Charity Ends At Home
How many times during your dance with the narcissist did you dread your home that you shared looming into view as you drove towards it or the taxi neared it? How many times did you sit wishing that you were still out and away from its dark, hulking menace as you fumbled for your house keys? How many times did you endure that drive back to the house with us at the wheel as the once vibrant conversation slowly dried up and a heavy, forboding silence engulfed the interior of the vehicle. Can you feel that knotted sensation in your stomach again as you see our silhouette at the window where we have been evidently keeping watch for your return? The sickness rising in your chest as you see the door slowly open and left ajar, beckoning you inside but we do not stand there waiting to greet you as we foreshadow what awaits you.
It seems that it is only you that suffers this treatment in your own home. It is meant to be a place of sanctuary a place where the toils and troubles of the world outside your window are meant to halt at the door. It should be a place where you feel warm, loved and safe. Goodness knows you have attempted to instil these things in your home as you have worked hard to make it a pleasant and inviting environment, a place to relax and be yourself. Unfortunately with us you succeeded to well in respect of that last part. Visitors to your home are always warmly greeted by us, cheeks kissed and hands shaken, a firm pat on the back as words of welcome are aired. We act the perfect host, accommodating guests, never hurrying them to leave, always offering a further drink. Of course you play your role as we order you about so you are the one organising the food and relaying the drinks, but it is done in a warm and appreciate manner which belies the reality of our standing over you. You pour the wine into the four glasses as you reflect on how this is the third set you have to buy this year and you are only in May as once the guests have disappeared into the night those glasses are thrown to the floor to shatter as some minor and entirely inconsequential transgression on your part is seized on and becomes the platform for a bout of intimidating fury. How quickly the host becomes the beast once the audience has departed. So many times you have insisted on our guests staying longer and on some occasions offered the spare room in order to keep what invariably follows at bay. Sometimes you have managed to stretch out their attendance until we have nodded off, infused with alcohol and a hearty meal which has enabled you to say good bye to our guests as we have snoozed as you prefer nor to wake the beast in to two senses of the word. You tiptoe past us only pausing, ever the caring person, to place a blanket over us as you then quietly head for bed relieved to avoid one of those scenes.
When your taxi halts outside after you have managed to escape the house for a rare night out and you pay the driver, eyes flitting back and forth from that ajar door, the gateway to hell that has yawned open and is beckoning you in, your despair and apprehension rises. The outside world has no comprehension of what goes on between those walls. To everyone else you appear a content couple, enjoying a good lifestyle. Our carefully constructed façade ensures that we are afforded the recognition and status that our kind is entitled to. We ensure that everyone else knows us to be capable, successful, entertaining and personable. That is the reason we receive so many invitations to drinks receptions, dinner, evenings out and prestigious balls. You know that you must never decline them for attendance is mandatory to allow us to walk amongst our people and shine, drinking deep of their admiring fuel. We give speeches at charitable functions and announce a healthy donation as we maintain the gloss of decency and respectableness whilst kicking you under the table so that you smile to all who are looking our way. Our greatness is acknowledged by all in our community and the maintenance of this façade is hugely important to us and not something we can allow to be pierced or destroyed.
Yet all of the charm, the apparent generosity (those donations never come from our pocket but from those of a business we belong to our others we have persuaded to sponsor the event but we of course always take the credit) and the warmth evaporates once the threshold to our house has been crossed. At times, as we have driven away from an event, you have wanted to open the car door and jump out and run away down the road away from the impending horror which you know is waiting for you. You recognise the signs. There is the reduction and eventual extinguishing of conversation after we have muttered some terse criticism of you. You know better than to try to argue back. The drive seems to take an age and you can feel our churning fury as you sit beside us in the passenger seat. As we round the corner and the house comes into view you want to pass out, you want to be removed from the situation but you know you cannot. You walk with heavy footsteps towards that door. We always enter before you and leave it open, in the same way we do when you have gone out without us. It is a clear signal. You are entering our domain now and you will answer for your failure to smile at one of our jokes, or the fact you spent twenty minutes talking to someone else rather than stand laughing and supporting me amongst my coterie. You did not fill up my glass and attended to someone else rather than me. You wolfed down your starter which lacked elegance and decorum. You failed to make a bid during the charity auction. You went to the toilet during a speech. You rolled your eyes at one of my golden anecdotes (having heard it a hundred times before). The list of transgressions, both real and imagined, is long and we will always find something that you have done incorrectly during our time away from the house and once returned you will be punished as we unleash one of our manipulative tools from our devil’s toolkit in order to devalue you. We hope you might argue back and unleash some anger, but more often than not as we push the front door closed with a click and move towards you it is the upset and tears that flow. As our shadow falls over you, already your eyes are welling with tears as you know what will come behind that closed door. The charitable largesse we ladle out to the world at large always ends at home.
