communication, complaints, family, musings, social media

Many of my “friends” aren’t actually my friends…

Today’s blog post may cause me to lose some Facebook “friends”. I’ve decided that I’m okay with that, mostly because not being okay with it isn’t useful. It would be hypocritical for me to be upset with people who unfriend or block me on Facebook for expressing myself in an honest way. If I want to be free to express myself and have authentic reactions, then I should be willing to grant other people the same courtesy. Moreover, most of the people on my Facebook friends list aren’t actually my friends, anyway.

People have the right to feel any way they want to feel, and react the way they want to react. I try to be authentic as much as possible, even though I realize that not everyone likes me as my authentic self. I’ve always kind of marched to a different beat that not everyone understands or enjoys. It’s caused me problems my whole life. When I was a lot younger and less wise, I even tried to be different. It didn’t work out very well for me, nor did it last. So… at almost 51 years of age, I’ve come to realize that I am who I am. Take me or leave me. 😉

Two days ago, I wrote a blog post that apparently greatly offended someone who was a Facebook friend. I woke up this morning to see that she’s blocked me. She’s no longer a Facebook friend, but she is still married to my dad’s cousin, and they do occasionally go to our family events. I guess if I ever come home to another family reunion while we’re both still living, things may be awkward. Luckily for her, there’s a good chance I won’t bother going “home” again, anyway.

The post that my former Facebook friend was apparently offended by is this one…

You will notice how many (or how few) people have viewed it so far…

I’m not going to rehash too much of the contents of that post, because as you can see, it has very few hits. I didn’t realize this person was a regular reader of my blog, although I did know that she might read what I wrote and get offended by it. I have a habit of sharing my links on my personal Facebook page– usually just once. And, as you can see, almost none of the now 382 people on my friends list clicked the link.

I guess I don’t blame her for apparently being offended by my post… but I suspect she doesn’t realize that the reason I wrote it in the first place was because I was a bit triggered by her comments to me. I needed to “unpack”.

I have written more than once that I often write blog posts about things that upset or trigger me. I blog here because the blog gets a lot fewer views than my Facebook page does, and that means the responses to my thoughts are generally much less contentious. I know it’s hard to believe, but I see posting in my blog as opposed to Facebook as a kindness. Most of the really popular posts on my blog are not about personal subjects, but on my thoughts about books, movies, or videos.

I am going to be very clear. I am not sorry for writing that post, although I do regret that my former Facebook friend was evidently offended by it. It’s never my intention to hurt people’s feelings or upset them. Writing is simply how I process things. It’s just a form of communication. It’s what I do.

I do realize that not everyone likes what I do. Some people would rather I stay quiet. That’s not my nature, though. I’m naturally an outspoken person, although I often tend to be even more outspoken in print. A real friend would know this about me and understand it on some level, even if they don’t always appreciate it. A real friend wouldn’t expect me to be someone different. That’s probably why I don’t actually have a lot of real friends… or maybe I’m just a worthless bitch. That could be true, too… :shrug:

I grew up in southern Virginia, which is a very southern place. I was taught from an early age that I should always be “nice” to people, even when they weren’t nice to me. I don’t think I learned this from my mom, though. My mom is a pretty blunt person. She knows how to be “nice”, but I’ve rarely ever seen her fake it with people. When she’s upset, she lets people know. That’s even more true today. She recently told me about how she ordered her dentist and his hygienist to “shut up”, because they were blathering about something annoying while working on her mouth. She got fed up with listening to them and literally told them to be quiet. I’ve never done that to my dentist, but maybe if I make it to my 80s, I might feel bold enough to tell him or her to shut up, too.

My dad was the one who encouraged me to keep quiet about how I felt. I think he expected me to look and behave like a proper southern lady. That’s not me, though. It’s not even his wife, who kind of looks the part of a demure southern lady, but really doesn’t act like it. I can remember him frequently chastising me for being too “honest” about my opinions. He was always allowed to say whatever he wanted, no matter how hurtful. But I was expected to shut up and keep sweet. It was quite toxic, so I don’t do that for anyone anymore.

