Hello, my name is Max June. I am the author of this page and want to clarify that I am not a mental health professional.
This page reflects my perspective on covert narcissist abuse, based on my experiences and extensive reading. Currently, I am going through a divorce with a covert narcissist, and my insights stem from my journey, influenced by my ADHD and hyper-focus on this subject.
While the content on this website might not be sometimes academically accurate, it is all based on my experiences. My goal is to support other women in similar situations by helping them recognise and understand covert emotional abuse, which can be extremely hard to detect when it comes from a loved one. If you resonate with the content on this site, please consult your thoughts or feelings with a mental health professional before making any decisions.
My Covert Narcissist and Me: Why Everything Makes Sense Now
The person I was with for the last six years was supposed to be the one who loved me the most. Instead, he drained my happiness, joy, and motivation for absolutely anything. I am not the same person I was before I met him. He manipulated me, controlled me using tactics I never imagined someone would use against someone they say they love, and made me believe he was someone he was not. I often wonder now, but why? It still makes no sense to me.
The Beginning (The Love Bombing Stage)
When I first met him it felt like a dream come true. I had never felt Love that way, I didn’t know something like that was possible. I felt really seen for the first time in my life and he fully accepted me for who I was. He was gentle, calm, attentive, always thinking about me and how to make me happy. I was in cloud nine for the first years. And I thought, that’s it, I have found the love of my life, we will grow old together.
But then, very very slowly he started to change. At the beginning was just a few hours in some random days at home, he will turn cold, and distance and silence, even his face changed, he had other eyes. I remember thinking that it was so odd, I couldn’t understand what was happening. And then, like nothing, he would go back to normal. At the time I was so invested with all the love he gives me that I thought he might have a bad day or maybe stressed out for work.
The Decline (The Devaluation Stage)
When we first met, he had just started a small company by himself. A year later, he urgently needed help, and I was tired of my old job. Ii was funny because I had the exact skills he needed, so it felt natural for me to start working together. At the same time, we intentionally started trying for a baby (thank god we didn’t succeed, I know now that he absolutely hates babies). At that moment, I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.
And then, in one day, the COVID outbreak happened, and everything changed drastically for both of us. The company was totally affected by the travel restrictions imposed by the governments, we both, from one day to another were jobless. A friend of his, offered him a good job and he accept it. The job requires us to move back to his country of origin, we both saw it as a good opportunity and we left.
After that moment, I started seeing more and more of his other face. I was working from home alone all day, and he would arrive late every day without notifying me. Every day, he told me he was having beers with his friend, who was his boss, and I believed him (recently I have found out that, at that time he was paying for a Tinder Gold Subscription). And every time I tried to tell him that he was hurting me by doing these type of things he will take it I was attacking him and felt offended that I was bringing it up. It was completely impossible for him to take accountability or being sorry for hurting me. It was bizarre.
And everything started to take a toll on me, andI fell into a deep depression. He was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in the middle of the week will act like an absolute asshole and then on the weekend, he would go back to normal and be lovely and tender. Given the circumstances we were in, my first thought was the stress of the situation, but there was something inside of me telling me that was not normal.
My body knew that something was wrong, a dense fog took over my brain and I couldn’t make my body move. I stoped going for long walks with my dog as I use to, I stopped riding my bicycle, I stopped listening to music, and I couldn’t work. I froze in bed scrolling TikTok and crying all day. And then, when he saw me at my lowest, he changed. He became again the men I fell in love with, we moved to a beautiful place in the middle of nature (which was my dream my entire life), I started to move and go for walks again and then, everything got better before it got worse.
And worse was extremely painful.
We stopped having fun, we stopped going on dates; our life became work and only work and all revolving around him.
The promises of me being an official part of the company dissipated with time, he slowly stopped putting money from the company to our shared bank account and left me with a very small salary. He was mean to me, expecting me to work every day of the week whenever he needed me, expecting me to do everything for him as if it was my duty.
He was one person in public and another in private. When we were alone in the same room and I talked to him he will act like he didn’t hear me. And when I ask him why he was doing that he will say I was imaging things, that he was just busy. And after 20 times a day I would go nuts and start yelling at him and he will tell me that I was crazy. And then, 10 minutes later, when we were with people, he will become again the gentleman he was at the begging of our relationship. It was horrifying.
