Let’s Talk About Ex, Baby
When you entangle with our kind in a romantic dynamic it is very rare indeed if you do not find yourself hearing about our ex. Whether it is the ex-wife, the ex-boyfriend or the ex-partner, the subject of the ex is one which will appear with considerable frequency. Indeed, you may not even meet this person but you will feel that you know them almost as well as you know yourself, the amount of time we spend talking about them to you.
At the outset of your ensnarement, it is highly likely that we were already in a romantic relationship with somebody. You may not initially be told about them, we may reference them because we utilise their existence as a magnifying factor to increase our opportunity to draw fuel from you and to bind you to us. It might be that their existence is referred to once you are ensnared, when we instinctively realise that you will not back away or we may refer to them almost as an afterthought when we have dis -engaged from them and made you the Intimate Partner Primary Source.
Whether we tell you the truth that we are married or we keep the existence of a significant other until afterwards and then we fudge precisely when we broke up with them, it is not a matter we consider as especially relevant. What matters to us is that we will keep telling you about them.
During your golden period, be it when we have targeted and seduced you or when we have embedded you, the ex will be painted well and truly black. We will tell you how this person is a truly terrible person. The immediate ex (or he or she who is about to become the ex) is the person spoken about the most, but other exes may well make an appearance too, especially if we want to portray ourselves as a super hero for enduring them or poor done to martyr. The ex or exes will attract one (or more) of the following labels:-
- Crazy Bitch – she is wild, unpredictable and clearly cuckoo for coco pops. We tried to help, to be understanding and make them see that there was something wrong with them, but despite our best endeavours she just could not see it. She had no insight and whatever we did was thrown back in our faces;
- Controlling Ogre; – he never let us do anything. Always checking where we were, who we were with, what we had been doing, we felt like an tracking device had been placed on us and everything we wanted to do was a battle beforehand;
- Addict – whether it was drink, benzos, weed, expensiv shopping habitse, gambling, junk food, it did not matter, this person had a terrible addiction which of course we tried to help them with but they would not be helped;
- Jealous Lunatic – he was always accusing us of having affairs, seeing other men, flirting and being obsessed with the attention of others;
- A Narcissist – the ex was definitely one of these (we might have read about it and it sounds good or the ex actually called us one so we threw it back in their face) and this meant he or she was an awful person to us, oh the stories we could tell you about this terrible condition and indeed we will;
- Violent Abuser – he or she would attack me, I had to call the police so many times to deal with them, a passer by once had to rescue me after he started to punch me in the street, I am a big fellow so I can handle myself but it was still unpleasant to have someone you love kick you in the balls
- Obsessed – she just would not give me any space to myself and even now, even though I have told her that it is over, she will not leave me alone, I don’t mean to frighten you but she is probably stalking me at the moment, she just cannot seem to accept that it is at an end
- Criminal – he was up to all manner of criminal enterprises, stealing cars, selling drugs, burglary, it was just too much. I don’t know why he did all of this when I was earning enough money for the two of us but he just kept going and in the end it was too much when he tried to get me involved;
- Addams Family – she was just odd. Her family had to be with us all the time. We moved in with them to save rent but then when we finally got somewhere of our own, every time I got in from work some member of her extended family would be there and it was like there was always at least three of us in the relationship and well, I am sure they were just a bit too loving and close if you know what I mean.
There are plenty more of labels which I am sure you can add. The fact is however that you will find we will talk about this person with daily regularity, treating you to the latest anecdote about this person’s aberrations and anomalous behaviours. You receive a forensic examination of what this person said and did as we recall it all in such detail that you can see it all in your mind.
This harping on about the ex of course is done for several purposes:-
- Drawing sympathy from you over how we have been treated;
- Appealing to your empathic traits to soothe us, help us and love us after this awful experience;
- Appealing to your desire to outdo your previous competitor by showing you are a far better partner than that person and thus in turn we gain more benefits from your increased desire;
- Making us look like a good person to have tried to help the ex;
- Making us look like a decent person to have persevered;
- To cause you to dislike the ex so that you will respond in a hostile manner should your paths cross with them;
- To ensure the ex has no credibility if they attempt to go down the route of trying to warn you about us;
- To create a ready excuse for any poor behaviour we might exhibit should the mask slip (“I am sorry, it is clear I am traumatised after how Kate treated me.”)
- To draw fuel from you in terms of your sympathy, your anger, your hatred of what that person has apparently done to us;
- To support the smearing which we will have done as we prepared to dis-engage from that previous IPPS.
