Divorcing a narcissist: read the contents plus chapter 1

Is my partner
a narcissist?
1
“The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything.”
(Aberjhani)
This book is written for those divorcing or separating from narcissists,
so it stands to reason that, first, you have to be sure that it is actually
a narcissist that you are dealing with. But recognising that you have
been narcissistically abused may not be quite as easy as it sounds.
Narcissistic abuse is mostly covert emotional abuse – subjectively difficult
to spot and hard to quantify. Physical abuse, which may also be a feature of
narcissistic behaviours is, at least, pretty easy to label by friends and relatives as
being wrong, even if it’s hard for the victim to be objective.
But before we talk about narcissists and how to identify them, we need to briefly
focus on you, something which many victims of narcissistic abuse aren’t so
good at doing, as they’ve been so focused instead on meeting the needs of their
narcissistic partner.
First, let’s talk about you
If you are dealing with a breakdown of a narcissistic relationship, you will have
been subjected to abuse for some time, the full extent of which you may not realise
to begin with. Narcissists don’t look like your average cartoon villain, nor the
devil incarnate, and they are not always easy to spot. Abuse usually starts slowly,
perhaps with small jibes or put downs, and the volume is turned up little by little
– so slowly, in fact, that you do not notice it. A victim of narcissistic abuse is the
proverbial frog in the pot of hot water, staying in the water as the temperature
is slowly increased, becoming tolerant of the heat, and so not jumping out, even
when the water starts to boil.
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