A few days ago, I shared a post a Facebook friend had on her feed. I liked the message of the post, which was to remind people to keep their toxic body shaming comments to themselves. The post had a picture of an overweight woman in a bikini. My former Facebook friend thought it was a picture of me and said I looked “great”. It seemed to me that she’d completely missed the point of the post, which was that most people (especially strangers) just want to be left alone and don’t necessarily want any feedback on how they look. Adding insult to injury was that when I pointed out that the photo wasn’t of me, she laughed and said “oops” instead of simply apologizing for the mistake.

At the time I saw her responses to me, my authentic feelings could be described as annoyed and a bit hurt. However, I resisted the urge to react with anger on Facebook, even though that was how I honestly felt at the time. Unfortunately, I was still perturbed about it the next day.

On Sunday morning, I felt compelled to write about the incident on this blog. There was a lot of angst and personal stuff in the post, because I was being honest and trying to explain where that reaction comes from. Could it have been less “angry”? Yes, maybe… but then, it wouldn’t have been authentic. And, as you can see, very few people have read the damned thing, anyway. One of those five hits came from the person who inspired my post in the first place. That’s precisely why I wrote it in my blog instead of directly confronting the person on Facebook. But maybe, in retrospect, I should have called her out on social media for all of the rest of my 382 Facebook friends to see. Perhaps that would have seemed less “shady” to my “victim”.

Now… this isn’t the first time someone has told me, in so many or few words, that I shouldn’t write about something. In fact, I recently wrote about how former tenant tried to silence me on multiple occasions when she didn’t like something I wrote in my blog. She brazenly implied that I was “mean”, “crazy”, or a liar, and clearly never even considered my perspective. It was pretty poisonous stuff, especially since she was monitoring me and tattling to the landlady. If she didn’t like my content, she could have simply minded her own business and unfollowed, right?

Several years ago, I was inspired by a former Facebook friend who kept sharing quotes that were falsely attributed to George Carlin. My post wasn’t really even about my former “friend”; it was about the common practice of sharing falsely attributed quotes. His repeated fake George Carlin posts just gave me the idea for the topic.

But boy, you would have thought I’d insulted his mother or something. He very dramatically blocked me, after telling me off, then got all his redneck friends to stalk my blog for days. All it resulted in was extra AdSense pennies. If he’d been a real friend, he might have stopped and thought for a moment about what I wrote. Maybe he might have considered my perspective and determined whether or not what I wrote objectively made any sense, rather than simply reacting with a wounded ego.

In my opinion, that’s what an actual friend would do… because they’d want to understand and relate. He wasn’t a friend, though… not that I ever had expectations of a real friendship with that guy. I was just there to up his friend count. I do think it’s funny, though, that we “met” on a Web site called “Epinions.com”, and sharing opinions was what the site was all about. I guess it’s okay to share opinions as long as they’re always about someone or something else.

Now, I’ve evidently offended my cousin’s wife, who actually offended me first, by disingenuously saying that I looked “great” in a photo that wasn’t even of me. Then, when I pointed out the error, she “laughed” and said “oops”. When I further tried to explain my point about not being so focused on appearances, she still didn’t get it, and complimented me again. Since she didn’t even know the photo wasn’t of me, and wasn’t getting that I didn’t find her mistake funny, how can I take anything she says about my appearance seriously? And why is it even necessary to make those comments?

I certainly don’t mind hearing that I’m pretty or look young, but I would hope the compliments are sincere and aren’t just said to be “nice”. Because, as you can see, “niceness” can backfire spectacularly, and most of the time, there’s simply no need. I think it’s better to be kind than to be nice. There is a big difference between the two.

When I decided to process this situation through writing, which is something I commonly and regularly do on this blog, her response was to– apparently– get pissed and block me. That’s not much of a friendship, is it? She had claimed to be my friend, but chose to block me rather than have a simple conversation. I don’t think that is the action of someone who values a relationship. If she had ever actually cared about me as a friend, she would communicate with me. I did try to communicate with her before I wrote my little read blog post that evidently so upset her.

