[Pinetree487]

Hello, I hope I am posting in the right place. My husband and I need advice:

We have been temporarily subletting a room in a house owned by a narcissist, who also lives in same house, for several months, and decided to move due to the stress, anxiety, constant criticism, and walking on eggshells. We have less than a week left, and our main concerns at this point are whether the narcissist is going to gets worse because she knows we are leaving and worry about her possibly getting dangerous, and the fear of not knowing what she might do has caused some extreme anxiety, especially with my husband, as he is barely sleeping, and spending a lot of time trying to be perfect as to not set her off. We are trying to keep it as peaceful as possible until we move, and are afraid she will do something extreme, knowing that she is losing her victims. She has never been physically violent, and has never raged at us, though.

When I finally blew up at her and told her how we were tired of the verbal abuse, and we decided to move, she stopped bothering us, mostly, and has stopped verbal abuse, but it seems like she is having a hard time holding back. It's hard to explain.

We are being cordial and are avoiding conversations and contact as much as possible without being rude, but she is the type that no matter what we do, she has made it look bad, in her mind.

I am concerned over the stress it's causing my husband, as the closer our move date gets, the more he is stressing about little things that might set her off. Like he is overly trying to make sure that everything is perfect, as to not give her any reason to set her off. Since we've been here, we have had to be like hypervigilant of everything like closing the doors ever so quietly, avoiding use of the kitchen even though we pay for use of it, not having lights on, not going in and out the door too much, etc, etc, etc.

When we first started renting, and after realizing she was narcissistic, and where being very careful about setting her off, and tried to avoid anything that could cause a problem that bothered her - she confronted us and said she wanted us to have more use of the house, to converse with her more, etc, so we know that it bothers her that we are laying low. She has been doing things to try to set us off, but not extremely so, and is holding back the verbal abuse.

We need advice on what more we can do, or not do, to keep the peace until we leave. I keep telling my husband to relax more, he understands that no matter what we do or don't do, she is likely to make something of it, but he asked me to just let him be paranoid about it, to try to not give her anything to go off about. Earlier this evening, my husband asked me if I could get by with eating my dinner and working on my computer with the light out, so she would not complain about a light being on.

Any advice?, please. Our stomachs are in knots. Also, this could be a coincidence, but our cat of 10 years went missing about a week after we told her we were moving, we have posted and called everywhere, even have people who live close by on the Nextdoor neighborhood website helping, we have not yet found her, even though she's microchipped and is a cat that takes walks and is aware of the area. We don't want to blame, but it is very coincidental, our cat has never been lost before, despite moving frequently due to my husband's job.

[Skeezyks]

Hello Pineetree487: I'm sorry I cannot really comment with regard to your circumstances. However I noticed this is your first post here on PC. So... to PsychCentral… from the Skeezyks! May the time you spend here be of benefit.

PsychCentral is a great place to get information as well as support for mental health issues. The more you post, & reply to other members’ posts, the more a part of the community you will become. Plus there are social groups you can join & chat rooms where you’ll be able to connect with other PC members in real time (once your first 5 posts have been reviewed & approved.) Lots of great stuff! So please keep posting!

[Pinetree487]

Thank You very much,

[Pinetree487]

I found some good advice for our situation, and thought i would post it here in case it might help others. Plus, after reading my original post, i dont think i explained exactly what are fear was very well. My main question was what can we do or not do to prevent the narcissist from doing something dangerous to try to keep from losing her constant supply we give her. I also did not mention that dhe knows that i have been abused by my narcissistic mother, so she focused on me.

I also did not mention that I was thinking along the lines of us moving away from her was, in my mind, almost like exposing her as a covert narcissist, which can be very dangerous. I was thinking that way because of the factt that i blew up at her which was the cause of us finally realizing we needed to get the hevk away from her. But luckily, after telling her we were going to move, she sent us an email stating the terms of when we had to leave, etc., so hopefully, in her mind, she was kicking us out, so we let that lay and did not differ or talk to her or argue about who was deciding that we leave. Ofcourse, in the email, she told us about how horrible we were.

I seen a video on you tube, made by therapist Ross Rosenburg, who knows a lot about narcissism, its main purpose is that its always a bad outcome to uncover a narcissist, why a person should not do it - especially someone like me who has been a victim in the past. He shows that exposing a narcissist, even by someone who has a lot of knowledge about narcissists like himself, never has a good outcome.
I cannot post the link because im new here, but the video is on You Tube, by Ross Rosenburg, called " When you unmask a covert narcissist, RUN, but quietly "
Thank You.

Originally Posted by Pinetree487

Hello, I hope I am posting in the right place. My husband and I need advice:

We have been temporarily subletting a room in a house owned by a narcissist, who also lives in same house, for several months, and decided to move due to the stress, anxiety, constant criticism, and walking on eggshells. We have less than a week left, and our main concerns at this point are whether the narcissist is going to gets worse because she knows we are leaving and worry about her possibly getting dangerous, and the fear of not knowing what she might do has caused some extreme anxiety, especially with my husband, as he is barely sleeping, and spending a lot of time trying to be perfect as to not set her off. We are trying to keep it as peaceful as possible until we move, and are afraid she will do something extreme, knowing that she is losing her victims. She has never been physically violent, and has never raged at us, though.

When I finally blew up at her and told her how we were tired of the verbal abuse, and we decided to move, she stopped bothering us, mostly, and has stopped verbal abuse, but it seems like she is having a hard time holding back. It's hard to explain.

We are being cordial and are avoiding conversations and contact as much as possible without being rude, but she is the type that no matter what we do, she has made it look bad, in her mind.

I am concerned over the stress it's causing my husband, as the closer our move date gets, the more he is stressing about little things that might set her off. Like he is overly trying to make sure that everything is perfect, as to not give her any reason to set her off. Since we've been here, we have had to be like hypervigilant of everything like closing the doors ever so quietly, avoiding use of the kitchen even though we pay for use of it, not having lights on, not going in and out the door too much, etc, etc, etc.

When we first started renting, and after realizing she was narcissistic, and where being very careful about setting her off, and tried to avoid anything that could cause a problem that bothered her - she confronted us and said she wanted us to have more use of the house, to converse with her more, etc, so we know that it bothers her that we are laying low. She has been doing things to try to set us off, but not extremely so, and is holding back the verbal abuse.

We need advice on what more we can do, or not do, to keep the peace until we leave. I keep telling my husband to relax more, he understands that no matter what we do or don't do, she is likely to make something of it, but he asked me to just let him be paranoid about it, to try to not give her anything to go off about. Earlier this evening, my husband asked me if I could get by with eating my dinner and working on my computer with the light out, so she would not complain about a light being on.

Any advice?, please. Our stomachs are in knots. Also, this could be a coincidence, but our cat of 10 years went missing about a week after we told her we were moving, we have posted and called everywhere, even have people who live close by on the Nextdoor neighborhood website helping, we have not yet found her, even though she's microchipped and is a cat that takes walks and is aware of the area. We don't want to blame, but it is very coincidental, our cat has never been lost before, despite moving frequently due to my husband's job.