When and what was your turning point during recovery that you accepted his/her disorder?

For me, the turning point in my accepting xnh's personality disorder was when someone posted a list of traits for NPD. This list had 67 traits listed on it, and xnh had 62 of them. I had previously been researching NPD (obviously, I suspected a personality disorder because I was already active on this site). However, reading this list and seeing how many of the traits xnh possessed, removed any shred of doubt about him in my mind. Any "gray areas" I had about xnh were GONE. I could fully accept that xnh had NPD. He was NEVER going to change. Xnh was disordered LONG before I ever met him, and he will remain that way LONG after I'm gone. Anyone else that has any relationship with xnh will end up with the same exact result as I did (devalued and discarded). To a narc, other people are nothing more than objects to be used for their own personal benefit. It really hurt for me to realize that I had no more value to xnh than his toaster did. I had been in a relationship with him for 16 years. However, the truth is that xnh dropped me like a broken toaster onto the trash heap, and walked away without a backward glance. The only choice I had was to pick myself up out of the dirt, learn from the experience, and then move on with my (happier) life without him anywhere in it. Xnh may have hurt me (badly), but I was NOT going to allow him to defeat me. In addition, at about the same time I read this list about NPD traits, xnh was continually harassing me at work (we work at the same company). Even though he cheated, abused me, and dumped me, I had the extreme displeasure of seeing just how nasty and cruel xnh really was underneath his mask upon removing myself from his control. I saw him for his real, ugly self in all of his NPD "glory" for the first time knowing exactly what is wrong with him. It wasn't pretty, and xnh is not someone that I admire, or would wish to have any relationship with. I fell in love with a very contrived illusion. The real xnh is a complete fraud. What has been harder for me to accept than xnh's NPD, is the fact I was duped by him for so long (16 years of making excuses about him to myself and everyone else). My issue with myself was WHY did I buy into his b.s.? His behavior is so transparent now that I know he is disordered. However, when I was with xnh, I must have been wearing blinders that were the size of the earth. My eyes are wide open now about xnh's personality disorder. However, I sometimes feel like Ralphie in that old movie, "Christmas Story" when he used his Little Orphan Annie decoder. BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE.OVALTINE?A CRUMMY CHAMERCIAL?SON-OF-A BITCH!!!!!!!!!. Then I left the bathroom sadder but wiser. :)

We were engaged for two years. For two years people congratulated us. We went with another couple (his friends) to the Caribbean and during a drunken stupor he announced rather loudly that he "loved his girlfriend, but he'd never marry her." I gave him the ring back upon our return to the States, and was understandably crying because I was devastated. Humiliated as well! The turning point was when he told me we were never engaged. It was all in my head. The ring was just a diamond, not a symbol of engagement. THAT is when I knew I was dealing with a sick person.

There wasn't one moment of "accepting." that took and is taking awhile. I can tell you that I had an urge to smother him with a pillow. Not like a little urge. An actual homicidal urge. It scared me. And then it dawned on me, I just wanted to kill my husband. ANd I think everyone on this forum knows the differnce between fleeting irritated thoughts we have at people in intimate relationships and actual violent urges. I realized something horrible was wrong. That I didn't know me anymore. I had been focused for so long on "getting him back" after a brutal Silent treatment right after marriage, that I didn't really see what was happening to me. My family came out and I could see how horrified they were at seeing me. They told me I look like a ghost or shadow of myself. That began the process of accepting, which I am still doing. Try thinking about how you feel about him. Is that how you feel about people you are close to and love? It isn't right? and Im' guessing you are a very compassionate and empathetic person. I have also read about this disorder til blue in the face. Have you also read as much about the affects it has on you? the self doubt and cognitive dissonance you are feeling now? How do the people you are closest to feel about this relationshp and him? Are they all dying for you to be done and resume to "yourself?" If yes, this should tell you something. As far as the pain goes, this is the most painful thing of my life and the only thing that has helped is this site and time. and trying to take my therapist's advice to have "compassion for myself" and be OK where I'm at. If it is watching cheesy movies and writing on this site for most of the day, then so be it. I may be just rambling but wanted to answer as I've felt the sharing of stories to be helpful to me. Sending good thoughts of strength your way.

You dont really love him. You love what was his potential. You love the bill of goods he sold you. Sometimes when we say we still love them its an act of denial itself. Its actually a way of not accepting what he is becuase when you accept what he is you begin to realize that you couldnt love that kind of evil. My longing for him has gone but I still have a terrible addiction to wanting retribution and continually looking for confirmation that he is in fact disordered. Unfortunately wanting constant confirmation that he is a wack job has kept me in the game psychologically as we do not speak but yes I have a problem with snooping. I snoop and get more evidence but its like each piece of evidence is not good enough I want another and another. All of that is a form of denial

If you had first person communication with him, through a proxy, where he described how he REALLY felt about you, in the snidest pettiest terms humanly possible, after being the very milk of human kindness at all times, to your face, it would wake you up real quick! Cured me totally instantly at a time where I was 90% cured already!

