Anxiety: My Wife's Most Narcissistic Relationship

How would you feel if you found out your spouse was in another relationship?

How would you feel if the one with which they were in a relationship could pop up at any time, no matter the day, no matter the time, no matter what you two are doing?

How would you feel if the one with which they were in a relationship wouldn't let them go and basically followed them everywhere and lurked in the shadows?

How would you feel if the one with which they were in a relationship was a narcissist and basically tried to control your spouse's every move?

Sounds creepy, right? Like a stalker, right?

Why not break up/divorce them? Why not go to the police station and get a restraining order?

Well, my valued reader, I'm happy to let you know that my wife, Kasey, isn't cheating on me, nor does she have a physical, deranged stalker. She does have a stalker, however, a mental stalker, her stalker is called Anxiety and it's the most narcissistic relationship she's ever been in.

Before we continue on this journey together I want to point out two things. Firstly, my wife has written about her struggles with Anxiety herself which you can read here. I'll let her tell her own story of struggles and how it got started. Me, I'm just an outsider giving their point of view.

Secondly, she never once called her struggles with Anxiety a "narcissistic relationship," which was a description of my own creation. Once spoken aloud she replied with "that's an interesting way to look at it." Originally I told her she should do another article about Anxiety and use the term but she told me I should do it, from my point of view. So now we're here and it's time to continue this story of the not-so-wonderful relationship of my wife and Anxiety.

My wife and I were friends long before we started dating. We first met around 2010 but didn't become friends until a couple of years later. At the time of our becoming friends she was in a terrible relationship and I was married. She eventually escaped that relationship and ended up with a wonderful man, or so she thought. It took only a couple of years for her to see what type of man he truly was, but I'll let her tell that story too.

Just to help put everything in context, I need to mention that my first wife passed away on October 18, 2014, very suddenly. After her death, I stayed single for a while. Partially due to fault of my own (lack of self-confidence played a huge role) and partially due to "looking for love in all the wrong places."

It wasn't until December 18, 2016, that my luck started changing. I had not heard from Kasey in years because she deleted Facebook and got a new number after getting married to her then-husband. Then out of the blue, I got a Facebook message "Just saying hi...." It was Kasey, my old friend.

Her husband had asked for a divorce but she was wanting to work on the marriage and just wanted to have someone, an outsider, to talk to.

To make a not-so-long story even shorter; her attempts to heal her marriage didn't work out, for reasons she states in her story that I linked above. We then started dating on January 5th, 2016, and got married exactly one year later.

Woohoo, I escaped the friend zone and did it in less than ten years!

When then lived happily ever after.

The end.

Well no, it's not the end.

Our relationship has been great, really great, she helped me realize that love was still possible for me and she gave me something else that I thought impossible, a daughter (that story here). But it has also been hard.

The "problems" in our relationship have nothing to do with either of us, we both love each other and do our best to keep the other happy. Our problem is her Anxiety.

When we were just friends, I had no idea how bad her struggles with Anxiety were, I had no idea how much Anxiety controlled her life, or how much of a burden it was on her.

Well, truthfully, I don't think her struggles with Anxiety were nearly as bad then, I think the two relationships she was in for the entirety of our friendship made it worse and over the last five years, I have seen her struggle with Anxiety evolve. Some aspects are not quite as bad as they were when we first got together, others have gotten worse, yet still, some have not changed at all or have changed very little.

I'm going to break down her Anxiety into three categories. I'm labeling these categories from my point of view, not hers, depending on how I believe they impact or have impacted our relationship. She might categorize them a bit differently on how they make her feel. It's also worth noting, while I list triggers for each, some of these triggers could possibly fall into other stages.

The stages are:

The Charmander stage

The Charmeleon stage

The Charizard stage

I chose to use the evolutions of Charmander as her stages because she's a redhead and I've always called her my "Fire Dragon" or "Catwoman on Fire," the latter being a play on "Hunger Games."

The Charmander stage

This stage of her Anxiety is constant. She pretty much always has Anxiety about something but it usually doesn't cause any overwhelming issues. However, there are things that will trigger it and make it a little worse, though not quite bad enough to put it in the "Charmeleon stage."

