Who Knew I Would Be
Single While Married
Maybe it’s because I’m a “people person,” or maybe it’s just because I’m a person, but I love laughing with others. I love sharing ideas, hopes, and dreams. I love playing interactive games. I love getting to know others and what makes them tick…
When married to a narcissist, all of that is stolen from you. In my case, he had no desire to listen to me, much less laugh with me or hear my hopes and dreams. He stopped playing games with me just weeks after we married - all family games would happen without his participation. He thought he knew everything he needed to know about me, so conversations were useless. He refused to attend couples’ events in churches. often refused to attend family events, and once the grandchildren started coming along and I planned sleep-overs and special events with them, he refused to participate and often called or texted from another room in the house to tell me to quiet them down.
The years of loneliness cannot be regained. These years where children and others need me less - the years that I had looked forward to spending and enjoying some free time with my spouse: well, he is doing it with someone else: not the spouse who gave him the majority of her adult life, not the spouse who was with him through sickness, through trials, through job losses, through all of the things that make up life - I’m left alone, to manage alone, to remember alone, to grow old alone.
My experience was that I woke up one morning just days after marrying my narcissist and wondered where was the man I married? I did not love the narcissist. I didn’t choose to marry the narcissist. I didn’t choose to bring this self-centered man into the lives of my sons. I loved the man he portrayed himself to be. I loved the man who spent hours in the yard investing in my children. I loved the man who talked with me for long hours on the phone. I loved the man who looked at me lovingly and promised to take care of us. That man was gone.
As stated, I was widowed before marrying my narcissist. I parented, traveled, shopped, slept, went to church, and attended events ALONE. One of the things that I struggle over when I think about life with my narcissist is that doing life with someone has been stolen from me. He married me with the promise of sharing life, but in reality, I’ve had to continue to do most of life alone while married to him, and of course, since his leaving.
There are so many parts of this type of relationship that bring pain and leave wounds. One of the most difficult things for me was living as a single woman, a single parent, while married.
More often than not, I felt the additional pressure of handling most of the responsibilities alone, expecting his criticism and mocking of how I carried out those responsibilities without any of the benefits of his love.
There is a difference in being alone and being lonely. This becomes very clear when married to a narcissist - I love occasional solitude where I can think and work and pray and focus on becoming more of who I should be. Loneliness, however, is hard! While married to a true narcissist, I sat in restaurants with him and was lonely, I sat at home with him in the room and was lonely, I walked through stores or events with him and was lonely. A true narcissist has no interest in you, what you have to say or what you would like to be doing - he is so wrapped up in his own desires that you can be beside him and be more lonely than if you were physically alone.