Audrey’s Narcissistic Ex-Husband One Year Later

This week we’re checking in with Audrey, who was struggling to move on from a divorce that happened seven years earlier, to hear how she’s doing one year later.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Laurie Gottlieb. I'm the author of Maybe You Should
Talk to Someone, and I write the Dear Therapist advice
column for the Atlantic. And I'm Guy Winch. I'm the
author of Emotional First Aid, and I write the Dear
Guy advice column fateed. And this is Dear Therapists. This
week we're going to check in on a guest from
season two to hear how they're doing a year later. First,

(00:24):
a quick note, Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only.
It does not constitute medical or psychological advice, and is
not a substitute for professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional,
or other qualified health provider with any questions you may
have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter,

(00:45):
you are agreeing to let iHeart Media use it in
part orn full, and we may edit it for length
and clarity. In the sessions you'll hear, all names have
been changed for the privacy of our guests. So today
we're gonna check in with Audrey. Her episode was called
Audrey's Narcissistic ex Husband. Audrey was struggling with making sense

(01:06):
of her marriage in hindsight, and she was doing a
lot of second guessing about her role in the marriage
and her husband's role and why he left and why
he left in such a cruel kind of way. He
was serving her divorce papers as she was taking care
of him after he had surgery, and he didn't even
tell her. She discovered it in the mailbox as she's

(01:27):
tending for him on the couch, and because so much
was left unresolved for her, she was really focused on
her ex husband's upcoming wedding and how well he was
treating his new partner and how loving he was towards her,
and making all these comparisons of how he had been
with her towards the end. And what we discovered when
talking with her is that she really hasn't recovered and

(01:49):
she was still spending too much of her thoughts on
her husband and not enough on herself. So let's get
a reminder of that session. The wedding is coming up,
the second marriage from my ex. It's in six weeks,
and it's really been hard, and I've been kind of

(02:10):
denying myself that that's sort of compassion, just saying, oh,
it's fine, I'm happy for him when really it's just
it's painful on a million levels. You're listening to dea
therapists will be back after a short break, and now

(02:42):
let's hear how things are going for Audrey a year later. Hi,
Guy and Laurie. It's Audrey catching up after hard to believe,
after a year of being on the show. I just
wanted to let you know that. First of all, I
was able to keep up with the therapy the entire year.
So I'm still seeing a therapist after our talk, and

(03:03):
it's been incredibly helpful. So we've just gone over and
continued the discussion from a lot of what came up
in my session, just about childhood and influences and how
to sort of look at myself in these scenarios that
were causing me so much trouble, particularly my ex husband
and his new marriage. So that's been really good. Um.

(03:25):
The other assignment I was given was to end the
relationship with the person who was married, and I did
do that and since have started dating someone new and
it's been really incredible and interesting to be in a
quote unquote normal relationship because I think after our talk,

(03:45):
I really was looking at myself in the past, you know,
several months an assessing where I was contributing to my
own pain and discomfort in those relationships, why I was
choosing things that wouldn't go anywhere, And it's taken some adjusting,
but it feels really good to be in a relationship

(04:06):
where both of us can give and I'm learning how
to allow that, which was really hard for me. And
so as you can imagine, my focus is much more
on myself than it was before. You know, I was
harping on things from the past and not really dealing
with my own contribution to my issues. So that part

(04:27):
is really good. Um. As far as the fun assignments,
I was definitely able to host people at my house
the night of my ex husband's new wedding and it
just felt really good to have people in there. And
ever since, I've been doing a lot more of that
and creating just a space that's more about me and
my kids and the people in my life, and that

(04:49):
has made just a massive difference. UM. So all those
things are really good. The only thing I wasn't able
to do yet was get on that trip with my sister. Um.
But this sort of leads to something that is very
important and what I want to share with you guys,
because it really shows how our talk if it found

(05:10):
its way into different aspects of my life. And so we,
my sisters and I were planning a trip um, but
we had a family emergency come up not too long
after we did the show. My mother needed emergency surgery,
and my father had been suffering from Alzheimer's and was
getting a lot worse, and so when this all happened,

(05:31):
there was no one to take care of him right there,
so we all had to sort of fly up and
manage this really hard scenario with my mom being in
the hospital and him being confused, and just being back
in our childhood home and sort of facing some of
the things that were challenging. But I realized going into
that that just fibe and having talked with you both,