And my brain fog and disorientation at that moment where of charts, I completely lost myself. One day I saw myself crying to him begging him to love me and something did a click in the back of my mind. It was the beginning of the BIG realisation for me.
The reality is that now, after everything he has done to me, I don’t want to love that way ever again. I I even think I won’t ever have a relationship with anyone ever again. My friends say that after time I will change my mind, but I know myself, and they don’t know what I have been through. No one knows. Only someone who has been through the same situation knows what it is like.
Early Red Flags and Realisations
During the first stage, when I started to see some red flags, for example:
- 🚩 The Timeline Line
- When we first met he claimed his last relationship ended 6 months ago, but it was actually only 2 months. When I found out my naïf reaction was to think: It is impossible he lied with bad intentions, I sure there is a reason for it.
- 🚩 The Ex Blaming
- He blamed the ex for the brake up, saying she was crazy. He explain that she had an affair with someone else and he left. The entire time of our relationship he continued to talk very badly about her all the time. One day, I heard him talking on the phone with her (he thought I was in the garden but i was in the room next door). and I could hear her voice on the other side. They were speaking in a way only couples do, with the kind of kindness and affection you only use with someone you are in love with. My Naïf Reaction at that time was telling that if he was having a good relationship with his ex, he could tell me because I would actually be happy about it. He acted surprised and said, “Oh yes, good.” I can see now how a big manipulator he is.
- 🚩 The Too Perfect
- We had the exact same taste in music, food, hobbies, values, and beliefs—it seemed too good to be true. With the pass of the time I saw that everything he claimed to like was not true. He didn’t have the same taste in music as me, he didn’t like talking about mental health, he hated walking in nature, he was more right than left in politics, and he had no principles or could change them depending on the person he was with. I actually have been realising about this lately. Now that he is out of my life and my brain fog is starting to disipate, I can see that he fooled me with all these things. I mean, WHY? How empty you have to be to do that?
- 🚩 The idealised Love
- He was incredibly perfect and loving, making me feel like I was on cloud nine. The perfect and loving partner I felt in love with after a year or so started to dissipate. Little did I know that the real person was that cold and empty one. After the Love Bombing Stage, when he started shifting to the Devaluation Stage, the perfect and loving partner disappeared completely, and it was all just an illusion. I can see now who he is and what he did to me.
- 🚩The Didn’t Had Any Real Friends
- I can see that he has no friends because people get tired of being lied to. I though the reason he only had 1 person he called ‘friend’ was because his group of friends where more friends with the ex. But that was not the case.
Other red flags were: He rushed the relationship, pushing for major commitments too quickly. He ignored some of my boundaries, pushing me to do things I was not really uncomfortable with.
But at the time all this it happened, when I saw all these red flags, I always give myself little excuses to fit that idealised version of him. I told myself we all have flaws, and I believed that with love and care, he could overcome these toxic traits.
(My entire life I have been very naif because I really thought that everybody was working on themselves to be a better person.)
What I was totally unaware is that there are some people that have a complete lack of emotional empathy.
Like is it a mental illness.
And it is called Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
When you have NPD there is something in your brain that it is not working as it should and you are incapable to feel the pain of others or see you are causing pain to them.
I discover this scrolling to TikTok, I stumble upon Claire’s Dein @CCCCC profile and she described word by word what my ex did to me. That was a moment of revelation. As more videos I watched from her the more I realise that him was that, a Covert Narcissist. And I went full in into a hyper focus mode for months. I did nothing else than read about Narcissism and watch TikTok videos about the subject and of people who have been in the same situation as I was.
It was like witnessing the sunrise for the first time after enduring a 40-year-long winter straight out of Game of Thrones. Every words I read, every video I watched, everything matched, everything was on point exactly, it was absolutely crazy. The more I watched the more I wanted to watch, I was completely addicted because it was so validating.
It was not all in my head. It was all real.
He did all those things to me. And there was so many people commenting on those videos going through exactly the same thing. I felt supported, and consequently I felt stronger and stronger everyday.
The healing from all this is very slow and goes in waves. Reading and understanding where these behaviours come from it’s being so helpful to put a cause, it feels to me that if he did all these things to me and there is no reason behind made no sense at all. Now I know that narcissism runs in families. And of course it does.
Connecting dots I had another revelation: I accepted so much of that behaviour because it was familiar to me, I grew up surrounded by it.
