Narcissism makes intimate relationships difficult at best. If you are dealing with a narcissistic partner, you may well relate to the phrase, "for a narcissist, every day is his birthday."

Emotional Abusers & Narcissism

While not every abusive person (also known as sex addict or pornography addict) has diagnosable NPD, many, if not all, have narcissistic personality traits. While these traits can make the beginning of the relationship incredible and traumatically bonding to the partner of the abuser (known as love-bombing), these same traits make the relationship unbearable eventually, sometimes very quickly into the relationship.

The Narcissistic Abuse Cycle 

Often, these relationships follow a pattern. Many women are told that the relationship is following the sexual addiction cycle, however, it is usually actually following the cycle of abuse, or the Cluster-B Personality Disorder cycle of:

* Idealization (love-bombing; you are the most perfect person in the world/hottest woman in the world, I will do whatever it takes to be with you, I will change whatever I need to change to be with you, I will call you all day and text you every second of the day)

* Devaluation (why are you so clingy? why are you eating again? Stop asking me so many questions. I just need some space. Sometimes I just miss my ex-wife... she was more fun than you. I never said I was going to change - you made that up. You are crazy.)

* Discard

* The discard happens when your partner relapses into sexually perverse behaviors;

* Physically abandons you and/or your children;

* Abuses you (though abuse happens in all three stages - at the 'discard' stage, the abuse is usually more intense and pronounced).

Narcissism & Your Abuser's Behavior

While this cycle is happening, you are also having to deal with:

* someone who is obsessed with himself

* daydreams often of wealth and power

* cannot self-reflect

* uses others as tools to get what he wants (including his own children)

* turns others against you to make himself look/seem better

* chooses to have zero empathy for you and your feelings

Narcissism Victims Can Protect Themselves

So how in the world do you cope with this?

In one word, boundaries. 

In Doctor Ramani Durvasula's book, Should I Stay or Should I Go, she paints a very realistic picture of marriage and partnership with a true, diagnosable narcissist: should you choose to stay, your relationship will need strong boundaries. You will need to have a strong support system to take your good news and your bad news to because your partner will never be able to provide the love, empathy, excitement, and support you deserve. You'll require physical space to yourself because your partner will need a break from the constant gaslighting and undermining. It will also be necessary to emotionally detach because your partner will never make relational decisions; he will always make self-centered decisions.

Pretty bleak.

Boundaries Protect Victims Who Stay Or Go

If you decide to leave the marriage,

Being emotionally and physically safe is our responsibility. If we don't set boundaries, we won't be able to keep ourselves and our children safe.

How To Deal With Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Made A Decision To Turn His Narcissistic Behaviors and The Consequences Over To The Care Of God

The surrender process enables us to accept the things we cannot change. And with God's help, know what we can and should change. When dealing with a husband's narcissistic personality disorder, surrender is the first line of defense.

For most of us, the only peace we feel is when we live in the present moment, since the past is too painful and the future is too scary. Having lived with the affects of abuse, pornography use, and infidelity in our marriage, we have experienced a lot of pain.

To heal from the effects of our husband's narcissistic personality disorder, we need to adopt new ways of thinking about ourselves and our problems.

Dealing With Narcissistic Personality Disorder In A Relationship

Overtime, we learned to accept . . .

1. Narcissistic personality disorder is a real thing. At first, many of us could not accept this idea. We thought it meant that our husband was somehow not responsible for his behavior, or that we weren't entitled to our feelings of anger and hurt. But it doesn't. For us it means that we see our husband's as sick, not bad. We forgive them by not expecting them to do something they are incapable of doing. They are unable to have human emotion and care for others. As we forgive them, we are able to set boundaries to keep ourselves safe from their harmful actions.

2. The actions of the narcissist are not a result of something we did or did not do, and we do not have the power to control their behavior.

3. Our attempts to control or ignore the harmful behaviors, rather than set boundaries to keep ourselves safe led to a decline in our emotional health and kept us in harms way.

As we work toward accepting these ideas, we begin to see our problems in a new light. We realize we do have choices concerning our own behavior! This is the beginning of establishing safety in our lives.

It's helpful to remind ourselves that we are powerless over the behavior of the narcissist and all actions and reactions of other adults. We ask god to hep us stop blaming and trying to control the narcissist and their harmful actions.

Knowing and using the surrender process helps in this endeavor. Because the behaviors of men with narcissistic personality disorder cause trauma, and betrayal trauma is similar to PTSD, we can get caught in obsessive thoughts that harm us. The surrender process helps us to recover from the betrayal trauma. We heal as we begin to rely on God for comfort and support.

The Surrender Process

The surrender process has four steps.

1. Write down what you would like to surrender to God. For example:

- I want to surrender my husband's perceptions and behaviors to God.

- Or put another way, I trust God to worry about and deal with my husband's perceptions of me.

2. Pray and surrender these concerns and worries to God.

3. Call your sponsor, coach or friend, and leave a message. "I want to surrender my husband's harmful comments to me today."

4. Put the paper you wrote on in your "surrender box". This box can be anything you want. My surrender box is my ex-husband's old sox drawer. When he moved out,

Surrendering to God is the only way to cope with the affects of sex addiction in marriage.