The Last Word
I often reinforce how the key to understanding who you have been entangled with and therefore maximising your own prospects of moving on is to comprehend that we operate from a different perspective from you. That is why so much of what we say and do appears odd, irrational and downright perverse to you, yet completely normal and understandable to us. One of those ways in which the perspective affects the dynamic between my kind and your kind is the fact that we always want the final word. Now, of course, it may have occurred to you that since we regard the Narcissistic Relationship as one which lasts forever, how can there really be a last word? Once again, this does not matter to us and this highlights the contradictory nature of the way by which we behave. We are the ones in control and we must always exert that state of affairs. Therefore, within the Formal Relationship we want the last word in any discussion or argument. We want the last word when issuing our opinion about something. We want the last word when the Formal Relationship has been brought to conclusion. Indeed, even if you end the Formal Relationship and escape us we will still maintain that we had the last word and we ended it. We will skew the situation to maintain our control and sense of power, irrespective of what might actually have happened. This causes confusion, frustration and astonishment for you, which of course is all good fuel to us.
The need for the last word is also a device which is designed to set us on a collision course with your kind. You also want to have the last word. You want to be able to say your piece. You feel that it is only right that you are heard. You believe it to be a fundamental part of any relationship that you are heard and because you find yourself so annoyed, upset and frustrated with the way that we operate, this desire to have the last word, set us straight and assert your position becomes all the more important to you. If the Formal Relationship has ended, you also want to have the last say. You want to let us know what you really think of us. You want to make some last plea to the normalcy you believe still lurks somewhere inside of us. You want to make us hear you, listen and somehow accept that we are wrong and you are right. This desire of yours to say the last word is considerable and flies in the face of our own desire which of course leads to conflict, drama and opposition, all of which creates fuel which is what we want. You are left infuriated if you cannot have your say. You are furious if you have been denied the chance to articulate how you feel. You are upset that your desire to say what you want to say has been ignored, disregarded and treated in a roughshod manner. You want finality. You want some kind of closure and having the last say as we both stare at one another across the smoking ruins of our Formal Relationship is something which matters to you tremendously. We know this. This is why we make it so damn difficult for you to achieve, either talking over you, shouting you down, walking away or just disappearing. You feel cut-off, denied, unfulfilled and this gives us both Thought Fuel and Proximate Fuel if we stay to witness the reaction.
The need to have the last word also leads to you being susceptible to being hoovered because you feel that there are loose ends which need tying up. We know this and rely on it to keep you hooked and providing fuel to us without ever allowing you to tie up those loose ends correctly. It is all part of the way we continue to manipulate you. No doubt you have found yourself in such a situation. You may now have moved on and know that the last thing you ought to do is engage with us in this way, no matter how tempting it might be. You have learned it will only result in fuel, if handled incorrectly and at worse you might even succumb to our charm once again and be sucked into the Formal Relationship again. Yet the desire to say those things you wish you had been able to say all that time ago or even more recently remains strong and powerful. Of course what you might say now would perhaps differ from what you might have said back then, when you did not know better than what you know now. You did not know what you had been entangled with, nor how you had been manipulated and thus your words would take on a different form compared to if you said them now, armed with knowledge and understanding.
Think back, when the need to say those last words arose, if you could have said them, at the time, what would they have been?
13 thoughts on “The Last Word”
Vent Your Spleen! (Please see the Rules in Formal Info)
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Hi HG
This is not a comment re article, but I don’t know where else to ask this question on your site.
Have you ever had someone cheat on you? After three years of devaluation, I developed feelings for another man and had an emotional affair. I confessed to it (reluctantly, but eventually caved in to the pressure), and he seemed to be understanding. At the time he said that he will kill the man, his wife and kids, if he ever finds out that this man laid a hand on me. This wasn’t said during a rage, but executed in a calm, psychopathic-like way. This message was repeated to me a few times.
Two years later, he heard rumours that the affair might have been physical and he went crazy. Started sending threatening texts to this man and assaulted him recently in a shopping centre. I had already broken up with him by this stage, and in fact had caught him in bed with a woman a few weeks before, when I popped in unannounced. He had already moved on.
Can you enlighten me please? More importantly, should I be worried about any future abusive behaviour, considering he does have a violent past where he has hurt people physically, over and above psychological abuse.
AK
There were several ‘last words’ as both of us seemed unable to sever all ties at first… tender last words when I moved towards acceptance… raging last words when I wanted him to understand what he did to me…
My final words were loving still, as part of me will always love him and I know that… but also establishing boundaries, and letting go. I did not know about narcissism, I only knew this madness had to end. In his mind, the bond has not been broken, but in time, he will see…
There are those who advise against writing your ‘last words’ as it provides him with fuel. Some write the letter, but never send it. I can only say it felt right for me. I did not care about fuel. This was not about him. It was about me. One last chance to say what I needed to say and close this chapter of my life.
Would I do anything differently now that I know? I would approach the matter with less emotion, and I would sever all ties sooner. I would not tell him what he is. I would just be gone.
Addendum:
By saying “I would not tell him what he is”, I meant that I would not call him a ‘coward’ and ‘liar’ etc. -and give examples- as I did in attempts of breaking free prior to the last contact. It is a waste of time trying to show him the error of his ways.