31 thoughts on “Charity Ends At Home”
Vent Your Spleen! (Please see the Rules in Formal Info)
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
They only bother me when I make them btw 😏
I know, I think I was distracted because there is a lot of fuel flowing at present.
I know you know, that I know 😊
Into the mouth of the beast, shall go the spoils….and so becomes its nourishment.
Positive or negative fuel, or both?
I think we are referring to two different things.
I have not told you that every single one of your postings is accompanied by the perfect picture havent I ? Its just so fitting that there would be no other better picture fitting. Also all the pictures themselves, seen in a way not associated to the the story are also impressive. I always go back after reading and look at the picture and I am fascinated with this talent you have and you share with us.
On the other side the words did bring me back punctual memories. I N BF i had long time ago. Was like you said. Extremely critical all the time and specially after all the social events he used to have at his home. After the people would leave, yes it came immediately, all what I had done wrong. I had not helped enough, I had exaclty left him alone if I was with the guests and if I was too much with him I had left the guests alone. Totally crazy. I did not stay long with him.
He too gave comferences in Amsterdam for international organizations and he recently told me that he is coach for a group of high functioning autistic people and how to cope at work. NLP trainer… Etc. incredible how someone with all that charisma could behind doors just be critics. Because the food was too hot, too cold, too early , too late. Fortunately I never lived with him and this is now many many years ago. He has moved on to his third wife.
One year ago he had a kid with a very nice lady. I know them both from work and because he kept a close relationship to my mother.
When my mom came to visit me they invited her for lunch and it seems his wife told him when he was gone to serve coffee, that she loved her new born baby but that life was very difficult at the moment. That the hope to know that better times would one day come, was what kept her going to go through the day. 😓
I guess my mother did not imagine what goes on when he closed the door after the she left. I have to send her the link to this posting as she never believed me when I told her how he talked to me.
Excellent HG 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Thank you Nikita and as ever, like others who post here, I read what as happened in your life with considerable interest and attention.
Bless Nikita, you should send her link. It is a dilemma at times to warn or advise those who may be at risk. I guess most times, it is difficult enough to take care of our own situation. I have warned several people, it doesn’t help when the narc is so adept at deception and manipulation that then you are perceived as the liar. Why it is always good to back everything up with evidence. I have learned my lesson for the second one😀if revenge is ever eminent, then In Ring of fire, he shall burn. I would prefer the closure route. I vacillate far too much in my mind over such things.
Yes, Nikita you and others, have always been supportive when I discuss family and relationship N issues ❤️
Growing up I hated having friends over when dad was working, I just never knew what mum would do or say to embarrass me.
My ex N that I did live with, I intentionally didn’t have any over, p,us, no one really liked him, except my mum, well why wouldn’t she, they were cut of the same cloth, though my mum was not a malignant N. She liked the gifts and so forth he bestowed upon her. My mum and I were opposed in the notion of love, I believed it was how someone made me fell when I was with them that constituted love, my mum beloved it was how much money they earned. So. We were always at odds. She was disappointed in my choice of study, profession, choice of men and my firm need to defend others when she slagged them off. I think deep down she was proud of me, as she communicates to others and I was I formed of such.
Yes, the return to the abode of comfort and un comforting silence and steely glances. I can do not right, only wrong in the eyes of the N. My smile is wrong, my applause too short, my expressions of affection in public too contrived or exaggerated. Yes, as the darkness claims me. The night. The wrath. I sleep unquietly. While they sleep with the eerie comfort of a job competed. The plot and scheme and destruction of the lives and solitude of many others through the guise of love, protection and commoraderie.
“Remember that the Devil doesn’t sleep, but seeks our ruin in a thousand ways. “
Remember that the Devil doesn’t sleep, but seeks our ruin in a thousand ways.
So very true Kaara .
Yes, he has keeps me awake hoofing his way through my dreams 😏 hugs, So Sad xx
Does implementing no contact after discard really matter to you? I’m reading No Contact and seems my timing was wrong. Starting to get stronger again. I see the pattern of my mistakes with him.
Yes it does because we will come looking for you to do a Hoover at some point so you need to use NC to tackle that. Thus it remains relevant and useful if we discarded you.
I’m trying to adjust that to be a little more selective these days. It’s just the guilt I then have to deal with…but, I’ll get there I guess.
The bit about putting on the blanket on the way to bed, made me shake my head at myself. I rarely don’t care for others around me; whether they deserve it or not! It’s a struggle, an internal conflict to treat others as they treat me. I am learning though and it either goes unnoticed or I am held in contempt by my inaction.
