Month: January 2022

Quotes like this make me sad.

First, I am sad for my husband. His ex-wife is a textbook narcissist, checking all the boxes, every toxic behavior. It’s no mystery why she chose him. He is loving, pure, trusting, always wanting to believe the best of someone even when they don’t deserve it. He’s a narcissist’s dream victim: giving, willing to hope, to believe something good is there when it truly is not.

Sometimes it strikes me: my husband once loved her. As hard as it is for me to comprehend that, he once felt affection and trust and adoration for this woman. She took something beautiful and poisoned it. He has said that the ugliness on her inside is all he sees now. I could not bear it if my husband felt that way about me.

Second, I feel sad for the kids. I don’t believe any of them completely understands or accepts that their mother is incapable of loving them. She is capable of using them, manipulating them, draining them, but not loving them. Just think for a moment of a child, at any age, being forced to grapple with that truth. If they never face that fact, they leave themselves wide open, the rest of their lives, to her abuse. If they do accept that fact, their heart will be blasted apart. They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Third, I am actually sad for his ex-wife. Sure, it’s exclusively her fault. It’s her choice to act as she does and to treat people the way she does. But I think of how my husband looks at me, how he would do anything for me, how he gently reaches for me in the middle of the night just to touch my hair or hold my hand in his sleep. I think of how immensely happy and peaceful I am just being at his side, knowing he is loyal, loving, my best friend. She will never know that feeling. She will never know anything but fake relationships to endorse appearances, draining one meaningless encounter before hopping to another like a greedy leech, endlessly monitoring and directing others’ perceptions, putting on horse-and-pony shows and then hoping everyone noticed and bought the act. It must be exhausting. And hollow. And unsatisfying.

I am sorry that my husband suffered through a marriage with a self-centered parasite of a woman. I understand why he stayed as long as he did, though. He made a promise to her, and that meant something to him, because he is a good man.

His ex-wife has never matured beyond primitive emotional capabilities. She believes she is winning when she adds a notch to her scoresheet for some nasty comment, rude behavior, or shoving another lie down someone’s throat. She measures her victory by how much destruction she inflicts. She has to pride herself on primordial tantrums and the most basic and banal of behaviors, because she is not emotionally or intellectually capable of anything higher.

She is too far removed from reality to realize something simple: her self-awarded victories are failures in every sense. Her only accomplishments are fabrications. Her only love is based on a fake persona. She has to rely on her act, her mask. She knows if people see her true self, they will be repelled, like my husband finally was.

He got away. He discovered real love, trust, and faithfulness with someone else, someone who adores him and treasures him.

She can continue keeping score. She can keep giving herself a gold star each time she is hateful, spiteful, childish. She can keep giving herself a pat on the back each time she lashes out due to her uncontrollable jealousy. It’s all she has. It’s all she will ever have. And she doesn’t even realize that each time she feels the need to talk about, insult, put down, or interfere with me and my husband, it is a shameless and laughable admission that she wants what we have — but knows she will never have it. She already lost long ago.