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Mental Illness is Not an Excuse for Abuse
Living with someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder
When I met my ex, I felt I won the lottery. He was the most charming man I have ever met. He was funny and caring, he listened to me with such attention I never believed was possible and he told me about himself. It wasn’t too-good-to-be-true, because he was very honest about his shortcomings. He told me quite early on that he was suffering from Cluster B personality disorder.
I wouldn’t have figured that he had a mental illness, but I knew enough about people struggling with depression, panic attacks, PTSD to understand that mental illness can be unnoticeable from the outside in lots of cases. I never questioned it — I’ve always known better than that.
When he told me, I wasn’t even alerted. I consider mental illness as a condition that can be part of our lives. You can live with it, you can function with it, you can tame it and control it. Knowing about it and admitting it is a huge thing — it takes a whole lot of courage, it means you open up and you show your most vulnerable side, you let in on a secret. I didn’t ask anything more, as I said, it was quite early on, we were just getting to know each other.
I would have wanted to ask what it means for him, how he lives with it, does he take any…
