Episode 14: From a dysfunctional family to a toxic marriage, John's story Part 1

This is Part 1 of John's story- you may know him as the creator of the social media page "Male Victims of Female Narcissists". He was raised in a dysfunctional and emotionally stunted family and then served over a life sentence with a woman who was not interested in a partnership, but rather, a dictatorship. He's suffered tremendous pain and suffering at the hands of those who were meant to love and support him. But, this pain has not stopped him from creating a life he loves, which has started with his creation of rock solid boundaries. 

Part 2 of his story is coming next week, so stay tuned. 

You can find John on IG at: @malevictimsoffemalenarcissists and on his podcast The Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel (NARC) available on Spotify and Apple. 

Visit: https://chantalcontorinescoaching.com to learn how to work with me.

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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not legal advice.

Transcript

0:01

Welcome everybody to The Survivor's Playbook. I'm your host, Chantal Contorines, and this is the podcast for every survivor of abuse. If abusers can have a playbook, then why can't survivors also have a playbook so that you can learn to live a life that you love despite what the abuser in your life does or doesn't do? And today I have my friend John on, and you might know him, from male victims of female narcissists. He does a lot of work in this space, because of his own personal story, which I think. Is like a lot of people who do this work and who have social media accounts, typically it starts from your own experience and then it's just grown from there. So thank you John so much for taking the time out of your full schedule on a Monday when you're away. I'm so glad to be here, to talk to people about yourself, your story, and to also help people because truly when you're in this, it can feel like you have no power. Like you are helpless and hopeless. In fact, I was actually in the ministry for many years and have counseled with so many over those years and did not know what I was even dealing with for 25 years. Just the discovery itself was really tremendous for me. It took me 25 years too, and then it took me an extra two years after. Is it hard to feel? Is it hard some days to feel, do you just feel a little dumb, like, how did I miss this? It's just so much of our lives spent, trying to manage somebody else's personality distortions. I certainly wish i'd known quicker. I'm sure you do as well. That would've been really helpful. 25 years. I think we've talked about this before. It is a life sentence. And when you think of it that way, it's a little bit depressing, but I choose to also think of the freedom that I now have and the understanding that I now have. Totally. Because I didn't realize until a couple years after I actually left what I had actually been dealing with. And I think that's quite common. Some people find out when they're in it, they go down the rabbit hole of Google or social media. But a lot of people have a delayed realization as to what they've actually been dealing with. Yeah. My podcast partner is like that Padida Jafari She divorced and then figured out later, after the fact what she was dealing with. And she's a lawyer. You'd figure that somebody like that would understand it or somebody in my position would understand it. But ultimately these things fly far under the radar and it can affect everybody and anybody. Absolutely. And this is what we're trying to share. I have clients and members who are psychologists who you would think would understand And it's because abusers are so insidious. Abusers are so covert. They don't come out, with guns blazing and their personality on full display. I have somebody I worked with whose wife is a psychologist and she's the narcissist. I think I served under. Nine pastors and I would say five of the nine had significantly narcissistic traits. So it can happen to anybody. And it does, and they're not, I think we typically believe that, policemen, maybe lawyers, but they can also be doctors, they can also be pastors, they can also be teachers and therapists and social workers, politicians, PO of course. That's a given. Yep. They can be actors, they can be your best friend, they can be your neighbor who's so helpful and cuts your grass for you and does all these helpful things. Remember, because abusers typically are very good at curating a facade for the public. Absolutely. Which means that you don't, even, the people who are kind to you, you really don't know what's going on behind the scenes, particularly in a marriage. Absolutely. Or in a parent. Child relationship either, right? Yeah. You might have these parents who are volunteering at everything and doing all these things and showing up at all the PTA meetings and doing bake sales and stuff, and they seem like loving, engaged, involved parents. But behind the scenes it's you owe me because look what I've done for you. Look at all the stuff that I'm, I'm sacrificing my time and my energy for you. And so it really brings home that you really, not that you can't trust people, but you really have to be discerning. believe victims, when they tell you that they've been abused, chances are they're actually not making that up, because most people