The Struggle Of An Empath With A Master Manipulator

I remember sitting in the middle of the floor, broken lamps shattered around me as my ex-husband yelled at me and told me he knew I was a cheater...

There were no tears, there was almost no sensation at all and my body other than frozen numbness and shock that were so often my friends now.

Well, that and a fervent desire for the interrogation to end!

I don't know how long it had been going on, the questions...

"Where were you?" He burned, looking at me with such disappointment. Like a parent would a naughty child.

"I was at work! I told you that!" I felt a slight spark of anger starting to come up out of my center as I answered the question for the 10th time, my answer the same as the previous nine times.

"No you weren't, you didn't answer your phone or text me. Where were you?" He was locked onto me like a heat-seeking missile on an enemy Aircraft...

"I'm a massage therapist! I can't answer the phone or text when I'm in session, my phone isn't even in the room! I was at work!" My body was so heavy, that little curl of anger -of defiance, struggled to flicker and come to life.

"No, I sat at the base gate exit waiting for you to leave the base. I was looking for your car, I never saw it go by! Where were you?" He paced, his chest heaving as though he'd run a marathon.

"There are three gates leaving the base! I left through the main gate! I called you as soon as I left the base because you can't use cell phones there until you're off base!" It didn't even register in my panicked mind that he just admitted to stalking me across the city and waiting for me to leave the military base, where I worked out of the fitness center as a massage therapist.

"You lie!" He screamed as his fist sank into the side of the dresser, a dresser that had passed down three marriages in my family... his fist hit the wall next, his knuckles denting in the thick hundred-year-old plaster...

That flicker of defiance instantly snuffed out, all sensation leaving my body, all expression leaving my face as I became as small as possible... Like a baby deer watching a panther sniff near it's silent hiding spot, not daring to breathe for fear that it would catch its attention and be the recipient of its deadly teeth and claws.

His anger and his questions shot at me like arrows, coming in such rapid succession that I eventually lost track, trying my best to keep up with honest answers, but somewhere along the way becoming more concerned with making the questions stop than caring about my answers...

At some point I became willing to admit to almost anything, just to make it stop.

At some point I honestly had to ask myself if I've been at work at all, or had I've been away with some unknown lover?

Logically, of course that wasn't the case! But in my mind, I was beginning to lose track of what was real and what wasn't...

He was so passionate, he was so sure of himself, and my confusion and panic were being used as a tool to show me how untrustworthy I was, how much of a liar I must be, to show me how inconsiderate I was at getting him so upset, making him so angry that he punched walls and broke lamps, making him yell at me, it was all my fault! How could I do that to him?

He would ask me that on many occasions, "how could I make him act this way? How could I make him treat me this way? How could I love him so little that I would hurt him so much?"...

And I never understood what he meant.

I never understood how I hurt him, how I made him angry, logically none of it made sense!

But emotionally, I bought it Hook, Line, & Sinker.

I bought that story, I sat through that cycle, I said yes to that type of relationship over and over and over again until four years later I was done.

Until 4 years later I was thousands and thousands of dollars in debt, the only one working, living with family, stressed out and taking any work I could find just to get the bills paid while my husband ran around like a high school jockey living the good life, flirting with women, fucking just as many, hitting the gym, hanging out with the boys, and terrorizing me in the off time.

I was dead inside. A mere shadow of the vibrant and joyful woman I'd been only a few short years before.

So lost to myself, so un-trusting of myself, that the only reason I was able to end that relationship (despite all of the silent screaming of my intuition inside) was it because I had a close friend of mine tell me that he'd been at her house messed up on drugs and talking about the women he was sleeping with.

It wasn't a shock... I'd seen the signs, I'd even found the text messages years before!

But his reaction when I confronted him immediately made me feel like the monster for daring to be upset!

His tears, his panic attack, his reverting into the lost little boy that would kill himself if I left him, all of it immediately and powerfully took me from myself as I felt like I had to rescue him from himself. From his pain. From the pain "I was causing him"!

For years that worked, for years I stayed. But finally I was done!

Each of us reach this breaking point at different times, for different reasons, and with different degrees of commitment to ourselves.

Some of us find the proof, some of us never do. Some of us just have to find ourselves.

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The following is a response I shared with a client of mine sitting in that place of struggle with her unhealthy relationship and her desire to have proof her boyfriend had cheated before she could confidently end the connection. They'd struggled with their relationship for years, repeating the same cycles so many of us get stuck in.

I wanted to share it here for any of you, male or female, who've been there, and possibly still are. ❤❤❤

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It's not stupid to want solid evidence. Especially when you're in a situation with a master manipulator! That's the terrifying part of being in a relationship with someone who is narcissistic, mentally and emotionally abusive and controlling, a master mind fucker.

You literally lose the sense of what's right and what's wrong.

Of what's real and what's imagined.

Of what you're feeling and whether or not it's valid.

When you spend years of having another person basically tell you that they know you better than you do, they say all the right things to undermine your intuition, your feelings, your fears, and you always come out feeling like the stupid one in the end, you stop trusting yourself.

How could you? You feel like your intuition doesn't work right! Every time it's started screaming in your ear, you've been shown it was wrong!

When you're in a relationship with a master manipulator, being an empath is one of your biggest tools of Destruction.

All of your feelings are literally used against you. Your love, your willingness to forgive, your desire for connection, everything.

So it's no wonder you're looking for concrete and solid evidence to undeniably give you permission to walk away when you have such a poor level of self trust within yourself anymore.

The more you talk to him the more you silence those parts of yourself that I spoke to on the phone the other night. It's classic.

And unfortunately, nobody else can really point this out to you! Nobody else can help you through this, because this is a choice you gotta make for yourself.

You either choose to follow your intuition, which you feel has failed you in the past based on what the people around you have led you to believe... placing full trust in yourself, and not on any outside sources that have turned you against yourself in the past..

Or you choose to trust the words of man who you shared so many parts of yourself with, so many years with, and who has become a more "trustworthy" source of Direction than your intuition has (whether right or wrong, whether in your best interest or his, maliciously or innocently).

It's tough! I've been there! And this 3rd ride on the cycle of relationship patterns for you may not be enough.

Maybe you feel like you need a few more years of this repetition.

Maybe you feel like you need a few more rides to be thoroughly done with it.

That's completely up to you! You'll ride that ride until you're sick of it.

Some women never get off the ride. And it breaks my heart! But it's not up to me to tell another person how to live their life.

But I AM here to support you in your process.

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My sweet loves, male or female, it matters not. If you're reading my words and wondering who the fuck stole and shared your journal, my heart goes out to you.

This isn't easy, pretty, or comfortable. But this doesn't have to be your "unhappily-ever-after".

Reach out and get some support from someone you KNOW you can undoubtedly trust. Someone who will lovingly and powerfully return you to yourself, not alienate you from yourself. ❤ The healing starts there...

If you don't have a source of support like that, reach out in the comments and I'd be more than happy to explore that with you or direct you to someone who can.

Ladies, you can also join my Women's group on facebook for a feminine and fierce dose of love and empowered movement!

Until next time, your Primal Pleasure & Legendary Love Coach, Tabitha