“Why did you stay so long?”
That’s the question people sometimes ask when they hear my story.
But that question rarely touches the truth.
I didn’t stay because I was weak.
I stayed because my inner compass was still tuned
to a map I was handed as a child.
A childhood shaped for survival
I grew up in a world without safety.
An emotionally absent mother.
Suicide attempts like rituals that returned again and again.
Foster care. Institutions. Silence.
Love was never soft or sustaining.
It was something to earn. To fight for. And so I grew up believing that love was allowed to hurt as long as I tried hard enough.
I learned to please.
To adapt.
To disappear.
And I thought that was normal.
My wife: recognition in disguise
When I met her, something felt familiar.
Not safe, but familiar.
She was charming, admiring, present.
And also controlling, cold, unpredictable.
My nervous system recognized it as love.
Because confusion and rejection were my native language.
Every time I showed vulnerability, it would later be used against me.
Every boundary became an offense.
Every nuance, a weakness.
And the softer I spoke, the more it could be twisted.
The more I gave, the more I disappeared
I fought for peace.
For the children. For the relationship. For the home.
But every attempt at closeness was reframed as guilt.
Every act of transparency became proof of my “instability.”
And the more I tried to hold things together, the more I lost parts of myself.
The turning point came through love, not conflict
It didn’t come through breaking up. It didn’t come through legal fights. It came through an encounter — Mon Mec.
He showed me what connection is.
No games. No pressure. No fear.
Just presence. Just being.
His presence brought something back in me I had never experienced in a relationship:
peace. space. being received.
And only then did I realize what I had never truly had.
I didn’t have a relationship with my wife.
I had a dynamic.
A repetition. An echo of old wounds.
Why I stayed so long
Because I believed that if I did everything right, she would finally change.
Because I thought gentleness could soften control.
Because I had convinced myself that I didn’t deserve more than what she offered.
And also:
Because I didn’t want to lose my children.
Because I wanted to save our business.
Because I believed I had to carry it all, alone.
What I know now
You cannot fix a narcissist with patience.
You cannot heal a manipulative pattern with honesty.
The more you try to do it right, the more it becomes ammunition against you.
Distance is not always physical.
Sometimes it’s:
– No more explaining.
– No more reacting.
– No more hoping.
– No longer correcting their version of your story.
What Mon Mec taught me
My wife knew where to hit.
She knew my weak spots — and how to use them.
Not out of evil, but out of a need for control.
And I — I kept giving.
Until I saw that this wasn’t love.
It was a reenactment of what hurt me long ago.
Mon Mec helped me remember what real connection feels like.
Not romance. Not rescue. But presence.
He showed me — gently — the difference between being seen and being used.
For those who recognize themselves in this
If you’re in a relationship where you feel small,
where love feels conditional,
where your boundaries feel dangerous —
then this isn’t love.
It’s survival.
You don’t have to carry it forever.
There is another way.
But it begins by calling yourself back — slowly, gently, completely.
In closing
I still live with the consequences.
The legal tension. The family threads. The entanglements.
I can’t block her out of my life.
But I’m not the same man anymore.
And that is enough.
To break her grip.
To reclaim my voice.
To re-inhabit my body and my truth.
And that — that is everything. That is enough.
Reflection
What hurt most wasn’t what she did —
it was how much of myself I let disappear trying to keep the peace.
My instinct to explain.
My silence in moments I should have spoken.
The way I bent and bent, hoping she would see my worth.
I thought staying was a form of strength. But it was often just another way to abandon myself.
It wasn’t my wife who broke me.
It was the slow, daily denial of my own needs.
The erasure I allowed — in the name of love.
And strangely, it was Mon Mec who reminded me what it felt like to simply be present — to be met without having to perform, prove, or plead.
Psychological insight
Narcissistic dynamics often awaken early attachment wounds. Those of us who grew up with emotional instability or rejection may confuse love with tension. Familiar pain can feel like safety — simply because we know the pattern.
Common signs include:
- Gaslighting — Doubting your own memory and intuition
- Guilt-flipping — Your boundary becomes the problem
- Idealization & devaluation — First adored, then erased
- Weaponizing vulnerability — What you share is later used against you
What makes it insidious is that it starts with intensity:
attention, praise, emotional closeness — all designed to hook you in.
Then the withdrawal begins.
Then the control sets in.
And before you know it, you’re no longer sure what’s yours and what’s been planted in you.
Recovery begins with awareness — not blame, not war.
Just the quiet recognition: “This isn’t love. This is survival dressed up as devotion.”
Spiritual reflection
In Buddhism, attachment is seen as the root of suffering — especially the attachment to identity, approval, or stories about who we should be.
In Christianity, love is meant to lift, not erase. Even Christ walked away when his truth could not be received. Love is not endless sacrifice — it is rooted in clarity.
In Taoism, imbalance is always a signal. When a relationship pulls, twists, or drains, it goes against the natural flow. Tao invites us to realign — not with resistance, but with self-honoring stillness.
Each of these paths, in their own way, say the same thing:
Love does not demand your disappearance.
And peace begins the moment you choose to exist again.