What does it say about us?

What does our relationship with our Cluster B say about us? In a world where love and care are often equated with sacrifice, it’s easy to find oneself entangled in a web of emotional complexities. Join me as I delve into the intricate dance of love, sacrifice, and self-discovery in this podcast where I come to terms with my participation in this relationship and how this reflects on who I am as a person.

Reflecting on my 23-year journey with a partner suspected of being a covert narcissist, I find myself pondering the sacrifices made in the name of love. It’s a narrative that many may find familiar, where the pursuit of another’s happiness becomes the sole purpose, often at the cost of one’s own contentment. The realization dawns - the profoundness of love should never be at the expense of our own happiness.

Welcome to My Inner Torch!

Transcript

 I've often talked in a lot of my podcasts about what does it say about me being in this relationship with my cluster b wife for almost 23 years. You know, we can cast blame on our cluster b. We can point our finger at them and say, you know, they're abusing us. They're neglecting us. But yet we remain in the relationships. So what does it say about us?

Let's delve into that a little bit further. So what does it say about me? I've been in a relationship with my wife, who I suspect is a covert narcissist for 23 years. I can say a lot about my wife. I could go on and on and on for hours about the weird things that she does, the abusive things that she does, the way that she doesn't see me, the way that she doesn't meet my needs, the way that she doesn't care about my needs. It's not about meeting my needs. It's about even noticing my needs, noticing my boundaries.

But what does it say? What does this relationship say about me? After all, I am complicit in this relationship. What does it say about me? Well, for starters, I could say that I deserve a medal for my emotional bravery for putting up with this for 23 years. But also it says to me that I'm codependent. That I'm more concerned about others than myself.

Does that resonate with you? It says that I'm ensuring the happiness of others and that ensuring this happiness is more important to me than my own happiness. Dig deep and think about your life. Think about this relationship that you're currently in with potentially a cluster b and past relationships that you've had. And also the way you are as a person because I can definitely say that I've always wanted to ensure the happiness of others putting my own happiness sort of off to the side. It means that I make sacrifices day in and day out while expecting nothing in return. And, yeah, that does kind of describe my relationship with my cluster b wife.

Day in and day out, I basically sacrifice my own happiness and I don't really expect anything in return. I justify it. Well, you know what? She's a person that's had a difficult life.

Well, you know what? This is who I am as a person.

I wanna make her happy. I wanna show her that the world is not a bad place. It says about me that I take great pleasure in keeping the peace, that I'm happy when I make others happy.

Do you feel that? Do you does that resonate with you that you're a peacekeeper? I've talked about this in previous podcasts.

I keep the peace. I walk on eggshells. I don't wanna rock the boat. Now there are those of us out there who do rock the boat, Who do take our cluster b to task. And I can assure you that the results are certainly not pretty. But for me, I do take great pleasure in keeping the peace. I'm happy when other people are happy.

I am a romantic who is so dedicated to love that I will spend my life figuring out how to fix things to have love reciprocated. Think about that statement. Are you a romantic who's so dedicated to the idea of love that you spend your life figuring out how to fix things to have love reciprocated and then it's not. Does this describe your way of being in a relationship? Does this describe, and gosh I don't like this term, your love language? Okay? But I think it is applicable for that particular statement.

You do you only feel loved and valued when you're caring for others? I know I do. If you aren't able to provide care, you feel inadequate. This is the people fixer in us, certainly in me. Your soul is satisfied when those around you need you. Does that resonate with you? To be needed.

They need you. You need to help them. You need to do for them. Cluster b is notorious for that. They are sponges for it.

Borderlines and narcissists. You can never please them. It will never be enough, but they need to need you. You need to be needed by them. I loathe conflict and avoid it at all costs. Yeah. I do.

Who likes conflict? There are some people who like it. They thrive on it, especially cluster b's. The constant turmoil. The constant upheaval in your relationships. But you may loathe conflict much like I do. And I'm conditioned to view abuse as normal because it becomes your normality.

I'll read that again. I am conditioned to view abuse as normal as it becomes your normal. And this is why we are blind. We are emotionally blind to the abuse. After a while, it's just it's just par for the course. To give you an example, I just the other day, in fact, my wife I I keep my laptop, in the kitchen. We have an island in our kitchen, and I usually keep my laptop there because I will go from, my office to the kitchen if I'm doing something, and maybe I'll do some work on my, on my laptop.

