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Judging from two family members who got involved with narcissistic abusers, from what I can tell the abusive narcissist has nothing but contempt for their spouse. They need their spouses unpaid manual labor and their paycheck, but they resent and despise[1] their spouse for everything, including for working outside the home to support the household.
The narcissist abuser will call and even visit their working spouse’s workplace constantly with complaints, demands, and ‘emergencies’ to the point where the working spouse may quit or get fired.
The abuser refers to their working spouse as a ‘wage slave’ and says things about how they aren’t smart enough to be a successful independent businessperson like the abuser is (their success depends on their working spouse’s paycheck, medical benefits, and unpaid manual labor)
The narcissist abuser enjoys telling embarrassing and humiliating stories about how stupid, useless, incompetent, and bumbling their spouse is. These stories always end with how the abusive narcissist is the one who knows everything and saves the day. The narc pretends these stories are ‘affectionate’ and ‘cute’ and ‘funny’ while their spouse sinks under the weight of every additional humiliating word.
If a friend or family member asks the narc to tell them something positive that their abused spouse has done or said, the narc will give a ‘deer in headlights’ look and will not be able to come up with a single kind or positive thing to say about their spouse.
The narcissist abuser enjoys calling their spouse humiliating names like ‘shmuck’ ‘failure’ ‘jerk’ etc. When a friend or family member of the abused spouse asks the abuser not to call them that horrible name, the abuser gaslights and declares that the humiliating insult is actually an ‘in joke’ between the two spouses. “you think it’s funny, don’t you, honey?” the abuser will demand of the abused spouse. The abused spouse will mumble ‘yes’ and stare at the floor, embarrassed and upset to be in the middle of a conflict between abusive spouse and concerned friend/family, knowing that no matter what they say, the abuser will scream and punish them for hours for their family or friend daring to contradict (Oh, wait, ‘attack’) the narcissist’s abusive name-calling verbal abuse.
The narcissist abuser likes to restrict their spouse’s sexuality while indulging themselves with affairs, online flirting, ‘webcam’ hook-ups, viewing horrifying, violent, humiliating pornography, and other disgusting behavior. The narcissist may say that they are ‘polyamorous’ and ‘bisexual’ and that is why they need to have multiple affairs, but of course since their spouse is heterosexual and monogamous, their spouse is not allowed other relationships. They will also accuse the spouse of affairs if the spouse sees an attractive actor on television or at the movies and admits that they find the actor attractive. If the spouse has an attractive friend, coworker, or even family member, they will accuse the spouse of cheating or wanting to cheat. They may accuse their spouse of cheating if they just have a bad dream where the spouse is cheating. They will then use their made up crazy ‘proof’ of the ‘affair’ to further restrict their spouse’s sexuality—no sex with the abusive narcissist spouse, no looking at attractive people, no masturbation, no nothing.
With most of us, marriage is finding a person we love enough to want to spend the rest of our lives with them. With a narcissist, it seems to be about finding someone they hate enough to want to spend the rest of their lives punishing and torturing, using and extorting. It is a sick and sad situation.
Footnotes
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