Exercise 1a:
Managing the Memories

I assume that if you’re here reading and working in this workbook, you must certainly have an idea of how the narcissist behaves and manipulates. Consequently, most of the exercises created for this book are about understanding (not to be confused with excusing) those behaviors and putting the relationship, as a whole, in its proper perspective. It would be great if this was the type of relationship we could just end without ever looking back but that’s not the case. A narcissistic/sociopathic partner is like no other and to experience one makes never looking back nearly impossible. That being said, it’s how you look back and how you choose to manage the memories that count when you’re trying to recover and that’s what this first exercise will be about.

When we leave or get discarded by a narcissistic partner or by someone we care about who has a narcissistic personality, we are often so crippled by the loss that we tend to forget just how awful he or she really was. We develop a type of relationship amnesia that I personally feel is more a symptom of narcissistic emotional abuse than it is, on our part, a conscious decision to forget. Much of this book, as you will see, is about reminding you of that awfulness lest you have a permanent lapse in memory and – God forbid – allow the monster back in your life. I know, first-hand, what the repercussions are of that particular memory lapse, having willfully allowed my ex-monster’s re-entry into my life probably a thousand times in 13-years. My hope is that, by working through the exercises in this workbook, we can eliminate the probability or our ever doing it again!

The unavailable man, psychopath, sociopath, narcissist – whatever you want to call him (because, to me, they’re all the same) – is a very passive-aggressive individual with all the time in the world to wreck your life. A normal person simply doesn’t have the same kind of time on their hands. In the beginning of the relationship, the signs and behaviors of the narcissistic disorder are deliberately subtle, complicating the whole damn thing for the victim and giving the narcissist exactly what he wants. It’s all part of a very methodical calculation connected to the pathological relationship agenda that most toxic people – and especially narcissists – live and “love” by. Unfortunately, those who were initially deceived by and now love these individuals do not typically discover what’s happened until it’s emotionally too late to break away easily. This is why I can say with great conviction that you can start from whatever point you happen to be in the relationship. It is never too early and it is certainly never too late.

Since dropping the mask or even letting it slip slightly too often too soon - especially during the all-important honeymoon, love-bombing stage – would certainly thwart the plans of his agenda, the narcissist has learned how to spread his work out over a long period time. This is no problem for the narcissist because everything he does is a means to an end and waiting is just part of the process. When my online investigations finally panned out and I figured out what was going on, I was already seven years or eight years in and I thought I could fix it. I read through list after list of behaviors and was continually flabbergasted (and sickened) how everything matched with the events I’d been suffering through. Even now, I still think it’s a crazy thing. But what’s even crazier than all of that is the phenomenon of forgetting how awful he is once he’s gone. I don’t know what psychologists call it but I call it relationship amnesia and it’s very real. It’s what keeps us going back for more pain every time the narcissist comes calling. To me, it’s so very important that we keep what he is and what he does in the forefront of our minds as we try to recover……as we regroup within ourselves and find our way back to some semblance of sanity.

Now, the list that I use as part of this exercise is one that some of you may recognize from When Love Is a Lie. Although I use it again for this book, it’s being presented with a much different purpose. Whereas my first book provided the list as a way to help the reader recognize the signs of narcissism, in this book it is being used as a way to help you remember exactly what it is that we’re trying to recover from and why your guy fits the bill.

Again, because I’m doing the work right along with you, you’ll always see my example in shaded grey italics preceding the bold sentences that indicate the reader’s work area. For this exercise, I’d like you to read through each item on the list and write down an example from your relationship where the ex (or current partner) acted (or acts) exactly as the narcissistic agenda dictates.

So, are you ready? Let’s see how well we resonate with the following list of narcissistic behaviors and expectations: