My Experience Dating a Spiritual Narcissist and How You Can Avoid One

The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing- Beware of the abuser disguised as spiritual teacher

I was in an abusive relationship, narcissistic abuse to be exact- a unique but incredibly insidious and dangerous form of abuse, mainly because the mask narcissistic abusers wear in public is so charming and convincing. You would never suspect that this person was abusive.

When victims reach out for support from people that know the narcissist, they are often not believed because of how kind, caring, and sane the narcissist appears to be to the rest of the world.

They have no idea what goes on behind closed doors.

I’m sharing my story here because the man I became involved with was first my spiritual teacher, gaining a level of trust and power over me that allowed me to tolerate behaviors and abuse that I never would have in an ordinary relationship.

Later he became a friend, then roommate, and at the very end, a romantic partner.

I’m also talking about this not to vilify my abuser or to get justice, but so you can know the warning signs and behaviors to watch out for, should you ever encounter someone like this in your life or on your spiritual path.

It’s hard for me to write about this even now, many years after the relationship ended.

I never wanted to see myself as a victim, let alone the kind of person who would allow herself to be abused and so severely mistreated.

That isn’t me, I thought. I’m not one of those women. I would never tolerate anyone abusing me.

Yet, I did. I was ever so slowly manipulated and controlled that I didn’t even notice it happening. All I had was a tiny feeling in my gut that said something was off, something wasn’t quite right. But that was it. It was something so small, I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I’ve since learned that an abusive relationship can happen to anyone, no matter how educated, smart, self-loving, or conscious you are.

And I believe abuse happens far too often in spiritual circles, and like all darkness within us and without, it’s time to bring it into the light.

Back in 2017 I was writing about spirituality on a popular website when a man contacted me saying he liked my writing.

We found we had a lot in common and the excitement in finding each other was intense, unlike anything I had experienced before. He said he was a spiritual teacher and coach, offering sessions for anyone looking for clarity on the spiritual path.

The amount of love I felt coming from this person directed at me was also intense- it came on so strong that it was disorienting. Any uneasiness I may have had at the intensity of this interaction was quickly swept away by the overwhelming energetic presence of this person in my awareness. It was like he was constantly around me even though I had never met him. I had no idea what was going on.

I now know that this is what’s called love-bombing, a technique abusers and narcissists use to control and manipulate their victims or objects of supply.

As I began to get to know him over a few weeks, he seemed unlike anyone I had ever met- incredibly loving, caring, and understanding. I felt so lucky to have met such an amazing person.

Things started to shift with a sudden, unexplained emotional withdrawal after our first video chat. He was completely enmeshed in my energy field one minute, and completely gone the next. The door that had been so tantalizingly open had slammed shut. I had no idea why and I blamed myself, assuming he had found something lacking in me.

Since this man purported himself as enlightened and a spiritual teacher, I gave my authority away to him. I thought he knew better than me, or was at least on the same level. And so, I continued to interact with him, as our first conversations were so healing and exciting.

Abuse began to creep in from there. It started with making sure I always knew he was ahead of me spiritually with angry outbursts and self righteousness to occasional, then later constant criticisms of anything and everything about me, including my sadness, fear and other emotional responses to his abuse.

The abuse I experienced was one of the most dangerous kinds- I was verbally and emotionally assaulted and then blamed for my inevitable emotional distancing as the reason for his mistreatment of me. He was constantly telling me I was shut down to him and cold (which I was, and I now see that I should have been, because he was abusive) and said that that was the reason for his behavior towards me. To say that this is crazy-making is a huge understatement.

Since I had placed him as an authority figure in my life, I couldn’t see the abuse. I believed he was trying to help me and had my best interests at heart. Abuse was disguised as help and teaching- personal attacks on my character, constant comparisons to others, and angry outbursts about my lack of ability to satisfy him in every way were explained by him as helping me evolve and lose my ego, with the most important lesson and goal being to get me to see him as good and open myself up to him.

He would verbally attack me, criticize me, and then swoop in to clean up the mess- coming in to rescue me as the spiritual teacher and healer. He would “save” me and give me an informal healing session to help me heal from the pain I was in (that I now know he was primarily the cause of).

He would use these instances of help he offered to me as proof of how good, kind, and generous he was and how crazy and emotionally unstable I was. He convinced me how lucky I was to have him in my life and even accused me of taking advantage of his kindness because I took all the help he offered me.

For months this man messed with my mind and my sanity. And I had no idea what was going on.

All I knew is that I was happier before I met him. But I didn’t know why.

He used the phenomenon of projection as the ultimate defense for his abusive behavior. He could see that I was hurt or afraid of him, but he would say it was all me that was making me feel the way I felt. He was just being himself, doing nothing wrong, and it was my fault that I was responding in a scared or upset way. My ego was in the way, he told me, and that I was constantly misperceiving him- he then used that as a reason to abuse me more. Since I saw him as hurtful, I was punished with cruel jokes and emotional withdrawal.

He used the spiritual teaching that life is a mirror to deflect responsibility for his actions.  If he was judging me it was because I attracted judgmental people. He couldn’t help it.

I was constantly on guard for being closed to him, knowing that this was what set him off. In the name of being open hearted, losing my ego, and being unconditionally loving, I was always trying to override my gut instincts that were telling me this person is attacking you to remain open to him. Fear was a constant presence when I was around him.

