Conversations with a Narcissist

Just Look At It

Recorded August 12, 2020.
This episode makes me nauseous. I was so naïve. After this recording, we started a daily video series called Just Look At It. The show lasted less than 20 days. I took the kids and left, closing the doors to our business and our only stream of income. Leaving him, destroyed our brand and trust with our audience BUT I could not go on. The kids and I were having medical issues from the stress, we needed stability.

Confusion with Trust and Leadership

Recorded July 12, 2020.
I could not understand how he could not see everything I was doing to keep our household and business operating. My prior career was consulting, speaking, and writing; he was joining me in a new venture. I had charts and graphs to explain our leadership, relationship, and cycles, but the acceptable standard constantly shifted.
I work too much. I don't work enough. We never had enough money, and he wouldn't work or hold a job. He was supposed to care for our children for many years but didn't put much effort there either. I was quick to shut down conversations because I already knew that we would not make actual progress.

Hangry -July 10, 2020

Early in our marriage, he started convincing me that my anger was a problem. I don’t remember what he said, but my feelings were THE problem. At one point he told me that if I didn’t fix my anger issues he would take the kids, and I would never see them again. I became passive, aggressive, and very confused… desperate to be loved. At the time of this recording, we had been married 16 years and I had no clue the games we were playing.

The Beginning of the End

Introduction and Recording from June 8, 2020
Transcript: 
June 8, 2020 S1:E1===
[00:00:00] On the surface, this is a conversation about narcissism. On a deeper level, this is a story of exploitation, and I think it's a story many of us are experiencing. The exploitation of our energy, of our attention, and of our focus. So many of us are walking around numb and we want to come alive.
We want to feel, but it feels impossible. I believe we are feeling the moanings of an earth being destroyed by injustice. The greatest exploitation that we are facing today is the exploitation of our human resources, and things do not change in silence.
This podcast is for two groups of people. It's for the mothers and for research. To the mothers who are facing insanity, you are not crazy. You have done too much. You're probably still doing too much. Just stop for a moment and please hear my words. Doing more is not going to solve the problem of doing too much.
The next thing, whatever [00:01:00] it may be, is not going to solve the problem. Slow down. Only then you can see what you cannot see. I'm also donating these recordings to science, to research, to study. I've learned much about my own experience by hearing other people's stories. 
As a society, we have a lack of evidence that shows the nuance of the patterns that are expressed within vulnerable, passive aggressive, covert behavior. Keep in mind that he always knew he was being recorded. I have only removed names and shortened the awkward silences down to 30 seconds. There are so many times when the silence hung thick in the air for over two minutes waiting for him to answer or say something, say anything.
You'll get the idea, so I shortened those down to 30 seconds.
I've handled many things incorrectly, and that's really how we learn. That's how we grow. I've done the very best I could every single day, and really, I think that's all we can [00:02:00] do. I am a mom of five with a 10th grade education and no other family or support. I am self taught and an avid reader. When we got married, we committed to breaking the generational cycles of abuse.
We committed to our children to care and provide for them. I have held him to this commitment. Granted, he could have left, but he didn't. There is no shame in survival. And look at me surviving all over the place. 
As I was listening to the recordings with a friend, she remarked that they sound like true crime. And they do. It occurred to me that these recordings and their publication may very well be the thing protecting us from becoming a statistic. Well, that and my fierce energy. I am a fighter. I was trying to figure out what the heck was going on, why my marriage and life was falling apart, why everything I did failed, and why I struggled every single day.
I needed [00:03:00] answers. I truly believe that the majority of women who are struggling in business is because of the male influence in our lives. It could be your husband, but it could also be a business partner or clients. In reflecting, I've seen it hundreds of times. A sign of change is change, and the only way things can change is by the secrets being revealed and the darkness coming to light.
That is the purpose of this podcast, to come out of the shadows, to cast light on the dark conversations, on the pain, on the exploitation, and on my journey to finding freedom. In a way, we are all narcissists. The difference is shame and what you do with it. Shame is poison. The more you have inside of you, the more toxic you become.
For me, I've found the easiest way to alchemize shame is through laughter, awareness, understanding, compassion, especially for myself, and acceptance. I [00:04:00] deconverted from Christianity by moving to Texas. I do not recommend. And yet, in that polarity, I found some of my greatest truths. I have always been an activist, a storyteller, a pot stirrer.