Although I always regret losing friends– or even “friends”– it seems to me that in many cases like this, when a “friendship” is suddenly lost over a Facebook or blog post that goes south, we were never really friends in the first place. And the more I age, the less time or patience I have for indulging people who aren’t interested in forming an authentic connection. The older I get, the more I realize that most people aren’t friends… at best, they’re acquaintances, with just the barest surface knowledge about the people who aren’t in their immediate orbit. Social conventions, especially in the South, have trained us all to act the part of a friend, even if it’s not genuine. It’s that whole “bless your heart” attitude…

If you’re not from the South, allow me to explain “bless your heart”. It sounds nice, and sometimes it really is meant that way. Say, for instance, if you’re a little kid and you fall and skin your knee, you might hear your Granny say “bless your heart” as she offers you a cookie and a kiss (although my Granny never did that to me).

However, a lot of the time, when you hear someone from the South saying “bless your heart”, what they really mean is that you should either be ashamed of yourself, or you’re just clueless or stupid. Instead of being straightforward when we communicate, we’re taught to “soften the blow” with fake platitudes like “bless your heart”. Women, especially, aren’t taught to be assertive and straightforward. Instead, we offer up heaping loads of bullshit to each other, and pretend it’s better than simply being “real”… and, by the way, being “real” isn’t akin to being rude or mean. Being real is about simply not being disingenuous.

I really tried to be more “nice” when I was younger, but it’s simply not in my nature. Trying to be superficially nice is, to me, like wearing shoes on the wrong feet. I do always try to be kind, but there’s a difference between being kind and being “nice”. And I’m afraid I’m not always “nice”. I’m definitely not “sweet”, either… and it kind of makes me cringe when someone says I am. Hey– if you know, you know! And if you’re calling me “sweet”, you definitely don’t know me very well. But then, maybe you’d rather not know me, if you want to be around someone who is sweet.

Living in Germany and Armenia, both places where people can be painfully blunt, has made me even less likely to indulge people who say “bless your heart” and lie to my face. I’ve come to realize that it’s a waste of time to adopt that style of communication, anyway. So many times, I’ve wasted time trying to be “friends” with someone who turns out to be full of shit. And then I’m left with the hurt and trauma of having wasted the effort… when they couldn’t even attempt to accept me for who I am, or try to see things from my perspective. And they’re always allowed to be offended, but I’m not.

I know that many people would tell me to process this crap by keeping it private, or by talking to Bill, or a friend. I don’t have local friends. Bill hears this stuff all the time, but he manages to love me anyway. And I think other people can relate, or might even be interested in the topic, so I write these posts for them. I know that a lot of people, for instance, are tired of being body shamed by strangers. They just want to be left in peace. That was really what the initial offending post was about, anyway.

Reading my blog is always a choice. I suspect that my cousin’s wife isn’t even a regular reader of this blog, but chose to read that post because of the featured photo, which offered a clue as to what the post would be about. She correctly realized it would be about that viral post of the woman in the bikini, and how she thought I was her.

As you can see by the tiny hit count on the above post that got me blocked by a family member, not that many people DO read my blog… just like few people read the posts they react and respond to on Facebook. More people read my Facebook page than this blog. I know most people would just let this stuff go without comment… but I’m not “most people”, just as you aren’t “most people”. We’re all individuals. I am me, and this is simply how I respond to things. If that’s upsetting to you, maybe it’s better that we’re not “friends”.

But don’t worry. I probably won’t be at the next family reunion, anyway. A lot of them don’t like me, either. 😉

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communication, family, narcissists, psychology

“Don’t lose touch with the important people in your life…”

Good morning, everybody. I had quite an interesting dream in the wee hours of the morning, just after Arran woke us up to be fed, at about 4:00 AM. Somehow, I managed to get back to sleep, and I soon found myself in a weird place in Asia, with Bill. I dreamt that we both got COVID, but it wasn’t a very bad case. We were over it quickly, and soon entering a familiar building, as in I felt like I’d been there before, or seen it before. It was deja vu in a dream. I don’t remember much else, except that I do know that the actor/musician/Facebooker Robbie Rist was also in the dream. He had bought a portable storefront building, which he’d had delivered to Key West, Florida. This is some random stuff, I know. I’m not sure where it came from. Maybe it was the tequila I drank last night.

