The complexity of grieving an ex who dies, re-traumatising. The legacy of narcissistic abuse and trauma bonding.

I have updated this post many times as the years go by. It may be sad but it has a happy ending.

The death of an ex. The re-traumatising that is unexpected.

The complexity and loneliness of grieving for an ex who was emotionally abusive. The legacy of unhealthy bonding. A grief that no one will sympathise with nor understand. A grief that will shame you and that you will be shamed for. 

No one understands why you would grieve an ex. They will shame you, not listen, use platitudes and therapy speak like 'it's just a trauma bond'. I have heard so many words used that were covertly said because people don't understand grief. They certainly don't understand grieving an ex. I mean they are an ex for a reason. But mostly it is because they don't know your whole story. 

They make judgements based on how they feel about their ex. I have had people say 'I wish mine was dead'. Yet few say, I am sorry for your loss and when they do it means a lot because that is all that is needed really. So this is a blog about loss, grief and the death of an ex and how it re-traumatises you. Please if you can leave your pre-conceived thoughts and concepts to one side before you read. And if you make it to the end, thanks for taking the time. It means a lot.

You are never prepared for the terrible grief when you walk away from a narcissist nor the length of time it takes to get over this. If ever! Leaving them was only the beginning of the journey not the end. You grieve and then the honeymoon phase of being free kicks in but still in the background is that slow drip of sadness.

In my case I had moved on with my life, found love, but then he died. I was not prepared for how this would impact my life. I thought I had moved on. Watch out for that trap! It can trip you up at any time. 

His death brought back all the sadness of the time when I left him. The utter desolation. And of course the truth of how abusive he was.

When I left my ex I grieved terribly. Living without him was both freeing and difficult at the same time. A paradox in itself. I was freed from his controlling ways and for once was able to breathe again and do what I wanted to do. While in the relationship it was always his world I lived in, and the room for what I wanted diminished. The paradox was that I had the best time of my life while with him. He was a character I would not forget, ever, even to this day. But the shame of grieving, oh the shame. And then the lightbulb moment when all the things you had buried come out and you realise 'I was a victim of coercive control/domestic abuse'. I was in denial.

The grief and loss of leaving
When I left I was not prepared for the grief and loss of it all. Not only him but also the world I had lived in with him. In the past this grief had always made me return to him. I had left him many times but could not stay away. They say that victims of abuse leave on avergae seven times before finaly staying away for good. 

  I felt I couldn't live without him. I always went back to him because the other choices were much worse. He was my anchor and my stability. I met him after leaving an abusive family of origin. Even though I was an independant woman I was also very dependant on him without realising it. So when I left the world that I had lived in, his world, it ended abruptly. I found myself in an empty place, knowing no one and with no life at all. I had to start from scratch again. It was a hard time.

I did not go back to him this time
I managed to stay away this time despite having left and gone back several times. I was in therapy for child abuse when I left him for the last time and it changed me. I saw him as he really was and I wondered that I had stayed so long. I did not want to go back to him and yet some part of me also did.  But I still felt love for him, didn't I, or did I? I had not yet heard of trauma bonding. I still grieved, and in itself, I felt shame for doing so. It was raw. Will it always be so?

I stayed friends with him
I stayed friends with him because he was, what I considered to be, my family, a replacement for my dysfunctional neglectful family. And of course I was very much alone. Of course all I had done was replaced one with the other, another dysfunctional relationship. He continued to treat me with disrespect and I took it. Then one day I had enough. 

At a time that I went no contact with my whole life, I included him in it, mainly to sever all links that would lead to me. Staying friends with him was a mistake because he was still so disrespectful, or perhaps I was just seeing clearly how he had always been. There was no benefit to staying in touch with him other than I was totally alone in the world with no one but him. 

I made friends and started to do all the things I loved. I fell in love with another. But still I missed him. You think that loving another will take away all the pain but it doesn't. It is too deep, too dysfunctional, too much to heal. Especially if you also have the added bonus of a childhood of abuse. My current partner has another take on this and says that it may have been the reason I am still alive. Because in leaving we are at the point where we are most likely to be killed. Instead he stole everything from me.

Then one day I found out online that he had died.!

I was not prepared for the shock this would be. It took me into a very dark place. I felt as if my world had ended. I spent decades with this man and through it of course there were good times but the good times did not included how it was to be with him which was a nightmare.