At first you will be pleased to hear about these daily bulletins briefing against your former competitor as this will serve to quash any fears you may have that we might go back to them or that we might succumb to an approach by that person to win us back. The more you hear us pour scorn on them, the happier you feel and the more secure you become. We will talk about them as we secure your allegiance to us, always reminding you of this spectre that promises to be the ghost at the feast.
Once you have been embedded then often we will then cease to talk about them because we have effectively deleted them from our mind as a consequence of the embedded golden period we are now enjoying with you. However, if there is reason for them to keep appearing in our sphere of influence (the ex keeps contacting us to understand why we dis-engaged from them, to sort out the return of property, to attend to child contact arrangements, to address matters appertaining to a divorce) then we will keep mentioning them. We will have no interest in engaging with this individual because we want to consign them to history but if they keep appearing then we will keep mentioning them for the purposes of drawing further fuel from you, by referring to the She-Devil or the Ogre.
Accordingly, the daily bulletins, smears, insults and so forth about the ex will follow this pattern:-
- Extensive mention as we start our seduction with you as the soon to be ex enters the final stages of devaluation;
- Continued mention once you are embedded if the ex appears in our sphere of influence;
- Mention effectively halts once ex stays out of way and the Embedded Golden Period commences.
Reaching point three however means you will have experienced plenty of discussion and observation about the ex as everything has been picked over in minute details. If there was a word cloud for this period of time between you and us, ‘you’ and the ‘ex’ would rival one another for primacy.
Yet this frequent mention of the ex is not yet over.
Once your devaluation as IPPS begins then the ex (or other exes) will start to be mentioned (or mentioned again) but of course all of the slurs, smears and insults will have been wiped away at this point because now the ex (or exes) will be seen in a ‘white’ light compared to your position in a ‘black’ light. Accordingly, you will be compared and contrasted to this ex on a daily basis and in the following ways as they are referred to in some or more of the following ways:-
- The Only One – she was the only one who truly understood us and how we want her back;
- The Super Sex God – he was dynamite between the sheets and you long for that excitement once again, compared to the damp squib we are now with;
- Mum of the Year – she is so good with the children, far better than you Wicked Step Mother (of course the children may well back this up either because they truly think it (hardly a revelation) or they have been manipulated to think this way by us);
- Domestic Goddess – she had this place shining and tidy, great dinners on the table and always looked great. Look at you, you are a mess, you cannot cook and this house is a tip. What have I done?
- Cash King – boy he worked hard, brought in good money and looked after me. What do you do? Nothing or you have a poorly paid job (compared to him).
- The Saint – she would never have treated me like this, you conned me into going with you and luring me away from such a wonderful woman, I hate you for it.
- Clean Living – he looks after his body, eats properly, doesn’t drink much and look at the way you go on, eating junk and smoking (you ate one burger in the last six months and smoke maybe two cigarettes a day – but it does not matter because split thinking has manifested once again)
Again, there will be many more labels for the person who once was the Devil Incarnate but is now Back On The Pedestal. To compound matters when you try to point out how we labelled them and referred to all of the ex’s awful behaviours, we will accuse you of making things up, being jealous, projecting your own behaviours and so forth which will leave hurt and utterly bewildered as to what on earth is going on.
We will talk about going back to the ex which will leave you dumbfounded when you point out that this person has done awful things (according to us). We will deny they have, euphemise their impact or refer to the fact that the ex has changed (of course this then alerts you to the fact we have been engaging with them behind your back which is often the case as we hoover them). If the ex is responding to our hoovers and is being seduced once again then of course you know what is happening to you when we speak with them don’t you? Yes, that’s right, we are giving you the labels we once gave to them as we talk about how we have been conned, how we were misled, how the new IPPS actually told us lies about you and we were taken in by them.
Never our fault. Always somebody else’s.
Triangulation is a major part of the narcissistic dynamic. It allows for two strong fuel lines, it causes parties to fight over us, it makes them work harder to keep us (or draw us away) when they perceive there is a threat. It is an excellent manipulation which delivers time and time again.
Accordingly, we love to be able to talk ex,baby.
27 thoughts on “Let’s Talk About Ex, Baby”
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Good lawdy! Dosent this apply to our masses. I had one telling me his children would only ever accept his ex girlfriend and he was afraid to let me meet them then the next one would not shut up about how financially irresponsible his exwife was and how he doled out sooooo much money etc.. the guy never stopped. I am curious tho as to why the one with kids got divorced then a year later his exwife died. He never spoke of it in any type of detail which i always found odd. Makes me wonder why his ex inlaws tried to get custody of his kids too after their mother died and he moved several states away … HG, any input on that?
