For the past week or so, I’ve been actually missing my emotionally abusive, narcissistic ex husband.   Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t like him, and I’m not making excuses for him (I still know he’s a narc and know No Contact is best).  I don’t want to be friends with him.  I don’t want to visit him, have lunch with him, or have him over to my house.   I realize the dangers of even having phone conversations with him; it would be a slippery slope into a relapse or very triggering situation (and I’m already triggered enough as it is right now).

But even at the height of his abusive behavior (here’s a semi-funny-but-not-really story about one way he used to manipulate and mentally torture me), there always remained those rare times I actually enjoyed his company.   I enjoyed his intellect.  It was almost as if at certain times, when he could talk about something he actually knew a lot about, he became less narcissistic — or I was able to look past it — or something.  There were certain topics having nothing to do with ourselves or the kids that we could have long, intellectual conversations about without fighting.  Politics was one of them.   We always were on the same page about politics, and we used to get into long, rather enjoyable intellectual discussions, sometimes with a little weed providing a kind of social lubricant.   These conversations never ended badly, unlike almost everything else.

My daughter visits her dad at least once or twice a week, since he lives nearby.   She says all he talks about anymore is the political situation, and how much he hates Trump.    Meanwhile, I have very few — really no — people in real life I can talk to about the political situation, which gets more threatening and scary by the day.    My daughter agrees with my views, but hates talking about it, and my son (who also agrees with me and is gay so he feels very much under threat by the Trump administration’s anti-gay rhetoric) has been escaping into entertainment, movies, games, and work because he doesn’t want to deal with it at all. My daughter’s boyfriend, who I get along with otherwise, does not agree with us about Trump, unfortunately (I thought he was changing his mind, but he never really did).   I really don’t have any other close friends or family I can talk to about this and it’s driving me crazy.

My daughter just went up to see her dad, and I asked her to give him a message.  I told her to tell him I missed our political discussions, and to give him my phone number in case he ever wanted to talk politics.    She said he probably wouldn’t call me, and that’s okay, but I wanted to extend the invitation.   I feel very much alone these days in an increasingly scary country that is about to get a whole lot worse (unless some miracle happens soon) and want a real life person to talk to about this, even if it’s a narc I was married to, because there just really isn’t anyone else.

I’ll provide an update, should he take me up on my offer, but he probably won’t.   I’m pretty much dead to him.