Sexual Health and Consent: Healing After a Relationship With a Narcissist

Last week, we had a WhatsApp flash chat in which Jane answered various questions on sexual health and consent. Jane is a family therapist as well as a clinical counselor who supports people and families in building and nurturing relationships, marriages and families. In this article, we look at how to pick yourself up after being in a relationship with a narcissist, which is a question asked in the group.

How do you pick yourself up if you were in a relationship with a person who has narcissistic tendencies yet they don’t acknowledge?

Always remember, what they say or do has nothing to do with you. Narcissists ego is so inflated they think they are the most important people in the world. They think they are special, superior and are master manipulators. Their self-esteem is very low and would do everything in their power to put others down to feel good. Remember this has NOTHING to do with you but they have to make sure they transfer their inner pain to you. They want to dump it to feel good. REFUSE! You gotta have to keep reminding yourself this is not your battle to fight. The more you respond to their fights, the more they come back for more. REFUSE to ignite the fire. 

You are no longer together but they will keep looking for you once in a while to add more to injury they caused before. 

They look for you for the very reasons explained above. Don’t feed their hunger for attention. Work on restraint to respond to their provocation. Unless they threaten to hurt or they hurt you, then you need to report or get a restraining order against them.

Please note there is a child involved that you don’t want to hurt, yet that person is the father of the child. 

Let any interactions you have involve the child only as long as they are not harming the child. Is there an agreement you had when you parted ways? Were there visitation rules that were created? Make sure you have a guideline on how to take care of the child. Set rules help keep things in order and you can point out what you don’t appreciate if he crosses the line.

From there how do you pick yourself up? And how do you know you are over that and ready for a new commitment while you are still afraid of the same kind of an emotional rollercoaster.

Work on yourself and like I mentioned above, keep reminding yourself that this is not about you. Narcissists do their best to erode other people self-esteem. Work on healing yourself by seeing a counselor if the damage is deep. This may help you make better decisions in your next relationship. You matter. You are beautiful. What was said about you is just a reflection of the damage inside a narcissist’s mind. Refuse to carry their baggage and start doing things you enjoy and being a good parent to your child or else you transfer your pain to the innocent child. You can do this! All the best.

You may also like: Healthy Relationships: Handling Emotional Abuse

Healthy Relationships: 3 Red Flags That Signal Emotional Abuse in a Relationship

Abuse is not only physical but also emotional and psychological. Any kind of abuse leaves the abused in a state of confusion, depression, doubts and many other effects due to trauma. If you are going through abuse or you know a person going through abuse, the Gender-Based Violence-free hotline is 1195. Furthermore, if you would like to join a community of women healing from abuse, WhatsApp +254736275978.

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