The only ex I heard about was the (former) DLS/IPSS.
“She expected too much from me, more than I could give her. She is not anything like you though. You understand that I have a family. And you have children of your own. She did not have any children.”
“Do you still talk to her?”
“Oh no way! After we were exposed I ceased all communication with her and (wife) and I went to counseling to tighten things up again.”
However waaaaaaay later on the story changed.
“We still keep in touch and talk a few times a year”
“Wait what? I thought you never spoke again”
“I screwed her over pretty bad after our affair was exposed. I hurt her as much as I hurt my family. I have a life debt to her and I am there for her when she needs me.”
I wonder if he told her the same thing about whomever came before her.
My narc told me he told someone I saved him (financially) and that he is indebted to life to me. Slick way of triangulating. Yeah, he owed me for what he did to me, but he had no intention of ever paying that emotional debt back.
Sarabella.. i got taken for about 40,000… guess i financially saved mine too. No sane or decent man would do that to a woman….ever. Lack of morals right there.
Julie, I can’t even imagine. Mine was 5k and I elected to ignore the advice of many to let it go. But when I accepted he had never had any intention of paying me back, and after realizing getting the loan back which is what it was, was one thing I could get back (compared to all the other parts of my soul that he stole), I went Super Duper Nova on him. I involved people. And I got it back. Minus our agreed interest and the fees it cost to move the money back and forth. I got that money back from an inheritance he was coming into but of course, until I fought for it, he never told me he was coming into some money.
He warned me before when he was conning the money out of me that money can damage friendships and that is when I knew later he knew it would, and didn’t care that it was going to, either. Cause he just never cared if I stayed or went. It was a hard swallow. No man with morals would do that, you are right.
Im glad you were able to retrieve your money back! Im sure that was some kind of screwed up narc warning when he told you money destroys friendships. I never recouped anything. He had me grocery shopping for him, buying home interior items online for HIS house , bought a hot tub, koi pond, remodeled a bathroom, a 5 star room at the Biltmore in NC and spa treatments . All funded by yours truely😡 he had No problem letting me buy anything and everything and all the while i was a DS.
If I thought he was capable of true remorse (not possible in dishonest people), I would say he did regret it. After 6 months of not talking, he seemed to be saying that we are ‘good’…. lets be friends and wasn’t I trying to help out a friend anyway when I lent it? ugh. The ways they can spin. The lies he even told and the manipulations to have gotten that money…. 🙁
I feel for you. That is one long list. I was burning with rage when the moment he got that money, he stopped talking to me, stopped talking about “us”. That’s when I saw that all that “us” talk was just the tricks to keep my heart going so his manipulations would work. When I slowly got it all, I was just filled with hurt and rage. I almost went ‘catatonic’ with what I felt. Until I finally went, NO. Got up and started to fight him. But in your case. Wow. I wouldn’t know how to make that feel good. I am sorry his tricks took you down that path. 🙁
Its amazing how they can spin things like that. Mine would say how his dad in Mexico was sick and needed money for medical expenses and that all of his siblings were contributing and he was broke so he couldnt then would proceed to tell me how they were ganging up on him to contribute and guess who did the contributing… this girl! Same with his daughters sweet 16 party… this girl again and I wasnt even allowed to meet her in the almost 4 yrs we were together. I was the ultimate cash cow for sure. I escaped but not until he financially ruined me. No moral man would do these kinds of things to a woman. I will never be able to wrap my head around how he can even think any of it was ok. But karma is a bitch . He married a girl 23 yrs younger than him less than 6 months after I left his sorry ass and one day she will wake up and wonder wtf shes doing with an old shriveled up man and leave him too , or at least Im hoping lol.
Of course yours only wanted to be your friend til he used you some more and pulled the cash cow on you too.. I swear there has GOT to be a narc university they all go to. You did better than I did tho because I never went after mine for repayment other than I did recoup the hot tub. I was going to be damned if he kept it. The rest chalked it up to im not even going there because I’d never win.
It amuses me to envision all the narcs I know gathered in a hot tub partying away with a sign on the side (where they cant see it) reading:
Narc Soup
Now THAT would be worth getting Facebok for.
