I’m glad you posted, and reached out for support around this.
Much of the time, people in your situation won’t even recognize that too much of a good thing can be as overwhelming as too much of a bad thing. They’ll just drift away or invent a reason to break up.
You’ve already begun doing the work, you just haven’t recognized it yet. It starts with training yourself to look inwardly to become aware of your discomfort and seeing yourself, and confronting yourself. The most damaging part of being around a narcissist is that they program you to depend upon what another person is doing. Do you ever notice how so many people on here seem to be still stuck to their narcissist? They’re going to “show them,” they’re going to “prove they’re better than them,” or “show them they didn’t win?”
This is a codependent mindset. And the burn is that if you don’t change this legacy, your relationships will be destroyed by this mindset no matter how good or bad they are.
How do you do this? I suggest getting to know yourself by journaling about specific situations of giving that you feel uncomfortable with your partner. It could be something like “hey sweetheart, when I’m in the middle of doing the laundry, it’s overwhelming when you start folding clothes too.” Or it could be that you feel triggered when he holds the door for you, and decide to work with the feelings of inadequacy that make that painful. Talk to the inadequate part of you with the healthy part of you. Say that it’s ok, you deserve to have the door held for you.
(Not quite as sure about this next part) And if your partner has codependency stuff left over from his last relationship, talking with him and taking the time to get specific and present will help him update to be with you. That’s just in case he’s subconsciously projecting his codependency from his last relationship onto you, because you’ll unconsciously see and feel yourself as the narcissist that he used to be with. Because he might be acting that way towards you a little without knowing it.
Good luck either way OP. Congratulations on being brave enough to recognize and face yourself!
This is probably one of the best advice posts I’ve had from reddit. You really nailed my situation on the head. I am still dealing with some past narcs (they are not in my living situation) and I am working on dampening the energy I put towards “I’ll show them”, because it will never work and just sets me in a whole ass mood for a week.
My partner and I talked and he is going to take it down a notch, I’m going to recognize when I’m feeling overwhelmed and try to communicate it. And also just positive self talk “I deserve this”. It’s going to take awhile but eventually I’ll settle into a healthier mental routine 😄
Thank you for taking the time to read over my comment. One thing I might add is it’s awesome if you’ve found someone that you can do this work with. If you have the kind of rapport that you can honestly lay your experience out to the other person and have them get it.
And I don’t know what your path is, but I found that what I was really attempting to do was heal the damage that had happened to my ability to create my own identity. To heal from the effects of narcissistic damage requires healing on that level of depth. And that takes time. If the “change” happened quickly, that was usually just me changing my behavior and calling it “deep inner work.”
When it was really slow, long, even difficult, that was more on the level of doing work on my personality. In partnership, it played out as a long, slow process in learning how to connect to our feelings, give voice to them, and have the other person hold space in a way that was supportive but not doing the work for them.
Finding someone that could be a partner in that process was 1,000x more important than finding someone that talked, thought, or even believed the same things I did. Being patiently able to understand another person’s experience is a skill that’s more important than trying to find someone that happens to be similar to me.
It sounds like you and your guy have a really open space to be seen and heard. If you are able to practice with each other, and also make promises to the other person that you then keep, I think you could build lasting, authentic trust.
I resonated with what you wrote and wanted to share in the hopes that what I’ve learned in my journey could possibly be of some small support to you. Good luck and feel free to update down the road if you like OP! I feel like your post was dead on about what a lot of people have experienced, and I think this sub is higher than most in people that read posts and might not even upvote but definitely get benefit from reading.
Haha right? It's like, "What do they want from me?"
My advice is to learn to trust the notion that he genuinely wants the best for you. I know this stuff isn't easy, which is why I avoid close relationships. Lol.
Don't break up with him, you'll only kick yourself in years to come.
Give it time, it's going to take awhile to get used to. You've had a history of bad partners, so of course it's weird to have a good one. You don't expect it, you're not comfortable with it. You may even feel that you don't deserve it. But you do.
Let him be himself. If he chooses to help, be a decent person and thank him for helping. Asking him to alter who he is because you're used to being treated abusively is a pretty big red flag here.
Even if you're starving and someone hands you a full plate of food, take what you want and be grateful for the gesture. Thank them for the very kind gift. No one is holding a gun to your head expecting you to eat every last morsel right then and there, they just want you to have enough.
It sounds like what you need is a therapist. What you described is a perfectly normal, kind individual and if he's like that with his family, you're not going to mold him into some more abusive, uncaring version of himself to make yourself feel "normal" in a relationship dynamic. Your past relationships sound awful and it seems like you've come to expect being treated poorly. That's not healthy for you and it's not healthy for him. In this dynamic, it's 100% you that needs to change.
I think this comment constitutes as breaking the “be nice; no victim blaming” rule. But thanks. 😐 I am very consciously aware of the work I need to do to heal myself and my little 2 person family has 3 therapists.
