Written by divorcinganarcissistblog

Thoughts on Closure

I’ve had a few “major” breakups in my life and have experienced the feeling of closure of a relationship in a few different ways…

  • There was my first ‘real’ boyfriend a 3 year high school relationship. He broke up with me for a girl that worked at the super market with him… who he was already seeing before we broke up. Then he started dating one of my close friends.. who he also turned out to be seeing before we broke up. I left all of the things he ever gave me in a garbage bag in his driveway, burned his photos and never spoke to him again. That felt like closure.
  • There was my first ‘I’m gonna fix you’ boyfriend who came next. I can’t even really remember how we broke up, but he left for the Coast Guard and although we saw each other a few times here and there… things just kind of naturally fizzled out. That felt like closure.
  • Then there was the last major boyfriend before the Narcissist. An almost 5 year relationship where we lived together and bought a dog. I realized that I didn’t love him the way I thought I did and started to get anxiety attacks that he was going to propose to me. Instead of being an adult and ending the relationship in a healthy way… I cheated on him and was mean to him until he got the hint. He moved out and kidnapped the dog from me one night. After a bit of back and forth I cut the ties all together. That felt like closure (at least for me anyway.)

One of the suckiest parts of this divorce with the Narcissist is the realization that I will never actually get closure in the sense that I desperately feel like I need. Without that closure it is hard to feel healed, it is hard to feel ready to move on, it is hard to get the freaking Narcissist out of my head. This is new territory for me, but I am well aware that:

  • The Narcissist is never going to acknowledge or apologize for the things he has done to me. While for some reason, the Narcissist can sometimes apologize for “the things he did to me when he was angry” aka the physical abuse… he never grasps the severity of it and he always makes it sound like no big deal. As for the remaining years of psychological, emotional, sexual, financial and religious abuse… yeah right. The Narcissist believes that he has been the epitome of a perfect husband for the rest of our marriage.
  • The Narcissist is always going to blame me and make me out to be the crazy one. He will always blame me for giving up on our marriage, walking away from him, choosing anger instead of love, and generally making his life miserable. His version of the story is always going to be the one he shares… the story where he is a an innocent victim and I am an angry evil crazy ex-wife.
  • The Narcissist is never going acknowledge what an amazing wife I was. I will never get a thank you or an acknowledgement for being a stellar wife during the years of hell he put me through. I will never get credit for doing most of the course work that led to his degree. I will never get credit for the emotional and psychological support I provided him through his mental crises. I will never get credit for financially supporting him for the last 5 years. He will never admit that I am pretty freaking awesome.
  • The Narcissist is never going to admit that he misses me. I mean how could he miss me when he already has 25 women filling his supply and feeding his ego? The one time early on when I asked him if he missed me even a little bit, he replied with “I miss the woman you were at the beginning of our marriage… before you chose anger over me.” (This means that he misses the submissive woman who he was physically abusing.) Some silly part of me actually thought that when I moved out and he was all alone he would realize a glimpse of what he had… but nope, not the Narcissist.
  • The Narcissist will always write-off our marriage because ‘it wasn’t meant to be.’ After years of being brainwashed into believing that I had found my soulmate… the one person that God designed exactly for me… I now must come to terms with the fact that God was just playing. The Narcissist now believes that our marriage was meant to be a learning experience and was never meant to be forever. This allows him to not feel any fault or any guilt for anything that happened… because it was supposed to happen exactly this way!
  • The Narcissist is never going to beg for me, fight for me, or ever want me again. While I recognize that this one is probably a bit unhealthy… I have to say it, because I feel it. I know that being with the Narcissist in any way shape or form is unhealthy, and I would never do that to myself again. However, there is some weird sense of satisfaction that I feel like I would feel if the Narcissist called and said “I can’t live without you… my life is in shambles… I would do anything to have you back.” Of course, he never will… and it doesn’t matter if he did… I think it just speaks to the feeling of being discarded… of feeling like you were never really important to begin with.

The closure piece felt a bit easier when I was full of anger at the Narcissist for the Southern Rose incident… I felt like maybe hating him could make feel closure. However, I just started to feel bad for Rose and couldn’t believe that he was doing the exact same thing to her. My anger sort of subsided as I realized that this is who he is… the is the reality…. this is the Narcissist.