don't want to admit that to actually say that out loud. I'm a victim of abuse. It's very humbling. It really is. You're right. I think we absolutely need to pay more attention to people when they say that abuse is going on, man or woman. I think we're unfortunately less inclined to even believe men. You're being abused. You're the stronger one physically. So a disconnect there in some kind of way when a man talks about these kinds of things too. But I also think it's really hard for men to even use that word. I've been abused. Yes, men can also be physically abused, but there's so much more to abuse than a raised voice or a raised handly. This is the reality, right? So many abusers never raise their voice, never raise their hand, which is why so many victims don't realize they're in abusive relationships. Because at least if there was that, if there was constant yelling and constant hitting or punching or throwing things, they'd be able to see anger. And we associate, that sort of anger with abuse. But there's lots of ways that a person can demoralize a person and render them really doubtful of who they are as a person without ever calling them a bad name or without ever raising their hand. Really true. As I think back to my telling even family members, and there was absolute resistance to the idea that could even be possible. That I could be the abused one, in the relationship. I could be the one who is gaslit. I could be this or I could be that. And I think two pieces of that. One, I didn't hide my pain. I don't think either. She seemed to be able to pretend all the time, which I'm just not able to do. I think it certainly affected me that way. If a victim is like that, you look like you're the crazy one when really, you may be just the one who's been pushed and pushed and pushed and even the most even keeled person, the most patient person, if you push their buttons enough, the buttons that you've implant on them enough, at some point they're gonna react. We're only no question human. And this is the reactive abuse. Yep. Yes. That we often see in public or in family gatherings or when there's people over. So you don't know what happens behind the scenes. And oftentimes the scene has been set long before the gathering actually took place. Yep. And then they just say one thing or they give you one look and you react. And typically it's an emotional reaction that comes across as the unhinged one, right? And then people are like, oh yeah, they've been saying this to me about this person, yeah. Look, they are unstable. They are reactive, they are aggressive. That's the mantra of my family. And over the last couple of years, I've spent more time analyzing my family of origin than I have the marriage. The marriage of course had I was married to a covert narcissist for 27 years. There are things, as you go and do your homework, you realize there are things that made that happen or put you in a place where you were susceptible to that. I guess I always thought once I discovered that my family of origin had narcissistic tendencies, I wouldn't call my parents flat out narcissists. They're certainly avoidant and, don't handle conflict well, the gaslighting is there with respect to conflict. you realize just how much that kind of stuff happens in your family of origin. You go, okay, no wonder this felt normal to me. There's no ownership of wrongdoing and I was just not able to pretend. And I think for me, as I've come out of this, I'm just no longer able to pretend anymore relationally like that. I got too old and I'm like, nah, we're done. You were probably like that all along. There's certainly evidences of that as a child. When you grow up in an environment like that where you refuse to pretend, you wind up looking like the angry one or the irritated one because you become a scapegoat. There's this level of pretense that kind of becomes normal and you threaten that. That semblance of normal in your own family, you become public enemy number one because toxic families, toxic partnerships. It's the appearance of being a loving partner. It's the appearance of being a loving family with everything, the white picket fence and the dog and the three children the happily, and then you don't, and then you don't have it and i'm certain that my family of origin looks that way, churchgoers and my dad was in leadership in the church for so many years, and he's very well respected and behind the scenes there is so little relationship, it's not even funny. you have to resolve yourself to those kinds of things and know those kinds of things about yourself so that you don't settle for that kind of environment again. There has to be something you learn from this. And that's ultimately the goal. The only thing you can do once you hit. A wall, this wall of narcissistic abuse. You can't fix the relationship. Know? I know there are people on Instagram who swear they're recovering narcissists. I do not believe that I think it's just another narcissistic trap. I think it's just, look at me. This is how I'm going to garner attention for myself. Yeah. I really do not believe that these people are, they might be self-aware, but I do not believe that they're healed. I think that they just continue the abuse in different ways. But look at the attention that they're garnering. And I wonder if they're really narcissists at all. A true narcissist really just is not