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The Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel is a transformative and supportive Podcast, dedicated to helping those who are, or have been, abused by narcissists to heal from the ravages of narcissistic abuse. Our show is a lifeline for those who are looking for next steps in their emotional and psychological healing, offering expert guidance and practical solutions for those who are in narcissistic relationships or are rebuilding their lives after narcissistic abuse. The hosts are Attorney Padideh Jafari and Jon McKenney who have helped hundreds of people in their narcissistic abuse recovery and know the journey personally in their own lives.
I said to her, I said, I don't want to give up on my family. And without even missing a beat, she said, what family?
Voiceover:Welcome to the Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel with John McKenney and Padida Jafari.
Jon McKenney:Hi Padida how are doing today?
Padideh Jafari:I'm doing well how are you?
Jon McKenney:Good it's another episode of the Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel. How have you been?
Padideh Jafari:I've been doing well, just sort of busy with the law firm but otherwise doing well.
Jon McKenney:I imagine law work very definitely keeps you busy, especially if you're in divorce law these days. What is it like fifty six percent of everybody who marries gets divorced?
Padideh Jafari:Actually in LA County where we practice law it's sixty two percent.
Jon McKenney:Go figure there's a surprise.
Padideh Jafari:And that's on the first marriage. The second marriage is seventy two percent, and the third marriage is in the 80s. So, Oh
Jon McKenney:my gosh.
Padideh Jafari:Actually, divorce attorneys in LA say it is a starter marriage. So your first marriage is your starter marriage, like you buy a starter home, because it's almost like no offense, but it's almost like a joke.
Jon McKenney:Interestingly enough, both you and I are divorced. We've not kind of made any secret about that. We each divorced narcissists. How long ago was yours?
Padideh Jafari:Oh my goodness. I believe fifteen years ago now.
Jon McKenney:Was it really that long?
Padideh Jafari:Yes. Wow.
Jon McKenney:And mine was I'm coming up on five. So my what I call my Freedomversary is coming up very shortly.
Padideh Jafari:I love that freedom verse.
Jon McKenney:Yeah, yes, I replaced. I replaced my anniversary with a freedom versary. So the day I I got notice that my divorce was official. That is my freedom versary day and I celebrated every year the freedom I have from the narcissist who was in my life.
Padideh Jafari:That sounds great. I think I think I will use that. Although, it's been so long for me that I don't really even celebrate or not celebrate that. I just feel I'm celebrating. Will give you a little bit of good news is I am celebrating my third year anniversary to my current and final husband next week.
Jon McKenney:So the starter marriage is done.
Padideh Jafari:The starter marriage is done. Second marriage and April 2, we're celebrating. Wonderful. I'd rather celebrate that than the Freedomversary.
Jon McKenney:Yeah, I'm not remarried so I'll keep celebrating my Freedomversary.
Padideh Jafari:That sounds good.
Jon McKenney:I have a question for you, something I've been thinking about here lately. There are lot of our listeners out there who left a narcissist, who left kids, who left family, who left situations that were and things that behind that were important to them. And I wonder if we didn't feel some guilt for walking away, even though we were in a situation where we were mentally and emotionally abused.
Padideh Jafari:That's a good question.
Jon McKenney:So so and I was trying to trying to look back on some of the things in my own life and and thinking thinking back through it. And and part of me there's a part of me. That when I did get the message, got the got the email or actually the call from my attorney who said, guess what? You are legally divorced. I can remember exactly where I was etched in my mind.
Jon McKenney:I was in the gym locker room. I was I just finished a workout. And I can remember hanging up the phone and sighing and then going and jumping up and down with my hands in the air going, woo hoo, woo hoo. I was so I was so excited to be out. And then it settles in, I think, what's actually taken place in this person who you loved or even perhaps still love.
Jon McKenney:You can still love somebody and divorce them. And you feel guilt over leaving them. And I think I felt some guilt over that. Particularly where it came to the kids and those kinds of things, I felt like I was now again I should qualify. All of my kids were out of high school.
Jon McKenney:I waited until then to until they were out of high school and into college. Two of them were already graduated even from college. Two were still in college when I left, but there there was this feeling. Like I was abandoning them to just her, even though I had no intention of ending relationship with them in any kind of way. And I felt like I had given up on something that I wish would have worked out.
Jon McKenney:And I think that haunted me for a long time. I wondered if I was a failure, I wondered if I was a quitter. And at the same time, I was in such a bad place emotionally. I don't Like I had to do it to protect my own life all at the same time. There was no other option.
Jon McKenney:I felt like, you know, was twenty seven years of marriage and I got to this place. I could not go any further and it was the right decision like I have absolutely no qualms about that either. It was the right decision, but there was there was a nagging guilt over it over what I'd left behind. That I think haunted me for some time, so I was wondering did you feel that as well? Did you feel guilt over?
