Honestly, looking back, I was scouring the internet for why marriage was so terrible for men. Getting engaged amplified my ex's behaviors that I now know are due to narcissism. Getting married amplified them again. I started to identify with Al Bundy. I felt trapped and disrespected. I thought "oh, man, this is what people mean when they say marriage sucks." Now I know that my partner was abnormally cruel and emotionless, but at the time, I didn't. I just thought she was a nag who didn't much care about my feelings (which is technically true).
In researching the persistent lying and manipulation, I started to come across articles about gaslighting. That wasn't an 'aha' moment, though. Those are pretty bold charges to lay on someone. But, I started reading more about smear campaigns and gaslighting and triangulation and flying monkeys, and I started catching on more in real life. I remember for certain the night I decided I was getting a divorce. It was my wife, one of my best friends, his girlfriend and me. The smear campaigns and inappropriate flirting with my buddy started right away. I could see her finding spare, private moments with my buddy and his girlfriend to talk shit about me (just little "haha" stories that make me look bad, usually exaggerated). Throughout the night, she slowly pushed more and more of my buttons. Eye rolling, being intentionally rude to me like walking away while I am talking, laughing at me in an intentionally judgemental way, and just saying rude shit about me, alternating between joking and serious. Well, my buddy wasn't taking her bait, but his girlfriend was. Tricia was increasingly playing bonding games with her, while pushing my buttons. This created a situation where my buddy's girlfriend would come to my ex's defense when I would call her out. After we started eating, my buddy's ex made fun of me for not wanting to eat the parts of the chicken with char on them. I said something along the lines of "you were giving me shit" about it. She talked down (like a child) to me and said "listen to my words." And, I mirrored her talking down language (but I forget what she said). At this point, she flipped out on me. She started hollering that "the way I talk to my wife is shameful" and a few other things. Straight up screaming at me about it. What's crazy, you'll notice, is how the whole blow up is about shit that doesn't even involve her. It's about how I was interacting with my abusive wife. This was my narcissist ex-wife's plan to a T. It was 3 against 1. Exactly what she had intended. I knew that night it was over.
She moved out about a month or so later. I would say that I wasn't really able to see the light while I was with the person. At least not 100%. It took me several months of not being around my ex before I was willing to say for certain that she is a covert narcissist. Now that the mental fog is cleared, it's so obvious. But, in the throws of the relationship,.
Now that I haven't seen my ex in months, my clarity of thinking has returned. It's 100% clear she is an abusive narcissist. I see it all now so clearly. But, I was never able to find that certainty until after we ended it.