self-aware. And. You can beat them with a stick for 27 years. And what would, have these conversations you need to have, and I don't mean beat them yes, really, but provet feeling, is that anger again, John coming out? It is so rage filled. You feel like you have the conversations. And looking back, my goal was to help heal this woman. That's what I felt like I brought to the table. And ultimately she never stepped in with it. And the reason she never stepped into it is because there is no self-awareness. They avoid it like the plague all of their lives. Everything they do is to avoid the reality of who they are and how much work they would have to do to heal themselves. Everything they do in life, is to avoid that. So if you bring that up again, you're threatening their status quo, you're threatening their ability to stay calm, you're threatening their ability to manage. And if you threaten their ability to manage, then it really becomes problematic in the home. And I saw a level of that I think as a kid, and then of course when I got married, saw much more of it. you find that through this process of healing, you understand what kinds of things put you in that place where you were susceptible to somebody, who might deliver narcissistic abuse? It's almost I was seeking the opposite of what my family brought to the table. But also your body goes with what it knows. So even if it does cerebrally, you're up here, it's like a subconscious. This felt just normal. This felt like home. This felt like what you knew. Yep. Which is why. And on top of that, the love bombing, a narcissist is giving you, they're pretending listen to you what you want. And they're using it either for you or against you. They're using it to hook you initially the kinds of things you want. And they become this person. And then later, once they've got you hooked, there's a discard because they realize they can't be you and you're flawed in some kind of way. So they discard you and then they'll take on the personality of another. And that person becomes their kind of narcissistic supply. I think for my ex, it was my children, which was weird. She would embrace things like she couldn't stand rap music, hated it. And then when my son started liking rap, she's oh, all of a sudden into rap music and all of a sudden into country and liking the kinds of things he liked because that, he became her narcissistic supply in a lot of ways, which is pretty common in relationships with a covert narcissist. They put that confidence, they put that trust, they put that love and affection into a child instead of the spouse, which further alienates the spouse it really is. There's ification and there's enmeshment, and both of those are very unhealthy children are not meant to be their parent's partner. They're meant to be the child. It's, emotionally incestuous. Oh yeah. That's the word I was looking for. Yeah. And that's a very strong word, but it really does carry the level of weight. A narcissistic parent, and enmeshment is a beautiful word for that. How they enmeshed their lives in with this child. And there's no boundaries. It's the completely like all the boundaries between parent and child that should be there, that are healthy, become erased in their enmeshment. Absolutely. And as you said, it's very incestuous. It's not the way that we typically think. It's emotional incest. Which is just as devastating, because a child has to take on this parent's, everything the child does is trying to appease this parent as well. So if the child has done something well, the parent is happy. If the child has done something wrong, the parent is upset and so the child becomes responsible for the parent. Which is a reversal of roles. It should be that the parent's responsible for the child. And they cater to their children. But in this type of relationships, it's a reversal. Yeah. Now, on that note, can you talk a little bit about your relationship with your ex and your children and what you had to go through to get to where you are right now? Yeah. my ex worked the whole parental alienation angle with my kids. And I see it now very clearly, and I did not see it very clearly when I was in the relationship, even though I understood a lot about narcissistic abuse, those last two years, I didn't think the parental alienation was happening. And I gave her more credit than she deserved for that. I can remember telling her that I wanted a divorce, and her almost first words out of her mouth were. Some of your children will never speak to you again. And that was a threat. It was not only a threat, but I realized in that moment she'd had conversations about this with them in the past where I chose a completely different route with my kids, actually a route I'm still working, I chose not to discuss my problems with, my ex with my children. And that's because i'm an adult, right? My marital problems are not my kids' responsibility. I didn't ever want them to feel like they were in the middle. I didn't ever want them to be my sounding board or whatever that might have been. I did not entertain those conversations. What I realized in that moment was that triangulation was already happening. That the conversation I was having with the kids was through her. And I did not realize that. So that was the first step. And now as I look back. I see that our goals for our children were very different. My goal