How Emotional Abuse Looks Like

Today was our Singapore reunion dinner.

Since young, our reunion dinner was one with our Malaysian family and relatives. My father would drive us back on the day of reunion dinner itself. Our loved ones in Malaysia would wait for us, even as late as past 8pm one year, before they started the dinner. 

The Singapore one first started when my mother wanted a reunion dinner of our own, when we were unable to return to Malaysia for our usual reunion dinner.

Since then, we would have one of our own before going back to Malaysia. After my father passed, my siblings are not keen on having reunion dinner with our Malaysian family, I am not sure why. They would go back on the first day of Chinese New Year (CNY) for a visit and come out to Singapore again on the second day of CNY. As someone without a car of my own, I did not have a choice but to follow what they did. But deep within me, I felt uneasy about giving up the tradition that my father had set.

Last year, I told them that I would join my Malaysian family for the reunion dinner instead. My 4th sister drove out from Malaysia to pick me up so that I could have that pleasure.

This year, surprisingly, almost all of them would like to have the reunion dinner with our Malaysian family so we had the Singapore one early today.

I asked Baby to join us. I even told her the Court Order states that she lives with me from Thursday to Sunday so she gets to have dinner on Saturday with me.

As expected, she cooked up some lame excuses not to come.

She told her cousin that she was sure that we would be speaking badly about her father and she didn't want to hear it.

I took a video of us busy eating and told her nobody could bother speaking about her father.

Clearly, William has been speaking badly about me and my family. It's a reflection. The fact that Baby refuses to come live with me is a clear testimony of how much he has been speaking badly about me.

Baby doesn't know she's being manipulated. 

Baby doesn't know she's being emotionally abused.

She thinks she voluntarily distances herself from everybody else.

She said that she doesn't like to go out anyway. She's alienating herself, under the influence of the NPD.

This is how abuse looks like.

I have stepped away from it. So I can see it.

When you are abused, you don't know you are abused.

If someone hadn't pointed it out to me and told me that I was abused, I wouldn't have known either. And I am an adult with lots of life experiences.

We can recognise abuse when it's physical abuse.

But few can recognise emotional abuse. 

The damage done by emotional abuse is often far greater and farther reaching than physical abuse.

Each time I named my child, it was often a reflection of my state of mind, which was invariably linked to my marriage.

Coco's name means:

a beautiful smile

I was very uncertain, fearful and unhappy. I wished my child to always be happy and to face life's hardships with strength and a smile.

For Baby, I told her her name means:

宁为玉碎，不为瓦全

not to put up with misery and wrongful acts like how her mother did, but to be strong and principled.

It took me 16 years to walk out. It was arduous, very misunderstood, exhausting, but I did it anyway. 

I hope one day, the truth will set Baby free.

Let’s Talk About Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)

For a long time, 16 years to be exact, I was living in a state of confusion.

I didn't know that there is such a thing as NPD.

I didn't understand why William would become a perfect stranger the second day of our marriage.

I made a lot of excuses for him:

It's the first time he got married (It was also my first time experiencing a married life too).

He had never been a father (He had spent two years getting along with Coco).

He was stressed (by being … married?).

William was wonderful, considerate, thoughtful and sensitive before marriage. He spent almost every day with me, talking a lot with me, trying to get to know my every thought, my life stories.

I thought he was my soulmate.

He would say that he knew me better than I knew myself. And I agreed.

There were a few times I felt something was not right.

He would sit in the middle of a foodcourt in Scotts Shopping Mall when he got angry.

Everybody stared at him and he would not care.

He would carry Coco away when we had an argument and scared her.

He would tell me that a man sitting beside me was looking at my exposed bosom when I was playing with Coco - after everything was over.

Every time, I felt something was off and wanted to break off with him.

He would appear below my flat at 6am and waited for me to beg me not to end our relationship.

He would shout my name out from the opposite block at 12am when he could see me through the windows.

He would beg me and give reasons for his unusual behaviour. 

He would say that it was because he really loved me and didn't want to lose me. It was because we were not married and didn't have our own space.

He said all these would not have happened if we were married.

Thinking back, I got to a point where I felt that I was so torn within that I knew I would get back with him in the end anyway.

But after the wedding, he seemed a different person from before marriage.

He was cold and didn't speak a word for the whole of next day after the wedding.

I thought he was tired.

Then within a week, we were fighting every day, shouting and screaming every day.

I hid in the room with Coco, with him banging the door and shouting for us to get out of the room.

I didn't know how to divorce him within a week.

We had a church wedding.

He was a wonderful man despite all the weird behaviour. 

He wanted to marry me. He must love me.

I was very very confused. I was in constant state of confusion for a long time.

He gaslit me, cast doubts on the things I remembered, belittled me and everything associated with me. He justified all his wrongdoings and put the blame on me for him acting ‘out of sorts’. It was my fault all the time. 

I had thoughts of divorce every day.

But he hadn't hit me. We just got married. It was my second marriage. How would others perceive me? 

It got to a point where I felt that life was hopeless. I told myself I had to change my values to align with his, even if they were not right, in order to spend the rest of my life with him.

It was after I filed for a divorce that I learnt about NPD.

Then everything became clear as day.

An NPD lies about everything, even trivial things that don't seem to matter.

An NPD gaslights people who trust him wholeheartedly.

An NPD emotionally abuses people who trust him.

An NPD is superb at putting up an act.

An NPD is the devil himself in human disguise. He steals, kills and destroys relationships and lives.

An NPD needs to spoil people's day in order to feel important. He told my mother he was broke and asked my mother for money on the first day of CNY. My mother was in shock. She asked me if he’s mentally unsound.

An NPD could not laugh to his heart's content. I had never once seen him laughing uncontrollably. His laughter, if ever, was always controlled.

An NPD alienates people they want to control from their loved ones. That’s why William always  alienates people he wants to control. It was me. Now it’s Baby.

An NPD sees money as the most important thing. He stole Baby’s baby shower gift, a gold bangle from my elder sister, Coco’s gold ring, my wedding jewellery, and stole the girls’ ang pow money and my money habitually. Of course. He blamed me for his stealing acts.

It got to a point where I was brainwashed into believing that it’s normal that - and I should expect, money and valuables should disappear from where they were kept. 

An NPD does not and cannot love their own children. 

An NPD only thinks about relationships and people in terms of how useful they are.

An NPD exaggerates and lies about who they know.

An NPD appears normal and looks like a good man to people who do not know him. That’s why people around me question if I had been perfectionistic and difficult, which William would always reinforce and reiterate.

I realised that very few people know what NPD is.

When I talk about it, they are always in disbelief that such people exist. When I give them examples of what William would do, they told me how they would react - in the same way as I did, simply because that’s how normal human beings are. 

But NPDs are of the devil. They attack normal human qualities. They exploit kindness, honesty, understanding, compassion and everything that’s beautiful. 

Because the devil comes to steal, kill and destroy.

Google ‘NPD traits’ and you will find more about what they are like and do. 

Not everyone who has some NPD traits is an NPD. My elder sister has a lot of NPD traits but I know that she is able to develop love for a few people so she’s not a full-fledged NPD.

But William is a full-fledged NPD because every single trait fits him to a tee. 

I hope more people are aware of NPD and can recognise NPDs if they are in close contact with one. You need to flee from them.