Loving what exploits you
America & Your Narc Ex
Loving What Exploited You
I’m sitting with something that rocked me and once it did there was no going back, and it feels personal but also so much bigger than me that it’s almost unsettling.
What I feel after years of narcissistic abuse, this confusion, this ache, this push and pull between grief and clarity, is the same thing I see people carrying when they talk about America.
That strange disorientation that comes after loving something that exploited you.
Because that’s what no one really prepares you for, not the abuse itself, but the aftermath, the part where you’re left trying to reconcile the love you felt with the reality of what was being done to you at the same time. Where you ask yourself if you were naive, needy, brainwashed, complicit, or just human and hopeful and wanting to belong somewhere that felt safe.
I loved him. I know that’s true. My body knows it even when my mind wants to argue. I felt warmth, connection, intimacy, devotion, the sense that I was building a future with someone. Those memories didn’t come from nowhere. They live in my nervous system whether I like it or not.
And the abuse was real too. The manipulation was real. The grooming was real. The slow erosion of my sense of self, the confusion, the way love became conditional and unsafe, that was real.
So what do you do with memories that felt good to you but were part of someone else’s strategy.
For a long time I handled it by force. Every time I felt myself miss him, I would immediately retraumatize myself on purpose. I would replay the worst moments, the betrayals, the cruelty, the gaslighting, as if pain was the price I had to pay to stay loyal to myself. As if remembering the truth meant I had to burn down every tender memory so I wouldn’t soften, empathize, or accidentally humanize him again.
But that did something to me.
It made my entire past feel contaminated. Like twenty years of my life were suddenly evidence in a case against myself. Like there were no good memories at all, only traps, only setups, only moments where I was being primed for the next betrayal. And the most devastating realization of all was this one, the one that still makes my chest tighten when I say it plainly.
The love I thought we shared was never mutual. It never existed in the way I believed it did. What I was nurturing, protecting, pouring myself into, he was exploiting.
That realization fractures reality. It makes you question your discernment, your intelligence, your capacity to love, your own history. It makes you feel like if the love wasn’t real on their end, then maybe it wasn’t real at all.
But that’s not actually true.
What was real was my experience. My body didn’t fake those moments. My heart didn’t imagine its devotion. What wasn’t real was the integrity on the other side.
And that’s when the collective mirror showed up for me, so clearly it almost startled me.
This is exactly what so many people feel about America. The pride, the hope, the belief in possibility, alongside the undeniable reality of exploitation, extraction, violence, and systemic harm. The grief that comes when you realize the system was never designed to love you back, only to use your labor, your loyalty, your belief.
People ask the same questions I ask myself.
Was any of it real
Did I imagine the good
Was my love misplaced
Am I complicit for caring
Am I betraying myself if I still feel tenderness
Just like with narcissistic abuse, the hardest part isn’t seeing the harm. It’s integrating the truth without erasing yourself in the process.
Because integration isn’t pretending nothing good ever happened, and it isn’t clinging to comforting myths either. It’s allowing two truths to exist without forcing one to cancel the other.
I loved him, and he abused me.
People loved this country, and it exploited them.
Both can be true without making the lover stupid or weak.
On a personal level, integration looks like no longer putting my memories on trial. It looks like letting the part of me that’s been on constant guard finally rest. It looks like not needing to punish myself every time I remember something tender. It looks like understanding that my capacity for love was never the problem, the conditions were.
On a collective level, it looks similar. It looks like telling the truth without denial and without self-loathing. It looks like releasing myths that require amnesia to survive. It looks like repair instead of rebranding, accountability instead of spectacle, care instead of domination.
Truth without repair is just confession.
And love without honesty is self-betrayal.
What I’m learning is that integration doesn’t feel victorious or dramatic. It’s kind of quiet and steady. It’s the moment your nervous system stops arguing with reality. When you no longer need to defend yourself against your own memories just to stay safe.
Grief is the doorway. Grief for the story you were told. Grief for the future you believed in. Grief for the love you gave freely to something that could not return it.
But grief doesn’t mean you harden. It doesn’t mean you stop loving. It means you stop offering your tenderness to people and systems that require your erasure.
Whether it’s a man or a nation, the work is the same. Reclaim discernment without killing softness. Remember without romanticizing. Tell the truth without annihilating the parts of yourself that hoped.
I don’t need to burn my past to honor my healing.
I don’t need to pretend nothing good existed to know it wasn’t safe.
I can live without the lie now.