I come to the realisation that my parents and siblings (as my ex did very comfortably) operated within a dynamic called Dishonest Harmony, where narcissistic tendencies are very common and where Covert Narcissists swim like fish in the sea.
Childhood Confusion
As a kid, I always felt like I didn’t belong. My family’s behaviours at home were extremely confusing to me. Why wasn’t I allowed to voice my opinions? Why did my parents have to yell so much? Why were they always fighting? Why was my mom always crying? Why, when I cried, was I told to just stop, and when I couldn’t stop, they would slap me in the face and send me to my room to calm down? Why wasn’t I simply loved?
I also didn’t understand why there were these unspoken rules that no one talked about but seemed so unfair to me: My mom was the only one doing the chores at home, and I was the only one obligated to help her while my father and brother relaxed watching TV. I, and not my brother, was obligated to learn how to deep clean the house on Saturdays while he could spend the entire day playing video games.
These unanswered questions and the stupid and confusing unspoken rules built up my frustration. Every time I saw an injustice at home, I reacted strongly, which led to punishment and accusations of having a bad character. They told me over and over again that I was bad, and I grew up believing something was fundamentally wrong with me. This filled me with a deep, dark anger.
Adolescence and Adulthood
There was something visceral inside of me that made me resist and fight against the system my family operated in. But every time I tried, my voice was suppressed, and I was never, never considered to be right. My parents never faced or talked about any problems and always pretended everything was fine when it was clearly not. I was shut down and ridiculed every time I tried to hold someone accountable. (Now, I can see clearly it was my ADHD that made me stand up against all these injustices).
At the age of 16, I left home to study far away from home and went no contact with my parents for several years. My family saw me as a disappointment because I was filled with rage. I turned my anger toward others around me, lied, cheated, took advantage of people, and engaged in reckless behavior. I was looking for self-destruction. I wanted to die because I felt dead inside.
As the firstborn female with a mother deeply ingrained with patriarchal biases, I know she loved me but the bond we should have had never formed. Motherhood was something she dearly desired, but when it happened, it became overwhelmingly difficult. She had all the responsibilities at home, a first newborn baby that wouldn’t stop crying, and she was completely alone. My father was often absent for weeks due to work (and constant cheating), which led my mother into a major depression that lasted for 15 years.
A few days ago, I stumbled upon Kelley Daring’s (@kelleydaring on TikTok) profile. She reads anonymous letters from mothers who regret motherhood. I can see my mother in those narratives so well. She regrets motherhood, at least being my mother. I know now and I knew as a kid.
When I was two and a half years old, my brother was born. He was a cute, blonde-haired, angel-faced baby, and I guess my mom felt the bond with him that she never felt with me (I also believe that because he was a boy that way easier for her). Growing up, I loved him dearly and felt a strong connection with him, we played, learned and spend a lot of time together. I remember that time as extremely happy for me.
As kids we had everything we needed: a nice house, plenty of food, a room full of games, and bicycles in the garage. But there was no emotional connection, not for me not for my brother, my parents lack completely of it. But my brother was a well mannered little boy, never disagreed to anything and always behaved the way my parents considered to be ‘good’.
Me, on the opposite side, I had my own opinion on everything. For them I was a pain in the ass. I think my parents saw in me what they were unable to face or stand against in themselves. At that time I was repeatedly told by them that I was a strong liar. And I was, yes. But the crazy part is that I learned it from them. They accused me of what they hated about themselves and what they taught me through their behaviour. They said one thing and did the opposite. And kids learn by osmosis. I absorbed all the good along with the bad. But I was punished, yelled at, given the silent treatment and sometimes bitten up every time I did something they believed was wrong.
Slowly, the light inside of me began to fade away, and darkness took over everything.
Family Dynamics
My little sister was born when I was nine, and I felt like she was a beautiful gift to me. I loved having a little, cute, and funny baby sister. But then, at the age of 2, she got sick with a rare type of cancer, went through many surgeries, and had to stay in the NICU for months. My mom moved to an apartment close to the hospital that was more than 100 km away from home, to be able to stay with my sister as many hours as allowed during visiting hours and not to have to drive everyday for 4 hours. My father, in the meantime, was having an affair. My brother and I were forgotten in our hometown, living in different relatives’ homes, always changing from one house to another.
During that time, I got my period and hid it from everyone. I was scared they would punish me; no one ever explained anything about periods to me.
