Late in our marriage, during a circular conversation that had gone round and round about all the bad things I’ve ever done in my life, I was defending myself and desperately trying to take this conversation in a productive direction. For several weeks, I had been honest with my husband about how I was feeling, trying so hard to get him to understand how much he was hurting our kids and me. Here I was again, trying to communicate effectively with him, trying to find the right words, trying to connect with my husband.
In the middle of this scenario, while I was pouring everything I had into genuine attempts at improving our relationship, my covert narcissistic husband asked me, “Can you even give me one compliment? One thing you like about me?” “Wait! What?” A compliment? You want a compliment? Like “your hair looks good today?” Or “I like that shirt.” I knew this wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted me to tell him something I liked about him. This, after 18 years of an emotionally abusive relationship, and our marriage was truly struggling.
This question really created a problem in me. All these different adjectives went through my head.
Helpful? No
Compassionate? No
Patient? No
Fun-loving? No
Kind? No
Easy to be around? No
Fun to be around? No
Easy to talk to? No
A good father? No
Happy? No
This list went on and on in my mind. What could I say??
I finally said to him that I was grateful for 2 things. I am extremely happy with the 2 boys that this marriage has given me. They are amazing boys, and I am very proud of them. The other thing is that I am grateful to him for providing for the family so that I could stay home and raise our boys. He responded, “So I am a paycheck to you? And you can’t even come up with one nice thing to say about me?”
I did feel a little bad about not being able to come up with something nice to say about him. So I gave it some more thought later. And even with some time to ponder, I still could not come up with positive and truthful compliments.
Instead the list was:
Selfish
Lazy and unmotivated
Mean and rude
Quick to anger
Hard to be around
Hard to talk to
Angry
Harsh and abrupt
It wasn’t my fault that this was who he was. This was our daily life with him, and it was truly hurting all three of us badly!