If you’re exhausted and terrified because your narcissist ex won’t leave you alone, you’ll relate to this. Anne prayed for years, and her prayer was answered.

She developed the strategies she now teaches in The BTR.ORG Living Free and Message Workshops. Lee came on the podcast to share how these strategies worked for her too.

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Transcript: When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You Alone

Anne: A member of the BTR community, we’re going to call her Lee, is on today’s episode. She’s going to be sharing her story. And then also how she implemented the strategies in the Living Free and Message Workshops.

Welcome Lee.

Lee: Hi, thanks for having me.

Anne: Many women in this situation go through years and years of emotional abuse and psychological abuse and they don’t even realize it. So let’s talk about your experience. You married really young. In the beginning did you realize it was abuse?

Lee: No, I did not. Not until pretty much in my mid 30’s. I got married at 19 and we were really young. so I thought it was just a maturity thing and that eventually we’d get past that. There was also addiction and again I thought that was a just a thing. That we would be able to at some point get over once we grew up.

I Thought Divorce Would Remove Me From My Ex-Husband’s Chaos

Anne: What were some of the things that he was choosing?

Lee: He really struggled throughout our entire marriage with pornography. Unfortunately, it just became a bigger and bigger problem. There was always pornography in our home. I think I just became immune to that part of it. So I thought, Oh, as soon as we grew up, he’ll stop drinking and the pornography will go away.

Anne: A lot of victims have that feeling. Like okay, once he can get this pornography thing under control, then he’s not going to act like this anymore. That’s hard to recognize. That all of these behaviors are abusive. They’re not going to get better. What do you think was the biggest contributing factor to not recognize it was abuse throughout those years?

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I Didn’t Recognize How Comparing Myself To Other Women Kept Me From Seeing The Truth

Lee: Comparison, and I feel like so many women do this, and this is something that I am so glad we get to talk about today, because I’ve been thinking a lot about it as I hear different stories from friends and family members.

Just the idea that someone else’s situation is worse than yours. Or your life isn’t that bad because you have a nicer home, or my life isn’t that bad because he doesn’t say this to me. Or he comes home at a decent hour. Hearing other people’s stories and finding one thing that might have been better in my life than someone else’s. It made me assume that it was still okay to stay in that relationship.

Anne: That makes sense to me. What were the things that you thought were better?

When My Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave Me Alone It’s Because He Wants My Pity

Anne: What are the things you are proud of?

Lee: It’s crazy because you don’t see the things that are in your relationship at that time. He might have done the dishes one night. And I took that one night and pulled it along for everything else. He never cussed me out or called me a name. Even though he was really unsupportive, he was very generous with his time.

Anne: So, at times you’re thinking, well, he doesn’t scream at our kids, so he must be a good guy. Or he didn’t scream that one time, or the other night he was great, so I’m lucky. A lot of women don’t realize he’s abusive because they think, I’m so lucky. He’s such a great guy, that’s really common.

Lee: I also don’t think women realize how much effort and work they put in to make their spouse a good guy. And what I mean by that is. A lot of the things I was proud of were what I was doing, not him. I would make sure we were at family gatherings. And also made sure our kids looked good.

I made sure we were going to church on time. And you know, all those things that were important to me. Things that I felt were essential to building a good family, I did. Instead of looking at how much work I was putting in I included him in that. I made it like it was his, like these were his accomplishments.

I think that that’s where my mind got a little bit skewed. Like we had a good family and I looked at it like that. But I didn’t realize that so much of it was my own work and wasn’t really his work.

I Felt Shame & Pressure To Communicate With Him

Anne: Yeah. A lot of women do that. They attribute characteristics to him that actually she has. That comparison is interesting because there’s always going to be someone who seems like they have it worse. So you think well all marriages must have problems. But the problems we have seem “manageable” or something like that. So here you are thinking these are just maturity things or that you’re so lucky in some ways.

Were there any other factors that kept you from seeing the abuse?

Lee: Shame. I married really young and a lot of people questioned that. Also I had family and friends both tell me I was too young. I felt the pressure to stay and keep it together. I think that’s why I kept it together and stayed a lot longer. And I didn’t want to admit to anybody that I failed.

Anne: You weren’t failing. You had a spouse that was failing, but it feels like that when you’re being emotionally abused. Because you think everything is your fault, right? Or that you’re responsible for everything . So that’s common as well.

I Need Support When My Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave Me Alone

Lee: I had just a few friends that I would communicate with about it. The problem with those friends, even though they were a good outlet for a release. They didn’t really understand my situation because they didn’t have a spouse like that.

I mean, they knew it was bad, they felt sorry for me. I could feel that they understood it. They gave me the space to be able to talk to them, which I appreciate. But they just weren’t in the same situation. And a lot of times, the friends that I did communicate with had pretty decent marriages. It made me feel again, like I needed to be more like them. I needed to maybe not complain as much, you know?

Anne: Okay, so how do you recognize that it is abuse

Lee: I ended up in a Facebook group with one of the members of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, and she was very open about it, which I’m so grateful for. And I’m so grateful for women who are open about it. The group that we were in had actually nothing to do with this topic. She was just open and shared a lot of her personal life.

Again, I’m so grateful for that. And the BTR community, opened up a whole new world for me. I started to understand that everybody’s looks different. Even still then at the very beginning. I don’t think I was ready to let go of the idea of keeping my marriage together.

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My Turning Point: When He Texted Me Emotionally Abusive Videos

Lee: Then it started to get really bad, my husband sent me some really abusive videos. Videos of him talking to me in a very violent and perverse way.

I didn’t know what to do. I finally sent them to the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group. Within 10 minutes I had a whole group of women to