It’s Thursday, which means I have to vacuum. I did some furniture rearranging yesterday, too. I moved our new wine/riddling rack into our dining room, and rolled away a kitchen cart that had served a purpose in our previous house. It’s now sitting in our foyer, next to another kitchen cart I bought for that house. In the old house, the two carts fit. In this house, they don’t fit so well and look out of place, although we do need the cabinet space and drawers they offer. We don’t have enough dedicated storage space in this house. German homes don’t usually have closets, which is a real pain.

I’ve always hoped to have my own house that I might make my own somehow, but we’ve moved so many times over the past twenty years, that it’s really hard to arrange that. So I have a hodgepodge of stuff, some of which has been in storage in Texas since 2014 and is probably in bad shape, thanks to the intensity of Texas heat. The storage facility is supposed to be temperature controlled, but that might not mean anything in a state with the power grid Texas has.

Somehow, I always figured I’d be living differently than I do, with connections to people and maybe a connection to one or two places. But I finally got the military nomadic lifestyle I missed out on by being born so late in my dad’s Air Force career. It’s not always a bad thing. It gives me a chance to see a lot. Like, for instance, sketchy tweets by a certain ex…

This week, I noticed that Ex posted a tweet with some surface wisdom in it. Part of it serves as today’s post title. She was having an exchange on Twitter with someone… I don’t know if this is a person she knows offline. Knowing her, it’s probably a stranger to whom she’s ingratiated herself. It looks like they have a love of a certain television show as their common thread. The person Ex was tweeting to is not a native English speaker, and a couple of weeks ago, she wrote that she had just said goodbye to someone. Ex had responded at the time, writing that her “best friend” had died a year ago, and she “[doesn’t] yet know how to live without her”.

Then she added another comment that gave me pause: “Be brave; everything will be ok. If you are more than friends… chase him down and pounce on him like a Tigger, though!!!!”

Yikes… for one thing, I cringe at the name, Tigger. You see, I once had a college roommate who went by that nickname. She was extremely loud, dramatic, and obnoxious– even worse than I am. She had super long, thick hair, and she used to swing it back and forth everywhere, dropping long strands of hair all over our dorm room. She was very much an attention seeker who was kind of fake. She also wasn’t much for showering, for some reason. Mary Beth, if you’re reading this, you know exactly of whom I write.

My ex roommate, Tigger, and I didn’t get along, and I’m sorry to say that my experience with her left me a bit traumatized, to the point of being kind of put off by a different woman I met a few years later who really reminded me of her. I wasn’t very nice to Tigger, or the other woman who reminded me of her. I did eventually apologize to the other woman… which was a shock to her. I genuinely felt badly about my annoyance, since it really wasn’t her fault that she bore such a strong resemblance to my ex roommate. And yet, I was also left legitimately scarred by my living experience with Tigger in college. In fairness, I probably traumatized Tigger, too. We just didn’t mesh at all. I do try to do better now. I don’t spend much time with people anymore. Anyway, that has nothing to do with Ex, except that it’s kind of strange that Ex would use that character– Tigger– to advise her online friend… It’s very cringey.

Oh my GOD. I’m more like Eeyore, myself. That’s probably why “Tigger” and I didn’t mesh.

For another thing, Ex kind of did what she advises her “friend” to do. She tracked down Bill in the late 80s, after her first husband ran into him on a military flight from Germany to the States. Ex, #1, and Bill all went to high school together, so they knew each other before the Army. When #1 told Ex that he’d run into Bill, she found out where he was in Germany and showed up on his doorstep with ex stepson, who was a toddler at the time.

Ex gave Bill the rush– pouncing on him, and taking advantage of his kind nature, inexperience with women, and vulnerability. She bowled him over with positive regard, attention, and manic energy. Next, she convinced Bill that #1 was an abusive asshole. Bill believed her, and decided to become a “white knight”. It didn’t occur to him, back then, that one day, she’d falsely tell #3 that Bill had abused her, too. We’re still dealing with the aftermath of Ex’s decision to chase down Bill and “pounce” on him like Tigger. (eeeew)

Anyway, Ex’s online friend thanked her, then praised her for being “so sweet”. Then she offered Ex her friendship, since Ex’s bestie had died, adding that her friend who had said goodbye was more like a brother to her. He left to make a better life for himself, so she accepted that he needed to do for himself.

