She remembered him as a perfect gentleman. He took her to the best places for dinner in their dating days. He made sure he picked her from her home even though she had her own car just so he could drop her off on their date nights. He pulled the seat for her; he opened the car door for her. He left random love notes on her wind screen and it made her feel she was the most loved woman on the planet. He bought air tickets for her when he had engagements outside the country, and this was how she took holidays. He made meals for her when she visited him. He involved her in his home shopping and introduced her to his friends and family as his woman. He motivated her to be better in life by encouraging her to further her studies and assisted her with sponsorship. To cream it all, he was a single perfect gentleman who knew how to treat a woman right. She knew she had found love and wondered where he had been all her life.

As she lay on her hospital bed, paralayzed from the stroke, she remembered reading somewhere, “not all that glitters is gold.” Her memories were coming back, how did she get to point of a healthy young lady getting a stroke at 38 years. What of her child, how was she going to work? Would she regain the use of her legs and left arm? Tears rolled down her cheeks. How could she have not seen the signs, there were times in their dating years that he shut her out for a week and she wouldn’t understand what was going on or what wrong she had done to her man and after some days, he would come back and plead with her that he had personal issues to deal with that required total isolation. The fact that he had given her house keys reassured her it had nothing to do with another woman.

Their wedding was private and intimate. And the honeymoon was to die for, down in the lower Zambezi. He bought her a ford ranger when she fell pregnant and this was the beginning of trouble in paradise. At this point, he became distant and when she sought advice from her aunties, friends and google, all indicated that some men withdraw from their wives for fear of hurting the unborn child during intercourse. This made her pull through many a sleepless night when she cried herself to sleep as he hardly touched her in the nine months. Everything else he did as a caring husband except be intimate with her. When she delivered a bouncy baby boy, he took her to a car show room and asked her to pick a choice of her own. She assumed life would normalize after giving birth. As things were, there was no change and so she went back to her aunties who advised her to wait a while for the baby to grow. She finally found the courage to question his behaviour and he told her that his shibukombe had advised him to wait for three months so that the wife fully heals, and the baby is strong. The three months were finally over and she put on her best lingerie waiting for him and made sure the baby slept in a crib. That night when she tried to be intimate, he pushed her away. She tried to make sense of what was happening and before she realized it, her son was two years old and there was still a drought in their intimacy. She would try bringing up the topic and he always told her marriage was not about sex. At times she imagined he was gay but the signs were not there. She spent so many nights wondering whom to tell about the drought. She now realized why some women stayed in abusive marriages, but she could not understand why she herself could not pack her bags and leave. She knew the law and it would be on her side. The thought of bringing dirty linen to the public scared her as a CEO of an organisation. She went back to her aunties who asked her if everything else was not being provided and she assured them that he was a good father to their son and finances were not a problem. The aunties then told her no woman has ever died from a lack of intimacy. Her best friends advised her to buy dildos, it’s a thought that crossed her mind and she went ahead and secured two but she could not go ahead and use them, masturbation felt too dirty a sin to her and so she burnt them.

Nothing felt worse than the silence between two people who feel in and out of love because one of them couldn’t get their priorities right. She spent a long time reflecting on where she got things wrong. She ensured she got her body in shape. But the more she tried to work on herself, the more he withdrew from her. She invested in expensive lingerie, found a belly dance tutor, invested in some pole dancing lessons but he was just not interested. He only gave it to her on his terms which came once in a quarter if she was lucky.

As she lay on that hospital bed, she realized how peaceful life can be if it’s not your responsibility to regulate other people’s emotions, manage their insecurities, inabilities, fight their inner demons or heal their wounds. She had tried her best in the fifteen years with her husband. Now she was acknowledging that forcing vibes was wrong, she needed her energy to be loved as much as she loved him. Life had anxieties as it is so it’s important to be with people who choose us and want to make us feel at home. For home is not just a building but a place of security and love and warmth. She realized he bought her affection; she really didn’t know him. If she had an opportunity to speak to her young self, she would stay single until she met someone who knew that disagreements are bound to happen and until she found someone who would value her. Her fear of society labelling her as a failure if she walked out of her marriage made her stay where she did not feel love. And it was this fear that put her in this state in a hospital bed paralyzed due to a stroke from high blood pressure from all the years of keeping emotions bottled up.

She developed high blood pressure whenever she tried to bring up the lack of intimacy talk with him. And it was like when she accepted the status quo and stopped bringing up the topic, he had to find something else to hurt her with. He begun to stop having conversations with her. Everyone else he could talk to in their home but not his wife. At first, she thought she was running crazy but slowly realized that the only conversations where on car keys, insurance, bread and groceries.

In my first meeting with Mercy, 40 minutes was spent in silence but with tears streaming down her face. The next meeting, she gave a slight smile and this time she spoke a little about herself. As I write this, Mercy has realized that staying in a relationship just because you love somebody is not worth it. Love is not all you need; respect is what you need; happiness is what you need; a best friend is what you need. The rejection that Mercy endured at the hand of her husband scarred her emotionally, women are not wired for rejection. It’s intimacy that a woman needs, a woman wants to be touched, looked at, admired, smiled at, a woman wants companionship and to be craved.

Mercy’s husband was using sex to control her or punish her. In a relationship with a narcissist, sex can be used as means to assert power and dominance over their partner. One way of doing so is by making intimacy conditional. If the partner does what the narcissist wants, they reward them with affection and intimacy. On the other hand, if the partner does not conform to the narcissist expectations, they might be denied physical closeness or affection as a form of punishment. Mercy was a boss who could run the boardroom at her workplace, a board member of various institutions who held a good command of leadership. But she had no voice when it came to communication in her marital home. A narcissist spouse will go from being the perfect love of your life to making you feel nothing you do is good enough. You will give everything, but they will take it all and give you less. You will end up depleted emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically that even the best make-up artist will fail to work on you.
If you’re rejected, accept, if you feel unloved, let go. If they choose someone else or something over you, move on. In every no from someone, there is a yes to someone or something better.

When you finally accept and see the narcissist for who they truly are and not who you thought they would be, that is the exact moment your healing journey starts accelerating and puts you on a path of healing from the mental aguish they inflicted on you.

Seek help when in need, talk to a counsellor near you!

About the author

Aka Monde, is a licensed Professional Counsellor who holds a Master of Science in Counselling from the University of Zambia. She believes in the adage “a problem shared, is a problem half solved.” Speak to your pastor, church elder, elderly family member or see a professional counsellor when in need.

Email: [email protected]