Thank goodness, the term ‘narcissist’ was not part of my vocabulary at the time of writing what turned out to be my last letter. The awareness came afterwards, and ‘no contact’ was a godsend, which enabled me to stay away. 🙂
Very timely HG. Divorce is imminent from my Narc and attempts at no contact over the last 16 months since he brutally discarded me have been on and off. I tried the whole “I need to understand” bit and just ended up incredibly frustrated by his responses. There has been one thing he has kept holding out on, all the photos of our life over the seven years we were together ( I had no photos at all over this time, all on his laptop). Eventually I realised that his endless promises to save them to a hard drive or flash drive were just his way of keeping me hanging on, waiting for him. So a few weeks ago after a day of multiple messages from him i just replied…”Thanks, but I’ve decided I don’t want the photos any more, I want to make new happy memories”. It’s been peacefully quiet ever since!
I am not able to say anything bad to him so I probably wouldn’t say anything. I can’t hate him even after some knowledge i gained . I don’t see an evil… I see wounded little child , desperate for some love, attention and acceptance. Yes… I know. Maybe cos I was this kind of child myself once..
I know this feeling. But I had to stop seeing that child for a while. So I could get properly angry at him. But I finally gave in. Our epic battle of wills is over. We tied. So I wrote a goodbye letter and asked him to at least read my letter from my wounded girl to his wounded boy. It was only for that little child that I decided to stop being the empath supernova event in his life. I hurt him back enough. As he did me. There can only be up from here, up and away from each other for good.
yup.
I said,
“DIE SLOW, ASSHOLE.”
then I tossed out a few suggestions he might try to that end.
😇
I like this one, too. I’ve recognised this need in me (most recently, the need to plea to him to be decent and do the right thing- pah), and I’ve recognised that it doesn’t work.
Not only will I never get the answers I once sought, no amount of ‘pleaing’ to his better nature to do the right thing will work, either.
Best to go grey rock or no contact – and stick to it 100% of the time. Stick to it, and it will become habit, it will be easy. Stick to it, and you’ll actually begin to not give a FF and start to appreciate the cognitive peace and freedom you now have.
Let your lawyers do any negotiation for you.
Let go of the need to have the last word, the need for closure, and anything else, like a helium balloon. Watch it float away and disappear. Then get on with your day, and your life.
When an ex emailed me demanding my help with whatever crap he made up, telling me he deserved my help after all he had done for me… this was my reply..
‘
” What you deserve is a lonely, long, slow, painful dying that leaves you begging for death. I will never give you what you want”
So he continues the game. Thank you for explaining in exquisite detail how this works. He raged at me, smeared me, ‘cut me off’, blocked me ‘everywhere’. I deleted an account and reopened it and it broke the block. Techno bug.
Anyway, I sent him a DM to read my ‘last word goodbye’ letter. I am in therapy now, have help, and its for real, my heart is closed. And within 24 hours, he accepted the DM, showing me he read it. Whether he reads the email/letter is another matter.
How long before your own anxiety kicks in between the one last word and the next last word? I think his own panic goes off. He could have just read the message and not accept it. Accepting the DM means he is telling me he is still playing, correct?
Thank god I have a good therapist. She said something today that I think, with what you explained in such detail, will help finally to break this bond.
Please hurry with your book on super empaths! I am still missing some pieces to the puzzle like how to really remove my hope for good, versus this now silly game that has been going on (silly now that I get it, excruciating until I did).
My last words were to tell him I understand who he is, that his desire to hurt me was always greater than his ability or desire to love me, that I am severing all memories of him, that I had always loved him and I am sorry he could never receive it, that his goal to gut me was successful and that I know he can still feel me but one day he is going to realize I am gone. That it was the most heartbreaking experience for me, that I am sorry his narcissism and corruption consumed him, that he was once the only one I ever wanted and I understand what had happened to my life after his 1st round with me ages ago, that I am done fighting with him, that I am moving on with my life, love only evermore, that I know all his tricks now and I can smile a bit at them, that I feel gratitude that he allowed me to confront a part of my life that has set me to healing as I know he never ever cared for me, that I wish with all my heart just one part of it had been real. No emotion, just laid out, that I know the truth of what happened. Fuel but yet not fuel. The only last word he has to my letter, if he dares to read it, is his dead silence. The silence that will forever trap him over and over with everyone he tries to love. This I am sure of. He will never hoover me, I learned too much. And how sad it all was, all for nothing. So much hurt and pain, for nothing but destruction.
Who does get the last word in the end? Is it the content, the lack of content, the silence, the love, the hate? How can this energetically be completely cauterized? Not just for the narc, but for the victim? I don’t even know if it bothers him at all. I can onky go on the pattern, the grand Bye on his part swiftly followed by, take a break from me for now, the door left open. Or is that the reason it never is, because the only way to stop this is to really accept it all? Not just NC, but accept this entire reality?
This exact thing happened to me. I had so many questions. I wanted to tell him how I had grown and how I knew what he was. Guess what? I got sucked back in. Three years no contact and I reached out to him! It got me 18 months of hell! I was the IPSS and I got to watch him run back to his wife after 18 months of promises. He loves to blame me, and I have to agree. Falling back into his trap was my fault. It doesn’t hurt as badly this time though bc I had a good idea what to expect. I don’t want his financial woes and horrible moods. She will not get a fight from me. He is all hers! What a prize!
When he tried to hoover me again, I sent him a short text message: “I will spend my weekends with Michael now, he waited such a long time for me. He was so patient.” But what would I say to him today? I think, I would do the same. Every time when I left a man, I was fair. With one of them I cried together about the broken love. I thanked him for the lovely time we had together. And that I will always remember him. But the personal devil? I knew what he is before I found this blog. I suddenly knew that he is a bad person. Yes, I would do the same. I instinctively knew that this message would wound him. And it did. The great womanizer, left for another man! That is impossible in his thoughts. You cannot leave such a wonderful man.