When people are trying to make sense of a difficult relationship, they often ask themselves a painful question: "Did they ever really love me?" It's an understandable question, but over time I've come to believe there may be a more useful one. Instead of asking whether someone loved you, ask what happened to you in the relationship. Many people define love by words. They think about the promises that were made, the affectionate texts, the declarations of commitment, or the times someone said,...

The grief of narcissistic abuse is often far greater than people realize. For many survivors of narcissistic abuse in intimate partner relationships, the end of the relationship does not feel like a breakup. It feels like a death. Not only because the relationship has ended, but because the person they loved seems to disappear as well. Survivors often find themselves grieving the partner they thought they knew, the future they imagined, the family they hoped to preserve, and an entire reality...

One of the most painful aspects of emotional abuse, coercive control, and subtle relational harm is not always the behavior itself. Sometimes it is the fear that no one will believe you if you talk about it. Many survivors spend months, or years, trying to find the right words. How do you explain a look? A tone? An undercurrent of contempt? A pattern of manipulation that unfolded through hundreds or thousands of interactions? How do you explain the feeling of constantly walking on eggshells...