After 25 years of trying to please him, one of my clients is divorcing a selfish, narcissistic man she has known all her life. She knew he had an abusive streak when she married him.
He had raped her three years before the wedding — when she was a college student. It was a date rape – she protested but decided it was her fault because she got physically close to him to comfort him. Since she had vowed to be a virgin when she married, she decided the only option she had been to stick with him. After the rape, she continued to have sex when he demanded it, even though she protested and begged him to ease up.
Not surprisingly, the divorce is a mess. His frequent irrational verbal and email attacks leave her in tears.
She continues to choose men who refused to count her needs. She won’t even count her own needs herself. Whenever someone protests that their needs are more important than hers — a teenage child, a lover, and even her first incompetent lawyer — she resists at first and then gives in.
Update:
Idealistically, as a young teenager, she decided it was her role to serve others. In our work together she has reconsidered that decision. Her new decision is that she is neither more nor less important as important as other people.
That re-decision has made all the difference.
In the months since she has revised her earlier decision a new attorney has helped her complete the divorce proceedings. She usually remembers to count her own needs before she promises to extend herself for other people. And she has started a new relationship with a kind and generous man who treats her well.
Is this you? “I don’t need therapy, but I could use some advice about…”
