Between love and emptiness
A journey through destructive love, trauma and healing
​
Some relationships feel like destiny. Not because they bring us joy, but because they confront us with everything within ourselves that still longs to be healed. This essay is a personal and philosophical exploration of such a relationship: a love that began with intense connection, deep recognition and the promise of healing — yet ended in confusion, emptiness and the loss of myself.
My journey leads through the dark dynamics of covert narcissism, borderline pain and trauma bonding, but also along the upward path: the path of awareness, insight and the return to the true Self.
It’s a story of love and emptiness of the destructive power of psychological wounds within intimate relationships and of the question: How do you remain true to yourself when the other seeks to rewrite your reality?
The meeting
When I met her, I immediately sensed that something greater was at play than a simple infatuation. She was open about her psychological vulnerability — about the psychoses she had been through, her schizoaffective disorder, her difficult past. I knew: this would not be an easy path. And yet, something drew me to her. Something beyond reason or logic.
In the first phase — the love bombing — she gave me exactly what I was longing for at that time: recognition, warmth, intense connection. She saw me, or seemed to see me. I had just come out of a long marriage and was searching for confirmation, for meaning, for a new foundation for love.
But what if what feels like love is actually the echo of an old wound?
What if you are not truly seen, but seduced into losing yourself?
​
The abyss opens up
The spell didn’t last long. Soon a pattern began to emerge: attraction and withdrawal. Intense connection followed by unexpected distance. Words that didn’t match actions. Loving messages in the morning, coldness or silence in the evening. My reality slowly began to shift. What was true, became fluid. What once seemed self-evident — openness, reciprocity, respect — was quietly called into question. Gaslighting is rarely loud. It is the slow erosion of your intuition.
My professional experience with borderline dynamics warned me: I recognized this behavior. But it also touched something old within myself. Something not shaped by education or clinical experience, but by my own childhood. The feeling that I had to give everything in order to preserve love. That I was responsible for the other person’s mood. That love was conditional, depending on how well I adapted.
She mirrored this perfectly. Not consciously, perhaps — I believe she, too, is trapped — but her borderline dynamics, her emotional instability and her manipulation slowly trapped me in a relationship where my sense of self was worn away.
Her lack of empathy — or rather: her inability to truly connect with my inner world — was striking. She could act without conscience, lie, cheat, and still uphold the facade of love. That contradiction gnawed at my sense of reality.
At a certain point I realized: this was not ‘just’ vulnerability. This went beyond mood swings or trauma. This touched something deeper — a fundamental inability to connect.
Narcissism as a survival strategy, as armor against emptiness.
The tipping point
The tipping point didn’t come suddenly. It wasn’t a bolt from the blue, but rather the slow filling of a bucket. Every lie, every silent treatment, every rejection, every distortion of reality added a drop. Until the moment the bucket overflowed.
That happened after the cheating — not once, but twice, and probably more. Unprotected sex, lies about it, and then intimacy with me again. My health was knowingly and deliberately put at risk. I forgave her the first time, against my better judgment. Love is sometimes blind, but trauma bonding makes you deaf and hollow inside. I did express my boundary — clearly, lovingly, but firmly: one more time and it’s over.
But that boundary was not respected. Not because she didn’t hear it, but because my boundaries never truly existed in her world. And so it happened again. This time with someone from her children’s environment. That was the last straw.
And yet… even then I wasn’t gone. I stayed. In fact, I returned — after yet another performance of fake remorse. Trauma bonding is an invisible cord. Not a chain, not a shackle, but a velvet ribbon that gently, yet inevitably, pulls you back. Again and again.
It was only when I started to disappear that the alarm bells rang. At work, I noticed myself making mistakes. I cried with clients, forgot appointments, lost my inner compass. I sounded the alarm with my manager. He saw it and gave me space. He decided I would scale back to 50%, but the damage was already done.
My ex knew all of this. She knew how fragile I was, how unstable my inner balance had become. And yet… when I asked her for peace and space, she accused me of being selfish.
Then something broke.
Not in anger, not in an explosion, but rather an implosion. A deep and undeniable knowing: this has to stop. Now. Not because I no longer loved her, but because I had lost myself.
And what is love worth, if it destroys your Self?
Silence as a weapon
I ended the relationship. Not with a theatrical gesture, no outburst of anger. It happened impulsively, in the moment, over WhatsApp — simple, resolute, raw in its everydayness. Not because she wasn’t worth more than a text message, but because I had nothing left. I was completely emotionally depleted.