Such events include:

Traffic

Large crowds

Going to new places

Bills

Weather

There are more triggers, these are only a few. As already stated, these triggers only exacerbate her Anxiety a little. Hence the reason I didn't go into more details about the triggers.

The Charmeleon stage

This stage of her Anxiety is a little less common than the "Charmander stage." Many of the triggers from the Charmander stage will crossover into this one at times, depending on the situation. With that being said, I'll only be discussing two main trigger points, not mentioned in the Charmander stage, because they are the, or some of the main driving forces for her Charmeleon stage.

Fear of losing me.

Technically there is no single event that triggers her Anxiety about losing me, it's something that's always on her mind. It's also worth noting that the fear of losing me isn't always bad enough to land in this "stage," yet there are times that it easily crosses over to this stage or to the Charizard stage.

In the early stages of our relationship, her Anxiety was mostly due to the fact that she was worried about me cheating, leaving her, or getting tired of her. She often went through my phone to check messages to make sure I wasn't talking to anyone else. There were times she'd literally lose sleep over the fact that another female messaged me and she was curious over what the message said. It needs to be understood, I wasn't randomly messaging other women, nor them me, I was communicating for business purposes, she knew this, but her Anxiety didn't let It rest, It was in control of her emotions.

I didn't let it bother me much, I understood, after her exes, especially the last, was caught cheating on her, I didn't blame her for being concerned and I let her have my phone when she asked, I had nothing to hide. I think most women in her position would have been worried.

Nowadays she never goes through my phone. She still has full access to it, we have full access to each other's phones but we never go through them, we have no reason to.

She has also always worried that I would get tired of her. Tired of her Anxiety. Tired of her ADHD. Tired of her not being, what she believes is, a "good wife" or "good mom." No matter what I tell her, no matter how many times I tell her I'm not leaving, her Anxiety won't hear any of it, her Anxiety thinks It knows the truth.

In recent years her Anxiety about losing me has been more about my health. While she has likely always worried about my health after blood work came back saying my cholesterol was a little high, her Anxiety flared and she immediately started worrying about me having a heart attack or a stroke. No matter how many people, even doctors, told her that it wasn't anything to worry about (unless it got worse), that it wasn't "that" high, her Anxiety wouldn't let her stop worrying. It wants her to worry, It wants her to believe that I will drop dead at any moment.

Separation Anxiety

Truthfully this could likely be categorized with "fear of losing me" but I wanted to single it out because it can truly be a huge burden on both of us. Her Anxiety makes her believe that every moment spent without me is wasted time and as though we're hundreds of miles apart.

Her having separation anxiety, on top of her pre-existing Anxiety made things really tough when I was working, she hated me being away from her. It also made it hard for her to get a job as well, she tried but her Anxiety would nearly cause her to have panic attacks due to the fact that she was losing even more time with me. Going out of town without her is not an option either, the separation anxiety and the Anxiety over losing me, is way too much for her to handle. While she knows I'd probably be perfectly fine, her Anxiety will put every worst-case scenario that It can think of in her head.

The Charizard stage

I hate this stage of her Anxiety! Not only does it put a strain on her body and mind but it also puts a strain on our relationship at times. I feel completely helpless in dealing with The Charizard stage. Since this is the most vicious stage of her Anxiety and the one that puts the biggest strain on both her and our relationship, I'll talk about several of the triggers in detail.

Her Ex

Her ex, the one she was with when we first became friends, has likely been the biggest trigger for her Anxiety, the thing she worries about the most. He has been the single most strenuous trigger in our relationship. He is her own personal boogeyman.

My first experience with how bad her Anxiety concerning him came when he was released from jail. I knew she was scared of him but I never realized how scared she actually was. She was worried about him coming to our house and hurting us, our son, our house, or stealing from us. Her Anxiety made her fear worse. Her Anxiety over it was made worse over things he both said to her when they were together and stuff he allegedly said to others when he found out we were together or when he thought we were together before. See, he knew we were close friends and he believed that she left him to get with me, which wasn't true.

