Help for Partners in Destructive Romantic Relationships

You are not alone!  We offer help for those who have been through a romantic relationship with a narcissist, sociopath (popular terms), or psychopath (clinical term) which are really disorders of low conscience and externalizing responsibility. They always include forms of abuse (e.g. verbal, physical, coercive control,  deceit, emotional manipulation, financial, sexual, spiritual) which have traumatizing effects.  You probably feel isolated in your experience.  Even well-meaning friends, family, and often therapists don’t completely get it and why you can’t just get over it.  We can help you gain clarity to stop blaming yourself, work toward healing the damage, and regaining your lost self.  We can help educate your therapist to better help you.

What is a “destructive relationship?

It is a relationship in which one of the partners has a personality structure with these core traits:

• ✓  Lack of empathy, which allows them to serve their own needs no matter how this affects you. It means they cannot perceive or meet your needs, if they are different than theirs. It means they are not capable of true emotional connection – in fact they would be threatened by it.
• ✓  Lack of conscience, and therefore, insight and remorse.  Lack of conscience is based on lack of empathy – if someone isn’t connected to their own emotion, they can’t connect to others’ emotions or the hurt they may be causing.  There is no ability to look at themselves and take responsibility, or, therefore, feel remorse for the hurt and be motivated to change their behavior.  Lack of conscience allows for the deception that is usually present in these relationships.
  
• ✓  Reward-driven.  They are not motivated by conscience or consequences but by reward.  And, they are usually confident and arrogant enough to take whatever risks to get to it.
• ✓  Narcissistic Self-Perception.  Whether you call the personality narcissistic, sociopathic, psychopathic, antisocial, etc. they all have a narcissistic self-perception, which will be internal at least, and may also be overt.  They must maintain this self-perception of being blameless and flawless at all costs, which their partner is expected to accommodate.  Of course this isn’t how mature relationships work, and that is why abuse happens, whether it be verbal, physical, control, manipulation, deceit, sexual, financial.

The outward personality can take on many variations and outward presentations.  One may be impulsive, irresponsible, and short-tempered, another may be calm, courteous, and very responsible.  But at their core are these basic internal traits that drive their behaviors, and they represent to their intimate partner one certainty: breakdown.

If you are in a relationship with a destructive partner, you begin to break down in a number of ways. You  slowly over time lose yourself, as you learn that aspects of you or your emotional needs are dismissed, not tolerated, or are met with a hostile response. You may experience physical, verbal, emotional, financial, sexual, or spiritual abuse, deceit, manipulation.  You are finding that that seemingly perfect person who presented themselves to you at the beginning of the relationship has become a cold, hostile, devaluing, and/or deceitful person. You feel more stress and anxiety over time in the relationship, which manifests in more physical symptoms and illness, psychological distress, confusion, depression, anxiety, panic, insomnia, loss of energy, loss of focus. You are likely to feel increasingly debilitated, and wonder what happened to the strong, confident person you started out as in this relationship.  Over time people often describe this as feeling as if they are “falling apart”, or “dying.”

You may at some point be shocked and traumatized to find that the person you thought loved you clearly does not, perhaps never had the capacity to. You may even find the person has been leading a double life that’s been hidden from you.  The realization is shattering.  You will likely be confused, and wonder what to believe and what to do.  You will wonder how you missed the signs and why this happened to you.  And, if you have children together, you may feel all the more conflicted.

You will need support to find the self you lost, to gain clarity and gather strength, to figure how to proceed in a way to stop the destructive cycle. You will need support (and possibly therapy) to heal Post Traumatic Stress. You will need to hear stories of others who have been or are going through the same experiences, to affirm that you are not crazy and you are not alone. Only those who have lived your unique situation do understand. And that is critical to healing.

Our mission is to provide a haven of safety, strength, healing and hope.

We are committed to:  Confidentiality, Anonymity, Mutual Respect, Constructive Positive Interaction

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