How To Deal With Narcissistic Abuse In Marriage – Ingrid’s Story

If you never thought you’d have to deal with narcissistic abuse in marriage, you’re not alone. To see if you’re experiencing any of the 19 types of emotional abuse you’ll experience from a narcissist, take our free emotional abuse quiz. If you are experiencing narcissistic emotional abuse, you will need support. For live support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session today. 5 Clear Signs of Narcissistic Abuse in Marriage 1. You’re constantly second-guessing yourself. Gaslighting makes you doubt your memory, instincts, and even your sanity. You start asking, “Is it really that bad?” That’s by design. 2. He makes big promises—and never follows through. Future faking sounds like: “We’ll go to Italy next year” or “I’m applying for jobs tomorrow.” It’s all smoke and mirrors designed to keep you hooked. 3. You’re carrying the entire relationship. If you’re paying the bills, managing the emotions, and making excuses for his behavior—you’re being exploited, not partnered. 4. Therapy made things worse. Couples therapy often misses narcissistic abuse. When the abuser charms the therapist, you walk away feeling more confused and blamed. 5. You think choosing yourself is selfish. Survivors of narcissistic abuse in marriage often struggle with guilt. But choosing you isn’t selfish—it’s survival. And it’s the first step toward freedom. Transcript: How To Deal With Narcissistic Abuse In Marriage Anne: I have Ingrid Clayton on today’s episode. She’s a clinical psychologist and trauma therapist in Los Angeles, California, and the author of the memoir, Believing Me. Welcome, Ingrid. Ingrid: Thank you so much, Anne. So happy to be here. Anne: Ingrid, let’s start at the beginning of your story. Ingrid: Wow, for me, it goes back to my childhood. So my parents divorced. And my mother rapidly remarried my dad’s best friend. That already sets the stage of the first betrayal. And this man, I can now use this language. This is not language I had for a long time, but he started to groom me. And what I now know set me up to please, appease and do everything I could to keep myself safe in a very unsafe environment. So with my first husband, with so many boyfriends before him. My blueprint was, I will find a way to keep myself safe in an unsafe relationship. So my memoir is about me unpacking decades of that experience. Sort of untangling it as a survivor, but also as a therapist who didn’t know that she had complex trauma. Because as we know. With narcissism, it’s decades of gaslighting and I believed it wasn’t that bad. Maybe it’s me, and if I try a little harder, you know, all those things. Anne: So when you say blueprint, you didn’t know that you were continuing to encounter abusive people. What labels did you give them back when you were unaware of the type of character these people had? Ingrid: I don’t think I would have used the word abusive, that felt too strong. But I saw there was a pattern, I saw they were dysfunctional relationships. Patterns Of Dysfunctional Relationships Ingrid: I went and sat on many therapist couches. And a lot of the language given back to me, things like codependency. I couldn’t see myself in that label, this idea that I was trying to control. There was this lens that felt shameful and stigmatizing, and that also didn’t feel like it helped me. So I kept going and trying. And I thought maybe one day it would shift. Meanwhile, there was just a lot of wreckage, and I didn’t know why. And the narcissistic abuse always presented a little differently. It was active alcoholism, someone who was compulsively cheating on me, exploitation, financially and otherwise. It looked differently in each relationship, but I certainly saw the thread. And it was so painful. So devastating. Anne: This is why you’re not codependent, you were doing safety seeking behaviors. While you were sitting on those therapy couches, did any of the therapists say the word abuse to you? Ingrid: Gosh, it’s a good question. I know none of them used the word trauma, which was the piece that finally became so helpful to me. They may have used the word abuse in relation to my upbringing. So here’s the other part of my story. Growing up, I went to the counselor at my then high school. Eventually, I said, here are all the things happening. I think this is wrong. And she said, “I’m a mandated reporter. And we need to call social services.” So it turned into what was essentially me initiating this intervention on my family. I was about 16 at the time, but if we rewind even further, maybe 12 years old, a friend’s parents had called social services on my behalf. Intervention & Family Betrayal Ingrid: And they orchestrated this sort of secret meeting with me and a social worker. She sat me down with her clipboard, and this seemed like this formal way. And asked me all these questions. She wanted to know where’s the physical abuse. And I was like, ...