Her Anxiety has led her to believe that his jealousy over us getting together and the way he treated her when they were together would make him come after us, something I, and others, tried to assure her that wasn't going to happen. Could it happen? Certainly, but very unlikely. No matter how hard I or anyone else tried to assure her, it did no good. Her Anxiety constantly had her on high alert. If she saw him walking down the road, even if it was in town, far from our house, she'd worry about him walking to our house and doing something to it. When I went to work she'd go stay at her mom's in fear of him showing up while I was gone and doing something to her, our son, or the house.

Anxiety about him has made her want to move away and that has long been where most of the issues between us have come from, I really never wanted to leave. We live on the property where I grew up, the property where all of my memories are, that's a hard thing to leave, especially when you feel as though you have no real reason to. I was working a good job and didn't want to leave that, something that is no longer an issue. Although he is in jail again now and supposed to be for many years, she still fears the day he might get out because she will always fear him doing something to us, unless we move away, something I'm not nearly as opposed to now.

Her Anxiety surrounding him was and still is one of her biggest triggers.

Her Health

Her health has always been a trigger point for her, if something new pops up if she has some unexplained symptom, her Anxiety automatically goes to the "worse case scenario." I can't tell you how many times I have had to reassure her that she doesn't have cancer and isn't going to die in her sleep. I know deep down she knows this, she has even told me that I have been right about her being okay every single time yet, again her Anxiety makes her believe that she has one foot over the threshold of death.

Her health concerns and Anxiety, have been made worse by her mom's death earlier this year. While her mom died from an overdose, her Anxiety over her health has multiplied many times over. She is terrified of death, she's terrified of leaving me and the kids alone. Her Anxiety will grab ahold of any health concerns she has and dangle death in front of her like a morbid carrot.

These health concerns have been really bad over the last month. She has been having unexplained discomfort in her head and her Anxiety automatically makes her think the worst. She has been in a constant state of worry and nothing that anyone says can set her mind at ease. Her visiting the hospital over the discomfort is what led to this article. The CT scan came back clear and she felt good, it wasn't anything serious. The doctor said it's likely stress and Anxiety. She felt so good that night, the best she had felt in a couple of weeks, but then Anxiety took hold of her again with a bunch of "what if's."

She's still struggling with the discomfort and the Anxiety is still making her worry way more than she should. Anxiety just won't let up and is likely making everything worse. Anxiety wants to win, to keep her imprisoned in her own mind, in her own worry.

Becoming Addicted

With her Anxiety as bad as it is you're probably wondering why she doesn't take medication for it, which is a great question.

The truth is, she was on medicine for her Anxiety and likely still needs to be but she's scared of becoming addicted to it. This is one aspect of her Anxiety I completely understand because her mom was addicted to her own anxiety medication and is likely what brought on her overdose (her mom's story). She's terrified of the medicine and truthfully so am I. Honestly, I don't believe her Anxiety drives her fear of the medicine, I think her knowing how bad her Anxiety is and how much she'd depend on it, is what scares her.

Going Forward

As our relationship has progressed I have noticed many of her triggers and I try to avoid them but many are outside of my control. Most of the time nothing I say or do will set her mind at ease, her Anxiety tells her I'm wrong.

There are many more triggers for her Anxiety and, truthfully, I suck at dealing with most of them, I get impatient with the fact that she won't listen to me, that nothing that I say will set her mind at ease, that she keeps bringing up the same problem over and over. Oh yes, I really suck at dealing with her Anxiety at times but I'm learning.

I know the problem isn't her.

I know the enemy isn't her.

I know she's not in control of what's going on.

I know she can't control her Anxiety over losing me, over missing me, over her ex, over her health, or anything else.

I know the problem is Anxiety!

I know the enemy is Anxiety!

I know Anxiety is in control of what's going on.

I know Anxiety is in control of her being scared over losing me, over missing me, over her ex, over her health, and everything else.

I know Anxiety has her imprisoned.

I know Anxiety won't let her go.

I know Anxiety is always lurking in the shadows.

I know Anxiety is the most narcissistic relationship she's ever been in.

I know Anxiety thinks It will win

I know Anxiety won't win, I won't let It

Fuck you Anxiety! Your time here is done!

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