A Narcissist's Performance Of Caring
The Most Insidious Part Of Emotional Abuse
I have learned, first hand, that emotional abuse affects you to your very core. It can change who you are as a person. It cripples your psyche and makes you too weak to fight against the very thing that is slowly poisoning you from the inside.
But the worst part, at least in my experience, is not the yelling and the insults and the criticism.
It’s the apology stage. The part where your abuser pretends to care.
The problem is that the apology is never real, no matter how badly you want it to be real.
Those “good” moments are the worst. They hold you back and make you think you can make the relationship work. They feed the fantasy that maybe this time he has finally, inexplicably changed. And that he means it when he says he is sorry. It slows you down.
I experienced this on a whole new level during our recent vacation, visiting my family across the country for the first time since Covid-19 started.
It had been a rough. He had been drunk and criticized me almost the entire time. He had picked a fight with my Dad at the end of my brother’s wedding and ruined the wonderful warm ambience of the evening.
What made it worse was that, after being with my family again, I had almost started to feel like myself again. Like something more than just his maid and mindless receptacle for his moods and desires.
Back with my family, people listened to me. Had real conversations with me. Cared about me. Helped me without being asked. I was home, and it was good.
Then he arrived a week after I did, scowling and complaining and judging my driving. It was like a dark cloud had descended.
The tension increased, day by day, as his week with us went on. One day, finally, I spent the whole day feeling more and more panicked. I had to confront him, I thought. It was too much. I had to give him a real ultimatum about his drinking. The thought overwhelmed me with panic. What was I going to do? I couldn’t cry, there was no one to turn to, and the horrible suffocating feeling was building and building as I drove around completing my errands. He had been drunk all day. I felt completely alone.
I arrived back to our vacation house to find that he had been doing tequila shots with my brother. The dinner he had agreed to cook was not made. Instead he was sitting there while our son played. I went inside and just broke. I screamed with frustration, needing some kind of outlet. I starteded to weep uncontrollably. I ran past my confused brother and lay down on the bed crying my eyes out.
My husband came in, to “comfort” me.
Now, since my brother was there, my husband at least made the effort to perform kindness. Normally, he would have gone straight to rage at such an outburst, but this time he sat beside me on the bed, stroked my head compassionately.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
A loaded question. There is no right answer. We both knew the answer was, him.
I sighed. I was tired of lying, of downplaying my feelings. I would normally complain that I was tired.
“Talk to me,” he said, slurred but kindly. It was so tempting to believe that he actually cared. That he would actually be sympathetic.
I can’t even remember what I said. Maybe I mumbled something about being tired, maybe something about him drinking all day, I can’t remember. My mind raced through my misery trying to think of an answer that would placate him.
“Talk to me, baby, you need to communicate.”
I settled on saying, “I don’t feel like I can count on you.”
I can’t remember what else I said. Nothing of meaning. I might have said I was just stressed.
He left without comment and went to start the dinner he had promised to make, hours ago. As predicted, the rage came. The banging of pots and pans and slamming of supboard doors.
“Now I’m the one who’s pissed.” he slurred, drunker than ever. “I don’t think I can count on you,” he mocked me.
He punished me for hours after that. The usual. He yelled that I was a crazy bitch. How dare I show this display in front of our child. How ungrateful I was. I said nothing. I knew there was nothing I could say. The effect would be the same.
About a half hour at least after the last outburst, I was sitting outside with my brother. My husband came outside a propos of nothing and stood there glaring at me.
“You’re a fucking piece of work,” he said, and stalked towards the door.
“Don’t talk to my sister like that!” My brother countered. I wanted to cry. It was shocking actually being defended for once.
“Don’t you fucking start,” he told my brother.
It continued for hours. The swearing, the anger, the passive aggression. I said nothing. I was fortunate to be surrounded by loved ones. The insults and aggression didn’t sting as much when I was with people that actually knew me. It helped my self esteem. They were like proof of the person I know I am.
The next day he was still drunk most of the day, but things were better. He wasn’t quite apologetic but some of the crushing tension inside me had subsided since I had at least vented, however ineffectually.
The fights and the insults are horrible, to be sure, but the most dangerous moments are the good times.
They might go on for a long while and your relationship might feel like it’s what you want. Like it’s finally the relationship it has the potential to be.
Except it’s not. Even during the good times, there is constant anxiety, and fear of what’s around the corner. The echoes of all the words and names he has called me, a worthless user, bounce around in my head.
This is why it’s so easy for survivors to start believing the cruel lies their abusers tell them: when things seem so normal, it almost starts to look like he must be right, and I must have done something to deserve all the abuse.
I don’t have an answer to all this. I am still biding my time, trying to be as numb to the good times as the bad ones, until I can find a way to be on my own.
The only moral I can offer is to ask the reader to please, believe survivors. They need your support just as much when things are going well as they do when the abuse is happening.
