

Wait a

Wait a minute..............what good times? I'm sorry, this may sound a bit harsh but come on ladies (and gentlemen) have we not learned anything yet? The ones new on board may feel this way, because they have to learn, get to that point........... THOSE GOOD TIMES WERE NOT REAL!!!!! HE WAS NOT REAL!!!!! HE WAS NOTHING BUT A MISCONCEPTION......... When you wake up from a dream, let's say Brad Pitt is in your dream, he knocks on your door, when you answer, he scoops you up, carries you to a saddled unicorn and you fly throught the sky, embracing one another, reaching out and touching sparkly stars and hearts that paint the universe, all the while your all time most heavenly music is playing everywhere. He brings you home, carries you to a bed full of roses that floats on the ocean and makes mad passionate love to you. He tells you how beautiful you are, you are the love of his life and will be with you forever..........then of course, you wake up. Do you hold onto that? well, maybe some do and thats why they get arrested for stalking.........any who THEY ARE NOT REAL!!!!! WE MUST NEVER FORGET THAT!!!! ALTHOUGH HARD TO ACCEPT, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE TRY HARDER. THERE WERE NO GOOD TIMES, THIS WAS ALL AN ILLUSION!! SMOKE AND MIRRORS...........

#7 Jul 27 - 7PM (Reply to #22)

Arwen

Sparrow...while your efforts

Sparrow...while your efforts are always so appreciated by me and I'm sure everyone else here, I need to say that I have heard you and a lot of well-meaning people on the board say what you have just said about illusion and smoke and mirrors many, many times, in the hopes that we will all just suddenly take in that fact. In fact, when you say "he didn't love you, or he didn't care about you", that only makes me worse about myself which is not what I want. And I also don't agree with you. I do know that my ex N has very strong feelings for me, and that he is sadly also a very sick man. The truth is, to most of us, there were some fantastic times, and they were real, we were real and we were there, and the N was there and he was real. I for one do not find it helpful to hear this over and over again that I really did not have a good time ever and that I just THOUGHT I had a good time. I feel I am being spoken to as if I were a child to be honest. Whether or not the narc creates a mask of charm and fun or not, the issue remains that my perception of certain days and moments with my N was amazing. IMHO, I think perhaps a better way to get your point across would be to say, "you did have those feelings for him, and you did have times of great fun, adventure and romance, and the awful thing about what has happened to you is that the N has such a short attention span, becomes bored easily, and has so much nervous energy that he cannot sustain this kind of fun and charm for any length of time or within the context of a committed situation". To me, that is the truth. When people on this board say things like "wake up honey he NEVER loved you", it just hurts me so much and puts me into even more of a tailspin of obsessing about what I am NOT. Ad again I don't think it's true that N's don't feel. I have dated only full-blow N's my entire life, and I have seen over and over again that they do experience the pain of love's rejection, feelings of love and feelings of committment and ownership towards a woman. I don't think that's the issue. My own experience of this is that they cannot handle being that close to someone and they must immediately devalue us in their minds in order to push love away so their deep and severe insecurities are not discovered. p.s. and I also believe that the N's ability to stay in a relationship is based on where he or she is on the NPD spectrum. I always picked the guys who were at the farthest end of the spectrum, and they were the ones who simply could not sustain their feelings for long before the extreme devaluation began. And these men were also the ones who loved me the most. Interesting, huh?

#8 Jul 20 - 4PM

Gullable1

Arwen

Clever btw.... The mind is an amazing peace of gray matter, creating a pleasant memory in leu of something disstastful and unpleasant. Don't memorialize or rationalize something unpleasant, this is now the past repeats itself.

#9 Jul 24 - 1AM (Reply to #20)

Arwen

Gullable so right.

#10 Jul 20 - 9AM

broken23

LOL isnt this is a reality?

LOL isnt this so true and hard? so much so that when a few years passed i let him back in my life again. It is ridiculous how quickly amnesia can set in from his bad behavior and you start idealizing the version of him you liked best. But not anymore, last time i had no idea what happened to me, but thanks to this site and all the information i know now on NPD, i know what is happening, why its happening, so i can snap myself back to reality!

#11 Jul 19 - 9PM

Susan32

"Skin in the game"

Arwen- Awesome username, BTW! I don't think I so much romanticized the ex-Psych prof as I *NORMALIZED* him... but when I broke NC in '09, it was to mockingly compare him to a shrieking newborn. Now, if you're still in love with someone&pining for them, do you DO THAT AT ALL??? "You remind me of a screaming, self-absorbed, immature newborn" is just not something anybody would say if they're in love. Even a self-absorbed/delusional N/P knows THAT. I don't see romantic cards at the Hallmark store with screaming babies on them. I think I normalized, and in a sense, romanticized the ex-Psych prof because I didn't have "skin in the game." He was the teacher, I was the student. It never got as far as casual dating.. it's not as if we went to galleries&restaurants together off-campus. I never saw his apartment. As for "skin in the game", I never got romantically/sexually involved with him. The ex-P had an LDR with the woman he eventually married (and to whom he is still married)... and yes, distance romanticizes. I felt like I was in an LDR with him, despite the fact that at the time he lived 5 minutes from campus. I gave emotionally, but not sexually, so it was easier to idealize (and the same goes for him) For an N/P, having sex is the ultimate D&D... it makes you into their *POSSESSION.* In a sense, the ex-P could idealize me because I didn't have sex with him, I didn't have his babies... his wife did that. He didn't come home to me after a long day at work. I wasn't the one helping him with his bills, coming up with the rent. It's easier (or harder) to idealize depending on how much one put "skin in the game."