(05:56):
I have been a stronger person since that call, and
I think that it enabled me to kind of cope
with the difficulty of what was going on with my
family and be supportive to my sisters and my parents
in a way that I don't think I would have
been able to have, you know, done, if I was
still caught up in this cycle of being in relationships

(06:19):
that were unhealthy, harping on my ex husband in his
new life and not my own, and being in that
position of relative strength, I am convinced to made a
massive difference in my ability to just cope with what
was a really tough situation. But I just found that
I was coming from such a different place, a place

(06:40):
of calm, a place of self power, as opposed to,
you know, feeling small, which I had for a very
long time leading up to this, And I wanted to
share that because again, it's just about the perspective shift
that I got from our call, and that perspective was
coming out of a victim mentality and much more into

(07:04):
a place of power and ownership of my own choices.
I just I was blown away by how important it
was to begin this process. And I just want to
thank you guys so much because I just feel like
I am different, you know, and uh, I can't really
emphasize that enough, So thank you so much. Hopefully the

(07:25):
you know, good things will continue, and just keep seeing
the impact of this process and what has started. Thank you.
I think one of the big winds here for Audrey
was how a shift in one area led to a

(07:46):
shift in many areas. In her life, starting with her relationship.
Once she began focusing on herself and not on her
ex husband, she was able to create space for her
own desire. So she left that relationship with the unavailable man.
She's now in a healthy relationship, what she calls a
normal relationship, maybe for the first time in her life,

(08:09):
and she's in a relationship where she can both give
and receive. In her marriage, she was giving a lot
and not getting a lot. So that's a big shift
for her. And she had also been avoiding getting close
to people in all of her earlier relationships. So I
think that now that she's able to let herself experiment

(08:29):
with getting close to this man in this healthy relationship
is real progress. This was one of those that as
I was listening to the update, I was smiling so
broadly because the proof truly is in the pudding, you know.
I mean, our listeners need to understand that once you
have the insight about something, it's not like a knot

(08:50):
that gets undone and now the issue goes away. Now
the work begins. And I think the illustration of that
is when she says she's in a relationship where both
of them are given thing and that for her, the
receiving is actually really difficult because it's not natural, it's
not comfortable, but she's working on allowing it. She's working
on absorbing it, on letting that in. It's a great

(09:13):
illustration of the work that needs to be done in
and after therapy and after, I mean in between sessions
and on yourself in between. It doesn't mean it will
be easy to go against many years of habit, and
it takes constant mindfulness and intentionality and efforts. So she's
clearly doing all of that, and that's wonderful to hear. Yeah,

(09:33):
and I like seeing too, how when we have more
agency and we feel more centered in one area, how
it generalizes to other areas, like how she managed that
really difficult situation with a family crisis with both her
mom and her dad. She said she's feeling stronger as
a person, whereas before when we talked to her a
year ago, she felt very, very fragile. Absolutely, and she

(09:56):
says also that she feels like a different person. And
then she explains that there's a shift in her perspective,
but she actually means in her true sense of identity,
because she went from seeing herself as a victim in
the world to feel that even if difficult things happen,
and they have, she is more empowered to handle them

(10:18):
and to deal with them, and that truly is changed.
That truly is different because it's in the core, it's
in how she sees herself in relation to the world.
So that's about as substantive a change as one can have.
And I think how she got there was by being
able to see her own role in what was keeping
her stuck, what was holding her back. And once we

(10:39):
can see that we can change what we're doing, even
if the circumstances out there are difficult, it opens up
a whole new world of possibilities for us, as it
did with Audrey. And this is something that I hope
our listeners take away too, that when they can really
look at what their own role is and what's not working,
there's so much possibility for change. Next week we'll hear

(11:05):
back from Paul to see how he's doing a year
after he came to us struggling to set limits with
his boss at work. She would kind of contact me
outside of work to keep that conversation going. I would
just see my phone light up and be a text
message and I said, Hey, if this is work related
and I'm not at work, I really would like if
you could just email me instead. She didn't really do that.

(11:26):
If you're enjoying our podcast, don't forget to subscribe for
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help people to find the show. If you have a
dilemma you'd like to discuss with us, email us at
Lori and Guy at I heart media dot com. Our

(11:48):
executive producer is Noel Brown. We have produced and edited
by Josh Fisher. Additional editing support by Helena Rosen, John
Washington and Zachary Fisher. Are in turns are Ben Bernstein,
Emily Guccieriz and Silver Lifton. And special thanks to our
podcast fairy Godmother Katie Curic. We can't wait to see

(12:09):
you at our next session. The A Therapist is a
production of I Heart Radio Fish fa