The secretive self of the typical narcissist is an unbridled ID without a fully developed EGO and an Warped Super-Ego; but most are very intelligent people who know how to hide in plain sight.
You can Marry a Narcissist and live with them for fifteen years before you understand the dark enigma. Fifteen years of wondering if you were 'crazy' because he, or SHE, will make you think that you have lost your mind. The take the truth and make it a lie, and the lie becomes truth. Gaslighting is their second language and they are fluent in it; if you say 'Blue' they swear you said 'Red', and will argue and deflect until you give in and swear you are becoming forgetful and absent minded; after all, there will be no peace unless they are right.
But there are the Good Days when this human in hiding is charming and sweet, loving and 'kind'; but can it really be so, after being cursed and degraded the day before? Or, is is that confounded Love Bombing you just heard about?
You lost yourself years ago, out of a duty to keep the peace and eliminate unnecessary strife, as you found yourself giving up and giving in more and more often. Eventually you wonder where you ended and they began, or even if there is a 'you' left. Everything you do is to please and keep the peace, to absolve, compromise, abstain, suppress and regress. You have stepped yourself all the way backwards as the world passes you by...but The Narcissist has Grown in power over the years until they are drunk with stolen power-YOURS.
Then it happened-the light shone in and you began to see what was hiding in the dark behind the mask all along. The rollercoaster emotional journey of intense love and hate, happiness and cruelty, lies and deceit, took its toll on you until one day your woke up to the fact that the Stranger your married was a Narcissist.
Not just ANY type of Narcissist, but a fully developed Covert Narcissist- a genuine Snake in the Grass. And you thought you had married 'one of the good ones'. The joke was on you.