Jon McKenney:Over leaving, over your situation when you divorced?
Padideh Jafari:I think it's such a great question because I think what happens with these narcissists or cluster B personality disordered people, what happens is they always sort of attach to empaths and sympathetic people by nature. Right? That's true. Very
Jon McKenney:true. Very true.
Padideh Jafari:And so for me, I had a tremendous amount of guilt. Even though we did not have children together, I did have a stepdaughter who I loved. I was in her life for seven years from the age of seven to 14. So I didn't want to leave sort of my family. And I'll never forget this conversation I had with my mom, who is in her 90s now.
Padideh Jafari:I said to her, I said, I don't want to give up on my family. And without even missing a beat, she said, what family? And I said, what are you talking about? I've been with this person for seven years. Wow.
Padideh Jafari:I love him. I love my stepdaughter. And she said, your spouse is supposed to have your back. That's what makes them your spouse is that they have your back, they're for you, they're not working against you. And she said, family that you have that you keep saying I don't want to leave my family is like a figment of your imagination.
Padideh Jafari:Because it's not a real family. It's you doing all the work for him and obviously my stepdaughter, but it's not him even showing up for you. And she set an example of my father. She said, even though your father and I are really different, he has always had my back. And when she said that, it was sort of like an moment for me because I looked back at the last seven years of how my spouse didn't have my back.
Padideh Jafari:And so it really made me it kind of made me realize that I needed to cut the cord. And Mhmm. I was a divorce attorney at the time, but we went to a mediator friend of mine. And know, again, we didn't have a child, so it was no custody issues. It was just material things that we had acquired.
Padideh Jafari:And long story short, she drafted the documents, but it took me three years to actually sign the final document because I subsequently moved to New York for a number of years. I started teaching at NYU. It wasn't a priority. And there was a sort of this nagging thing about, well what if we get back together? And what if God, you know, in his infinite wisdom is going to cure, this thing that this man has, which I didn't at the time note was narcissism.
Padideh Jafari:But what if, like I wanted to give that space. And even though I had now moved part time to New York and I was bicoastal, and my mom finally said to me after three years, like, what are you doing? You're still attached to this person, and you need to finalize this. And my ex husband was, he said to me, he's like, you know, I'm dating this girl. He dated this girl right after we separated.
Padideh Jafari:Actually, was dating her probably while we were still married and I'm still not I haven't acknowledged that in my brain. But he said, You know, I've been dating her for three years and she wants me to finish our divorce. Like she wants me to do this. And I said, Okay, I'm fine. I'm ready to do it.
Padideh Jafari:And so we went back to the mediator friend of mine who's now actually a judge in Los Angeles County, and she finalized the documents. And two things I asked for, and only two things were my my engagement ring and my dog, Zoe. And he even said, well, I want visitation with Zoe. And I said, okay. You know?
Padideh Jafari:And that was kinda like something we laughed about. And we signed the paper, we went to the garage together. And I'll never forget this, it was like he gave me a hug and he was like, I'm sorry. And tears in his eyes and I'm just thinking to myself, oh my gosh. Like, you know, again, that was like the guilt thing.
Padideh Jafari:Like, I was happy on one respect. On another respect, I had guilt because I had been this person's savior, I felt like for seven years. And then the other half, I was like, this is finally freedom.
Jon McKenney:Yeah.
Padideh Jafari:So it was a range of emotions. And then I gave him a hug and I said, okay, you know. And and I got in the car and I sobbed. Not like cried, I sobbed all the way to my mom's house. And, you know, I had guilt after that point of finally signing the divorce document for the next two years.
Padideh Jafari:So it took me two years to just forgive myself and you know, forgive myself for, I don't know what it is, like not being good enough, not trying hard enough, all the things, all the emotions. And then it took eight years from the like, 02/2010 when we filed for the divorce, it took eight years before I finally realized I'm ready to start a real meaningful relationship with someone else. So this and by the way, again, we did not have children. So you can imagine how much more difficult it is for someone that has a child that is constantly connected to their co parent because of the child.
Jon McKenney:Mhmm. That's absolutely something more to think about. I'm fascinated by something you said, And it goes back to, was it your mom that said this to you? She basically said this is not a marriage, for lack of a better phraseology. And I think that's kind of what got me out of this whole idea of guilt over it.
Jon McKenney:And I felt the same kinds of things you did as well, where it was, you know, I don't like to lose, I didn't want to lose, I didn't ever want to be divorced, like I didn't ever want to be a divorced guy. Then there are religious implications as well. I'm a believer in Jesus Christ and consider myself a Christian and I'm not raised with divorce and from a religious perspective don't believe in it as well. That also had some impact and bearing on my situation too. But I think the thing that got me out was having to go back and assess what a marriage really is and what a marriage really is not.
