It helped me when I learned...

those with NPD are incapable of true love.

At first, one of the hardest parts of the betrayal of my ex is thinking—why didn’t he love me like I did him and and why did/how could you use me so and you play me for a fool?

And yet, when I grew to understand that those with narcissistic personality disorder are incapable of ditching their masks and have no true sense of self, (only different identities/personas for different people they are targeting) I realized this—

True love and relationships requires vulnerability, being raw and exposed with another.

My ex could never truly do that. I caught glimpses of a slightly lowered mask but then it would be immediately put back in place.

I tried to sustain a relationship from those flashes.

There is no way around the rawness of feeling deeply and loving.

There is also a great deal of healing from heart break and the vulnerability of even considering, much less embarking, on a new relationship.

And yet—I am confident in my capacity to still love. To still be vulnerable and give.

I know that I have survived worse and even when/if I have my heart broken, I will survive. That’s what I do. I will press on.

Those with NPD don’t. They won’t. They can’t.

That’s a very dark place to be—in such deceptive lies of grandiosity to mask mediocrity and shame-filled inner selves—that you are unable to allow yourself to be vulnerable.

In doing so, they may entertain false ideas of self-protection, but in actuality, they don’t know how to love. Only love bomb. They can’t be vulnerable and be entrusted with another’s secrets and most fragile sense of selves, because they will file it away and use it as ammo later.

All of that say, when I realize that I was with someone so incredibly damaged that he has an incapacity to love, the problem became him, not me. Less personal and deep.

The heartbreak lessened because he is the one lacking, not me. I was/am capable of true, deep love. (Which is why he could drop love of my life to me and a month or two later easily discard/drop me to drop the love bombs on another and suggest children and a life with her.)

The relationship that I had and the love that I thought we had was simply one-sided. I realize I sustained it and tried to carry it for us both.

Rather than being hurt by that—I now realize the ultimate truth—-

I support and encourage and I have a hell of a lot of love. I mirrored back to myself the love that I thought I got from him. It was my own devotion to our relationship. But all that love, it was me and from me.

That’s pretty powerful.

And the more I realized that, the smaller and oh-so much more insignificant he has become in my perception of the history of our relationship.