for my kids was for them to be independent, to be productive human beings who could provide for themselves and take care of themselves. And, who were separate from me emotionally. That is, that they needed their own selves, right? Yep. So that's the goal of that. That was my goal. I think a lot of healthy parents have that goal. I'm sure they do. That was not her goal. Emotionally, it was almost a brother sister kind of relationship. I've said before, it's almost like being raised by a sorority sister. And I can go back even to when my kids were little and realize there was a power struggle with her trying to win their affection over me. I remember this clear as day with my oldest. I wanted to change a diaper or something, or do something for the kid, she wouldn't let me do it. And I'm like, why are you fighting me? I feel like you're fighting me for the attention of this kid for power over this kid. And was a power struggle back then because she was dead set to make my kids dependent on her, even from that little and it's the jagged stone and a river, over time it takes the edges off and you wind up with a smooth stone. And I think that's what it's like in narcissistic abuse when you're dealing with a parent who's a narcissist and their child, they start this very young, and it's little The edges are rounded off and then you realize you're in this place. And when she said to me, some of your kids will never speak to you again. That was the realization. And I could feel everything inside me go. Oh my God. She's been having these conversations. And then you put the pieces together and they want to converse through her to you. And I'm like, no, we're not talking, I'm not talking to her through you. I'm talking to you directly. And insisted on these kinds of things, which I think were hard for them because I didn't realize all this was happening with all the chaos. The end result has been that three of my four kids don't speak to me and they're adult children. Now my oldest is 30 and my youngest is 24, she's gonna be 25. The oldest three don't have any communication with me whatsoever. And what I've had to realize and had to adjust to is that they are on their own journey of discovery with respect to narcissistic abuse. And that's the reality for children. I can't give them that. I can't. I've resolved it, Chantel, there's no conversation. I can have no individual conversation. I have to convince them of what took place. They were not there. They think they know what took place because all they've heard is the spin of their mother rental. They've heard one side alienation. They have. And they've intentionally decided they don't want to hear the other side of the equation. Even with the youngest who does communicate with me, she's I don't want to hear your truth. So they've separated themselves outta that as have my parents, as have my sisters, as have my church. The mantra has been, we don't want to hear it from you. And in doing so, that leaves only their relationship with her to figure it out. It's unfortunate on a couple of different levels, one is it keeps us from being as close as we could.'cause they think I didn't have a legit reason for divorcing their mother when I really did. I think there's resentment in that and they've blamed me entirely for the whole thing. So I think that makes our relationships trained with all of them. Perhaps maybe if they all had that insight, it would be something else. Other part of it is that they have this continued relationship with the narcissist ex wants enmeshment and not independence and does not necessarily let them breathe. And I think they feel responsible to take care of her as well. And at the same time, the harder part of this is watching them recreate this stuff. Their relationships with their own significant others. And none of them are married, fortunately, at this point in time. The sad part is, I know I have the key to help them be successful in all of this stuff. And they're just not interested in that because they've been raised in this they've been told that what is healthy is not healthy. They believe giving the child everything is the way to go parent, and that the world spins around the child. And that's not a fact. you don't worship your children. And that's the mantra of the narcissist. You worship me, I sit in the center and everything spins around me and when it doesn't spin around you, there's hell to pay. And that's how my kids operate their lives, I think particularly with, their boyfriend and girlfriend relationships. So seeing some of that is very hard. Knowing that I could help is harder. And knowing also that they have to figure this stuff out for themselves. That I have to wait till they get that moment of realization when they go, my God, I understand. And I've seen, with my youngest, there have been momentary glimpses of, insight. I can remember my youngest saying to me, she was gonna date this boy that my ex did not approve of. She said to me, I know that if I don't obey her and do exactly what she wants, she will never see me the same again and treat me completely different, which is strong. And what she's saying is, mom's gonna discard me. And for your child to say that out loud is actually how the child feels. So as painful as that is, your child is aware. They just don't feel safe to actually deal with that. Just like any victim of abuse. Absolutely. This