Stockholm... again.

A second walk through the city years later.

In 2017, I vacationed in Scandinavia. First stop was Stockholm. This was a vacation I did not want to go on, but my then-husband insisted. I did not want to go on that vacation, because we were about two weeks away from moving back to the United States and I wanted time to pack, organize, and say a proper goodbye to my family.

My ex husband was relentless.

“You never want to do anything.”

“You know that it was always my dream to see Scandinavia.”

We had been living in Europe for two years at this point. We had been to Greece, Portugal, Spain, France, the UK, Switzerland, and Austria. Sweden did not come up. Neither did Norway.

But he had to go.

So, we went. It was always treated like a crime when I disagreed with him. Another failing documented in the ever growing book of missteps by me. A relationship that was already over, but I did not know it, yet. He had forgotten to tell me that he was living a double life at this point. Year three or four of an affair with a colleague of his. Maybe longer. I never really found out how long the affair actually lasted. And the more I dug into the details and played my own private investigator the more disturbing the details became and the more shocked I was by how long he had been living this double life.

Eventually, I stopped caring.

No contact with your narcissist and abuser means you stop all interaction. This includes stopping the pain shopping that investigating the details around an affair actually is. To break the bond with your ex, you have to go on withdrawal. Refuse looking up social media. Refuse to hear from acquaintances what he is up to. Like an alcoholic needs to avoid drinking, anyone trying to recover from narcissistic abuse needs to be weaned off the abuser.

It worked.

Stockholm is a city like so many other cities. But it has some pretty sides. The old town is beautiful. It is near the water and if you know me, you know how much I love water.

2017 was the last family vacation for me. I did not know it then. The stop in Stockholm that year was very stressful. My ex was the usual pleasant self. Growling at me over anything that he declared was a misstep. We did a walking tour through the old town guided by a guy in a viking helmet. My ex was charming and entertaining to everyone in that tourist group, but as soon as he looked at me his eyes darkened. I knew he hated me. It was obvious. I tried to make him happy that day. Like every day. But nothing worked.

After the tour, I could not decide on where to eat fast enough. He became angry. We walked around some more. Went into a few museums. Six hours of walking. 30,000 steps. My ex was in some kind of frenzy. Would not relax. Wanted to go from one tourist attraction to the next. Eventually I asked to go back to the hotel, I did not want to go to another museum. He exploded. Anger pouring out.

“You never want to do anything.”

He did not speak to me for the rest of the day. Just the darkened stare. Pure hate.

The next two days were not much better. His frenzied “we need to be busy at all times” continued. When waiting in line for any museum, he would bring up everyone’s shortcoming: kids not doing enough chores, kids not understanding what budgeting is, kids not being able do speak German well enough. All directed at me. Failings as a mother. Still the darkened eyes whenever he looked at me.

My marriage was over. I did not know it then. All I knew then and all I felt then was that I was a failure, a bad person, and bad mother, who was incapable of controlling her emotions well enough and was never able to live up to her husband’s standard. I was in a constant state of exhaustion. Hypervigilant. Constantly reading my then-husband’s emotions just to avoid another spurt of anger directed at me and my failings. Completely ignoring my own needs, because even saying that I was tired was a direct attack on him and his “dream of seeing Scandinavia”.

I was a bad wife.

So I thought.

I did not know how deeply traumatizing my stay in Stockholm was. Until two days ago.

My company sent me to Stockholm for a team offsite. I did not really want to go, but also did not have much of a choice and decided to make the best out of it. The majority of my stay was commuting between hotel and office which were just a brief 5min walk apart, so nothing really made me feel like I was in a foreign country.

On the last day, one of my colleagues and I decided to take a small walk to the old town. Just so we would have the ability to see anything more touristy and feel like the trip was not just work, work, work. So we walked. The old town was just a short 10min walk away from our office and hotel, so it felt like this was the right choice before flying back home with the limited time we had.

The closer we got to the old town, the more anxious I became. At first, I did not really understand why. But then the flashbacks started. I saw the dark eyes. I saw the stares. The growls.

I felt the deep sense (again) that I was a bad person. A failure. Everything was my fault and nothing was ever going to fix things, because I was beyond repair.

My colleague and I walked around an hour or so and I was glad when we decided to just get dinner, before we had to head to the airport. I felt relieved leaving the old town behind. I felt relieved, because I survived being there again. And in some sense it felt like my own conquering of the past.

Now with the knowledge of the aftermath of the worst year of my previous marriage, I see things with more clarity. I know what narcissistic abuse looks like. I know that the stress and the constant reminders of my failings were deliberate manipulation tactics my ex applied to wear me down. To make me the hypervigilant and nervous wreck I had become. To make me into the women who would overreact at the smallest things gone wrong. Hysterical crying in public? Yes, I have done that. Yelling at my ex husband in public seemingly out of nowhere? Done that. Thrown a plate on the floor with full intention to break it? Yes, done that during a fight with him.

I was being played like fiddle, so he could play the victim. He knew exactly when and where a slight remark in a public setting would set me off. And I did. I was his marionette with invisible strings.

It is amazing to me that after the divorce and when I went full ‘no contact’ I never felt that same rage and anger again. I have not even raised my voice at someone since then. I am a completely different person. Even my kids say so.

My daughter once remarked, how she always uses me as an example of what abuse does to a person. She must have read up on this, because she also recognizes the tactics my ex used on me that most people do not recognize as abuse. For example, for years, I would only be able to drive through mountains and coast lines with my eyes closed. As a passenger of course. Why? Because my ex thought it was hilarious to constantly pretend to drive off a cliff or the side of the road just to scare me. Yes, I am afraid of heights to an extreme. I do not feel very comfortable driving on narrow roads and never have. He used this fear and exploited it for his own personal entertainment and to wear me down. Most vacations I was mentally and physically exhausted after every drive.

Playing with someone’s fear is not funny. It is abusive.

My kids know this now. They have seen the change in me.

My marriage was over in 2017. I did not know it then. The aftermath of that last family vacation is easily explained. Two weeks after we moved back to the United States. A couple of months later he told me he was so unhappy that he wanted out of the marriage. He said my anger issues were the reason. Then I became my own private investigator and I found out about the affair.

Learning about this multiple year long affair freed me.

In an instant, I knew things were not all my fault. I knew, because he lied for years. I knew, because I basically devoured every single book about the topic I could find. They all indicate the same thing: cheating husbands devalue their wives to justify their affair to themselves. Narcissistic cheating husbands do not rest until the wife is fully destroyed. They essentially get off on the secrecy an affair provides. And they have to turn their wife into the bad person, so they can play victim claiming the affair was just a necessary escape, a cure for a bad marriage.

They all play victim.

I re-conquered Stockholm. It was an eye opening trip, because I had not realized until this week how much pain I am still carrying around with me.

More work to do.