This “winning” over narcissists is not really winning

Several years ago, I feared the merger of my church with my narcissistic abusers’ church.  At the time, it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen.

Meanwhile, my abusers found my blog and decided to threaten me and start stalking me at church.  However, their threats soon fell away and turned to nothing, until the only “stalking” they do now is to read my blog once in a while.

As for the merger, it did finally happen last year.  I was afraid they would start coming to my church all the time.  Thankfully, however, they did not.  I have not seen them at my church in several years, even though I occasionally see them in the church website stats.  Their church had no services for a few years, so I guess they go wherever they’ve been going for the past several years, if anywhere at all.  When I do see them in the church stats, it’s usually around a major holiday such as Christmas or Easter.  If they’ve been to my church, it’s been on a day I wasn’t there.

But this time around, I saw no sign of them at all in the stats even around Easter.  I guess they’ve moved on.  The threat is long over.  Yes, it’s a huge relief, and yes, I am glad about that.

But I have to be careful.  I must not gloat or feel like I’ve “won.”  Nobody has “won” here.  The best outcome of this whole situation would’ve been repentance and reconciliation.

People say narcissists don’t repent and it’s better not to reconcile with them.  Still, my faith–and, apparently, current research–say that narcissists can sometimes choose to repent and work on eradicating their narcissism.  The victim of a narcissist needs to be careful, though, because oftentimes an apparent repentance is actually a ruse to manipulate the victim.  I’ve been through that in the past, too, with an abusive ex.  Though years later, he did finally regret what he did.

But I’ve also experienced, again and again, past bullies or abusers apologizing to me.  Maybe I find them on Facebook or at a class reunion, and they are nothing now like the mean person I remember.  Time and growing up led to their apologies, which I did not seek out.

So a part of me can continue to hope that one day Richard and Tracy will repent and try to make things right, though it’s just in back of my mind now, not something I’m “waiting” for.  And while yes, it is a relief to not deal with them except as information in my blog stats, I still need to look at the situation with sadness that it was not resolved in a proper, Christian manner.  And also sadness that a friendship I poured so much of myself into, that meant so much to me–meant nothing at all to him.

There is no “winning” here.  The ultimate goal is salvation for all parties, not beating a narc.