I can't pinpoint the moment I turned the corner. It was a long process for me. NC and talking and reading on this board got me here. It took a while for the Narc to get you so confused, so it will take a while to reprogram your thoughts on them. NC, knowledge and time. It is a rough road to travel, but you will be soooo much better when you get to indifference. HUGS

Was when she became very ill, was hospitalized and had emergency surgery. N was nowhere to be found. Then I was brought home by a family member, who later informed me that I was the laughing stock of his firm because he *my brother* was doing all the things xN should have been doing. She did nothing to take care of me or help post surgery, when for weeks I was unable to do anything for myself. A few months before that things had been getting progressively worse, and I got my 3rd D&D. It was the middle of a particularly cruel and purposeful silent treatment. I am unable to remember whether it was her or me that initiated contact. Irregardless, I was coming apart at the seams. I fell to my knees and asked my God to help me. For the first time ever, instead of asking God to bring her back to me, I said "I'm giving it all up to you" I sat on the floor weeping for a few minutes and then got up and the phone rang! It was her texting, The text said "I'm really sick" and then went on saying how scared she was about a minor medical procedure. Every single one of the text messages began with the word "I" "I want you" "I am really sick". It was at that moment (thanks to the grace of the Heavenly Father) that my prayer had been answered! Within an hour after I told God I would let go and "Let God". That was a huge moment~ There is something else I want to tell you. It's OK to still love him. When I read some of these posts and articles I can see that there are not many people in that camp. Telling someone to stop loving another person ...REALLY??? Yeah, that always works.

The turning point for me was when he was envious when I made nearly 200$ in one day at street music. Every one else was happy for me, he turned nasty straight away. It was so obvious that I googled "envy", and one of the things that came up was a site about narcissism. It became obvious to me that many times in the past where he had been inexplicably cruel and nasty, he was just envious. I never recognized it, because envy is something I have never felt. But everything else fell into place, too - particularly D&D: that was a real eye-opener.

I don't think there's been a single turning point for me. Instead it's been a gradual process. The latest phase is still unfolding. As I've said elsewhere, I am bit-by-bit dredging through all his old messages and it's blowing me away. I've found I was never truly certain that I was right about him, and I've always had a little bit of doubt that maybe I was just so angry I wanted to demonise him when really he was just an innocent victim of circumstance. It's like I only 75% believed in the whole theory of him being a narc. Going through all the messages has confirmed the theory and now I'm at more like 95%! Every day I pick up little snippets that I had forgotten, or even yesterday's gem where I realised he's never left his parents house and moved in with anyone his whole life, but only stayed with his partner over weekends - that's just totally blown me away and made me realise he would have done that with me too. The more stuff I read the more it confirms what a peculiar little fraud of a man he really is. He's a little boy playing at being a man.

I'm probably not the person to answer this as I'm very new to this whole journey, but I've had some significant flashes of insight already and tonight I came to fully realize that my narc just has no idea that he is in any way disordered. Now, I know that the question of whether they are or are not self-aware of their predatory behavior is one of the conundrums which plague us the most, and I do believe that there is a scale or spectrum of psychopathy that makes some narcs aware of their exploitative nature, and others not. Some, like my N, simply have the emotional maturity of a two-year-old and nothing more. When my narc says that he genuinely loved me and was heartbroken to realize that it could never be between us, my jaw drops in disbelief. Here I am, from the depths of my misery, watching him go blithely on, chasing after life's pleasures, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But when I remember to think of him as an emotional toddler I realize that his "heartbreak" is akin to a two-year-old having his ball taken away from him when playtime is over. He cries over his lost toy for a minute, then, look -- something shiny! And the once cherished bouncy ball now lies in the toy bin, forgotten. That's how much depth there is to his capacity to "love." He sincerely thinks that his initial infatuation with me represented real love; his sense of heartbreak was little more than passing disappointment at losing a source of fantasy-based pleasure. Whether or not he'll come back for more supply down the road, I don't know. His emotions, whether of love or loss, are so shallow and transient that he may get it into his head to seek me out for more stimulus someday, as though nothing traumatic had passed between us. The sad fact is, he has no frame of reference against which to judge that these are not the normal responses of a healthy, emotionally-stable, adult human being. The other piece of cognitive dissonance that floors me is how a man possessed of such a seemingly poetic and romantic soul could be "not all there." I mean, his love letters and poetry are so incomparably lovely and lyrical, if you could only read them you'd think you're witnessing the second coming of Keats. As well, his conversation is so full of deeply humane insight -- how could he be somehow less than human in light of all that? The only thing I can chalk it up to is that that is the man he *wants* to be, so he imitates it -- has done so for as long as he can recall -- and he honestly takes it for the real thing, as his real self. How he can do that is a mystery of the human brain that we may never fully understand. Anyway, sorry for my rambling response, but your question spoke to everything I've been mulling over to myself tonight, and I just had to get it out.

