Grief felt today over loss of friend

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on June 12, 2011August 5, 2021

Maybe it’s not about me or my prayer at all. Maybe it’s actually about them. God wants to redeem every single person on this planet, and these two, like anybody else, need a lot of redeeming.

Maybe he did this to break them, not me, and mold them into what he wants them to be. Maybe Richard hadn’t yet lost enough friends to show him the error of his ways.

Maybe it took someone who was “sweet, innocent and nice,” someone who gave so much to help his family–rather than the other ones I’ve heard of who had some huge character flaw, such as being abusive himself, or a negative woman who wanted to be queen bee and be right (as I saw on her own forum)–to show him that the problem doesn’t lie in just the others who broke things off.

Maybe they need to see that their behavior is truly hurtful and that most people won’t tolerate it. I don’t know.

But I do know that God won’t honor my prayers for reconciliation as long as they are the way they are. So I have to bide my time and accept that it may never happen.

Once you’ve decided to exile the malignant narcissist from your life do not fall prey to fanciful ideas of his reformation. Time will not render him the wiser for his ‘confinement’.
Like Diane Downs he or she will persist in their rationalizations and justifications to the bitter, ugly end.
The malignant narcissist easily believes the whole world wrong and themselves alone right rather than risk a confrontation with the opposite reality. Hence, introspection = anathema. —Absence of Introspection

This blog goes into the question of confronting your abuser. Also note the comment about hypnotizing, which sounds very familiar:

Exposing ourselves to our ex pathological leaves us WIDE open to be sucked in again. Remember they have the ability to hypnotize us and place us in a trance-like state VERY quickly. Confronting our ex-pathological leaves us wide open for re-victimization.

Part B has already shown itself to be true in the dealings I’ve had with Tracy, so no, confronting her again is not on my to-do list:

I thought about it for a long time after our conversation and even before talking to my therapist about it, I decided that it would only feed It with negative supply and could have no value for me whatever.
The fact that confronting a pathological can’t have any value is part of why there is NO closure from a relationship with a pathological.
The outcome will inevitably leave us more frustrated at their inability to empathize with what they’ve done – and remember empathy is an impossibility for these people.
But after discussing it with my therapist I realized that confronting It can do nothing but put me in REAL danger in two specific ways:
A: Exposing ourselves to our ex pathological leaves us WIDE open to be sucked in again. Remember they have the ability to hypnotize us and place us in a trance-like state VERY quickly. Confronting our ex-pathological leaves us wide open for re-victimization.
B: Psychopaths absolutely HATE to be exposed face to face. Confronting our ex-pathologicals puts us in danger of severe wrath and retribution at the hand of someone who has absolutely no empathy for anyone and who is prone to rages. Very dangerous!

[Note 4/27/14: This is exactly what happened when Tracy found my blog, proving I was right about her narcissism. See here.]

Another post by this blogger, Laura Kamienski, is also very familiar, especially the part about others not understanding why you don’t just “move on” when it’s “already been a year!”: Finding new pieces when you can’t pick up the old ones

Losing Narcissistic Friends by Lisa E. Scott is helpful.

At my lowest point I couldn’t eat or sleep. I couldn’t go to work or socialize with people. My friends and family couldn’t understand the depth of the pain I was in and thought I should just “snap out of it” or “get over it!”
I would have loved to be able to just “get over it!” But this was one of the most difficult challenges life had brought my way….
It wasn’t until one of my few friends I had left referred me to a psychiatrist who believed I had been in a relationship with a narcissist, that my desolate world began to have meaning.
I could finally at least understand why I was feeling the way I was. I finally had somewhere to go with this. I finally understood that I was not crazy as I had come to believe I was!
…Recovering from narcissistic abuse is a journey. It is a path back to the self. Those who have been abused by narcissism have slowly lost themselves. They have given pieces of themselves away bit by bit until there was nothing left to give.
It is usually at the moment of one’s greatest sense of depletion that the victim experiences the horrible devaluation and discarding by the narcissist in their lives….
Most victims, which I chose to call “survivors,” or “thrivers” find themselves at their all time lowest lows once the relationship ends….
You would think that when the relationship officially ends, would be a time where victims can get their energy back and get on with their lives. But it never quite looks like this.
Instead one ends up feeling as if she has been kicked almost to the point of death and left to die in her own pool of blood while the one who has kicked her goes off to live happily ever after with someone who is young, beautiful and full of life.
As survivors we struggle to stay alive and although we know the narcissist is NOT good for us, we become obsessed with him. He becomes our link to life and to our sanity. –Kaleah at Narcissism Free

For every spouse abused by a narcissist, there are several children of narcissists abused by them. And, in most situations, the narcissist has had the power to get co-workers fired and/or to destroy careers, so the narcissist also leaves a trail of these victims in his or her truculent wake through life.
And then there are the friends. People who once were friends of the narcissist and all of a sudden one day found their guts hanging out in a narc attack, to be left wondering forever afterwards what they did to make the narcissist so mad that he or she ripped them to shreds and refused to see or have any contact with them anymore….
Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever had a friend who suddenly blew up at you one day and spoke just viciously, tearing you to shreds, to the point of tears, and then refused to see or talk to you again? Still bewildered by it? If so, stop wondering what you did….
This is one of the most difficult facts to face about malignant narcissists: they are predators. They need no reason to attack: they need a reason NOT to attack.
Therefore, when it’s the last time they’re going to see you, there is no longer a reason not to attack you. There won’t be any adverse consequences.
So they attack just because this is a golden opportunity to dump a load of projection and projective identification on someone. It’s a golden opportunity to feel powerful by having a powerful effect on someone.
They feel great afterwards. They not only relieve their moral constipation by dumping their load on you, they get high off the power rush in trampling you or tearing you to pieces.
And what’s to restrain those urges? Any morals? Any conscience? So, if this has ever happened to you, you probably just had a close encounter with a malignant narcissist. Be glad that you had to serve as her toilet only once in your life. –Kathy Krajco at The Rewards of Befriending a Narcissist

[Lots of good stuff in the comments section, too, such as, “The best thing though is to keep telling the truth. Stick with those who believe you and for those who don’t leave them to their fate with the N.”]

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. We share a house