Audrey’s Narcissistic Ex-Husband One Year Later

It does not constitute medical or psychological advice, and is not a substitute for professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let iHeart Media use it in part orn full, and we may edit it for length and clarity. In the sessions you'll hear, all names have

been changed for the privacy of our guests. So today we're gonna check in with Audrey. Her episode was called Audrey's Narcissistic ex Husband. Audrey was struggling with making sense of her marriage in hindsight, and she was doing a lot of second guessing about her role in the marriage and her husband's role and why he left and why he left in such a cruel kind of way. He was serving her divorce papers as she was taking care of him after he had surgery, and he didn't even

tell her. She discovered it in the mailbox as she's tending for him on the couch, and because so much was left unresolved for her, she was really focused on her ex husband's upcoming wedding and how well he was treating his new partner and how loving he was towards her, and making all these comparisons of how he had been with her towards the end. And what we discovered when talking with her is that she really hasn't recovered and she was still spending too much of her thoughts on

her husband and not enough on herself. So let's get a reminder of that session. The wedding is coming up, the second marriage from my ex. It's in six weeks, and it's really been hard, and I've been kind of denying myself that that's sort of compassion, just saying, oh, it's fine, I'm happy for him when really it's just it's painful on a million levels. You're listening to dea therapists will be back after a short break, and now let's hear how things are going for Audrey a year later. Hi,

Guy and Laurie. It's Audrey catching up after hard to believe, after a year of being on the show. I just wanted to let you know that. First of all, I was able to keep up with the therapy the entire year. So I'm still seeing a therapist after our talk, and

it's been incredibly helpful. So we've just gone over and continued the discussion from a lot of what came up in my session, just about childhood and influences and how to sort of look at myself in these scenarios that were causing me so much trouble, particularly my ex husband

and his new marriage. So that's been really good. Um. The other assignment I was given was to end the relationship with the person who was married, and I did do that and since have started dating someone new and it's been really incredible and interesting to be in a quote unquote normal relationship because I think after our talk, I really was looking at myself in the past, you know, several months an assessing where I was contributing to my

own pain and discomfort in those relationships, why I was choosing things that wouldn't go anywhere, And it's taken some adjusting, but it feels really good to be in a relationship where both of us can give and I'm learning how to allow that, which was really hard for me. And so as you can imagine, my focus is much more on myself than it was before. You know, I was harping on things from the past and not really dealing with my own contribution to my issues. So that part

is really good. Um. As far as the fun assignments, I was definitely able to host people at my house the night of my ex husband's new wedding and it just felt really good to have people in there. And ever since, I've been doing a lot more of that and creating just a space that's more about me and my kids and the people in my life, and that has made just a massive difference. UM. So all those things are really good. The only thing I wasn't able

to do yet was get on that trip with my sister. Um. But this sort of leads to something that is very important and what I want to share with you guys, because it really shows how our talk if it found its way into different aspects of my life. And so we, my sisters and I were planning a trip um, but we had a family emergency come up not too long

after we did the show. My mother needed emergency surgery, and my father had been suffering from Alzheimer's and was getting a lot worse, and so when this all happened, there was no one to take care of him right there, so we all had to sort of fly up and manage this really hard scenario with my mom being in the hospital and him being confused, and just being back in our childhood home and sort of facing some of

the things that were challenging. But I realized going into that that just fibe and having talked with you both, I have been a stronger person since that call, and I think that it enabled me to kind of cope with the difficulty of what was going on with my family and be supportive to my sisters and my parents in a way that I don't think I would have been able to have, you know, done, if I was still caught up in this cycle of being in relationships

that were unhealthy, harping on my ex husband in his new life and not my own, and being in that position of relative strength, I am convinced to made a massive difference in my ability to just cope with what

was a really tough situation. But I just found that I was coming from such a different place, a place of calm, a place of self power, as opposed to, you know, feeling small, which I had for a very long time leading up to this, And I wanted to share that because again, it's just about the perspective shift that I got from our call, and that perspective was coming out of a victim mentality and much more into a place of power and ownership of my own choices.

I just I was blown away by how important it was to begin this process. And I just want to thank you guys so much because I just feel like I am different, you know, and uh, I can't really emphasize that enough, So thank you so much. Hopefully the you know, good things will continue, and just keep seeing the impact of this process and what has started. Thank you. I think one of the big winds here for Audrey was how a shift in one area led to a

shift in many areas. In her life, starting with her relationship. Once she began focusing on herself and not on her ex husband, she was able to create space for her own desire. So she left that relationship with the unavailable man. She's now in a healthy relationship, what she calls a normal relationship, maybe for the first time in her life, and she's in a relationship where she can both give and receive. In her marriage, she was giving a lot and not getting a lot. So that's a big shift

for her. And she had also been avoiding getting close to people in all of her earlier relationships. So I think that now that she's able to let herself experiment with getting close to this man in this healthy relationship is real progress. This was one of those that as I was listening to the update, I was smiling so broadly because the proof truly is in the pudding, you know. I mean, our listeners need to understand that once you have the insight about something, it's not like a knot

that gets undone and now the issue goes away. Now the work begins. And I think the illustration of that is when she says she's in a relationship where both of them are given thing and that for her, the receiving is actually really difficult because it's not natural, it's not comfortable, but she's working on allowing it. She's working on absorbing it, on letting that in. It's a great illustration of the work that needs to be done in and after therapy and after, I mean in between sessions

and on yourself in between. It doesn't mean it will be easy to go against many years of habit, and it takes constant mindfulness and intentionality and efforts. So she's clearly doing all of that, and that's wonderful to hear. Yeah, and I like seeing too, how when we have more agency and we feel more centered in one area, how it generalizes to other areas, like how she managed that really difficult situation with a family crisis with both her

mom and her dad. She said she's feeling stronger as a person, whereas before when we talked to her a year ago, she felt very, very fragile. Absolutely, and she

says also that she feels like a different person. And then she explains that there's a shift in her perspective, but she actually means in her true sense of identity, because she went from seeing herself as a victim in the world to feel that even if difficult things happen, and they have, she is more empowered to handle them and to deal with them, and that truly is changed. That truly is different because it's in the core, it's in how she sees herself in relation to the world.

So that's about as substantive a change as one can have. And I think how she got there was by being able to see her own role in what was keeping her stuck, what was holding her back. And once we can see that we can change what we're doing, even if the circumstances out there are difficult, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for us, as it

did with Audrey. And this is something that I hope our listeners take away too, that when they can really look at what their own role is and what's not working, there's so much possibility for change. Next week we'll hear back from Paul to see how he's doing a year after he came to us struggling to set limits with his boss at work. She would kind of contact me

outside of work to keep that conversation going. I would just see my phone light up and be a text message and I said, Hey, if this is work related and I'm not at work, I really would like if you could just email me instead. She didn't really do that. If you're enjoying our podcast, don't forget to subscribe for free so that you don't miss any episodes, and please help support Dear Therapists by telling your friends about it and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Your reviews really

help people to find the show. If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us, email us at Lori and Guy at I heart media dot com. Our executive producer is Noel Brown. We have produced and edited by Josh Fisher. Additional editing support by Helena Rosen, John Washington and Zachary Fisher. Are in turns are Ben Bernstein, Emily Guccieriz and Silver Lifton. And special thanks to our podcast fairy Godmother Katie Curic. We can't wait to see

you at our next session. The A Therapist is a production of I Heart Radio Fish fa