For a long time, I believed I had failed to protect my boundaries in my marriage. That I had allowed too much. That I hadn’t spoken up clearly or firmly enough. That I had somehow participated in my own erasure. But that story doesn’t quite hold. Inside the relationship, I didn’t really have boundaries. Not because I didn’t enforce them — but because I had never learned they were allowed to exist. As a child, I had no privacy. None. My phone calls were listened to. My belongi

I learned very early in my marriage that if something mattered to me, I couldn’t just say it. Not plainly. Not directly. If I needed something, anything really, I had to figure out how to present it in a way that allowed him to arrive at the conclusion himself. As if the idea had originated in his mind, not mine. At the time, I was vaguely uncomfortable with this. I remember wondering if that made me manipulative. And in a technical sense, yes, it did. I was manipulating outc

Breaking free from the grips of a narcissistic, abusive relationship is a courageous step toward reclaiming your life. Yet, the scars...