To donate to the Covert Narcissism Podcast and receive your free copy of chapter one of my upcoming book, potentially titled: Grasping Covert Narcissism, Catching A Ghost, click the link below. 

https://patron.podbean.com/covertnarcissismpodcast  

When you are coming to grips with the thought that you are in a long-term marriage with a covert narcissist, you will go through the stages of grief. In fact, just living with a covert narcissist, already has you in these stages, and you don’t even realize it!

What are you grieving about? The death of who you thought this person was, of who you believed they were. The death of what you thought your life would be like with them. The death of who you thought you were with them. Actually, the death of yourself. Like so many other victims, I lost me…for years.

And we may think that this grieving started when our eyes opened to reality, and there certainly is some truth to that. When the FOG lifts and we truly really see it, the stages of grief definitely apply. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And the emotions that come then are often quite intense. But this actually isn’t when the grieving process began. It began many years before. It began when the abuse began. That is when this death process started, but we aren’t aware of it. I certainly had no idea…at the time.