E074 - Did He Ever Love Me? The #1 Question We Ask After A Narcissistic Relationship Ends

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[00:00:00] In this episode, I'm gonna help you answer the question that you are dying to know. Did he ever really love you?

Speaker: Welcome to Heartbreak to Wholeness, the podcast helping you heal from the mindfuck of narcissistic relationships and move towards the secure, peaceful woman you want to become. I am your host, Bre Wolta, Relationship Clarity Coach and EFT Certified Practitioner. Let's dive in.

Welcome back, beautiful people. Today we are answering your number one question. I get asked this all of the time, Brie, did he actually love me? So by the end of this episode, you're going to understand why you're stuck, wondering if your ex actually loved you.

You're gonna learn what love actually means to a narcissist, and you're gonna begin to find closure after being deceived and discarded in the way that you have. And be sure to stick around to the end of the episode where I will pull an Oracle card that will offer you a message to stay anchored in as you move forward this week in your healing.

Okay, [00:01:00] so here it is. Did he ever love me? You're asking yourself this question. You are waking up in the middle of the night, maybe in a cold sweat, realizing that this might not be true. He might not have loved you, and you're wrestling with this back and forth and up and down, and maybe even wondering if something's wrong with you because you are asking yourself this question.

So I want to relieve some stress right now by starting and saying that nothing is wrong with you. That this is a normal question to ask, and it's normal because we are humans, okay? We are meaning making machines. When there is incongruence in how the relationship ended versus how it started, of course we're gonna have questions.

Of course, we're gonna have doubts. Of course, we are going to try to find the answer. So nothing is wrong with you. You're not crazy. I. And I have an answer for you, so let's get into it. I wanna piece apart [00:02:00] what love means to you as the listener. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that you are empathetic, that you are looking for depth in a relationship, that you are willing to try to be vulnerable, even if it's scary.

That you meet somebody with respect in a relationship. So love to you likely means a partnership where you can be real, where you can be safe, where you can show up in all of your colors and be welcomed in the, in that experience. So you're looking for somebody that can do that with you. Right. You have this definition, this understanding of what a relationship is, of what love is, and you're asking this question, did he love me from that place of what you expect love to be?

So if you're asking that question from that place, I'm gonna tell you no. He didn't love you, and [00:03:00] here's why. A narcissist is not capable of love in the same way that you are capable of love. One of the biggest components, one of the most important pieces of a relationship is empathy, is having the capacity.

To feel empathy for the other person, because if you don't feel empathy, you're not gonna give a shit about what their experience is. You're not gonna respect them, you're not gonna try to understand them or try to improve the relationship so that your, your experience together is better. No, you are operating in a different way in that relationship.

So a narcissist or a narcissistic person. Has a different motive for getting into connection. Your motive for connection is love is potential of going really deep and spending your life with somebody in a very real way. A narcissist motivation for connection is to gain admiration, validation, and [00:04:00] power from you.

If we think about this like a leach. Right. The narcissist is a leach and needs a host in order to stay alive, a lech globs on to something to someone in order to get what they need in order to stay alive. So a narcissist can't really exist on their own self validation. That's not a thing. They're constantly seeking the people in their environment that they can manipulate

and mold in this way that will really give them what they're looking for. So they deceive you in the beginning in order to bring you in, in order to leach onto you, and then they continue to manipulate throughout the relationship in order to get what they need. This is not a pleasant way of thinking about the relationship, but it does give an answer to the motivation behind the reason they came into connection.

I get asked from clients all the time, well, if they [00:05:00] can't love, then why do they get, why do they have people in their lives? Why do they get into relationships if they're just gonna fuck 'em up and lie and deceive and throw everybody's worlds upside down? And this is why they need the host. They need the person that gives them that validation.

So their motivation is not the same as yours. Their definition of love, even if, if they have a definition of love, I don't know if they would. Classify any of their experiences as love, but their, their reason for connection is different than yours. This is really their survival method, they have to exist in a relationship to stay alive because validation and power and control is like.

Air and food and water to them.

It's really when we're asking ourselves this question, did he really love me? We're really like asking somebody who is paraplegic to run a marathon. They are [00:06:00] just actually incapable and what's really fucked up is that they told you that they could run, right?

They sat you down, they looked, they gazed into your eyes, across the table. They held your hands. They promised you that their legs worked. They promised you that they loved running, and they promised you that they would run with you through this marathon, into this sunset. And so you believed them. Of course, you believed them because they probably were very convincing, and you probably really wanted that to be true.

So understanding that somebody who is paraplegic is never gonna be able to run a race in the way that you can run a race. Maybe they can be wheeled in a wheelchair from the start to the finish, but they cannot show up in the way that you can show up.

And this is so important to understand because of this, when we don't have an answer. We will keep that chapter open and we will keep frantically sifting through the pages. In order to find the [00:07:00] answer, we will go back to the beginning. We'll go back through the middle, we'll go back again and again trying to understand what happened, trying to understand if they really loved us in the beginning of that relationship.

It's like you're keeping the energetic door open to that chapter. You're keeping those pages open. So when we have an answer, we can finally find closure. We can finally close that chapter and move forward. Another thing that can happen when we don't have an answer to something is that we create an answer.