Looking at pictures of myself at the age of 12, I can already see the darkness emerging. I can see the extreme sadness in my eyes. I was so lonely.
The present
My brother and sister are both very bitter people right now. I see now they exhibit strong narcissistic traits; they only care about themselves. I love them so much and have such good memories of my childhood with them. Sometimes I daydream about something stupidly normal like having dinner together, being happy and talking about our lives or our plans for the summer, and being happy for each other. But I know that is impossible. Conversations with them are always about criticising others (they hate everyone), always having something to complain about (nothing is good enough for them) or talking about how bad the world is. You can always feel the tension in the air, as if they are mad at you for something. But they never talk about any real problems. And don’t you dare bring up any issues – they will take it as an offence and a war against me will start. So I always choose silent and resignation. I fear Christmas and holidays (I am only looking forward to spend time with their kids, they are beautiful, smart happy little people and I absolutely adore being with them).
It is such a sad feeling to love people so deeply who don’t love you back. I am learning to let go and I am growing more distant from all of them – my mom, my father, my sister, and my brother. They don’t love me, at least not the way I love them. I know this, and I am finally making amends with it.
At the moment I am writing this, I am still going through the separation with my ex, none of my family have offered support of any kind since the day it happened. On the contrary, they all act like they are mad at me for I don’t know what. A few weeks ago, I celebrated my 45th birthday by going to a restaurant with my mom, just the two of us alone, no cake, no candles, and when I offered to pay half of it, my mom said: “Okay.”
After that meal, I went home alone and cried rivers. And I said to myself: That’s it, I have to get out, I have to find my place in the world.
Their behavior always made me feel like I was the one with the problem. That’s why it took me so long to realize the truth. They are four people against one. I mean, it had to be me.
Therapy and Self-Realisation
I started therapy very young, always convinced that there was something wrong with me. Indeed, there were many things wrong with me, and I carried an extreme guilt inside of me for years. I have worked hard to unlearn all these toxic behaviours. Through this journey, I have learned that accountability is the most important step toward healing. I have accepted everything I did wrong and acknowledge that, yes, I did all those things. I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused, and I never want to be that person again.
But even after 20 years of therapy and reading constantly about self awareness and how to become a better person, I still felt I didn’t deserve love.
Then I met my ex, who loved me like no one ever had. Experiencing his unconditional love was entirely new to me, and it allowed me to feel what I had never experienced during my childhood (The love from my parents was always conditional, they loved me only if I did behaved the way they wanted).
What I didn’t know at the time (because he hid this part for years) was that him, like my mother, was adept at manipulating emotions and maintaining a facade of calmness and care while controlling and diminishing me behind closed doors. It’s a hard and unsettling realisation to understand that you fell in love with someone because they are similar to your mother. It looks like we fall in love with familiarity. Even his family was weirdly similar to mine. We both had absent fathers and mothers who gave their lives for men, were okay with the patriarchal system, and were great advocates of it. The lack of emotional connection with our parents was also scarily similar.
Then, in the middle of the pandemic and in the biggest depression episode I have had in my life, I downloaded TikTok and algorithm diagnosed me with ADHD and It was like a warm bath with amazing views to the high mountain you just climbed for hours. I slowly realised that the root of the problem was that I had never loved myself, I always considered myself unworthy of love and that I had undiagnosed ADHD my entire life (my mom was super hard on me because I was always forgetful, dreaming all day and doing stupid stuff that no normal person would do). Very slowly, the darkness I felt inside of me my entire life started to dissipate. I learned to look at myself in the mirror again and learned about Radical Self-Compassion and Unconditional Self-Love, and slowly the big stone I was carrying on my back for all these years dropped.
It also helped me to started to see in the extremely toxic dynamic I was with my ex and everything I was accepting.
I started going to therapy, and my therapist was a blessing, she helped me so much. She recommended starting medication for depression and ADHD, and something I didn’t expect: taking medication has been one of the biggest life changes I have ever had. Thanks to it, I am now where I am, and I have been able to break free from my ex and now also from my family.
Yes, I am alone. But I am okay with being on my own for now.
I have learned to love myself better than I ever loved anyone. And that feels so good. I want to take small steps, I want to have an honest life, with love and care.
I am tired of bitterness, lies, and abuse.
At the age of 45, I am changing my life for good, and no one can stop me.
