I've read a couple of books on NPD. My IC hasn't come right out and said that (x)WS is a narc, but he thinks PD for sure. He believes that (x)WS "twinned" with me and had very strong codependent features that I didn't recognize or, in my inexperience in relationships, tolerated thinking it was his way of expressing love.
Leaving him "alone" for job reasons this year is what finally brought everything to the surface. He couldn't function on his own, needed what IC calls a "prop"... literally someone he could play house with. It seems like he zeroed in on OW because she was going through a divorce and made herself available to someone willing to play husband and daddy to her and her child.
I am trying to figure out if I was codependent. I've ordered "Codependent No More" and will see if it rings any bells. My IC (and my best friend who is a therapist) think not. On one hand, I am a career person, so I'm often busy, not home, on trips, meeting a deadline. Sometimes I "kept the peace" mostly because I was too tired to fight and not around enough to feel true consequences for not working out the little things.
The other thing that taps into my FOO issues is that my mother, much like (x)WS, came from a very messed up family. My grandmother was NPD and bipolar. (x)WS's mother has multiple personalities and paranoia, brother and father have bipolar. I had a very happy childhood, but also grew up knowing that any expressions of anger, frustration or any fighting could trigger my Mom's PTSD. So, I learned early on that if you had an issue, talk to your friends, take a "time out" to deal with it yourself, go for a run... but don't confront unless you want to have to devote an exorbitant amount of time trying to reason with someone whom you can't reason with because their reaction is pathological, not logical. I used to think that (x)WS was a lot like my Mom is that they both seemed really emotionally chaotic to me, but I would just sort of ignore them until they sorted things out for themselves. I used to call (x)WS "Walter Mitty"... if he got upset about something because he let his imagination run wild with these fantastic/unrealistic conclusions, I could usually talk him off a ledge and then give him a couple of days and he would regain his equilibrium. Having grown up in that environment, it didn't seem strange to me or feel like a lot of effort. In fact, it felt "normal."
So IC thinks I'm less codependent in the sense that I wasn't afraid to leave (x)WS or walked on eggshells because I feared him. It was just sort of a perfect storm. People tell me now that from the outside it looked like I was doing 80% of the work in the relationship, but I honestly felt like I was checked out most of the time. And my task in IC now is to try to tap into my feelings, because I think I would have continued to deny them with or without (x)WS, because that's how I grew up.
But I am aware in retrospect that his level of dismissive-ness (e.g., the laughing and not opening up) was a little over the top. And I did view him as the older, more mature, smarter half of the couple-- so my looking up to him probably allowed him to dictate the terms of our interactions more than I realized.
You know what's really stupid about this whole thing? We *are* tough. We *can* handle anything. But those strengths were used as weapons to control us.
I want to reflect on this. On DDay #2 he told me he couldn't R because he couldn't stop himself from engaging in the A, couldn't stop lying to me and didn't want to put me through that anymore. He had gone to a couple IC sessions and told me he wanted to stick with it "because there is just too much there" (he originally went after DDay#1 because he thought he had snapped like his mother). At first he had been telling me that he wanted to R because he needed me to help him pull himself out of whatever hole he was in. On DDay#2 he started to say that he realized he couldn't let me "save him." And I told him that I knew I was strong enough to do it. He would say that sometimes he fantasized about holding me and crying and telling me how sorry he is, but he just can't let himself. He said he knew he would either "over attach" or feel repelled by me if he tried.
I know I could have gone to MC with him, helped him work through his FOO issues. I would have done my best to get past the A so I could be there for him and I would have tried to use the A as an opportunity for us to learn to communicate, open up our feelings to one another and get even closer. He just wasn't capable or willing, I guess.
I wonder if it's codependent of me to have wanted that. To sort of sacrifice myself for him in a sense. I told him at one point that I saw it as my duty in our partnership to help pick him up, like you said, because I know I'm strong enough. Frankly, the harder thing *is* having to work on myself and not work on him... at least if we were in MC, and R was working, I might feel like some kind of "progress" was being made. When you work on yourself, alone, I find it's sometimes tough to figure out how you are progressing, if at all.
In the meantime, I see things like crying at baby showers as almost like an emotional exercise. I'm getting my training in on learning how to be vulnerable and open with my feelings. And opening up on SI is also a part of that for me.
I've looked at the NPD thread. I find some of it relevant. If we ever had a house of our own, I imagine there would have been tons of caulk lying around.