So instead of understanding that this person is not capable of love. You might come to the conclusion that, well, if you were just more lovable, then they would be able to love you. Or maybe if you were just good enough, then they would actually have chosen you. Or maybe the real kicker here, that sucks so bad.

When you see them move on, you're wondering, is she gonna be able to change him? Is she gonna be able to make him feel [00:08:00] love? And the answer is no. This person. We'll never be able to run.

Another question that I have for you, when you ask yourself, did he ever really love me? Is, what do you mean when you ask yourself that? Is there a deeper question that you're trying to answer? And I ask you this because for me, as I was moving through this part of my healing, I couldn't make sense of it either.

I really could not comprehend what happened, how this person went from the Prince charming to the villain, how he showed up in ways that were truly horrifying, and how I didn't see that that was something that he was capable of. And so. I couldn't understand what the beginning of the relationship was and if it was real.

So I was asking myself this question over and over. My therapist helped me come to the real question that I was asking. I was saying out loud, [00:09:00] did he ever love me? But what I really wanted to know was if it was real, because if it wasn't real, then I was making the story in my head that I was stupid, that I didn't see it, that it was my fault.

So I was asking if he loved me in order to like validate, in order to confirm that it was real. And that confirmation was never gonna come from him answering that question. I never got an answer from him. But even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to believe it because so much of what came out of his mouth was a lie.

So I was seeking this answer from this person that I couldn't trust the answer anyway. And what I had to do was find the answer for myself. I had to, I had to finally come to the place of acceptance and say. He showed up in a really inauthentic way, but I showed up in a way that was real for me. This relationship, this, this love that I felt was real for me.

I didn't have [00:10:00] control over his behavior or control over how he felt about it, but I showed up to that race. I had my sneakers on. I was stretched, I was ready, I was hydrated. I was willing to go the distance and I was. I was willing to show up that way because that was real for me

and I had to also sit with the truth that I was duped. This picture, this portrait was painted for me that was not real and I did fall for it. I did choose to believe that that was true, and I found so much compassion for myself in that place because. I didn't know what I didn't know, and now I know so much more about these types of people and what they're capable of.

I know so much more about myself and have really built my sense of self, my confidence, my self-worth to a place where I ask more questions, I insert more boundaries. And I have a hell of a lot more.

[00:11:00] Self-protection now in not allowing behavior that I used to allow in the past. So I've come a long way, but me as that woman with my ex, at that period of time in my life, I was not, I did not have those same tools. And so finding compassion for yourself for where you were, especially when you're looking in hindsight, is so important because I want you to know that you are not stupid.

Even if you had the wool pulled over your eyes, that doesn't make you stupid.

People who can manipulate others in this way who don't have empathy like we do, who are on the narcissistic spectrum, are experts at survival, they're experts at manipulating you to get what they need in order to survive. So. Having compassion for yourself for not seeing it, having compassion for yourself that you were up against a chess master when you are just learning the game of chess

So I want you to revisit this [00:12:00] episode. When you go back down that rabbit hole, when you start to forget what we talked about today and ask yourself, did he ever love me? Did he ever love me? What does that mean about me? Go back to this episode. Listen over and over again, repetition is going to help you come back into your sense of self to come back into that knowing. So to recap what we talked about today, we talked about why you're stuck, wondering if your ex really loved you, what love actually means to a narcissist, and how it's different than your definition of love, and why that's important, and how to begin to find closure when the ending of the relationship doesn't make sense and doesn't match the beginning.

And for the cherry on top of today, let's pull a card. So I am beginning to shuffle these Oracle cards and just tuning into your energy. Asking, what is the message that is needed today? What is the message that you need to hear? And the [00:13:00] question that came up is hindsight. So I'm going to find this in the book and read you what it says.

Hindsight. Take a deep breath, breathe it into your back body. What is it? Seeing? This is hindsight. It comes to you as a perspective shift to remind you that what is behind you is as important as what is in front of you. A message from the divine seer of the past, present, and future reminds you that there is much to be learned from the past, lessons to be embraced and celebrated.

A treasure trove of knowledge and experience to inform your next steps. You choose what you take and what you leave behind while always honoring what was. Hindsight also requires you to be thoughtful and aware of what you are leaving in your wake is or was your impact what you intended it to be. In every moment.

The decisions you make have forwards and backwards consequences. Hindsight encourages you to gauge gently on the past for you cannot change it yet it reminds you that the awareness in back of you matters just as [00:14:00] much as the awareness in front of you. I love that message. We can find. All of the answers that we need in order to heal if we're using our experience as lessons as a teacher, and I know that's painful, I know that's a long process, and you're not alone in that process because narcissistic relationships usually start with love bombing, um, as the main form of deception.

I want to offer you my free three ways to recognize Love bombing Guide. This is a free guide. You can click through the link in the show notes. That's really gonna help you learn the red flags so that you can better avoid the pain of another narcissistic relationship and really spot that from the beginning so that you're not in another relationship where you are.

Finding yourself in the same place of asking, did he really love me? As always, this podcast is for you and you are not alone. I'll see you next [00:15:00] time.