You should have used your voice.
Have you ever heard that comment in response to your toxic marriage ending?
It can be frustrating to hear, can't it? Why? It's frustrating because you did use your voice.
The problem is not that you did not use your voice.
The problem is that you did use your voice, but your voice was not heard.
Yes, the vibrations of sound moved through the air from your mouth to his ears, but your voice was not heard.
Voice:
: wish, choice, or opinion openly or formally expressed
: right of expression
Why wasn't your voice heard?
It wasn't heard because the owner of the voice was objectified. You were objectified.
In a sermon I heard at church in the last year of my marriage before separation, the pastor was explaining that there are four types of relationships. When he spoke about the I-It relationship, he pointed out that one person has objectified the other person. In that type of relationship, he said, it is easy to mistreat and abuse the objectified person.
This sums up the relationship with a narcissist. To the narcissist, people are one of three things: a tool, a toy, or an obstacle. In each case, the other person has been objectified and does not enjoy the courtesies and simple human dignities due a person.
In such a relationship, the victim's voice means nothing.
There is no true communication.
There is no compassion when there are teary expressions of how their behavior affects the other.
There is no redemptive, constructive, solution-oriented communication.
There is only a collection of words to be used for their gain in some way.
The wife who doesn't understand this continues to pray and fast and sprinkle her words with sugar and honey in an attempt to make her words palatable so they can be received as she hopes for empathy, growth, and connection.
God cares about her efforts, but her narcissistic husband does not. Her words inform him of care to withhold, needs to ignore, boundaries to violate, and confidences to betray.
God cares about her aching, rejected heart, but He will not override another person's will.
Unfortunately, this kind of husband will not change unless he sees his need to change. Of course, a hallmark of narcissism is that everyone else has a problem, not them.
The abuser cannot truly hear your voice, your heart, because objects do not have voices.
Dealing with the issue of trying to have your voice heard while in a relationship with an abuser is an entirely different topic to which you need to give attention, if this is your situation. There is help.
For now, please remember that you matter. Your voice matters. How you feel matters. Your navigation of this journey that has included so much suffering matters. Your voice deserves to be heard.
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