Never Enough

One time I complained to my Ex about a coworker of mine. I have an antipathy to this coworker and got upset while complaining about him. My Ex didn’t react with support, but instead shamed me for getting upset. She related my emotional response to her accusation that I have a temper. I tried to defend myself: anger is a normal emotion that everyone experiences from time to time. She disagreed: I become aggressive and have to work on myself, because I trigger her fears. I should do therapy.

I suggested that she may be oversensitive to stress due to her childhood fear of abuse. She countered: “That’s what an abuser would say. I own my feelings.” Considered separately, she was right. A common manipulation technique of an abuser is to minimize the abuse and to shift the blame onto the victim; but shifting the blame for one’s own emotional dysregulation onto another person is manipulation, too.

When we talked after we had gotten into a fight, my Ex oftentimes justified her emotional response by saying: “I own my feelings.” I assumed that she learned this concept in therapy. After our breakup, I did my own research and discovered: she got it wrong–and it’s hard to imagine that her therapist taught it wrong to her. The proper concept goes like this: I own my feelings and I take responsibility for them. My Ex cherry-picked the part that validates her feelings, but denied the part of taking responsibility. Instead, her unspoken toxic version was: I own my feelings and I blame you for them. Narcissists do not accept responsibility. They blame a scapegoat for their own toxic behaviors, failures, and unpleasant emotions. The Nameless Narcissist explains:

Narcissists like myself have a habit of externalizing our emotions. What that means is that we feel something and we assume that you are the cause for it. For example, let’s say I’m in an angry mood and then somebody says something that is kind of annoying me. I’m going to assume that they caused the emotion. I’m not going to take any responsibility for the emotion I’m feeling. I’m going to think they caused it and often I’m going to think they caused it on purpose. […] Then I’m going to blame you for it instead of accepting the fact that […] my emotions are my responsibility.
—Nameless Narcissist¹

My Ex‘s subliminal expectation was that I have to be emotionally indifferent in order not to trigger an emotional response on her side. She relied on me for her emotional regulation. My expression of unpleasant emotions, e.g., about a coworker, affected her emotional well-being. Thus I wasn’t allowed to be annoyed, impatient, stressed, or angry. She wrapped this toxic expectation in a seemingly innocent desire for a kind, warm-hearted man. Her ideal man should be hard-working, submissive to her control, and shouldn’t fight back when she abuses him emotionally. She wasn’t looking for kindness, she was looking for a doormat, who is willing to give up on himself in order to please her.

At first, I resisted her accusation of me being an aggressive person. It didn’t align with my self-concept of being a calm, friendly and cooperative human being. Over time, I started doubting myself. If she feels intimidated by me, could I be wrong? Maybe she has a point. People misjudge themselves all the time. Maybe I’m unkind to her without noticing it. Independent of whether she’s right, I don’t want her to feel threatened by me. This was reason alone to work on myself to be more patient and considerate, to smile at inconveniences rather than getting annoyed over them. I wanted to be the anchor that grounds her and the shoulder that she could lean on.

Starting therapy was too big of a step for me at that time, but I registered for seminars about stress management and conflict resolution at work. My Ex dismissed them as not effective enough compared to individual therapy. I asked my Ex whether she would consider doing therapy, as she had done in the past before. My idea was to address this issue from both ends. Yes, she wanted to continue therapy anyway at some point in the future, but the circumstances weren’t right at that time. The whole burden was on me.