Apparently Everyone Is A Narcissistic Abuser

[joreth]

I have a problem with our new trend of slinging around labels like "narcissistic" and "borderline personality" and even "abuse". I had the misfortune to observe up close several relationships that imploded under mutual accusations of abuse and personality disorder labels. And in many of those cases, I got it wrong. I backed the wrong horse. I heard

Comments

[emmainfiniti]

Thanks for sharing this. I'm fairly sure my ex still thinks he's the victim of my "selfishness and inconsiderate behavior". I eventually saw him as controlling and gaslighting. I'm pretty sure I caused him real pain by not submitting to his control. I'm pretty sure I did some genuinely crappy stuff to him (abusive?) and made some hurtful mistakes as well. I spent years convinced that I was the bad guy in the relationship and worked on everything I could think of to fix. Eventually, I just had to decide that if I was making him that unhappy, it was better for both of us if I leave.
I am part of a community that has tried to deal with abuse/consent issues, and almost immediately after we started to examine how to address issues in our community, we had someone who was demonstrably (publicly) abusive claim the role of victim and demand an intervention (where we would somehow force former partners who had finally cut off contact to sit down and "mediate" with the person). We had not tools to deal with that and just stopped trying (for

[joreth]

That community situation sounds rough. And I'm glad you were finally able to leave your situation with your ex. Sometimes it's less important to assign abuse labels than it is to just acknowledge that the relationship is not making people happy and leave, regardless of why or how.

Thank you for sharing.