#12 Jul 19 - 11PM (Reply to #15)

Arwen

Susan you know who Arwen is

Susan you know who Arwen is already...we know each other. Arwen used to be someone who had a goal. :-)

#13 Jul 20 - 4PM (Reply to #16)

Susan32

Arwen-Queen of Elves&Men

I guess I think of the Tolkien one, who sacrifices her immortality to be with Aragorn;Galadriel's granddaughter, radiant, beautiful. Inspires Aragorn in his heroism. Her beauty mesmerizes Frodo&the fellowship ;)

#14 Jul 24 - 1AM (Reply to #17)

Arwen

Ah Aragorn...if he were a N I

Ah Aragorn...if he were a N I would still be with him LOL

#15 Jul 19 - 7AM

FreeToBe

CD

I have been NC with my ex for 14 months with a 2 month period of contact smack dab in the middle of those 14 months. It seems that at the 7 month marker, for me, CD is at a high. At 7 months just prior to our period of contact, I could only feel love and longing for him. This 7 month marker reflects almost the same for some damn reason. I think this is evident in my posts of late where I declare that I will always love him. Hell yes...I will always love the him that he never truly was. This time I am aware that it was all a fake front full of LIES and I will not make contact with him. I'm DONE! FreeToBe

#16 Jul 19 - 11PM (Reply to #13)

Arwen

Free to be...I have been on

Free to be...I have been on an NC breaking spree and you know what? I am seeing him for who he REALLY is and guess what? It's made my stomach turn which is what I've been wanting. I just don't think NC is always the way to go for that reason. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe 18 months is the magic number and you just haven't gotten there yet and neither have I. I could be wrong. I just know that I needed something to kill my feelings for him and his latest behavior has pretty much done that!

#17 Jul 19 - 5AM

NinjaGirl

For me the opposite was true.

For me the opposite was true. Two days after I initiated NC I was spouting off the most vile, albeit true, things about him that I had never really accepted. Once I chose to not have him in my life for any reason anymore, I finally began to heal and see the truth about him. I think I spent three or four solid weeks just mocking him to everyone I knew, and since none of them liked him either, they joined me. It's a pity he never got to hear any of it. Some of the things I said I know he would have been very sensitive to. He was a really wimpy momma's boy narc.

#18 Jul 18 - 5PM

rosedewittbukater

I feel your pain

I am in the same boat as you right now. And feeling it all the more since I broke NC recently. We haven't seen each other for over three months. In Lisa's second book she writes alot about how the brain is wired to not recall all the abusive acts and other bad memories and in general all the pain we all went through. Anyway, no matter what we read and what our brains are now learning about all this, telling it to the heart is quite another thing, now isn't it? It reminds me of a lecture I recently attended where the speaker made a comment about "puppy love". He related how people use the term to describe a love that is immature or somehow less than. "But it is real to the puppy" he went on to say. I think the point I am trying to make here is that to you, everything was real. To him it was not. It couldn't be. That is very very hard to accept, I know. I think for me what makes it even harder to accept is that I think there were some truths in the false persona that was presented to me. In other words, I don't think this persona was entirely a lie, so that makes it more difficult for me to accept. Anyway, I think (or pray) that maybe the point we are both at could be some kind of peak or plateau. Maybe from here it will get better. One thing I did which helped was to make a list called "What I will not forget". I think I read this in one of Lisa's posts or books. In this list write down all the horrible things he did to you and ways he hurt you. When you get to missing him (which I think most all of us do whether we want to admit it or not) take this list out and read over it. It will help your brain remember and help you from getting stuck. Peace and love, Rose

#19 Jul 18 - 7AM

Deidre40

I've read before that the

I've read before that the human brain purposely blocks out pain, if it's on overload. It also doesn't ''remember'' pain as well as positives. I think back to the births of my kids. Physically painful, yes...but, I tend to remember the beauty of those two special days. I've read also that our brains can't sense pain AFTER it's gone. So, while we are IN pain, our brains are processing it. And trying to find ways for us to block it so we can carry on with our everyday functions. So, it's not uncommon just from a physical standpoint alone, for our brains to lean towards the good times, even from abusive relationships. It's perfectly normal to have these thoughts. It's how long we dwell in them, and let them fester, that is up to us. Narcs can be charming. We have all admitted here that in the beginning stages, they were like a dream come true. Everything seemed to fit...we connected with them in many ways. But, unfortunately, that's an act to get us to trust and fall in love. Not saying they don't feel love AT ALL. But, for them, it's more about supply, than love. More about getting you to adore them, than love them. Cling to them, become dependent on them, than it is about a mutually rewarding relationship. As we see it, we were falling in love. As they saw it, it was a means to an end. They wanted to gain control. So...when you're having CD...think about his 'other' side. And think about how THAT side really became what you saw more often. If they meant what they said in the beginning, if they were authentic with us...they wouldn't have abused us, and the relationship most likely would have lasted.

#20 Jul 19 - 5PM (Reply to #9)

Susan32

Or there would've been closure

Towards the end, after the final D&D (and after I had met the ex-Psych prof's live-in girlfriend), the ex-P was RAGING at me when I was congratulating him on being engaged, on having found someone to share his life. For some strange reason, he wanted to keep his engagement a secret (turns out the character Prince Andrei in "War and Peace" does that with Natasha) If he had been authentic, the relationship could've ended on a happy note, not with me having him ridiculed in the senior skit, or purposefully toying with him so I could brag to my friends how I could cause a middle-aged man to act like a tantrum-throwing toddler. The ex-P would always talk about how he drove people away. He didn't want an authentic teacher/student relationship. He wanted CONTROL... except my 2 year old nephew has more emotional intelligence. He whined about how I didn't appreciate his masks. I said, of course I didn't. I wanted authenticity, PROPRIETY and APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR BE DAMNED! I wanted authenticity at any cost in the end. If it meant violating his emotional boundaries, I'd do it. He had silenced me so much in the relationship. He whined about teaching... complaining to me about my classmates... I'd always tell him that if he GAVE more, he'd be GETTING more out of teaching. But he saw it only about $$$, even in the end. During the final D&D, when I told the ex-P I loved him, he'd angrily accuse me of wanting to call all the shots, wanting to control him. My friends thought he was out of his mind.

#21 Jul 19 - 12AM (Reply to #7)

Arwen

Dierdre

Yeah I really need to make that list as all of you have pointed out of the abuse, to remember it. It's just SO hard for me to believe that he really didn't love me at all because saying that somehow means that I am unworthy of love.

#22 Jul 20 - 3AM (Reply to #8)

empath

It doesn't mean you're unworthy of love...

it means you deserve better than to be abused by a Narc.

#23 Jul 17 - 8AM

bakingfortherapy

Patience....

Patience... Ur name says it all. I am the same as u. I remember the good years with my best friend. I have to catch myself and remember all the lies and awful memories at the end. But I think it's hard to do. I think our brains are programmer to block out painful memories and remember the good. I am NC 3 months today!! But I still think of him every day. And I will always love the person he was.... Not the person he really is. But that person I loved is dead. Hang in there . It does get better! Baking alot again... Ugh!!

#24 Jul 17 - 8AM

Susan32

Having a nephew is enlightening

My breakthrough came in October '09 when my sister had my nephew. I realized that the ex-Psych prof is a toddler stuck in an adult body (calling him a teenager in an adult body would be assuming WAY too much maturity on his part) My nephew will throw tantrums when his needs aren't met... so did the ex-P. Oh, yes it certainly does help the ex-P's father and my brother in-law have the same name. And that my nephew is from Massachusetts, like the ex-P. I'm going to confuse the two ON PURPOSE from now on and make it look like a mistake ;) Now, my nephew has a sense of empathy, is cheerful, is SMART, he isn't an emotional void... believe me, the ex-P GOT REPLACED! And the toddler is the superior version. My nephew is more brilliant than him! He'll imitate his father, but it's because he's a toddler. It's not going to be "I'm a professor because my father is a professor." I can listen to my nephew babble incoherently for hours... but the ex-P's lecture on "War and Peace"... didn't miss out on anything. For a time, I had idealized/normalized the ex-P... but becoming an aunt was a *LIGHT BULB* moment.

#25 Jul 17 - 7AM

Lobo555

Missing the laughs, the

Missing the laughs, the places we used to go (which I'm now avoiding because he's going there with his wife) -- lots of things. Before I just wanted to be left alone. It's been 4 months and I want the avoiding and the feeling of trauma to be gone. But I don't want to see him and the wife because that will hurt and he'll shove it in my face that he's replaced me. This is all such nasty stuff. Still. . . I miss our friendship. :(

#26 Jul 19 - 12AM (Reply to #2)

Arwen

Lobo it is so hard isn't it

Lobo it is so hard isn't it at times? The CD gets so strong.

#27 Jul 19 - 5AM (Reply to #3)

Lobo555

The CD has been horrid

The CD has been *horrid* lately! Must be the brain rewiring to protect itself. I'm glad I'm on here reading all of this because being aware of what's going on and why it's going on really helps. I haven't seen him in 4 months, so I'm forgetting how truly disordered the dude is. The moment I see that reptilian stare or he does something just to be mean, my brain will snap to attention! I'm sure it will be a shock.

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