Jon McKenney:So as thought about it, I thought there are people in life who enter into a legal agreement and marriage is a legal agreement, legally binding agreement. And as they enter into this thing, there are people who enter into legally binding agreements and they're not really married. There are people who buy a house together and they're not married. There are people who have children together and they're not married. So you have a legal document, you have kids, you have a house, you have things together, And it begs the question, what is a marriage?
Jon McKenney:What's at center of it? And ultimately, what I concluded was this. A marriage is a love relationship of choice where, like you described, you are present for each other. And that's something that was promised upfront, and that was something that was never delivered on for me. So I had it was like it was like I had I felt like I had all the icing and I had no cake.
Jon McKenney:There was no substance to it. And icing by itself was just terrible. So yeah, I had a house. Yeah, I had kids. Yeah, we had cars.
Jon McKenney:Yeah, we had rings. Yeah, we had this legal document that said we were married. But what qualified it all as a marriage was actually the relationship at the center. And a real marriage kind of spins these things spin off of that. You have kids from that love relationship.
Jon McKenney:You have a house from that love relationship. You have a legal agreement from that love relationship. You have cars because of that love relationship. You have rings because of that love relationship. And my conclusion was, and this will sound ridiculous for a guy who was legally married for twenty seven years.
Jon McKenney:I was legally married, but I think never emotionally married in any kind of way. And to me, that's kind of the real marriage. That's what I signed up for in the whole thing. And by her own admission, she said, look, we were done at three months in into the relationship. And she just kept using me and pretending and ended there.
Jon McKenney:Marriage literally ended right there. That was the point of discard for her where she said, Okay, I just don't want anything to go do with this anymore. Three months in gave some lame excuse for leaving the situation or leaving emotionally and never returning and felt no remorse over it whatsoever. So I had to go back and realize that my marriage, even those first three months, probably never really were what I thought they were. I was attached to something that never really existed more than anything else, and I felt guilt over that.
Padideh Jafari:I think you're absolutely right. I I I'm recalling a conversation that Johnny Depp, was talking to Amber Heard, and they played this tape. She was actually taping him to use it against, Johnny Depp in the trial, but it actually backfired on her. He said, I never knew you. You were a figment of my imagination.
Padideh Jafari:You were everything I built you up to be in my mind, but in reality, I never knew you. And and if you if you've never heard that audio, please go listen to it.
Jon McKenney:Well, it just so happens that I happen to have the quote here, and here's the exact quote from Johnny Depp. He said this, I loved you for so many fucking years, but you know what? You didn't exist. You don't exist. You're not there.
Jon McKenney:You're not there. You're a fucking made up thing in my head. Again, that's Johnny Depp in a recording that, Amber Heard actually made a video.
Padideh Jafari:Literally, he has so much pain in his voice. Now whether you think, you know, Johnny Depp is a narcissist or Amber Heard is or whatever you're but like that is exactly what it's like to be in a relationship and marriage with a narcissist. You never knew them. Because if you knew
Jon McKenney:I say no cake.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah if you knew them, if you knew your ex wife who she was would you have ever married her?
Jon McKenney:Hell no. There's no way absolutely. If I thought it was going to go the way it's gone, is not what I signed up for. Who wants to go restart their life later on and having to go start over from complete scratch in almost every facet of your life? This is not what I dreamed of.
Padideh Jafari:Right. There's no question about Today the person that I am, you know fifteen years later after the divorce, is so different than who I was the girl that you know said I do, you know '28, '20 '9. The great thing about my ex husband, who is a malignant narcissist, is he painted this perfect picture of what life would be and his devotion to me and my family, who I'm very close with. As you know, I'm Iranian. And I just fell in love with the story of this fairy tale that never materialized because he was not genuinely who he said he was.
Padideh Jafari:And Well, and it's their
Jon McKenney:it's their own fairy tale also. And they're pretending to be somebody they're not from the beginning. So, is a legally binding agreement even valid when somebody makes ridiculous statements or pretends completely that something is that it's not and you get into this legal agreement and go, Wait a minute, this isn't right. And those are the kinds of things that ultimately go to court, which is divorce.
Padideh Jafari:Right. So yeah, I think you're absolutely right when you say there's a cake. And the cake looks great. Because it's got the icing. I'm thinking about my wedding cake.
Padideh Jafari:It's got the icing. I had a huge bow on the cake because my second dress had a big bow on the back and so I wanted to match it. And like I can see that what you're saying. Like I can visualize it because I'm such a visual person. But then you cut into the cake and you're like, there's nothing here but this beautiful exterior.
