How the N is thinking about U and how to resent him less...

Thank you for your response..We have to be real and experience and process all our emotions even resentment. But, knowledge and growth = power to over come and lessen our resentment in time...Be gentle with yourself as you process all emotions. Accept all of your ugly feelings too, or you will never heal at your core..But, give yourself the power back by giving to yourself what others never seem to be able to, or willing to give to you. That is really the only way we can really respect ourselves and keep some happiness to move forward. We can only control our thoughts and actions, even though we would like to bang our N's over the head with a baseball bat (not literally) and put some sence into them. So, if we can control ourselves, and in a way control the N's nonsence, we must not keep pleasing people who will never be pleased. They never try to please us do they?! A controller only wins, when we hand over our self control/power to him. It is best to live a separate life to hang on to yourself without broadcasting your thoughts or desires to him. You don't want to lie, but you don't want to lose yourself totally. If you are living with an N, you walk on a balance beam always trying to not fall off. Don't always enable him to mistreat you, but don't always respond when he tries to create a conflict with you. Your truth is your truth. Keep that to yourself so you don't enmesh so much with him. You want to keep just enough autonomy for your sanity, but not so much autonomy that he feels threatened and creates more trouble for you. Now, you can keep some autonomy but the trick is, you don't want to tell him that, that is what you are doing or thinking. Don't sabotauge yourself another words by broadcasting it. If your N says for example, "Isn't that a great movie?" and you didn't like the movie in your "reality" Hang on to your reality but you could change the subject by distracting him, or not respond, or just say, "Boy, I wonder why there weren't more people in the theater tonight?" Don't go along with the N all of the time and resenting him that you didn't have a say so of your own. You had a say so. You held onto your reality and autonomy, without him having an outburst causing you more pain..You get the idea...This wont work 24/7 because N's drive us crazy too often, but to lessen some of his blows to us, we may need to implement this strategy when we can..

Well said!! Your last sentence is exactly where I am too..That is the trick in moving on in a positive healthy way...Good Luck to you too...

Your one tough person..I have to keep up with you :)I am putting all the pieces of the puzzle together now...I am so close to moving forward with more strength. I spent 2 wks. as a hermit on the computer spending 8 - 10 hrs. a day researching many resources out on N's and spending time on here to stay strong...still NC so far...I do look up your threads too..We might as well play a game on here while we are searching for strength. The game will be, who can be the strongest and wisest in our knowledge. That keeps our motivation going to keep up our good work and get an A+ on our test of "life" with or without narcs in our lives..We are becoming our best selves now...Thanks, V