It took Ex over two weeks to respond to her new online “friend”. But, when she finally did, this is what she wrote:

I understand that… you can still stay in touch! Don’t lose contact with the important people in your life, even if you only talk to them once in a #StrawberryMoon.

This advice doesn’t seem unreasonable. But then I ponder what Ex has actually done in her life. She’s divorced two men, having falsely accused both of them of horrific abuse. She’s forced her children to change their surnames and denied them access to their natural fathers. Two of her children have moved far away from her and actively avoid talking to her. One of her children doesn’t even call her “mom” in front of her kids, because she doesn’t want her mother to influence her children. And, based on Ex’s Twitter handle, it looks like she doesn’t even know that her latest grandchild has been born.

Once again, I caveat that, technically, none of this is any of my business, and I probably shouldn’t be looking at this stuff… Except I do, because Ex really doesn’t lose contact with “the important people” in her life. And by that, I mean she stays in contact with the families of her exes, even if she doesn’t talk to the exes themselves. However, when she “hoovers”, it’s not because she genuinely wants to be friends or family. It’s because she wants or “needs” something. Because I pay attention to what she does, I often catch her doing stuff she shouldn’t be doing, especially to people in Bill’s family.

For instance, Ex got in touch with #1’s family in 2009, when she decided to get ex stepson back in touch with his “abusive” father. She did that, not for generous or altruistic reasons, but to get back at Bill for allowing me to write her an email that gave her a severe narcissistic injury. In that email, I pointed out that she regularly emotionally abuses her children by forcing them to divorce their fathers. So, she retaliated by talking ex stepson into secretly changing his last name to what it was originally, and getting him in touch with his “real” dad, who never paid child support after Bill “replaced” him. Ex stepson was found out, and that resulted in his losing out on most of the last year of “child support” (for a 21 year old), and destroying the relationship with Bill. Actually, that was his choice. Bill would happily talk to his ex stepson anytime. Also, I suspect that the relationship would have been ruined, anyway, since it appears that ex stepson was only interested in money.

More recently, she got back in touch with Bill’s bereaved stepmother, showing up at her house with Bill’s long lost older daughter in tow, as well as her daughter with #3. She wasn’t there just to visit, though. She was there because she wanted money and “stuff”, even going as far as giving SMIL packaging materials so she could box up things to send to Ex– “to pass down” (or sell on eBay). Ex doesn’t have any shame, and she never forgets a previous source of supply. So she always shows up again, somehow. I feel pretty certain that if I were to divorce Bill or die, she would try to make nice with him. She is very practiced at trying to get back into people’s good graces, even when she’s practically blown up proverbial bridges with dynamite!

I know I shouldn’t be surprised that Ex knows what the “right” thing to say or write is. She’s always willing to “make amends”. It sounds wise not to lose touch with the “important” people in one’s life. And her two ex husbands, no doubt, were important people in her life, so she doesn’t lose touch… even if she doesn’t actually speak to them. Like most narcissists, she uses other people to do the dirty work. She stayed in touch with people in #1’s family and used him to hurt Bill when he dared to defy her orders. And she’s stayed in contact with Bill’s stepmother, so she can keep tabs on Bill and exploit her for money, material goods, and narcissistic supply. You can bet it will happen again, as long as these folks allow her any contact.

I could ignore her, like I did for years… but either way, she really won’t be ignored. As long as younger daughter is talking to Bill, she will be around… So like it or not, we will have to stay vigilant. Kind of like June in The Handmaid’s Tale.

“You will never be free of me.”
“You don’t deserve to make amends to anyone.”

But she also stays in touch with celebrities… and she has no shame about asking them for stuff, too…

…could you please share with anyone you think might be interested in helping us. Our next expenditure will be a service puppy’s training. I found a place to get a puppy (I hope), but need to pay $12k for the training! Och aye!!!! Our needs are great & friends few.

and

Can you help Autistic wanderer NEEDS fence on the Generosity Network? Every little bit helps!

and

Congratulations on this honor! Coach Sam, could you please, please, please, recommend a point of contact at the conservatory for my daughter who wants to do a study abroad in acting and learning to do more types of voices?

and

Puppy breath is the BEST!!! I cannot wait until we can afford to get a service puppy for my autistic son!!! I know it will be life changing. I just know it!

