Never Enough

The inconsistencies that bothered me the most were the double standards that my Ex applied. She complained about an alleged aggression of Northern European culture, but justified offensive wars in geopolitics. She judged inconsiderate behavior as aggressive, but appreciated or overlooked actually aggressive behavior, for example, her roommate yelling at her boyfriend or a female Italian taxi driver committing coercion.

My Ex claimed that she is never aggressive and never retaliates, but this was untrue subject to the passive aggression that she had already shown in our relationship,¹ and it would be disproven further after our breakup. Her definition of aggression seemed to be elusive and unrelated to the objective action. Instead, she judged purely subjectively by her emotional response to the action. Remember that narcissists take everything personally. If my Ex could relate to a person, like her female roommate or a female Italian, she overlooked or justified their aggressive behavior. If the person was an antagonistic party in an interaction, she was hypercritical to judge slightest inconveniences as acts of aggression, e.g., a person closing the fridge door in front of you.

Due to this cognitive bias, my Ex insisted that I have an anger problem, even though she got angry more often and with a higher intensity, for example, during the laundry incident or the income fight. My Ex one time mentioned that I haven’t seen the full scale of how angry she can get, which included throwing things around in a fight in the past. I would at most destroy a computer mouse when I get frustrated with my computer, but not with people. Yet, it was me who has the anger problem that needs to be addressed in therapy. The narcissistic rationale behind this is as follows: if she gets angry, she has a reason for it, because I (or someone else) made her angry. Her anger response is righteous and justified. If someone else gets angry, it triggers her fear of abuse and makes her feel uncomfortable. The angry person commits a wrongdoing.