Maybe you think you were, but I'm here to tell you and affirm to you that no, you were not always like this. At some point or another, life was good for you, and you were good, too. Remember the calm, kind you? The warmth?
You want to know where the old you went, and why you're now this snappy shell of yesterday? Sit your understandable fury down for a little while, and let's get into it together, because this has everything to do with the narcissist.
I had a wife sit across from me last year and whisper, "I don't recognise myself anymore." She wasn't angry by nature. She was angry by design.
1 Newsflash: This isn't your fault
All narcissists try to make their victims think they're the problem. This has been the case since the dawn of time, and is unlikely to change any time soon. The problem occurs when victims believe this; and carry that weight of misery with them in their lives. You're too emotional.
I can never be myself around you. Why do you insist on asking me so many questions? You never seem to cook meat properly. You always start arguments. Why aren't you as easy to talk to as you used to be?
It won't matter what it is; you will be the issue. Like anything, if you hear something enough, you will start to believe it. Over time, this is how victims wind up thinking they're at fault for everything. Fine, so you're angry, but what about what came before that anger?
Why is it that the narcissist never mentions that? All those times they dismissed you. The times they never listened. When you tell them you're hurting and they just look at you like they can't understand a word of what you're saying.
I had a client say her husband once told her, "I don't know what you want me to do with that information," when she said she felt lonely. That was the whole reply.
You thought it was your fault, so you swallow it all and try to make out like you're sorry for it all. Here's that newsflash:
None of it has anything to do with you.
2 Nobody pays attention to that peaceful start
The narcissist doesn't, and you certainly don't, too. You are who you are, and your narcissistic husband is who he is. You're reasonable, and you'd like to think you're patient.
You carefully make sure you explain your feelings, and when you want to bring something up to talk about, you pick the right moment, and more importantly… you stay calm. The last thing you want is to start another argument, I mean, you know how that ends up, right?
The house gets so full of tension that you can't even think straight. It doesn't work though, does it? Over time, you realize that there's no point in doing all of that because it seems to be for nothing.
All that happens is every conversation gets twisted, and you feel tired from it.
You bring up something small, like the tone he used at dinner, and somehow twenty minutes later you're apologising for something you didn't even do. That's the trick.
For you, the need to connect is there, but for him, he only wants to cause problems. It's no wonder people feel like they're going crazy in these types of relationships. The dynamics will never work to suit you, and your narcissistic husband knows it.
3 It's slow, but it's constantly burning
It never happens overnight, but I want you to know that time is the one thing that transitions you from being that kind, good wife, to the angry wife you will eventually become under any marriage with a narcissist. Months, years, even decades of your life being minimized.
You're treated like you mean nothing to him, and he doesn't listen to a word you say. He gaslights you for fun, and it changes the way your mind thinks entirely.
Eventually, that constant burn will set your nervous system alight, and you'll be on constant edge from every noise, every raised voice; your body will learn to keep score.
There's never a right moment to pick talking to them, so you stop trying, and everything you want to express turns inward, like it has no place to go.
That's a painful way to live, and of course, you end up just keeping yourself as private as you can, and not because you want the privacy, but because it turns out it's the better option. It's exhausting. Soon? You explode. That's natural, right?
It's going to happen eventually, but it will be one small thing that sets you off. The dishes, or the comment they made about your baking. Perhaps it's just the way he looked at you. You burst. You're angry, and you can't keep a lid on it any more.
I wish everyone knew exactly what I had to deal with. That's his response. He knows what he did, and all that means is he gets to feed you more lies about yourself, making you feel worse.
I had a client whose husband said, "See? This is why nobody can talk to you." She'd been silent for six years before that outburst. Six years.
The vicious and dangerous cycle.
4 How did you get here, or should I say, who got you here?
You don't have to tell me that you didn't sign up for this, because I already know. You went in thinking you were entering a happy relationship with someone who was nice and kind. He acted that way initially, right? Then it all changed, and you changed.
You didn't change by choice, it was simply the outcome of living and spending time with someone who didn't like the best version of you, so he ruined and replaced it.
He chipped away slowly. A comment here, a sigh there, a rolled eye when you spoke. Piece by piece, the woman you were got buried under his disapproval.
He rewrites history, remembers every tiny thing you did wrong, and he manipulates you. On top of that, he makes you feel invisible, and you're supposed to tolerate that? It's totally natural for you to go from the nice wife to the fed up, angry wife.
You didn't get to this point because you wanted to change, you got here because someone caused it. And it wasn't you. Falling for the pretend version of him wasn't your fault, it was all part of their performance.
5 This was never meant to be you
The anger you carry around with you like this unwanted heavy weight you can't put down is not, I repeat not, your personality. It's a natural part of what happens when you get involved with a man who turns out to be an abusive narcissist.
You think he's nice because he acts nice, and why wouldn't you take that all for face value? You're not angry. That's not who and how you were born and who you were before you met them.
If you paused for a moment, you'd be able to see that and correlate your time with him to when you started to change.
The bright woman who laughed easily, who trusted her gut, who spoke up without second guessing every word. She didn't vanish because of you. She was buried.
Good women tolerate the worst kinds of relationships because they hope it will change. You hope a marriage will be what he needs to realize how loved he is, and want to work on it to keep it alive.
I'm here to tell you that the woman you were before you met him is still there inside of you. Sure, she's hidden right now, and it feels like she's gone entirely, but that's not the case.
She's waiting for someone to finally let her know that something terrible happened to her, and that she met someone she should've sidestepped. The truth is right there, and I think if you can take the time to reflect on that, you will find the good person you really are.
6 What the anger is actually trying to tell you
Anger gets a bad reputation, especially in women, and especially in wives. But your anger is not a character flaw. It's a messenger. And it has been trying to get your attention for a long time.
The anger is saying, "something here is not right." It's saying, "I have been asking for basic decency and getting scraps." It's saying, "I am tired of shrinking."
When you snap over the dishwasher or the tone he used at dinner, it isn't really about the dishwasher. It's every swallowed comment, every dismissed feeling, every moment you smoothed things over so he wouldn't sulk for three days. The anger is a receipt for all of it.
I want you to stop treating that anger like an enemy. It's the part of you that still knows your worth. It's the part that hasn't given up. Somewhere underneath the exhaustion and the guilt, there's a woman going, "no. Enough."
Listen to her. She's the one telling the truth.
7 The friends and family who noticed before you did
There's usually someone. A sister who went a bit quiet after meeting him. A best friend who stopped asking you to brunch because she got tired of hearing you cancel. Your mum, saying something like, "You seem different, love," and then dropping it because you shut her down.
See also 8 Creepy Bedtime Habits That Only a Narcissist Would HaveThey saw it. Long before you were willing to.
And that's a strange grief to carry once you finally wake up. Because now you have to sit with the fact that the people who love you were watching this happen in slow motion, and you defended him to them.
You maybe even cut some of them off because he told you they were "toxic" or "jealous" or "trying to come between us."
Go back to them. Not with a big speech. Just, "You were right. I couldn't see it then." Most of them will meet you where you are. Some won't, and that's a wound you'll have to sit with too. The angry wife didn't push them away.
He did, using her mouth.