I really hope she doesn’t get a puppy. I know what happens to living beings who are under her care. They all end up abused and eventually discarded… then hoovered. Fortunately, I also know that most of her big ideas are either overcome by events, or usurped by other shiny passions and whims. That gives me some comfort about the puppy, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s sketchy as hell. When she tries to “stay in touch” or “make amends”, it’s never for friendship or familial love. It’s because people are tools for her agenda. It’s a chilling thought, isn’t it? Makes me cringe.

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mental health, narcissists, psychology, relationships

“To have good friends, you must BE a good friend…”

When I was a junior at Longwood College (now Longwood University), I had a really nice roommate named Angie. I went through many roommates when I was in college– I think seven, in all. Angie and I got along the best; she was a very considerate person. I remember telling her I was really glad we were such good friends. And I remember that Angie said, “To have good friends, you must BE a good friend.” I was honored that she ever thought of me in that way, although I think that a lot of bad people wind up with good people in their lives.

I wish I could report that Angie and I are still in touch, but she sort of dropped off the face of the earth at some point around 2007. I don’t think she ever bothered with social media, which makes her smarter than a lot of people, including yours truly. I sometimes think about her and wonder how she is. I hope she’s doing well. I’m thinking of Angie this morning as I ponder something I saw on Ex’s Twitter feed this morning.

Although I think that in a perfect world, Angie’s quote would work well, I know for a fact that a lot of good people are super attractive to narcissists. Because many good people are more empathic than other people are, a lot of really selfish, mean-spirited, exploitative people do end up with good people in their spheres. Since empathic people are so concerned about the welfare of others, they wind up trapped in toxic relationships with narcissists. Even when a good person recognizes that they are being victimized by someone with nefarious intentions, they often still get trapped in situations in which no one can win.

Narcissists are experts at DARVO– that is Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. When they get called out for doing something shitty, they frequently gaslight their victims. Most narcissists, especially ones as old as Ex is, are very practiced at turning around an accusation so that the person being wronged and having the courage to speak up, ends up being the one who is demonized.

A couple of days ago, I posted about how narcissists will take revenge on those who hold them accountable. I wrote about how I think that the Sussexes may try to get even with the British Royal Family by becoming estranged and withholding access to the young Sussex children. That may or may not happen– as the British Royal Family is pretty powerful. However, I have also seen this dynamic happen in less famous and powerful families. One parent in a narcissistic family system feels entitled to weaponize the children and keep them from the other parent, or the opposing parent’s extended family. This is a means of temporarily maintaining control.

Of course, that happened to Bill, and when he tried to confront Ex about it, she accused him of being a terrible person who horribly abused her and their children. The reality is, he simply couldn’t take Ex’s abuse anymore. He didn’t want to live in poverty, do low-paid, second and third shift assembly line work in factories, and have his life completely controlled by a woman whose personality seemed to change by the hour. He didn’t want to deal with a woman who treated him like a sexual predator, when he couldn’t be further from being an abuser. In fact, the opposite was true. Most of all, he didn’t want to be married to someone who didn’t love and accept him for who he is. Ex wanted someone else, and she was constantly trying to get Bill to change who he was to suit her whims. Even when he did something different, Ex wasn’t satisfied. She would accuse him of trying to be cool, or something like that. Above all, her shit never stinks. It’s always someone else’s fault when something isn’t right.

My old friend, Ken Turetzky, has a great song about the “her shit don’t stink” phenomenon.

So, as you can see, Ex isn’t a good friend. And, it appears that she doesn’t have any good friends, either. This was what she lamented about on Twitter today.

It IS sad… and she’s right that she doesn’t trust people. But aside from that, in order to have good friends, you have to BE a good friend.

To be a good friend, you have to have good intentions. You can’t look at people and determine their worth only in terms of what they can do for you, or how they might influence other people. A quality friendship is based on mutual respect and admiration, honesty, and genuine regard and concern. There must be give and take, fairness, and consideration for the other person. I know for a fact, Ex isn’t a good friend. She doesn’t have consideration for other people. She is good enough at FAKING concern, but only toward people who don’t know her. Those who do get into her “inner circle” are eventually abused. And when they’ve had enough abuse and try to back away from the relationship, she accuses THEM of being abusive.

