A revelation about the exercise in futility

I just had a revelation that makes sense of one aspect of my ex's behavior that I've never before been able to understand. 

He used to regularly bleat at me, "I need you to fill my looovve taaank!!" But no matter what I did, of course there was never any filling it. 

One of the things he insisted would "fill his love tank" was my spending time with "the girls," aka his two teenage daughters... which was an exercise that most certainly did not fill *my* "love tank." 

I could drive the 70 miles one way to his house, spend some time with him and both girls there at the house, then take one girl out for 1:1 time, return several hours later... and he would bleat at me, "I neeeeeed you to spend time with the girls!!! That fills my love tank!

And I would feel so confounded, and so chastised. <the voice in my head: "I *literally JUST DID* the thing you're saying you neeeeeed me to do for you!"> He would act as though it was something I refused to do for him. It was so crazy-making to have him express it as an *unmet* need, something I was "failing" or outright refusing to fulfill.

It's been years since I've been out of that relationship, yet I'm still putting the pieces together - unraveling and making sense of what it was all about, as well as putting the pieces of myself back together. 

The revelation that just occurred to me about this particular aspect of our relationship is thanks to my brain's ongoing work to synthesize the immense volume of reading I've done to fully understand narcissism and all its facets.

In the same f-d up way that narcissists can't differentiate their own feelings from those of their partner, such that they accuse US of having anti-relationship or other negative feelings that THEY actually have, or such that they accuse US of doing things THEY are actually doing... 

I think that perhaps in this same way, when I would return from spending an emotionally, physically, psychologically, and financially taxing few hours with one of his teenage daughters, he would look at me and see ***MY*** empty "love tank" and then reverse-project it as being his own! His own feelings instead of mine! 

It's like an extra twisted spin on the already twisted game of "emotional hot potato." It's yet another appropriation of my personhood, of my soul, of my psychological energy. 

So, I think it was quite possibly *that* that was going on.

Also, due to the lack of "object constancy" and "theory of mind" that narcissists seem to have (they lack those things), I also just realized that maybe my spending time with the girls wasn't in any way "real" to him, and therefore he couldn't take any true personal pleasure in it, because he wasn't there to participate in and experience it himself. So it, and all of my other efforts outside of his immediate physical and "emotional" purview, were "de-realized" in his mind. 

Talk about the "law of diminishing returns"! Talk about an exercise in futility!

 Today my therapist read the following advice column response to me. She wanted me to know that it's the response I deserved years ago from all the therapy I sought (and paid a lot of $$$ for) when I was in an abusive, controlling relationship and trying to understand what was going on. None of the therapists I sought help from for eight years ever identified for me that I was being abused or controlled. 

After reading the column to me, my beloved now-therapist, who has helped me through years of post-abuse trauma, then tore up my payment check to her from last month and told me she chose to do so because she feels strongly about doing "reparative" work where harm has been done. 

What she read to me was the second story, on the following linked page, from Carolyn Hax's advice column in The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/advice/carolyn-hax-its-simple-support-your-sister/2021/03/09/15c24dfa-785c-11eb-8115-9ad5e9c02117_story.html

Here's the text of the column:

"Ms. Hax: I have been dating a gentleman for 1½ years. He's a nice man, in my same profession, divorced and also a single parent.

Since the pandemic he has spent a lot more time with me, and every time I get on a call with a friend, he sulks, often seems upset, and storms off. He's in his mid-40s so I find this behavior peculiar. He also often gets upset with me when I agree to outdoor, distanced gatherings with a friend who needs to talk; he admonishes me for days about not being cautious.

I am feeling a bit trapped and wanting to run. I have found myself changing who I am and walking on eggshells as a result of his behavior. I have suggested therapy and tried talking to him about it, but he deflects and turns it back on me. He is otherwise lovely, but this is extra stress during an already hard time.

— M.

M.: Get out. Respect your impulse to run. It’s a healthy response to danger.

If he were putting you in a cage, then you’d have no doubt he was restricting your freedom. You say you’ve responded to his moody possessiveness by eggshell-walking, which restricts your freedom to be yourself. Just because it is psychological doesn’t mean it’s not a cage.

Pandemia teems with mental health challenges, but don’t lump in possessiveness, control or blaming. They star on lists of predictors for abuse."

"Just because it's psychological doesn't mean it's not a cage." Yes! Exactly.

Historically, psychological abuse has been roundly downplayed across society. Many victims remain in relationship or contact with their abusers (whether spouse or dating partner or parent or other family member) because they think "domestic violence" is only about physical abuse, so that if physical violence isn't happening in the relationship, too often victims don't realize that they are being abused. 

The words of the column prompted me to realize in a new way, as I then told my therapist, that psychological abuse actually IS physical abuse because 1) it quite frequently or even regularly impacts the recipient's body because of the stress hormones it causes and the neurological pathways it establishes within the brain and overall neurological system, and 2) especially in intimate partner relationships, it restricts the recipient's physical freedoms, as well as agency and autonomy over choices such as when to be with friends or even how to dress or rest or even feed her own body. 

Psychological abuse creates an invisible cage, similar in some respects to the invisible fence that a pet owner might use to contain a dog. If the dog crosses the invisible line of the invisible fence, the dog will receive a painful, frightening shock! The target of psychological abuse might not actually be inside a physical cage, but nevertheless is aware that there are numerous invisible lines all around, lines that dwell within the mind of their controlling and abusive partner, lines that they dare not cross or else risk being punished for in some form. Worse even than that, often the lines change or move, the rules are inconsistent or appear out of nowhere, or the bars of expectation (aka entitlement) get raised ever higher, so that there is never actually any safe pathway and the invisible bars of the cage encroach closer and closer around the victim until she can barely breathe or is terrified to even move. Living in a house of mirrors would be far easier. 

The restrictions of personal freedom waged by a psychological abuser are very real. The limitations of personal and bodily - and even mental thinking or feeling - autonomy and agency are very real -- and very harmful. 

From the advice column response that she shared with me, what my therapist most wanted me to have heard years ago were the simple words, "Get out." Would that I could have been gifted those words when I was 36 instead of 52! 

My hope is to use this blog to start writing and verbalizing more about these and related topics. 

#goodtherapy #thatwasnotlove #psychologicalabuse #autonomy #agency #entitlement #narcissism #covertnarcissism #fuckthepatriarchy #fucksexism #fuckmisogyny