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How Long It Takes to Get Over Narcissistic Abuse

You were used, abused, and now you want to heal. How long should you expect?

Zita Fontaine
9 min readFeb 11, 2022
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Time is a funny thing. It’s intangible and fleeting at times, and other times it’s like a rock sitting on your chest — with minutes crawling almost backwards, hours feeling like years. Yet it slips away, quicker than you would think leaving you with no recollection of long periods.

Nothing shows better the volatility of time than an abusive relationship with all its highs and lows. The great moments of the initial blissful times seem like a lifetime away and the times when you are hurting seem to be eternal.

I was in an abusive relationship with a Narcissist and what appeared to be a dream in the first few weeks slowly gave way to a nightmare that was seeping into my day-to-day reality — ruthlessly and gradually. Of course, it didn’t start off with abuse, it never does. On the contrary, it was everything I have ever dreamt of, a funny, charming, charismatic guy who was into me and falling in love with me, showing me every moment of the day that I was the best thing that ever happened to him. It was too good to be true, and I thought that it was the love I deserved, the love I never had before. The fireworks, the great talks, the attention, the passion. The full package.

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Zita Fontaine
Zita Fontaine

Written by Zita Fontaine

Writer. Dreamer. Hopeless romantic. Newsletter: zita.substack.com Email me: zitafontaine (at) gmail

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