So I have been desperately trying over the past 4 months to turn the focus on myself and off of him. I’ve been spending time with friends and family. I’ve been spending time with rescue puppies and babies. I’ve been doing new things and having new experiences. I’ve been reading and learning and writing my heart out. I’ve been seeking closure everywhere I can think to find it.

Its easier today than it was 90 days ago for sure. I think it is one of those things that is just going to take time. I think that the more I fill my heart with new love and new happy the further away the Narcissist will feel.

20 thoughts on “Thoughts on Closure”

  1. They never beg, but they sure as heck like to keep their victims on the line or at least try to. My ex-husband and I had a conversation right after the divorce about him keeping in touch. He said at one time I was his best friend, and he wanted to keep in touch. I asked him what if I don’t to keep in touch. He said he would accept it….not so. He sent me a friend’s request on Facebook and tried to connect on LinkedIn….DENIED. He then started following me on Twitter a few years ago. I ignored him, but here we are 11 years later. Dude reached out to me as recently as March on Twitter. He did not receive a response, but I did welcome him to the BLOCK party. He needs to move on. BTW, he tried to connect with my brother on LinkedIn too.

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      1. Interesting thing is… he also called me several years ago looking for pity after he got physical with his new wife. He chunked a bottled water at her during a heated argument. He also said that she thought he was cheating. I believe she still feels that way because some of her friends started following me on Twitter after my ex sent me a DM in March. They eventually unfollowed. The new wife’s quarrel is with her husband, not me. I am too old for that kind of garbage.

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      2. Angie, I have been reading a lot about how Narcs use triangulation with their exes and current targets as a way to keep the focus on a ‘competition’ with someone else versus the abuse that is going on from the Narc. Its freaking crazy!!!

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  2. Wow. All of the things you cite are so true for me. My ex narc actually thought that after all he had done to me, we were going to be friends. He even went so far as to say “if I thought I was never going to see you again, it would kill me.” Then, he went home and fucked his tramp who was shacking up with him.
    These guys….there has never been any closure for me. I passively (not passively aggressively) want revenge….I just don’t want to spend the time trying to get it. So sorry you are having to deal with this. 😦

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  3. You are still “addicted” to his crazy. Compare it to being brainwashed. It takes a while for your brain to go back to normal. You will NEVER get closure from a narcissist. Just keep “no contact” as much as possible. At some point you won’t care if he apologizes. You just won’t care.

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  4. We seem to be in the same place in trying to get beyond this mess. I am sick to death of being around my cheater / liar / narc husband. At the same time, I’d like to hear him say he’s miserable without me. He’s not going to say that. Ever. Because he can never admit to having made a mistake. I am sick of him, sick of feeling discarded, sick of trying to figure out why I wasn’t enough, and sick of myself for feeling so weak. This sucks. Hopefully we will both find better days ahead!

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    1. Kate, I am confident that we will. I think this weird messy phase is normal. There’s realization, healing, coping, grieving, anger, and a whole ton of other stuff going on. I tend to be on the impatient side so I just can’t wait to get through it! Stay strong!

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  5. I realized, while still married and before I discovered the cheating, that I would never be able to make him happy, that he would always throw me under the bus when it made him look like the poor put upon victim, and he would never stick up for me and put me first. It was devastating and at the same time liberating. Once I knew that and accepted it it freed me. I hope that all of those realizations you’ve had will bring you freedom, too.

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  7. Omg! OMG! Everything on your list of things describe me too. I’ll never get credit for getting him that job, raising our son, sacrificing my job to stay home, sacrificing my credit so he could drive the newer vehicle, live in the friggin country which I HATED, he didn’t appreciate anything I did around the house. I never got acknowleded, said hello to or how ya doin? Yet, till this day, he tells me I need to help pay rent and half the bills (I don’t even work a full time job) since I refuse to have sex with him anymore because he chooses to disrespect me. How fair is that??

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  9. So unbelievably relatable — wow. This is both a blessing and so sad all at once to be in the mix of others who have experienced similar scenarios. I just wrote about “closure” a few weeks ago too – rachel2point0.blog

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