What followed was silence. No attempt to talk, no questions, no apologies. Only silence.
For weeks. Until suddenly, on my birthday, a message appeared to congratulate me. As if nothing had happened. As if everything that had been said, everything that had been done and endured, had taken place in another universe.
I wrote her an email. Not a desperate love letter, but an attempt at closure, at giving meaning. I summarized our dynamic, named what had happened, what it had done to me. There was no response. Only silence.
On her birthday, about two weeks after my email, I sent her a little book. Not a symbolic gesture, but a sincere gift, chosen with care. That book expressed what I had felt for so long: that our encounter had not been meaningless. That love does not end at destruction, but becomes visible there — in the longing for wholeness. Again: no reaction. Only silence.
Only later did I understand what that silence really was: not an inability to speak, but a form of control. Power. The silent treatment. I recognized it from my childhood — making your pain invisible, punishing your feelings with absence. My mother had mastered that art like no other. And now it repeated itself, as if time circled instead of moving forward.
Two weeks after her birthday I sent a final message. A final attempt at closure — with an open heart. Vulnerable, honest, loving. No accusation, no request, just an acknowledgment: I miss you, I feel you, I love you. And again: no response. Only silence.
Until I blocked her on Spotify. Only then did I receive a reply: "Are you so angry that you removed your playlists from my Spotify? Such a waste..."
Not a word about my sorrow, my attempts at contact, my words, my love. Only about the loss of her access to my emotional world through my playlists. That one sentence confirmed what I had recently discovered: this was never love as I knew it. This was something else.
Something colder.
Something hidden.
Something narcissistic.
And suddenly, everything fell into place.
​
The Mirror of the Past
Now I knew for sure. Not just because the label of covert narcissism fit her behavior perfectly, but because my entire body knew it. Everything in me screamed: this is not new. This is old. I know this.
I started reading. Not one book, but twenty. About narcissism, trauma, gaslighting, emotional manipulation, love addiction. Podcasts, forums, articles, conversations with others who had lived through it, too. I immersed myself in it. Not because I still wanted to understand her, but because I wanted to find myself again.
In all those books, there was always a chapter about parenting. About the impact of narcissistic parents. At first, I skipped those chapters. That wasn’t what I was looking for, I thought. Until one day, I decided to read one anyway.
It was like staring into a mirror I had avoided my entire life.
The role of the golden child — recognizable in my brother and sister. The scapegoat — that was me. The way my mother manipulated, belittled, and yet kept all the strings in her hands under the guise of ‘love.’ The invisible pressure to please, to emotionally care for the other. To disappear when necessary. To deny your truth if that was what it took to keep the peace.
It hit me like a sledgehammer. Everything I had felt my whole life, but had never dared to name, suddenly became inescapably clear. My past did not return gently — it stormed in.
And it opened a deep, dark pit I had kept sealed for years out of self-preservation.
My truth began to tremble. Beliefs I had thought were the foundations of my existence began to crumble. Who am I if I no longer believe it was my fault? What remains when I see that my own parents never truly saw me?
Pain, yes.
But also space.
Because something kept me going.
My children. My ex-wife. My friends. My work and colleagues. My art. But above all: the music. The music was my anchor. My comfort. My voice when I had no words of my own.
The music understood me like no human being could.
And deep inside, I felt: this is not happening without a reason. This is the invitation. To finally meet myself. To heal. Not despite this relationship, but because of it. Not despite my pain, but in and through it.
I chose Schema Focused Therapy. I asked for help because I knew I didn’t have to make this journey alone. And because — despite everything — I still believe in growth.
This is not just a story of pain.
This is a story of liberation.
Back to myself — the path of healing
There I sat. In a room almost identical to my own office, just across the street.
A space that immediately felt familiar and safe, opposite a therapist I barely knew, but who looked me straight in the eye. Not to understand me, but to give me space. Space to simply be.
No helper. No parent. No savior. No pleaser. Just me.
For the first time in a long time, I was allowed to breathe without having to justify myself.
Schema Focused Therapy. The words sound abstract, but for me, it became a place of coming home. Not because it’s easy — far from it. But because it invited me to meet the voices in my head I had spent a lifetime suppressing. The vulnerable girl. The angry teenager. The absent mother. The wounded daughter. And, very slowly, very carefully: the compass of my true Self.
Every session feels like an encounter. Sometimes a clash. Sometimes a rupture. But always, I choose to stay. Not to run away from the sadness. Not to disappear again into someone else’s emptiness. But to stay with myself, even if it means walking through fire.
