David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

narcissistic personality disorder

Fear of possible violence keeps some people trapped by misery

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For years, I’ve known she wanted out of her terrible marriage.

She never should have married him. I don’t think she ever loved him. Not really. But he wanted her very badly. He pursued her hard. After a series of less-than-stellar relationships, it made her feel happy to be wanted so much. And he checked all the boxes on her “must have” list. So she accepted his proposal and they got married.

Even before the wedding, she saw red flags, but she didn’t want to back out. She kept making excuses for him. She was a strong woman, so she thought she could control the situation.

But as soon as they got married, she found out that he had been putting on an act about what he was. The red flags she had occasionally seen turned out to be routine behavior. Verbal abuse was constant. Belittling was an everyday thing. She soon realized she had married a malignant narcissist. She didn’t know anything about narcissism until then, but as she started reading about it — at my urging — she recognized her husband in every possible way.

She finally admitted something to me tonight. The only reason she hasn’t left him so far is that she fears he wouldn’t let her out alive.

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A year later, my father’s death looms large, but I have no regrets

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There was no dignity in my father’s death.

Edward Leroy McElroy died a year ago today. He had been admitted to a hospital in Anniston, Ala., about a month before that. He was only 87 years old and he had been in excellent physical health six months before this. But when I reviewed his journal entries from the 18 months before his death, he talked often of wanting to die — and of the possibility of killing himself.

I had several conversations with a hospital social worker while he was waiting to die. She told me there was nothing specific wrong with him. He had some minor infirmities that are typical of older age, but if he hadn’t spent the previous months starving himself, he would have been fine. The social worker told me that he was too weak and frail by the time he was hospitalized. Doctors couldn’t make him strong enough to survive.

He had given up long before this. He wanted to die. He got his wish about 4:30 a.m. on April 17, 2018. A nurse named Linda Anderson was the only human being with him when his life slipped away.

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Social media can be dangerous for those of us raised by narcissists

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The scariest thing I’ve ever done is confronting the parts of myself which could have turned me into a malignant narcissist.

I’ve talked about this before. It wasn’t until about 10 years ago that I even understood what clinical narcissism is. I had no idea the term applied to my father. I had no idea that growing up with a narcissistic parent damages children in predictable ways. I had no idea that many of those children turn into narcissists. And I had absolutely no idea that I was in danger of going down the same path.

Confronting that truth was painful and terrifying — and working my way through making changes was even scarier — but seeing the dysfunctional parts of yourself is always painful and terrifying.

I found that social media is the place that exposes many destructive narcissists — and I also found that social media is a dangerous minefield for those of us who are dealing with the fallout from having been raised by narcissists.

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