Padideh Jafari:And that, I think John, you just described like the narcissist to a tee. Because It's a shell. It's, and it looks so good. They just look so good from the outside. And that's why it's also very difficult to convince other people that there's no depth.
Padideh Jafari:There's nothing there. The outside, they only see the outside the narcissist has completely made the outside look so beautiful with this big bow and then you're like, but no, no, no, there's nothing there and they're abusive and they've done this and they call me names and they hit me. Me it was like, you know, he was a sex addict, so it was like pornography and physical abuse towards the end. And it's like, what are you talking about? They didn't wanna believe me because they're like, it looks so good from the outside.
Jon McKenney:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let's wrap this up. Are there people out there, there are listeners who we care deeply about, even though we don't know them? That's why we do this.
Jon McKenney:If you feel guilt over having left for whatever reason, I'd say a couple of things. From religious perspective, I would tell you I don't believe God meant you to be abused by your spouse emotionally or otherwise. I personally believe as well that emotional hurts can even be worse than physical ones. Padida and I both sat with a group of veterans who had gone through something like this with their spouses, and I asked a question and I said, Would you rather be shot at or would you rather go through what you've been through with a narcissist? Hands went up 100% I'd rather be shot at than have to go through the emotional pain of this.
Jon McKenney:I don't believe God ever intended for that. Ultimately, again, the emotional wounds can be as deep or deeper than physical wounds. And the second part of that is realizing what you had or actually didn't have. Remember the narcissist was pretending. They entered into an agreement with you of pretending they were something that they were not.
Jon McKenney:And again, as soon as you got married or got involved with him, things started to change and they became this other kind of person, which is a relationship of using and not loving. And I will tell you that once I realized that I had I never really had the relationship I thought I had, and that it was all under false pretenses from the beginning. My ex was gracious in this to me and told me in front of my pastor, Well, I never really loved you. So those kinds of things help you understand and go, Okay, well you know what? Was fooled from the beginning.
Jon McKenney:I was duped, for that reason, I honored it as best I could for as far as I could possibly go with it, and then from then on, had to end, and and there's really no reason for guilt over that. If you gave it your best, and you try to make it work, and the narcissist would not allow, there's there's no guilt and no shame in that.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah, I mean I would definitely agree with that. And you know what even if you have to go through because I feel like you do have to go through the grieving cycle John. Yes you okay now you're divorced from them but like what's the next step? I would just encourage you, and I know you probably agree, is to seek therapy and make sure that therapist understands narcissistic abuse because any therapist that we've talked to, they don't understand that. And then also, know, work out, go for hikes.
Padideh Jafari:I know it's so difficult that we have an episode actually about that with Work
Jon McKenney:on you.
Padideh Jafari:Luke Holbrooke who talks about working out, like go to the gym, go on walks, really figure out like sort of your part in this and your and start your healing journey. But you have to go through the grieving cycle. I mean that's just don't deny yourself that. For me it took eight years. Married four and a half years, knew him seven years total but it took eight years.
Padideh Jafari:People sometimes say well it takes half of the length of time you've been with someone. Not if you were with a narcissist. Would say it takes a And I'm sorry because I know you were with her for twenty seven years. But it takes, for me it took a year. Every year that I was with him I had to spend a year of healing.
Padideh Jafari:Seven years, eight years I took you know separated from him and healed before I got into a new relationship. And so go through that grieving process and please don't talk about it to people that have never been through narcissistic abuse because they will not understand
Jon McKenney:They'll never get it. Nope, you have to have been through it.
Padideh Jafari:And you know there are so many resources now, free resources like YouTube, Instagram, podcasts like ours. Really start your healing process for yourself and you will realize at the end of your healing, which I think that we're always healing because of these these people but you'll realize at some point you had to let them go or else they were going to they were going to drown you.
Jon McKenney:Yep. So so as you as you think about these things, be free be free of guilt. Be free of guilt. Don't don't live encumbered by that. That's that's who you were.
Jon McKenney:That's not who you are, and it's not about your your future and if you have questions about that, reach out to us on Narc Podcast on Instagram or Padida is at Jaafari Legal on Instagram as well and I am male victims of female narcissists on, on Instagram too and, it's it's important to live your life, guilt free. There's nothing you could have done to have made it work. This is the Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel. I'm John McKinney and have a wonderful afternoon.
Voiceover:Channel. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To hear other episodes or read the associated blogs, visit www.narcissistabuserecoverychannel.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram with the handled narc. Podcast. The guest's views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are their own.
Voiceover:The information presented is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be legal advice. The co hosts are not licensed therapists. Seek professional help as information is often state specific. The Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel is produced in studios in California and Georgia.