I am learning that loyalty to my past is not the same as loyalty to myself. That I don’t have to ignore pain in order to survive. That I can set boundaries, not out of spite, but out of love. And I am learning what love really is.
Not the addictive high of love bombing.
Not the false intimacy of dependency.
Not the hollow “I love you” without actions to match.
Love is soft and powerful. Love is truth. Love says: I see you — and I also see myself.
Slowly, I am beginning to find myself again in small moments. A walk in silence. Music that not only comforts but also affirms: I am still here. The realization that I am allowed to exist, regardless of what I mean to others.
And one day — unexpectedly, but unmistakably — I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: peace.
Not because the past had vanished. Not because everything suddenly made sense or was resolved. But because I held on to myself, when no one else ever had. I am becoming my own anchor. This journey is far from over. I am still in the middle of it. But I am moving. And with every step, I rediscover something that was never truly lost: my essence.
​
Self-love: the foundation of my existence
For a long time, self-love was an abstract concept to me. Something for bathroom tiles or self-help books. Something I granted to others but didn’t dare claim for myself. Because how can you love yourself if you’ve learned that your worth depends on what you give? If your value lies in being needed, useful, or available?
I had learned how to take care of others. To understand them, to sense them, to catch them, to carry them. But no one ever taught me how to hold on to myself. I knew everything about empathy, but nothing about boundaries. Everything about giving, but nothing about receiving.
For me, self-love didn’t begin with grand words or beautiful intentions. It began with small, often invisible choices. Stopping myself from sending messages that remained unanswered. Putting on music that comforted me, instead of music that reminded me of her. Going to bed early because I was tired — not because I wanted to numb my feelings. Saying no, without apologizing. Saying yes to therapy, to help, to vulnerability.
​
I discovered that self-love can be raw and uncomfortable. That sometimes it means not responding. Not going back. Not hoping that this time will be different. It means grieving the longing that was never fulfilled. The child inside me still craving validation from people who could never give it.
It means looking myself in the eye and saying, without hesitation: "You deserve better. You are enough. You are allowed to heal."
Sometimes I felt empty.
Sometimes I felt angry.
Sometimes I felt desperate.
But in all those emotions, I found the truth of my recovery: I could feel again.
And what I felt was mine. No longer shaped by manipulation or gaslighting, but rooted in my own body, my own soul.
Slowly, very slowly, I am learning to believe in myself. I see how I searched for love in the eyes of those who could not see my light. And I decided: from now on, I will look at myself with love. I am worthy. Not because I am perfect, but precisely because I am not.
My vulnerability is not my weakness. It is my humanity. And that is where my strength lives.
Self-love becomes my foundation. Not a wall, not a shell, but a ground beneath my feet. Soft, powerful, supportive. It gives me back something I had lost for a long time: dignity.
And from that dignity grows my will to rebuild. Not on sand, but on truth.
​
Rebirth in daily life: living in truth and connection
After a period of deep mourning, confusion, and healing, a different kind of silence slowly dawns. No longer the cold, paralyzing silence of being ignored, but a warm, spacious, creative silence — one in which I can hear myself again. Where I can feel my breath, inhabit my body, explore my boundaries. Where I can learn to live again. Not to survive, but to live.
This rebirth is not a sudden enlightenment. It is not a spectacular awakening, nor a heroic breakthrough. It is the quiet awakening of a soul remembering who she has always been.
I carry my experiences into my work, but in a different way. Not as a burden, but as a compass. I now know how deeply destructive relationships can cut. That makes me all the more aware of my responsibility in my work with clients. Not as a savior, but as a human being next to another human being. As a witness, not a judge. As a mirror, not a projection screen.
At home, I have become softer, more open, more accessible. My loved ones do not have to earn my love, and neither do I have to earn theirs. I am. And that is enough.
My children see a mother who cries, but also laughs. Who fails, but also learns. Who says, “I am sorry” — and means it. I am not an infallible rock, but a living, feeling person. And that is exactly what gives them safety: my humanity.
In my relationships with others, I choose clarity. Boundaries that are not walls, but gates with guards. I know now: I don’t have to let everyone in. Not everyone has good intentions. Love without truth is not love, and truth without love is not truth. I no longer need to lose myself in order to win someone else. Those who truly see me will stand beside me. Not above me, not beneath me, but beside me. In equality. In connection.
Music remains my anchor. Art, silence, nature, my children — everything that brings me back to essence. To being itself. With a love I no longer have to seek outside of myself, because it lives within me. In my breath.