is the thing is we forget that our children are also victims of abuse. Yeah. Just like the adults in their lives were, and it takes people sometimes a long time to get to the realization of what they're really dealing with. Yeah, a hundred percent. And all we can do, just like people from the outside looking in at us going, oh my gosh, why are they with this person? If a friend came up to you and said, Hey. This person's not good for you. You'd become very defensive if you were still matched with your partner, just like a child with their parent. And so all you can do is just take care of yourself. Yep. Really heal yourself. That when your children get to that, realization for themselves and they come to you, you're not broken. Absolutely. That what the narcissist in your life would love Nothing more than for you to be broken. Literally every part of your life was taken from your children, your family, your, your faith-based community. If that doesn't break a person that the whole purpose of all of that was to isolate you from anybody who could support you and take care of you completely. To withdraw love from every avenue that you had known up until that point. So how did you, so like you've gone from that. Any of those things, for your faith-based community to turn against you, that's not really Christ-like as far as I know, but what do I know? No, not at all. No. It's not Christlike at all. In fact, I think Jesus would speak differently and I do believe that the Bible gives some pretty clear direction, on divorce as well. Where some would say Jesus would not embrace this. I really do believe the Bible teaches divorce for specific things like abuse in, in Corinthians seven, that there are places where it talks about these kinds of things that when they escalate to a level of like abandonment where somebody just abandons the relationship and walks away and it has that kind of emotional weight to it. The appropriate responses is divorce, but. Most don't, most pastors most in faith-based communities just look at the surface and say, okay, if you cheat, maybe you can divorce. What about emotional cheating? Is that is that an issue? What do you do with that? And they're just not well thought through with these kinds of things. And they rather just deliver judgment first and say God doesn't support divorce, and then you're done. And for me, I've had to rethink everything because not only are my kids treating me this way, but my family is treating me this way. My church treated me this way, my siblings treated me this way and I've had to go back and go, what was I raised into? Because what I understand of it isn't this. What I understand of it is not pretending. What I understand Jesus to be was the most honest person that ever walked the earth and authentic. Authentic. Absolutely. And here I am, bringing my authenticity and it's rejected and calling it out and going, we don't wanna deal with it. And so the Jesus that I know, remember I was raised Catholic. Yeah. I don't go to church anymore. My religion is kindness. It's kindness. Yeah. It's loving people. It's accepting people exactly as they are. There is no judgment. There is no criticism, there's no ostracizing, there's no isolation. Absolutely. And the people that Jesus judged were the judges. Yes. Yes. They were the ones that he had the most ire for and was the most irate for. And for people who were hurting, for people who were abused, for people who were sick, Jesus had absolutely nothing but compassion. Yeah. And that was his way. And also for a group of people that were marginalized because of even their sin. Jesus was loving towards them. You'd figure that he would be angry at those kinds of things, and he was not. I've had to go back and go, wait a minute, what did I attach myself to? What was I raised in? And my, the end result has been, I understand Christianity and I understand who Jesus is, but I don't know that any of my family really understands that whatsoever. And if they do, they've left this part of their lives completely out because they've chosen to judge instead of love, which has been problematic. But, and for me, I, it's been a long journey of discovery for me of a lot of things. One has been, what true family really is. I've had to embrace the mantra that, that family or the people that you choose and that choose you. Because I've lost my biological family and although I feel this biological, I think pull towards them. with my parents, every child does, and this is what we have to remember when we're looking at our children who are turning against us they just want the unconditional love of this parent, right? All children, absolutely adult or young, want their parents to love them. They want this relationship and for many, they work really hard for quite some time trying to get that relationship to work. Yeah. And it's, again, the opposite should be happening. It's the parent's job to make the relationship with their child work and not the other way around. And that goes for young children, and it also goes for adults like you and I. Yeah. It is not your responsibility to make the relationship with your parents' work. It's your parents' responsibility to make the relationship with you work. Unfortunately, they don't know what they're missing out on. think so. my sisters and I have just not ever been close and they're not necessarily close with