Never Enough

My Ex wanted to pause our relationship and concentrate on herself until she finishes her exam. She postponed the exam and blamed me for it due to the distress that I caused her. While this is certainly true, it is also a much better excuse than the poor educational quality of the seminar or the fact that she needed two more weeks of studying, which she actually had told me before the yelling incident happened.

She said that she needs to move her career forward in order for me to respect her, implying that I’m disrespecting her for not having a job. This thinking was completely foreign to me, but it makes sense from a narcissistic perspective, in which relationships are a transactional power struggle. It also answers my question, whether our relationship would have gotten better or worse once my Ex feels more secure in life: worse for me, because my Ex would become more demanding and controlling when gaining confidence.

Over the next days, my Ex intensified the devaluation by accusing me of various character flaws and wrongdoings. She said that she had devoted an effort for us, hoping that it would ground our relationship, but it didn’t. At this point, she used me to vent at without any consideration how it affects me or our relationship. She was willing to discard me. The list of accusations included:

• isolating myself
• idealizing being alone
• looking for conflict
• being defensive, always feeling challenged
• being short-tempered
• being controlling and disrespectful
• being selfish and inconsiderate
• being aggressive and abusive

What’s noticeable is that most of these accusations apply well to my Ex’s behavior. Two months after our breakup, she wrote to me in a letter that she was all alone during this relationship crisis and had no one to run to, i.e., she had isolated herself. She had been looking for conflict in the cinema incident, felt challenged in the laundry incident, was short-tempered in the income discussion, controlling and inconsiderate about my needs, passive-aggressive and emotionally abusive. A rule of thumb when dealing with a narcissist is: accusations are confessions.

What felt like an attack on me, was probably a defense mechanism for my Ex. After I yelled at her, she needed to distance herself from our relationship, assert her independence, and protect her ego by projecting her weaknesses onto me. Over time, the accusations became worse and some had no factual grounds. My Ex accused me that I enjoyed seeing her in a weak position in life. I suspect that she couldn’t bear it herself and discharged her negative self-reflection in form of an accusation onto me. After our breakup, she accused me that I don’t like and would maltreat dogs. I had said before that I prefer cats, but I never said that I dislike dogs. She made an assumption based on the fact that I didn’t agree to get her a dog and based on the projection of an acquaintance of her, who once hit a dog.