My hands.
My words.
My choices.
This rebirth is not the end of my journey, but the beginning of a new chapter. A life no longer guided by fear, dependency or trauma — but by truth, self-love and connection.
I have come home to myself.
Epilogue
I. The Memory of Connection- From Survival to Healing
The pain of a relationship with a covert narcissist — and with a partner carrying borderline traits — is raw, confusing and deeply disruptive. But when the mist of illusion lifts, space opens up for a painful yet liberating insight: this relationship was not meant to heal the other, but to meet myself. Not the superficial self that survives, adapts, and mediates — but the true Self that had been waiting for me all along, hidden beneath layers of learned behavior, survival strategies and false childhood beliefs.
Discovering narcissism in my parental context was like finding a staircase to a basement I never knew existed. For years, I had believed I was “too sensitive,” “difficult,” or “strange” as a child. It wasn’t until I read the chapters on narcissistic parenting that the puzzle pieces finally fell into place. The manipulation, the silent treatments, the role of the scapegoat: these were not random occurrences, but structural dynamics. What repeated itself in my love relationship had its roots in my youth.
That repetition became an opportunity. Not to be hurt again, but to wake up. To recognize that what I called love was, in fact, an echo of my old pain. That what felt like connection was, in reality, a bond — born from trauma, not reciprocity. And in that realization, I found something much deeper than anger or resentment: compassion. Not as an excuse or justification, but as an acknowledgment of the brokenness — in the other, and in myself.
​
II. Love as a reminder of who we really are
The love I felt — and still feel — for my ex, was not a mistake. The love was real, even if she may not have been. My love was true, sincere, open. And that love says something about me. Not about what I lack, but about what I carry in abundance. That love is not naïve, but speaks of the deeper longing for connection that lives within every human being.
But where I once thought that love meant saving, bridging, and suffering for the other, I now know: true love begins with self-love. Not as an egocentric concept, but as an anchor. Self-love means setting boundaries, speaking the truth, standing firm when the other wavers. And it also means recognizing that some people cannot love. Not because I am unworthy, but because they cannot yet meet themselves.
So, my journey with a covert narcissist eventually became a journey inward. Toward my own wounds, my patterns, my longings. Toward the pain of loss and the beauty of healing. And above all: toward the memory of connection — that ancient knowing that love is not something we earn or obtain, but something we are.
​
III. Choosing Love, Beyond Trauma
My story is not an exception. More and more voices are emerging in the public space — on social media, on television, in books, podcasts, and therapy rooms — from people who recognize themselves in the dynamics of narcissistic or borderline behavior in their partner. But what this conversation needs is nuance. Not every difficult partner is a narcissist. Not every intense emotional life is borderline. But there are destructive personality structures that can deeply disrupt those in a relationship with them. And staying silent about this — out of fear of stigma — means silencing survivors once again.
What we need is awareness, not condemnation. Insight into the mechanisms of trauma bonding, gaslighting, emotional blackmail, and the subtle erosion of boundaries — mechanisms that cause people, often loving and empathic people, to lose themselves in connection with the other. People with borderline traits or narcissism often long for love, but their inner chaos, vulnerability, and fragmented identity lead them to sabotage that love the moment it comes close. That doesn’t necessarily make them bad, but it doesn’t make them safe either. That is why professional distance is necessary when working with them and personal distance is essential when living with them. Not out of coldness, but out of love: love for yourself.
My healing process is far from complete, but I am on my way. Schema Focused Therapy helps me untangle old patterns. Friendship, music and writing carry me through difficult days. And above all, there is the deep knowing that my experience holds meaning — not because I had to suffer, but because I choose to unravel a message of love within this suffering.
And something else has returned, something that had been silent for a long time: Art.
On my way back to my true Self, I have picked up painting again. Through image, color, form and language, I want to give expression to my journey. Not to hold on to the past, but to make visible what has been transformed. To bear witness to the power of vulnerability and the beauty of healing.
Art helps me speak where words fall short and allows me to feel what my mind does not yet fully understand. Art is my bridge to connection — with myself, with others, and with the greater whole.
I believe that as human beings, and as a society, we face a crucial choice. Do we wish to continue believing in the myth of love as sacrifice, as suffering, as fixing the other? Or do we dare to embrace a different paradigm: love as truth, love as a mirror, love as the embodiment of connection? A connection that begins within ourselves and then extends — freely and reciprocally — to the other.
Love is not the opposite of pain.
Love is what leads us through the pain, back to our true selves.