And so the other day, I actually moved my laptop. I I took it away from the kitchen, and my wife came down the next morning and she said, you know what? It's so nice not to see your laptop here because when you have your laptop, it's really obnoxious. Think about that statement. What's obnoxious about my laptop being on the kitchen island where I actually do some work? But that was a pretty nasty little statement to make, and it's it's interesting because a lot of us, perhaps taking it out of context, would have said, well, that was pretty nasty for her to say that. But you know what?

It it really didn't it didn't resonate with me because that's just par for the course. Abusive statements and nasty statements like that, double standards in relationships with cluster b's, we we become just we're just like, okay. That's cool. And a third party observer, somebody who's not in the relationship, may point out to you, and this is why cluster b's don't want you to have contact with That statement in and of itself, is it abusive? No. It's just nasty. Why is it obnoxious that my laptop is on the kitchen island?

Why would somebody consider that obnoxious? And I don't even know if I would want to even think about how she could have crafted it differently to make it perhaps a nicer statement. Why why would she say something like that? But that's because she doesn't have a filter and she doesn't really care. And so she'll say things like that and then I might make the excuse for her, give her the emotional discount by saying, well, you know, that's just the way she is. But you know what? That doesn't make it right.

It just doesn't. So what does it say about us when we've been married to a cluster b or we're involved in a relationship with a cluster b for an extended period of time. I've answered those questions now, at least for myself and perhaps it resonated with you. Why we stay is because it is about us inherently too. We wanna be the knight in shining armor. We want to save these people from themselves, and I'm here to tell you that that is not possible. It's just not possible.

So what are the aftereffects of cluster b abuse? We are survivors. While we survive in these relationships, we're not victims. I don't like the word victim. We're survivors because perhaps we're aware of what is going on. But survivors are often left with low self worth. Remember that cluster b's, and I just talked about this, work very hard to make you feel unworthy of their love and inadequate as a human being.

That's what my wife does all the time. With statements like that, it's obnoxious that your laptop is here.

Well, why do you do that? Oh, you know, it's your fault.

Everything's my fault. We're also left with trust issues because our experiences teach us that or taught us that you can't trust someone that you really loved. You can't love yourself or even your intuition. We have trust issues. We have fear and anxiety because being around a cluster b has taught us to walk on eggshells and feel profoundly unsafe. I've talked about feeling safe. Do you feel safe in your relationship? Emotional numbness.

Survivors are left with this. Learning that our distress could matter less to an abusive other leads you to stifle it. We we just stifle our feelings just to keep going. And that's part and parcel to me not reacting to my wife's statement of my laptop being on the kitchen counter being obnoxious. Most normal people might have entered into an argument with that person and defended themselves, gone into jade mode. I didn't. We're also left with no effective boundaries.

Cluster b's require us to live in submissive people pleasing mode 247 and punish us for any attempts we make to assert or defend our rights. This goes part and parcel with any cluster b. You're gonna find that with a borderline or a narcissist. You're gonna be constantly dealing with boundaries that are being crossed. You can't set them. They don't get it. They don't see them.

You're gonna deal with isolation and abandonment issues, Which is completely understandable given that you've been deliberately isolated and repeatedly abandoned by your cluster b, especially a narcissist. A borderline may try to, you know, define themselves through you and sort of envelope you. But a narcissist is definitely gonna leave you feeling isolated and abandoned. And then finally, you know, this term is thrown around a lot. C p t s d, complex traumatic stress disorder. Because we are living in a domestic war zone, it inevitably leaves us with flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, intense and easily dis triggered distress, and a whole lot more. And I know that that applies to me on a regular basis.

I have a lot of different triggers that put me back to past events, you know, where I replay those in my mind on a continual basis where a pleasurable event may trigger a negative thought process. That's really sad. I will always think back to things that have happened in the past, and the past is always there.

You gotta move forward. You gotta move away from the past. But it's very difficult to do when you are in a cluster b relationship.

So think about it. What does it say about you? What does it say about you continuing in your relationship with a cluster b? Myinnertorch@gmail.com. Always appreciate hearing from you. Thank you for your correspondence. If I don't get back to you, I do get a lot of emails and I do thank you for that.