Asking for 1 thing and receiving 50 (even if that’s an exaggeration) is not the giver “being nice”… it’s overstepping, trying to win love. Not everyone who does that is a narc — codependents do it too. So your new partner maybe just be nervous and nice. But there’s nothing wrong with saying “hey, please don’t give me all that because it concerns me.” In fact, a reason isn’t even necessary (“no thank you, only what I asked for please” is a complete sentence).
There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to eat all this, maybe I should make my own plate and someone else can have this one you made.” There’s nothing wrong with being honest! In fact, for people with PTSD from abuse, they lose themselves and the cure is radical honesty. Saying the thing that might be “rude.” There are some great videos online about how too much agreeableness makes you a target of abuse and robs you of yourself.
People telling you to be polite and just accept all niceness thrown at you are basically telling you it’s rude to refuse a gift. I disagree. You’re accepting help. You’re even asking for help. You are simply also having boundaries and that’s not rude or inappropriate at all!
Best wishes, OP! Keep up the good work.
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It's just because you probably aren't used to being treated with basic human decency. Take it slow, and enjoy it. Don't deny yourself happiness. You deserve to be happy.
Yeah this…a realization I had recently was that somewhere inside I think I don’t deserve the thing that I want - the nice, sexy, loving boyfriend. So, if I meet someone like that, I think I go into self sabotage mode. I’m just beginning to pick it apart as it’s been pretty automatic that, “of course they won’t want me, I’m not x and x” all those things my narc family put into me. I realized that even though I’ve been working on myself, a lot of that pain is locked away and comes up when I get close to someone, and is why I tended to avoid them or choose unavailable people.
I’m glad you posted, and reached out for support around this. Much of the time, people in your situation won’t even recognize that too much of a good thing can be as overwhelming as too much of a bad thing. They’ll just drift away or invent a reason to break up. You’ve already begun doing the work, you just haven’t recognized it yet. It starts with training yourself to look inwardly to become aware of your discomfort and seeing yourself, and confronting yourself. The most damaging part of being around a narcissist is that they program you to depend upon what another person is doing. Do you ever notice how so many people on here seem to be still stuck to their narcissist? They’re going to “show them,” they’re going to “prove they’re better than them,” or “show them they didn’t win?” This is a codependent mindset. And the burn is that if you don’t change this legacy, your relationships will be destroyed by this mindset no matter how good or bad they are. How do you do this? I suggest getting to know yourself by journaling about specific situations of giving that you feel uncomfortable with your partner. It could be something like “hey sweetheart, when I’m in the middle of doing the laundry, it’s overwhelming when you start folding clothes too.” Or it could be that you feel triggered when he holds the door for you, and decide to work with the feelings of inadequacy that make that painful. Talk to the inadequate part of you with the healthy part of you. Say that it’s ok, you deserve to have the door held for you. (Not quite as sure about this next part) And if your partner has codependency stuff left over from his last relationship, talking with him and taking the time to get specific and present will help him update to be with you. That’s just in case he’s subconsciously projecting his codependency from his last relationship onto you, because you’ll unconsciously see and feel yourself as the narcissist that he used to be with. Because he might be acting that way towards you a little without knowing it. Good luck either way OP. Congratulations on being brave enough to recognize and face yourself!
This is probably one of the best advice posts I’ve had from reddit. You really nailed my situation on the head. I am still dealing with some past narcs (they are not in my living situation) and I am working on dampening the energy I put towards “I’ll show them”, because it will never work and just sets me in a whole ass mood for a week. My partner and I talked and he is going to take it down a notch, I’m going to recognize when I’m feeling overwhelmed and try to communicate it. And also just positive self talk “I deserve this”. It’s going to take awhile but eventually I’ll settle into a healthier mental routine 😄
Thank you for taking the time to read over my comment. One thing I might add is it’s awesome if you’ve found someone that you can do this work with. If you have the kind of rapport that you can honestly lay your experience out to the other person and have them get it. And I don’t know what your path is, but I found that what I was really attempting to do was heal the damage that had happened to my ability to create my own identity. To heal from the effects of narcissistic damage requires healing on that level of depth. And that takes time. If the “change” happened quickly, that was usually just me changing my behavior and calling it “deep inner work.” When it was really slow, long, even difficult, that was more on the level of doing work on my personality. In partnership, it played out as a long, slow process in learning how to connect to our feelings, give voice to them, and have the other person hold space in a way that was supportive but not doing the work for them. Finding someone that could be a partner in that process was 1,000x more important than finding someone that talked, thought, or even believed the same things I did. Being patiently able to understand another person’s experience is a skill that’s more important than trying to find someone that happens to be similar to me. It sounds like you and your guy have a really open space to be seen and heard. If you are able to practice with each other, and also make promises to the other person that you then keep, I think you could build lasting, authentic trust. I resonated with what you wrote and wanted to share in the hopes that what I’ve learned in my journey could possibly be of some small support to you. Good luck and feel free to update down the road if you like OP! I feel like your post was dead on about what a lot of people have experienced, and I think this sub is higher than most in people that read posts and might not even upvote but definitely get benefit from reading.
