Was your marriage partner controlling? Was he/she a Narcissist? Today I want to share a resource that provides valuable information and offers questions you can ask yourself to help identify a Manipulator, Controller or Narcissist. If you were not married to one, you may want to check out this resource anyway. You see, it was not until recently that I discovered a man that I dated for 14 months, and considered marrying, suffers from Narcassistic Personality Disorder (NPD.) I had no idea at the time.
I thought it was important to share this information for two reasons. First, possibly your ex-spouse was a manipulator/controller/narcissist and you never realized it until now, after you were out of the relationship. Second, as someone recovering from a divorce you may be more susceptible to getting in a relationship with a manipulator/controller/narcissist. As someone who fell into the trap, I wish I knew then what I know now.
When you begin to date again, there are questions you can ask yourself to discern if a person is a manipulator/controller/narcissist. I found this website to be quite helpful Divorce 360, not only on this subject but many other areas dealing with divorce.
After my dating relationship ended, this man quickly got into another relationship (trying to get married within 6 weeks of our breakup.) Although the marriage was delayed a couple of months it lasted less than a year. His now 3rd ex-wife, contacted me out of the blue several weeks ago. As I learned details of their relationship. My heart ached for this woman and what he put her and her children through in 15 months. We both feared for the next woman that will fall victim to his ways.
I continue to praise God for sparing me and my children from what could have easily been us. I admit I went through a time of beating myself up, thinking how could I have been such a poor judge of character. I was able to find peace when I realized it can happen to anyone. So say the experts about what the chances are of getting romantically involved with a controlling manipulator. Even the most well grounded of us can find ourselves mired in the complex dynamics of a controlling relationship.
“We want to all be loved and needed, and find that Prince Charming. You can be very educated, very attractive, feel good about yourself, but we all have susceptibility, no matter how high our self esteem is,” says Daniela E. Schreier, 37, a licensed clinical psychologist and assistant professor of the Chicago School based in Illinois. “If a person is coming onto you, wants all of your time, is the perfect sexual match with lots of passion, it’s hard not to be seduced by that. You may not notice that the person is taking over your life. By the time you look back and notice it, you are already sucked in.”
And if you are even just the wee bit vulnerable or, worse, coming out of a broken relationship or from a place of shaky self esteem, you are a particularly easy mark. “Most controllers are charming in the beginning. They say things like, ‘I will always be there for you. You can count on me. I am the one who really understands you,’”said Susan J. Elliott, 51, a New York-based lawyer, certified grief counselor and founder and CEO of Getting Past Your Past Productions, LLC.
I hope you will find the Divorce 360 website valuable to you in some way. Please feel free to share your comments (below) or experience from a manipulating/controlling or narcissistic relationship, and any other helpful resource you may have found relating to this topic.
Copyright 2008 Shelley Grieser All Rights Reserved.