It was by accident that I was going through old papers and there was a card he had sent me after we split up. It said 'you left your footprints all over my heart'. Of course it set me off thinking about him. So I looked online and instead of seeing how much money he was amassing, as I thought would happen, instead I saw his obituary. It felt as if the whole energy of the earth had been sucked out of it and my life with it. I knew this did not feel normal. I was afraid.

His death  has helped me to see how life actually was with him and how I got tricked into staying with a person I did not want to be with. A small sense of closure. I have also experienced terrible guilt and shame for things I did myself. There is no doubt that I was trauma bonded to him because there is no other explanation to why I stayed. Apart from the huge fact that he gave me a security and stability that I lacked due to my abusive childhood.

But the grieving process I have had to go through and the re-traumatising of old hurts and memories was beyond belief. It made me feel as if I had undid all that I built up. Together with the lack of support for this kind of bereavement, even from other survivors or those who have lost partners, this shocked me the most, the lack of understanding. I understand now that it is called disenfranchised grief

From the website linked above: 

This can happen for a number of reasons that, for the most, fall into one (or sometimes more) of the following categories:

1. The loss isn’t seen as worthy of grief (ex. non-death losses)
2. The relationship is stigmatized (ex. partner in an extramarital affair)
3. The mechanism of death is stigmatized (ex. suicide or overdose death)
4. The person grieving is not recognized as a griever (ex. co-workers or ex-partners)
5. The way someone is grieving is stigmatized. (ex. the absence of an outward grief response or extreme grief responses) --Ken Doka

“Grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned or publicly mourned”. Ken Doka

Yet beyond even this was the terrible shame of grieving for an ex when I am with a man who loves me. He has supported my grief but there is only so much you can say about another signifigant person from your past. So I have felt very alone in this grief. I tried two counsellors who both were not trauma informed despite having trauma as a part of their list of experiences. They both damaged me further.

When I met my ex he had nothing and by the time I left he was very rich. I left with nothing and had to start again exactly as I was when first meeting him, on my own with no one and nothing. Whereas he just changed me for another person to wait on him, and carried on with all his money. His life did not change at all. I thought he would miss me. I felt shame at hurting him. All those things that survivors of narcissistic abuse go through. All the self blame. It is so damaging. Of course he did not miss me, only what I did for him. I was unaware of that at the time. I blamed myself. I really believed he loved me. How stupid I was.

Is it normal to grieve an ex who was abusive? Yes it is. All loss is grief. But if your loss is an ex few will understand why you cry. They don't have compassion for YOUR grief they only see that you were abused and think you should be feeling nothing for them. But some people are not cut out like that. Some of us grieve. We can't all use anger to hide our pain or to shut off our emotions and numb out. If only we could.

I can go from missing him to being angry that I am thinking about him at all. We had such a long history together and you can't just block it out. It was bad enough when I first left him but I got on with life. I don't think I ever stopped missing him and much of it was due to not knowing about trauma bonding and narcissistic abuse at the time I left. But his death. that was a big blow. I had not been prepared for such strong feelings about it.

I have begun to accept that he has in fact left this earth and that I will never see him again. That any thought of returning to him has been totally taken away. But with this grief comes the regrets I have at things I also did to him and I am not proud of who I was then either. I did not want to be with him, he coerced me into the relationship. Coerced me into an intimate relationship I definately did dnot want. I try to forgive myself for my ignorance. 

It isn't a grief that is talked about much is it, your ex. Yet it is happening every day to those who are divorcing or seperating. It is a real and deep bereavement. But tell anyone about this grief and you will be met with minimising and platitudes. If this is you I understand your grief. Whether they are alive or dead feel no shame in your loss. All loss is big, no loss is small. Maybe your ex was not abusive but you just fell apart, yet still their death can impact you. But no one understands why you grieve. It is a lonely place.

As an update, years later.

After much time had elapsed, years, my grief lessened and instead of romanticising how it was I was able to admit to myself that I was a victim of coercive control/domestic abuse and it shifted something inside me. 

I have compassion for the man I once lived with, he had his own demons, but I now know that he never loved me, he just used me and controlled me. The truth is that in the end he hated me. It was in his eyes and in his actions. I just found it hard to accept. I love myself enough now to know that it was not love. I know what love is and it is not abuse.

 Even though he may come into my thoughts I have a new life now, a much better life, with someone who loves me and who I love. It is a simple life filled with peace. I am so grateful for every tiny thing. But mostly I am grateful that he was unable to take my heart and make it hard, thereby maybe denying me of love in the future. In the end I won because I do not hate.