I am dealing with what seems to be unbearable pain- I really need to focus on work and stop obsessing about what the STBX, Mr. Mean, does. I really hate what he has done to us!!!!!!!

Rejected,<P>Your H is in LaLa Land right now. You can not depend on him to be logical, reasonable, or dependable, so stop trying. <P>Here is my prescription for you; it is a hard pill to swallow though. Write him a goodbye letter--for your eyes only. Write everything you wish you could say to him--everything you wish he would understand--every pain--every hurt--EVERYTHING. Write it all BUT, say goodbye. Tell him how much you will miss him, how much it hurts to lose YOUR dreams because of HIS actions, and how this is making you all twisted up inside. Don't hold back anything--after all, it is for your eyes only--but get everything off your chest.<P>Okay, sweetie, this is going to hurt like heck. You'll feel like throwing up and you'll feel like your heart is ripped out of your chest, but you will also get it out of your system and begin the process of dis-entangling from him. At this point, he does not know what the heck he wants (or who), so you have to start to dis-entangle from him and start to build your own life of happiness. <P>You can do this. You're right--you need to focus on what you can do and what you can change, and right now, that is NOT him! He is acting like a selfish teenage jerk, and there's not a thing you can do about it. But you can start to work on you, work on your job, become an excellent employee, and start building joy in your own life. Remember? Just about a week ago, you realized that you can chose to let some joy in your life. <P>So, go down to the lunchroom right now (or 7-11 or someplace), buy yourself some grape juice and a box of last week's chocolates, and do one, small joyful thing. <P>Come on, Rejected, you can do it! If I can, you can!<P><BR>CJ<P>cindy-wolfe@blm.gov<P>------------------<BR>Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

The only thing that got me through this ordeal was the realization that my stbx was not really doing this to me, she was doing it to herself.<P>What I mean to say is, when they make these kind of decisions, they are not even thinking of how it will effect anyone else. As far as they are concerned, no one else has feelings.<P>We can obsess about how could they do the things that they do, but they don't think that way. Most of the time, they don't really think through anything.<P>They will come to realize, at some time int he future, what they lost. At least one can hope.

When my wife left me, the thing that astonished me the most was her seeming ability to switch off her feelings for me. Throughout our marriage she had consistently been a loving, extremely sensitive person, very much aware of my feelings and very much affected by them (for better or worse). Then, all of a sudden she seemed completely oblivious to the effect her actions had on me, and completely unaffected by my feelings. It was as if I had ceased to exist for her, at least emotionally. (It seems that later I was redefined as a monster and the source of all her problems, but that’s another story.)<P>Some weeks after she left, in my scattered and copious reading via which I struggled to find a match for my wife’s emotional and behavioral pattern in the experiences and understanding of others, I came across the concept of “narcissistic regression”. Sam Vaknin says that “Recent research shows that there is a condition which might be called ‘Transient or Temporary or Short Term Narcissism’ as opposed to ‘The Real Thing - the Narcissistic Personality Disorder, (NPD)’. The phenomenon of ‘Reactive Narcissistic Regression’ is well known: people regress to a transient narcissistic phase in reaction to a major life crisis which threatens their mental composure.”<P>For such a “well known” phenomenon, I have had precious little success finding out anything more about this. All I could really find is the following, copied some months ago from an Internet link which no longer exists:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Research shows that (Gunderson-Roningstam, 1996) when an individual (at any age) encounters an obstacle to his orderly progression from one stage of development to another - he retreats to his infantile-Narcissistic phase rather than circumvent the hindrance. The process is three-stepped:<P>The person encounters an obstacle, (2) The person regresses to the primary Narcissistic phase, and (3) The person recuperates and moves back from the primary Narcissistic phase to attack the obstacle again. While in step (2), the person displays childish, immature behaviours. He feels that he is omnipotent and misjudges his power and the power of his opponents and opposition. He underestimates challenges facing him and pretends to be "Mr. Know-All". His sensitivity to the needs and emotions of others and his ability to empathize with them deteriorates sharply. He becomes intolerably haughty and arrogant, with sadistic and paranoid tendencies. Above all, he then seeks unconditional admiration, even when he does not deserve it. He is preoccupied with fantastic, magical, thinking and daydreams his life away.<P>He tends to exploit others, to envy them, to be edgy and explode with unexplained rage. A person undergoing a psychological development crisis brought on by an insurmountable obstacle - will, mostly, revert to excessive and compulsive behaviour patterns. To put it succinctly: whenever we experience a major life crisis (which hinders our personal growth and threatens it) - we suffer from a mild and transient form of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (see further in this article).<P>This fantasy world, full of falsity and feelings hurt, serves as a springboard. It is from there that the individual can resume his progress towards the next stage of personal growth. Faced with the same obstacle, he feels (falsely) sufficiently potent to ignore it or to attack it. In most cases, success is guaranteed by the very unrealistic assessment of the fortitude and magnitude of the obstacle. The main function of the episodic NPD is this: to encourage the individual to engage in magical thinking, to wish the problem away or to enchant it or to tackle and overcome it from a position of omnipotence.<P>A structural abnormality of personality arises only when recurrent attacks fail constantly and consistently to eliminate the obstacle, or to overcome the hindrance - especially if this failure happens during the formative years (0-4 years of age). The contrast between the fantastic world (temporarily) occupied by the individual and the real world in which he keeps being frustrated - is too acute to countenance for long. The dissonance gives rise to the unconscious "decision" to go on living in the world of fantasy, grandiosity and entitlement. It is better to feel special than to feel inadequate. It is better to be omnipotent than psychologically impotent. To (ab)use others is preferable to being (ab)used by them. In short: it is better to remain a pathological Narcissist than to face the harsh unyielding realities. This phase of permanent narcissism is often called "secondary" narcissism.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Sound familiar, anyone? To understand this better, you have to dig into object relations theory, which is <I>very</I> heavy slogging. I’m not sure what to think of it myself, but make of it what you will.<BR>

again, all I can say is you guys are good!!!! <BR>

Can I tell my H that his infantile narcissistic omnipotence attitude is really starting to get to me??? (Knowing me I would probably say your narcotic impotance attitude is starting to get to me )

Your reply cracked me up Trs!!!! <BR>

Wow, GnomeDePlume,<P>What an article you posted! I had to check the reference to see if they were talking about my wife. It is so accurate a description of her behavior over the last 18 months, it's spooky!<P>My favourite example of her "transient narcissism" (there are sooo many to choose from):<BR>Wife - "I think you should buy me a car so I can drive our daughter to school in the morning (a 5 minute walk), and then I can get to XXX's place and back (her OM)."<BR>Me - stunned, jaw dropping open, "We can't afford a car on top of the mortgage, and my apartment rent. How about being a little more realistic?"<BR>Wife - shouting "Well I don't see why I should be punished!!!!"<BR>Me - "Well, I don't see why you should be rewarded."<P>She has all the other symptoms; extreme selfishness, intolerance of the needs of others, using others, rage, fantastic thoughts, paranoia, etc.<P>I have got to look into this some more.<P>Thanks,<BR>Kenneth <BR>