Indeed, notwithstanding how badly you are treated your caring nature still continues.
Hi crystalempath.
I was forced to sleep in the spare room , even though it was my house . The times I chose to stay in my own bed when he stayed with me I was kicked out ..almost always . If I went straight to the spare room to hide from him sometimes he’d follow me there . Always drunk. He rarely showed any affection towards me sober so I welcomed the cuddles even after he’d hurt me .
Relationships with Narcs really do mess with your head !
❤❤❤
Ohh so sad. Sorry to hear. Sending you hugs and light to overcome the bad memories.
☀️☀️❤️.
I hope the new path you can now build up for you brings you lots of happiness 💐🍁🌻
This is all too real btw H G. I often hated to come home and equally so, to go out. It is awful to never feel truly at peace anywhere, but this was familiar to me as this is how I felt during most of my childhood. It’s amazing what one can become accustomed to….
I second your final sentence.
I bet 😜
The insincerity of being out amongst others was equally as painful, the compliments you knew that were staged, the touches, the kisses all for a show to others. But, usually their true colours were contained in public, in private the hounds of Hell ran rampant with ferocious barks and infecting bites.
I have seen this in many ways. Even of those not so well educated, apparently elegant and glamorous. Simply adored and seemingly down to earth, genuinely caring, charitable, sociable people. Their world (whatever class it may be) is a stage…how they perform and mould others as they see fit and appear to blossom in both their glory and their puppet mastery.
I can truly see I have been all kinds of fuel. Hugely, by being myself, as I was raised to be and after being hurt and reacting in many different ways over time. Forever struggling to keep the peace, but eventually and intermittently following my wish/need to defend others within the household changed me in many ways. Defending children who were unable to defend themselves. It was to no avail in the long run, as some of the children had been damaged beyond reach before I met them. And to this day, they follow the same path as their creators. Perhaps it was not a total loss. On reflection, some of them have seemed to expect more from others and are healthy boundaried and have since severed ties for their own wellbeing. Their N mother still intermittently circles around like a shark. They have managed to learn to ignore her; perhaps not emotionally, but choose not to let her ways corrupt their children. So I guess it was not all pointless. Some paths may have indeed been altered, by my example during that period. If only to show them not to allow this to be their norm. As this is not, nor will it ever be, love. I dare say, without them and the experience of being a step parent of such kinds of individuals and their families, I would have never found the strength that I did to see things in a different light.
Wonderfully stated Crystal, you are wise and effecting for others. Yes. Thank goodness for the light and our ability to open our eyes to it ❤️
Well you’ve hit the nail on the head again HG .
Ex narc took me for a spin in his car at over 90 miles an hour ( knowing full well I hate speed) simply because I’d asked him to buy an extra potion of chips . yes chips !
The rest of the night I walked on egg shells while he drank wine , a bottle of red followed by a bottle of white, I could see his mood changing as he drank , by the end of red I knew he would be a happy drunk , playful even but as soon as the white was opened I knew what was coming & it did .
He would always find a reason to start an argument , from there break MY things , never his , and then the violence .. I was always my fault though never his , he never ever took the blame & he never ever said sorry ..He’d get up the following morning before me and clear up the mess , then it was business as usual as though nothing had happened .
This went on week, after week ,after week , months then years .
Sometimes I read your comments & they are too close for comfort . I know you’re not ex narc but you went to the same school .. you must have .
I contemplate the same thing So Sad, then feel insane for thinking them. I won’t utter my last thought I had, but I am sure HG knows what it is. The similarities, are astounding at times.
OMG, Chips?! I’m sure these people all take the same classes Mind Games 101,102,&103….lol
Poor you, So Sad….*hugs*❤️
Ty for the the hug T .:) x
He knew I hate speed in cars . So he did it to scare me.
I was dumped outside of the car after I pulled the handbrake.
He drove on for a while then then came back to pick me up . Business again until later that night x
Oh wow HG !! This is so spot on !!
My mother and my husband’s mother were always saying how they do this, that or the other for their children. We would always look at each other, completely aghast knowing the reality, that we’d done it all ourselves.
And motherinlaw was a complete master at ‘helping’ others, but she would never give he help, first time maybe , only. Then she’d manipulate someone else into doing it, but stil take the credit haha. She had completely perfected this.
The MN always talked about his kids and how he took them here / there / did this / did that. But the reality was, his wife did everything. (Yet, she was the crazy one) everyone believed him, at first I used to question him when he talked badly of her. I learned not to, but I never believed what he said as it was the complete opposite of what I saw.