Narcangel.. LMAO!! I reclaimed the hot tub.. oooo he was pissed tho. Narc soup, I love it! Boil my lil mexican peanut, boil((insert laughing emoji))
Oh.my.God
This guy is a real piece of shit. Please tell me you don’t talk to him anymore
He is an asshole extraordinaire
I think I replied to this question in another thread a few times but yes, I am still communicating with him.
CF: One day you will get so tired of him that you will never talk to him again.
Imagine that you have a Box for him in Your brain With all emotional bits and pieces. When the Box will fill With negative pieces (that no Space will be left for more), you will lose all emotional ties With him. Till then it will be a push and pull all the time. It won’t be possible for us to discard narcs so easily as we are addicted. Either you start studying at the university level – something that will keep you mentally occpupied 24 hours, then only you can get rid of him faster from your side. At a slow pace it will take time for you. But keep discussing his negative sides all the time. Avoid even Music or Things that can remind of him.
Hey HG,
I wonder one thing:
if you are a victim who wants some revenge (the time has passed since the discard and you use your logic, not ET) is it better to go no contact or to keep the communication lines open?
I ask because for me the best revenge would be seeing that his relationships falls apart. I don’t want him for myself. I just want to see that someone new escapes him. But I don’t want to alert her, it wouldn’t work after all and I prefer playing in the shadows. And as I know him, how his mind works and as I know women I can make a few assumptions:
If I keep the communication lines open (social media):
1. He would try to hoover me – make some sort of contact, like something I post, make a comment. I don’t have to answear it, but I know he would do this, he would focus on provoking me.
2. If I go no contact (and I did it so I could heal) he “forgets” about me and focuses on new target
3. Women hate when their man is distracted by other women, when their man tries to triangulate her with the ex. By opening the communication lines I make it easier for him to use me to triangulate even if I stay unresponsive
4. So please tell me if I am wright or wrong but I think that keeping communication lines open can speed up the natural destruction of his new relationship because a) he focuses not only on his girlfriend but also on his ex b) she feels he is not 100% in the relationship, they start arguing and so on.
It depends on how long has passed and where your ET has got to. I would need to ascertain this through consultation. In essence however, what you are proposing smacks of emotional thinking as a way to continue your engagement and is not a sensible method of revenge.
My ex narc has labeled me as crazy. Shit I wear that proud. Damn right Im crazy. Crazy ass Marine. Hehehe!!! Her new supply called me and I clearly stated, ” you show up at my home and ill blow you clean across the fucking street. Oh and she’s already cheating on you motherfucker”. I meant every damn word. Its was a promise. So….crazy it is. However, Im not the one popping antidepressants, nerve pills and adderrall but she is. Along with alcohol. Shame if she drives here where I live….she’s not supposed to drive on those pills. Clearly states it on the bottle….no driving. Aweeee….call the cops and sweet ass DUI on her trick hoe self. Im waiting. Buhahahaha!!!!
My Narc was a Marine and he is one crazy mofo lol.
Ditto here.. the marines here too. Must be a thing
Lol, mine said he was a navy seal.
Of course it was complete b.s.
How did you find out he lied about it? Just curious. I dont think mine lied but being what he is anything is possible right?
This brought a smile to my face.
Love this, HG!
My narc talked about his ex all the time.
He would even call her to check on her because she was a bad addict who needed help. But then ask her for money. It should’ve been my cue to drop him like a burnt match in the first couple of weeks.
I put up with it for almost 5 years.
Clearly I was in love with the idea of being in love.
T
My thought is that most are not in love as they believe themselves to be, but addicted to potential.
NA,
Thank you.
I believe you’re right, it’s the potential mixed with infatuation.
That makes it better somehow.
Even though there was love there, what you said is more accurate.
In the beginning there is a potential for love (on the victim’s side) but as soon as narc starts the devaluation and treating you badly I believe the victim falls out of love, just a stockholm syndrome. Of course the victim will always miss the golden period, this sweet feeling pf being in love with someone so perfect. But as we heal we start to see it was not real love, there was no bond, it was one sided. And when I compare my “perfect in the eatly stages” relationship with narc to my relationships with “ordinary men” I can tell you I feel the difference – deep down, in relationship with narc I felt unloved, unwanted, not enough, there was no real connection heart 2 heart. And I feel like he never knew me my true self.
That was me for sure. Now, when I assess previous relationships I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love. I’ve always looked at what I hoped they would be. I have loved men/women but they’ve all been dear friends.
t, are you sure the ex was a drug addict? My ex would tell every one the same thing about me. it is just projection
Not sure if his ex was, but he turned out to be one.