With me, it was reading about the personality disorder and taking the time to look at me and my own belief system. I also wrote a lot in notebooks which clarified things to me. I even started writing before we broke up when I felt things were "off" with him and yet did not leave because nothing drastic had happened yet. I started to figure him out, and in a way he started to become very predictable. I was able to see the games he was playing and how cruel it was to do to me. I had information drip-fed to me by him. When we met, he talked about how he wants love and marriage just like his parents who have been married for close to 50 years. My parents have been married for close to 50 years and are incredibly happy and the best of friends, so I was happy to finally meet someone whose parents are still married and he looks to that as an example that he would like to have for himself. I thought it meant he wants commitment and believes in long-term commitment. But!!! His "happy" parents who have "unconditional love" turned out to be very unhappy parents who are still together because they are both dysfunctional. His father cheated a lot and gave his mom diseases and they came close to divorce a few times, and she tells my ex that she would never do it again if she had to do it over, but she stays because she always wanted to live in a mansion and be rich (which they are) and her family disowned her when she married him, so she felt stuck and chose to love him anyway and tolerate it for the lifestyle he gives her. From what he told me about his father, his father is a narcissist who is a womanizer and ruthless shark in business, very loud and aggressive compared to his "sweet and passive" mom... and my ex seemed to admire that even though he also seemed to not like his father. I asked him, "and this is the marriage you told me you would love to have when you said you'd like to be like your parents???" He seemed to think they have "unconditional love" and that was important. I think at some point there should be some conditions... like don't cheat and bring me diseases. I started to realize my ex wants a good woman who is his wife at home who makes him look good like he is a good family man, but he wants his sluts "secretly" on the side. And if he gives the wife plenty of money and a big house and she stays quiet and adoring of him, she will get his "unconditional love. " I got tired of hearing how much he loved me while treating me like he hated me. To me, love is not contradicting and mean like that. To him, it is! Our beliefs and values are way too different, not to mention he has NPD. All his money could never make me put up with the craziness. I'd be rich, but I'd be miserable and driven to depression. And I let go of wondering if he wold change for the next woman who was prettier or whatever and could wave a magic wand and get a version of him that I didn't get. I realized if these narcs do go on to be married for life, it has to be a horribly disfunctional relationship like his parents'. If my narc ever gets married, it will be because he broke some girl down and made her passive... he made her self esteem reliant on him... and he will cheat and lie as usual... he is not capable of love and has a very screwed up belief about what love is. The more you see them for what they are and keep your head in reality and stop fantasizing about a wonderful him that doesn't exist and look at what your beliefs and values are and gain your self esteem and self love back and compare what you want with what he is capable of and actually IS, you will see you are not a good match with an NPD guy.

I remember that during the first two or three months I made a comment to him about his Jeykle Hyde behavior. At that time, about eight years ago, I knew very little about PD's, yet I felt there was something off. I suspected he was a cheater from day one. During the first several years, I blammed myself for his abuse and neglect...not rich enough, not pretty enough, not educated enough and on and on. That's mostly because I've always felt not good enough and unlovable and he definately reinforced those beliefs. As time progressed, the red flags were piling up; bazaar behavior, suspicious behavior, questionable behavior, disappearances after good times, a jab here and there, etc. I was in total denial but, a part of me knew he was off. He was also a heavy drinker. The other thing was that he was representing my daughter in a court case and he shouldn't have been messing with me. These guys have no boundaries. I became convinced he was narc when I attended a workshop on narcs. After that, I went back and forth between denial and acceptance. There was a part of me that believed I could change him, plus I was intreged with the challenge. I'm into the spiritual stuff and into finding the "good" in everyone, LOL. I now know evil exists and will never be that naive again. The battle is between logic and emotion and I continue to go back and forth. I can't pinpoint when I accepted his disorder because he inflicted so much pain. All I can tell you is that I accept he is disordered and, like you, there's a part of me that still wants him back. I'm not a martyr but sure acted like one. I don't know what else to say...the more I write, the more confused I'm getting. Thanks for your post...I totally get what you're going through. It's so confusing and frustrating. I just pray it ends soon so I can get on with my life as 100% there, not 60%.