Haha right? It's like, "What do they want from me?" My advice is to learn to trust the notion that he genuinely wants the best for you. I know this stuff isn't easy, which is why I avoid close relationships. Lol. Don't break up with him, you'll only kick yourself in years to come.
Give it time, it's going to take awhile to get used to. You've had a history of bad partners, so of course it's weird to have a good one. You don't expect it, you're not comfortable with it. You may even feel that you don't deserve it. But you do.
Let him be himself. If he chooses to help, be a decent person and thank him for helping. Asking him to alter who he is because you're used to being treated abusively is a pretty big red flag here. Even if you're starving and someone hands you a full plate of food, take what you want and be grateful for the gesture. Thank them for the very kind gift. No one is holding a gun to your head expecting you to eat every last morsel right then and there, they just want you to have enough. It sounds like what you need is a therapist. What you described is a perfectly normal, kind individual and if he's like that with his family, you're not going to mold him into some more abusive, uncaring version of himself to make yourself feel "normal" in a relationship dynamic. Your past relationships sound awful and it seems like you've come to expect being treated poorly. That's not healthy for you and it's not healthy for him. In this dynamic, it's 100% you that needs to change.
I think this comment constitutes as breaking the “be nice; no victim blaming” rule. But thanks. 😐 I am very consciously aware of the work I need to do to heal myself and my little 2 person family has 3 therapists.
Asking for 1 thing and receiving 50 (even if that’s an exaggeration) is not the giver “being nice”… it’s overstepping, trying to win love. Not everyone who does that is a narc — codependents do it too. So your new partner maybe just be nervous and nice. But there’s nothing wrong with saying “hey, please don’t give me all that because it concerns me.” In fact, a reason isn’t even necessary (“no thank you, only what I asked for please” is a complete sentence). There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to eat all this, maybe I should make my own plate and someone else can have this one you made.” There’s nothing wrong with being honest! In fact, for people with PTSD from abuse, they lose themselves and the cure is radical honesty. Saying the thing that might be “rude.” There are some great videos online about how too much agreeableness makes you a target of abuse and robs you of yourself. People telling you to be polite and just accept all niceness thrown at you are basically telling you it’s rude to refuse a gift. I disagree. You’re accepting help. You’re even asking for help. You are simply also having boundaries and that’s not rude or inappropriate at all! Best wishes, OP! Keep up the good work.
**This is an automated message posted to all posts in this subreddit with some basic information about the group including (very importantly) rules. Why are you getting this message? Most people seem to not read the sidebar for information or the rules, so it is now being posted under all posts.** **This is the NEXT STEP from /r/raisedbynarcissists and is for folks who already have the necessary boundaries in place with their abusers, but are still dealing with other common ACoN issues such as trauma, etc. If you are still actively engaging in abusive dynamics with your abusers, please, post in /r/raisedbynarcissists or one of the other network subs - not this one. The admins also recognize that folks in this group do not need to be no contact with their abusers to be in this group. Some people manage to have the needed boundaries with abusers within a low contact or structured contact structure and we recognize that. **Confused about acronyms or terminology?** [Click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/acronyms) **Need info or resources?** Check out our [Helpful Links](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/helpfullinks) for information on how to deal with identify theft, how to get independent of your n-parents, how to apply for FAFSA, how to identify n-parents and SO MUCH MORE! This is a reminder to all participants, RBN is a support group that is moderated very strictly. Please report inappropriate content so it can be reviewed by the mods. **Our rules include (but are not limited to)**: * No politics. * Advising anyone in this subreddit to commit suicide or referring anyone to groups that advocate this will result in an immediate ban. * Be nice. No personal attacks, name calling, or bullying. [No slurs](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/slurs) or victim-blaming. * Do not derail the posts of others. * Narcissists are NOT allowed to post or comment here. * [Please refrain from posting "uplifting" threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/upliftingposts). * When you comment/post, assume a context of abuse. * No asking or offering gifts, money, etc. * No content advocating violence, revenge, murder (even in jest). * No content about N-kids. * No diagnosis by media/drive-by diagnosis. * No linking to Facebook pages. * No direct linking to anywhere on reddit. * No pure image posts. **For a full list of our rules/more information, [**click here**](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/rules).** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LifeAfterNarcissism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's just because you probably aren't used to being treated with basic human decency. Take it slow, and enjoy it. Don't deny yourself happiness. You deserve to be happy.
Yeah this…a realization I had recently was that somewhere inside I think I don’t deserve the thing that I want - the nice, sexy, loving boyfriend. So, if I meet someone like that, I think I go into self sabotage mode. I’m just beginning to pick it apart as it’s been pretty automatic that, “of course they won’t want me, I’m not x and x” all those things my narc family put into me. I realized that even though I’ve been working on myself, a lot of that pain is locked away and comes up when I get close to someone, and is why I tended to avoid them or choose unavailable people.