Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him – Podcast

Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him – Podcast

The following is a podcast. The identical episode is available on several different hosts, including iHeart media, Apple, and I forget where all else.

I listened to this podcast, then went back and re-listened to the first ten or so minutes of it, but the podcast did not go into detail in explaining how this woman’s church enabled this (not that I recall), but I’ve seen enough over the years to guess why and how.

Most Christians, and I include church preachers in this, are ignorant about Cluster B personality disorders (under which Narcissism falls), so they actually expect women to stay married to individuals who lack empathy and/or a conscience- this is not a realistic, safe, sane, or compassionate response or perspective, by the way – most Christians, especially preachers, are huge morons on these topics.

(Not that secular culture is great at understanding these topics, either.)

There is currently no ‘cure’ for Cluster B personality disorders, and they are quite therapy-resistant (especially Narcissism and Anti-Social), so it’s quite unrealistic for Christians to instruct someone married to a “Cluster B” person to tell them to just “submit more” to the spouse, or to just “pray and trust the Lord” and to tell them divorce is always prohibited, no matter the situation.

Goodness knows that gender complementarian Christians don’t help matters, in that under the false, un-biblical “complementarian” or “biblical womanhood” teachings they love to spout off, they essentially ask or guilt trip  Christian girls and women into adopting Codependent, people pleasing behaviors, to lack boundaries, and to endure abuse or mistreatment.

However, the Bible teaches personal responsibility for each person and does not teach that God wants or expects girls or women to remain in abusive relationships, but to leave them and to avoid them in the first place, if possible.

God gave girls and women discernment and wisdom and expects them to use it – to high tail it out of abusive situations, for one thing, not sit there and put up with it, all because Pastor John Doe has a faulty interpretation of the Bible.

It’s not up to any girl or woman to “change” a man, nor is it possible, certainly not in the case of Cluster B personality disorders. Women are not the Holy Spirit. It is not up to women to sanctify a man. It is that man’s responsibility to fix his own problems.

It’s possible I am misunderstanding things, but by “enabling,” I think the lady interviewed (who was married to a Narcissistic Sociopath named John) seemed to be saying that she was living with John as boyfriend-girlfriend, and he manipulated her into marrying him by continually nagging her with the observation that she was “living in sin,” which her church would not approve of.

They, her church, would expect her to make things right by getting married, and not living together as boyfriend and girlfriend, seemed to be the point.

Her ex, John, was using her religious upbringing to manipulate her into marriage.

She said in the podcast that John asked her many, many times to marry him, but she kept saying “No,” until he finally wore her down, and she caved in.

(I could write a separate blog post on that!
I’ve run into several people via this very blog and/or this blog’s associated Twitter account, who kept pestering me and hounding me repeatedly OVER MONTHS (some were very nice about it) to befriend them further over Facebook or e-mail, they kept saying they wanted to get to know me better, even though I politely turned them down many times.

I finally blocked one guy who kept doing this; he would not respect my boundaries and take “no” for an answer, when he kept asking if we could be friends over e-mail.
I’ve since come to learn that this non-stop pestering and hounding after you’ve said “no” to the person many times (and no matter how friendly and nice they are being about it) is one indication that the person more than likely has a personality disorder, and they are to be kept at arm’s length.)

(Link – to iHeart host, 1.15 hour long): Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him

(Link – same podcast episode, but located on Spotify): Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him

(Link – same episode but on PodPlay): Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him

Sept 8, 2022

Today’s Guest overcame a tumultuous marriage with a narcissistic husband and the Church that supported his actions. Coming straight from a religious college and community, our Guest and her ex-husband met and were groomed by the Church to be together and get married.

After what she thought was the perfect pairing to the perfect man, and that they were going to change the world for the better, everything changed.