Unfortunately, if a person has been trapped in an abusive system like that long enough, their thinking can get distorted and they can experience “trauma bonding”. That is, the victim can attach to their abuser, not because the abuser is good to them, but because they are chasing the “high” of the good times, and they think they either “deserve” the abuse, or they can’t live without the abuser. Narcissistic abusers can be very charismatic and charming, and they can be convincing as they make the case that they’re victims. They are also very good at being threatening and foreboding. A narcissist won’t hesitate to tell a victim that if they leave the relationship, they’ll be left with nothing.

When I first met Bill, he made many alarming statements about his relationship with Ex. She had him believing that he was dangerous, and that he’d profoundly harmed her. He believed that the divorce was his fault, and he was sure that I would see the situation in the same way Ex presented it. But the more I got to know him, the more I realized that he is not an abuser at all. He’s an empath, and a very good friend to those who will allow him to be a friend. Although we do have occasional spats, they’re usually caused because he doesn’t want to be assertive and explicitly define his needs, not because he’s a mean, abusive person. And now that Bill talks to his daughter, we can see that he never was the whole problem. Ex treats her children– who are in her inner circle, at least for a time– just as badly as she treats her husbands. And I’m sure that if she ever has had a friend who got close, that friend was treated similarly badly. Ex keeps her relationships superficial for good reason. Because beneath the surface, it’s really ugly.

Hell, I have even experienced trauma bonding myself. A few years ago, I actually was against moving out of the house we rented from a very high-conflict landlady, because I worried that the next landlord could be even worse than she was. At least I knew what to expect from her, right? Of course, now I know that my thinking was skewed by four years of psychofuckery, and dealing with this very intrusive, manipulative, and controlling person whose dealings with us were dishonest and exploitative. Our current landlord is nowhere near as disrespectful and unfair as she was. Yes, we pay much more rent, but it’s totally worth it, because it’s a much nicer house, and we get to maintain our dignity and privacy. But I still marvel at how I had initially balked at moving because I was scared. That’s a form of trauma bonding.

The same “trauma bonding” dynamic happens in abusive friendships, marriages, employment, and romantic relationships. Narcissistic abusers can’t risk letting anyone get close, because then they will see the mess that lurks under the facade. It would be one thing if Ex was open to allowing someone to help her clean up the mess, but she can’t do that. She doesn’t trust anyone, and is fixated on a false reality that she’s created, because reality, to her, is simply too painful to acknowledge.

Likewise, now, when I look back on the four year period in which we rented a home from a high-conflict landlady, I realize that just like Ex, our former landlady was very focused on the external. Every project she undertook was about curb appeal and surface image. She never did anything, at least while we were living there, that would improve the actual experience of living in that house. We weren’t important, because we were already in the “inner circle”, and ripe for abuse. She wanted to attract new victims for when we were discarded. So all upgrading projects that were done while we were living in that house were done for cosmetic appeal or the landlady’s convenience. Moreover, it didn’t matter to her if we were inconvenienced as she completed these projects. I did read that after we left, and before she got new tenants, she updated a few things in the house– probably using the money that she illegally tried to rip off from us. But I’m sure those upgrades were minimal and mostly cosmetic. I doubt, for instance, that she bothered to put in a modern toilet that didn’t backup all the time. Instead, she got a new dishwasher. Dishwashers are great, but toilets are essential, and I think that having a toilet that doesn’t take two or three flushes to clear would be better than having a spiffy new dishwasher.

So anyway, I don’t think that Ex is a good friend, even on a casual basis. She isn’t capable of being a good friend, because she is much too fixated on herself. She’s not a good partner or a good parent, either, for the same reason. She was never able to psychologically mature beyond early adolescence. It’s really sad, actually. I would almost feel sorry for her, except that I know she has hurt people I love. Aside from that, I actually think that it’s rare to have a lot of extremely true friends who are very loyal. Those types of relationships are very special, and they have to be nurtured. That’s why I tend to hang out with dogs. 😉

Noyzi is a pretty good friend.
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