I've dedicated my life to understanding and healing trauma. But for the first 40 years of my life, I could only recognize overt abuse. This is my journey of understanding covert abuse. When I know better, I do better. But what I didn't know was that I was naive about the fact that I was naive.
Ouch, that was a white girl blunder. I've been stirring pots of racism, capitalism, and religion for 20 years, but I did not see this plot twist coming. I heal loudly. My pimp and the anti trafficking movement, they got a book.
And so it only makes sense that my ex husband gets a podcast, because everything [00:05:00] ends where it begins. Like a snake eating its tail. May we all be judged by our words and actions.
Why am I doing this, you might ask? Beyond the obvious notion of creating awareness and earning an income for myself and my children, breaking the chains of financial abuse, I literally cannot scrub the internet enough to remove him from the centering that he has done in my life. For the last 21 years, he has placed himself, and for the first 16 years, I very much consented to him being the center of my universe.
But by 2018, and my 40s like quickly knocking on the door, we were camping on land by the beach after a hurricane, not even earning 20, 000 a year, for a family of 6 7 people. Depending on how many kids were at home right then. But we made it fun, for a time. But it's not any way to raise children long term.
He wouldn't keep a job, and most jobs didn't pay enough for our [00:06:00] large family to even survive. So we started a brand, sharing our journey publicly. Building a business was our pathway out of the mess. We have Facebook pages, YouTube channels, even find some porn. Shit got weird. He even wrote the foreword to my book that was published in 2020. I literally cannot tell my story without exposing him. And I'm gonna let you decide whether or not he planned this.
I wish you could see my desk right now. A hundred papers, little scraps of memories, of thoughts, of notes. And right in the center of my desk is a yellow note card that says, At any point, he could have stopped being an asshole. My heart weeps for him. For sixteen years, this man hung my moon and stars. I loved him in his strengths and his weaknesses.
I cared for him and he worshipped me. He rubbed my feet, he did dishes, he cooked, he cleaned. When he was 17 years old, he [00:07:00] designed and built his parents a home. The home they still live in today. He was my hero, but he never gave his family a home. In fact, quite the opposite. He was the good guy. I could not fathom the story that I'm telling you today. I frequently joke about channeling Alanis And some of her lyrics ring so true for me today. All I really want is some comfort, a way to get my hands untied. All I really want is some justice.
Everything is ironic.
When we met, our very first conversation was about overcoming childhood sexual abuse. We became best friends that very first day, and we married seven months later in March of 2004. Mental health was hardly a thing 20 years ago, and I had read every book I could find on trauma and healing.
All ten of them. I learned very early that humans are controlling, but we can only control [00:08:00] ourselves without being toxic. We can control our thoughts, our words and actions, and everything we have or don't have is a result of that control. When we try to control others or we simply aren't controlling ourselves, that's when conflict arises.
to raise healthy children, we must be the example of growth, self control, patience, kindness, and love. When we got married, I had a daughter who had just turned three, and he would raise her as his own, which he did. We had four more children in the next six years. When the kids were little, we called the hour before dinner, the witching hour, because it was chaos.
And almost every single night, something would happen, and I would yell at the kids over stupid little things. So I started recording myself. I wanted to understand what was happening. myself helped me understand and heal my triggers. It helped me learn self control and deeply get to know who I am and my subconscious.
[00:09:00] I highly recommend recording your own worst behavior. It will reveal a lot about your character. And it also formed my life question, what is healthy? Over the decades, I've read hundreds of books and have sat with thousands of people who are facing incredibly difficult situations. I am a researcher and my life is the experiment.
In June of 2020, I started recording our conversations whenever I felt like I was losing control of myself. I felt so confused and frustrated. I wanted him to hear me, and I did not understand what was happening. As I hear my younger self pleading to be loved, pleading for kindness, chasing sanity like fireflies on a late summer night, I love her.
I flop back and forth between what's wrong with me and what's going on here, which is a much better question. I didn't know I was playing a game and I definitely didn't know the [00:10:00] rules. From 2020 to current, the kids and I moved 17 times. 16 of those moves were in 2020. 
He and I have had five different businesses. I was trying to find the one he would actually make money with. He did go from earning less than 20, 000 per year to over six figures for the last two years, and he pays for our basic existence, but it has been a huge tooth and nail fight.
Which also tells me he's always been able to provide for his family. He has been alienating and discarding his children one at a time, painfully and slowly. We've had two periods of extended, very little contact.
