As I would with any other illness, my approach to marriage to a covert narcissist was to stay married and use all of the tools and education at my disposal to attempt to keep the marriage intact. To be honest, I did not believe we had a bad marriage. We certainly didn’t fight and argue. There was no domestic violence occurring. As compared to a lot of people around me, my marriage still seemed much better than many of the people around me. I didn’t see my spouse as a bad person. She had a personality disorder.
To try and keep a relationship going with a narcissist requires a delicate balance. The narcissist needs supply. That need for supply has to be delicately balanced against the codependents need for boundaries and identity. From 2018 to the summer of 2024, I did just that. At first, it required a conscious effort to ensure that I was setting boundaries, not engaging, etc. But it didn’t take long for that to be second nature. When her covert narcissism would surface, I would handle it. More often than not, it was simple matter of shutting down the behavior in a non-confrontational way. Negative behaviors were ignored, but spoken about later. For example.
Our oldest dog was sometimes prone to accidents in the house. It’s just a fact of owning dogs, especially when they become seniors. On one particular day, I was watching TV in the Great Room of our house. The sound was broken by a high-pitched screech calling me by name from the bedroom. As a joke, I replied with a high-pitched screech back. I thought it was funny. She did not. After assisting with a cleanup of the dog, including a bath, I went back to the Great Room and resumed watching TV. Shortly after, my spouse came barging out of the bedroom with this comment:
“How long can I stay on your health benefits if we separate?”
Huh, what? I recognized it for what it is and simply ignored it. If it were a few years earlier, I would have been needing to discuss it. It would have been pointless.
Two weeks later, we were sitting on the back patio. I was listening to my spouse talk about her brothers inheritance. Who should get his house, and who should get his money. My reply:
“You should get the house. That way, when you divorce me, you have someplace to live. And yeah, you can stay on my benefits because I don’t plan on getting married again.”
My spouse was shocked. She asked how could I say such a thing and I explained that she brought it up a couple of weeks ago, so there is my answer. Of course, she dismissed her behavior as simply being angry at me at the time. I calmly said, “Maybe you shouldn’t say those kinds of things when you are angry.”
There you go. That is how you handle narcissistic behavior.
Since 2010, some close friends and I have had an annual reunion. We have all known each other from the Navy as submariners. Our friendship goes back for over three decades. What does such a reunion entail? Hanging out with a couple of friends, and one friends wife. We eat, sight-see, and play Rock Band. Pretty crazy, huh? It’s our thing, and at worst, we may get a little drunk, and a little loud. My spouse participated in these reunions, but after marriage counseling, it was best to no longer host these events at our house. As such, we shifted locations to one of their houses. For years, I would drive down to Maryland for a long weekend. That continued until 2024, when they moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming. I am not really sure if my spouse thought that would be the end of the reunions, but no. I announced that I was going to fly to Cheyenne to visit. She didn’t say too much about it afterward, but that was the beginning of the end.
The day of my flight, I was awoken in the early morning hours to take the oldest dog out. Afterward, I was blessed with a message from the airline that my flights were all canceled due to computer issues. You may recall the Crowdstrike issue that took down several airlines. In the early morning hours, I went on a search to find a flight, which I did. Hooray! As I pushed the purchase button, I was greeted with a notice stating that our credit card required a code to complete the transaction. That code was sent to my spouses mobile phone. I apologized for waking her up, she unlocked her phone, and I proceeded to the home office with phone in hand. Then the screaming started from the bedroom. She suddenly must have realized there was something on that phone that I might not like, because she wanted her phone back ASAP. I finished the transaction, and returned the phone to her charger. She had already gone back to sleep.
The following day, I flew to Cheyenne. Almost immediately, the silent treatment started. She didn’t reply to any of my messages. So, I stopped messaging. I later received a message from our security system that the outdoor security cameras were offline. I recognized this as escalation, and didn’t respond. Finally, the day before my return, I received a text message asking when I was returning. I responded nicely, joking about sending out a search party for her. I would be returning the next day, and wishes that everything went well while I was gone.
The morning of my flight home, I received a text message with a letter attached. The letter accused me of verbal and physical abuse the day before, and that out of fear for her safety, she would not be home when I arrived. She also stated that she was forced to leave the dogs at home and prayed I wouldn’t hurt them. There would be follow up communication at a later date. Wow! The letter also looked more like a deposition than one of your classic “Dear John” letters. My answer was to not respond and deal with it when I get home. Admittedly though, I was shocked at how quickly she escalated her behavior when I didn’t cave in to the narcissistic abuse.
But wait, it gets better.
I arrived home and indeed, she was nowhere to be found. I reached out several times to try and figure things out. No reply. I was genuinely concerned about the letter I received because it read like a deposition. That can’t be good. As a result, I contacted an attorney and made an appointment for the next available timeslot the week following.
After being home several days, I was greeted by a knock at the door. It was the county sheriff. In hand was an order of protection with a directive that I was to be removed from the marital home. Because there was no evidence (hard to have evidence for something that didn’t occur), my spouse went to the family court to obtain her order of protection. With the letter she wrote in hand, it was a simple matter of filling out paperwork to obtain a temporary (ex parte) order of protection. Ouch. She filed for the order of protection the day after I returned. No doubt, it was done as a further point of escalation to gain back control.
Now one may think that was the discard. It wasn’t. Not once for the three weeks I waited for a preliminary hearing did she file for a divorce. This was all about putting me in my place and taking back control to my codependency days. My answer…I filed for divorce instead. Did I want to? No. Did I have to? Yes. Think about it, if your spouse is willing to go that extreme, what else would they do? I can think of several horrible things that would have destroyed my life.
That was the turning point for me in my relationship with my spouse. This was what I was warned about in marriage counseling. It only took a tiny spark to set things ablaze.