each other either. So we're not a closely knit family in any kind of way, which is also very typical in dysfunctional families. It's that children are not close. Siblings are not close. And my parents are older and my dad just turned 87. And my mom, I think is pushing 83 right now. So any time after 80 e every day you have is a gift from God. You don't know when the end is, but it's certainly sooner than it was before. The things I've spoken of are the inconsistency. Like my father would tell me he loves me and misses me so much, but then when he comes to town, he stays with my ex and can't stand to be around me. And what I've had to do is to separate myself from that as much as they've separated themselves from me in not wanting to hear my story and supporting my narcissist ex, I've had to separate myself out from anybody who would embrace her. And my heart just won't let, I can't pretend my heart won't allow for that. And I can't live in this environment of pretense. Yet they would still like for me to go do that. I don't have a relationship with my ex anymore. I've gone no contact. The kids are out and grown and all of that, and there's no reason to have much conversation if something were wrong with the kids, they were sick or something like that. Certainly I would hope she would. Reach out to me and I would certainly do the same if I knew and she didn't. But you are not, there's on the same parenting cloth though. I'm not. And most of their conversation is with her without question. But I've chosen not to have any relationship with her at all. I don't respond to texts. I don't respond to calls. And I think she's finally, after about five years, gotten that through, her head that we're not going to be friends. She's offered me friendship and I don't want it because it's not genuine friendship. I said, what I offered you in marriage, I'm not going to offer you in divorce. So you had an opportunity to befriend me for 27 years. You don't get to do that anymore. And I'm not going to act like your friend, even for the sake of the family. Which would honestly be the only reason she'd be doing this. She doesn't actually wanna be your friend. She wants to be able to look at us. We can co-parent beautifully and look at me, even though he's been so horrible and the kids don't wanna talk to him because he's so horrible. Look at me, giving him the olive branch, that's the good Christian in me. Trying to, and she can say that to her church. I've worked so hard to be his friend and he just doesn't want it. He's just so un-Christian and it feeds that Oh yeah. Narrative. When I just don't wanna be around somebody who abused me. And I really do feel like, marriage was your shot to go do that. I didn't steer I didn't steer clear of honest conversations. Chantelle. I had these conversations. I had, we went years and years talking about what it was like to be a good friend in marriage. The idea of leading in my family well and seriously. And I didn't back away from these conversations. So when you get approached with the opposite of what you've led somebody through and there's leadership and there's followership, I could lead, but if she didn't wanna follow, she didn't, doesn't have to follow. And that's on her. And that's between her and God. But she chose not to go do these things in marriage, so I'm not going to provide them in divorce. And the other thing is she wants to use me in divorce. This is not about me. this is not genuine connection. This is not her. Truly saying, Hey, you know what, John, I'm so sorry for what I've done and continue to do to you. I'd actually like to, change. This is manipulation again. It's just a different form. She asked me to come over and help her with the hot tub. No that's a hus, that's a husband's job. And I'm not your husband anymore and I'm not your friend. you can find a friend Or you can find a partner. So that is absolutely correct. And again, I've separated myself from her and I really do think, for the most part how I feel about her and any attachment that may have remained, and there really wasn't much towards the end, I gotta tell you. That part of it for me is settled. The harder part the biological relationships with parents and family members biologically attached to. My kids, my sisters, my parents have been harder in this last season of life, I think, because of this. Again, what child doesn't want a relationship with their parent? That's I'm the child that wants a relationship with a parent, but I can't pretend in it. And I've had to have boundaries. And the same with my siblings. And I've offered, I've offered opportunities to, to own up to, and to talk about things where hurt has taken place and it's been met with, it's been met with more pretending, of course. The thing I hope for my kids in this. And on one hand I, I feel discouraged about it. And the other hand I'm positive. Thank you for listening to The Survivor's Playbook. If today's episode helped you feel less alone, more confident, more empowered, and more educated, please share it with somebody else who may also need it. And if you're ready for deeper support, you can join my monthly membership or grab free tools on my website. All links are in my show notes. Remember, your clarity is your power. Your calm is your resistance. You are not crazy, you are not alone, and you are not powerless. Until next time, keep going. I see you.