We divorced in 2023 at 19 years, one day, the divorce only took 24 minutes from filing to the judge signing. And now it's time for me to break the chains of financial abuse. I will be [00:11:00] releasing a new recording without any context every day for the next 22 days. And then we will move into Season 2 where we're going to talk about it. You will hear me go through the stages. Is our marriage going to work?
How do we financially survive? How do we get divorced and co parent? Is co parenting even possible? Would it work if I was a hundred percent parent and he just paid me? And no contact means no money. Everything begins where it ends. With a story.
I honestly,
I don't know how to respond because
I feel like I am extraordinarily patient and gentle and forgiving,
especially of you.
And I do seek to [00:12:00] understand
and I just feel like there's a lot of times where. It's little things that you say that are mean, or harsh, or hurtful, and none of them are big. They're just frequent. And I don't know how to deal with that. And so I try to put a stop to it, and then you don't talk to me, and don't address things, and don't bring things up.
And then You just, I feel like you get angry at me all the time, and I have to walk on eggshells. And I don't know what to say, and yet I'm believing in you so much, and I'm trying so hard to raise my vibe and to encourage and support and help you and love you. And I don't want to fix you, and I [00:13:00] don't, like, like last night, I was simply trying to share my journey.
And, like, I help you because it helped me and I see that it was different and it's like everything that I just feel like I'm always interpreted as angry or frustrated or something. I, I
feel like
for some reason, wow, somehow recording helps me focus. On what matters.
I feel like you are trying to fix me a lot of the time when I love that. I love that you correct my behavior, but I feel like you're [00:14:00] trying to fix me a lot of the time and, and I know that's not what you intend on doing because you just said that's not what you want to do. And I say that in my words regularly to you, right?
I actually try so hard because you've told me that so many times, I am very intentional about not fixing you, not helping you, not challenging you, but only sharing my stories because if God forbid, I, if I even, come this close to giving you advice without you explicitly telling me that I can, you lose your shit.
And then I get hit with these negative, snide, hurtful remarks, and [00:15:00] in comes the thousand paper cuts that are bleeding me to death.
Can we address one issue right now? Okay, um Can we just go to the vinegar thing? Sure. Or was that a good example? Yeah, well,
yeah. Okay. Um, what was the thing that you wanted to address that bothered you about that? What, what was it that I said that, that bothered you?
It was me presenting with treatments and you having negative remarks toward the treatment [00:16:00] and were very firm in that that was not going to happen. And I'm just trying to present treatments. Did I say it's not going to happen? Is that what You were just like, ooh, but the smell. No, that's, that smell.
You don't want that. Like, you just How many times, like, you just You just said it like four or five times, and if you had seen face, cause it wasn't about you, the whole thing, none of it was about you. It was about and her face. And now she gets a potentially less effective treatment because you talked.
And when I said stop, you didn't stop. I thought I did. I said stop with the negativity, and because I said that, you [00:17:00] started laying into me about the negativity. Oh, and I didn't think that I repeated it several times. I, I recall You didn't repeat. I recall just saying it once, actually. Saying what once? Um, what I recall saying is that the vinegar has a really strong smell.
I would so rather use a different method. I said four sentences total. I didn't say anything about repeating. I'm speaking of myself right now. Right. Well, when I was reiterating what you said, I never said that you repeated anything. You, you just said I kept saying.
I see where you got the confusion. You didn't keep saying the same thing. Keep saying is different than repeating. How is it? Keep saying is like a, because it was a, Oh, it was like three expressions of [00:18:00] vowels, one sentence, two sentence, three sentence, you were done. But the entire thing about vinegar, not a single inch was left for to make a decision that that was the option.
I, okay. I do remember going, uh, ooh. Right. And then saying that sentence, I don't remember, like, extra sentences in there. I don't understand why you are so obsessed on how many sentences you had in a conversation about vinegar, that you can't see that there's a large You were literally arguing over how many sentences you said about vinegar.
Well, it's because I do believe that you have a tendency to blow it out of proportion. And that's not blowing it out of proportion? And I believe that blowing it out of proportion would just say If we were to go back and, to the recording, you said repeat.

Season 1 Trailer

They run corporations and governments. They commit evil acts beyond comprehension for the sensitive soul but aren’t just out there. They are our parents, partners, lovers, and family. 
Conversations spiral for hours like a dog chasing my tail. I’ve spent years, decades, in the mental blender of covert, passive-aggressive abuse.
These are my audio files of consensually recorded conversations with my now ex-husband of 19 years. May you learn from my naivety, oversharing, exhaustion, and pain. 
May this love never find you; if it has, may you have the strength to prevail. Welcome to Conversations with a Narcissist.