Eventually he claimed I was abusive (this was long before I had realized that he was the real abuser). He had so thoroughly messed with my mind and manipulated me that I believed him. I believed that I was abusing him because I was scared of him and wasn’t able to empathize and agree with his perspectives of me. I felt I deserved the inevitable punishments from him in the form of guilt trips, cruel jokes, and his own emotional distancing. I believed I deserved it all.

It was shortly after he kicked a hole in my door, told me I caused the hole in the door because of my behavior, (and the door for being of poor quality construction) and proceeded to punish me through guilt trips about it, that I started to realize that something was really wrong. Every time I looked at the hole in the door, I got a sick feeling in my stomach.

A few days after that, he was angry at me again (my fault of course) and wanted to end the relationship. He had done this multiple times, breaking up with me as a manipulation tool to get me to learn something or behave the way he wanted me to, and then reentering the relationship when I had “learned my lesson” or changed my behavior to please him.

But this time it was the worst. And this time it was over text message. He was yelling at me through the screen of my facebook messenger. He was calling me a fucking idiot and a piece of shit, asking me (yelling) to give him a reason to stay in the relationship. And there it was in black and white on my screen. I couldn’t ignore it anymore. The fog cleared and I could see the light of day for the first time in almost a year.

I think I’m being abused...

If it seems utterly insane that I would stay with this person for as long as I did, you would be justified in thinking that.

As I write this now from outside the relationship looking back, it does seem crazy. It is a literal miracle that I did not end up in a psychiatric hospital due to the amount of psychological manipulation I experienced (one of his exes actually did).

But I stayed because there were good times. And this person appeared to be the most caring, loving, compassionate person I had ever met. Now I know that this wasn’t really the person I was with, but a mask, a false persona if you will. The real person was incredibly cruel. I now know that his extremely attentive, loving behavior that occasionally came out was just another way to manipulate me and keep me from leaving.

To this day, my former parter still blames me for the abuse. It can’t be entirely his fault, he says. It’s a dynamic. It takes two people to contribute to abuse- I caused it and brought it on myself because of how I acted. Mainly, because I was cold and shut down to him and was unable to empathize and sympathize with his actions and grievances against me. Which I wasn’t able to, because they were abusive and irrational.

He told his friends there’s something wrong with my brain- a lack of understanding of him and his emotions- that caused him to treat me the way I did. This is abuse in itself- blaming the victim for the abuse the abuser perpetrates. And it’s another technique narcissistic abusers use to hurt you- taking your strengths, in my case, my empathic nature, and trying to convince you that they are your weakness.

He used things I told him in my sessions with him against me as evidence of how messed up I was as justification for abuse, an especially cruel form of abuse, as I trusted him with my deepest secrets as my teacher. I never expected them to later be used against me.

Here’s what I’ve since learned about abuse- there is no excuse for it. It’s never the victim’s fault.

It’s not a toxic dynamic, the victim doesn’t bring it on herself because of the way she acts or what she does.

Abuse is caused by the abuser. That’s it.

My former partner even tried to blame me for having no boundaries as the reason he was abusive to me, like if I had better boundaries his behavior would have been different towards me- anything other than take responsibility for his actions.

The thing is, since I considered myself to be a spiritual person and someone who was conscious, I so didn’t want to think of myself as a victim. So much so that I ignored or pushed aside blatant red flags when I was around this person.

But mainly, I ignored these things because I didn’t see it as abuse. I didn’t know that putting someone down, trying to fix them all the time, and telling them how much better they were than you was abuse.

I didn’t know that there was a thing called toxic anger, that manipulation was abuse (I didn’t even see that I was being manipulated) or that violent eruptions of anger out of the blue were abuse. I didn’t know that walking on eggshells, racking your brain to try to avoid triggering someone’s anger or feeling like nothing you ever did was good enough were symptoms of abuse.

I didn’t know because I had grown up in similar dynamics as a child. Power and control were the air I breathed. How can you see something as abuse when it’s considered normal in your family of origin and culture and everybody tolerates it and looks the other way?

You don’t.

Until you do. I had to wake up out of a massive amount of denial to see that what I was experiencing was abuse.

When we experience abuse in our childhoods and we cannot leave unhealthy family dynamics, we have to come up with coping mechanisms to survive. Mine was denial. I cut myself off from the part of me that was experiencing tremendous pain, who knew that how I was being treated was wrong in order to make it through my childhood intact.

So when an abusive situation came into my life again, I initially didn’t see it. I thought that this was just how some men were. Other than a small little voice warning me, I had no idea that something was wrong.

Since learning about abuse and the dynamics of power and control, I am releasing a tremendous amount of guilt and the belief that I am responsible for others emotions. My life and childhood has finally made sense. The issues I had that I believed were all because there was something innately wrong with me, like anxiety and depression, I am now seeing were normal and expected responses from chronic abuse.

There was nothing wrong with me after all.

Yet while knowing I am truly not a victim in the ultimate sense, I am finding that claiming my status as a victim and survivor of abuse on a human level is the healing I was looking for.

Because in order to see the unhealthy dynamics of relationships and to see what I truly want and deserve in a partnership, I had to see the opposite. I had to experience the unhealthy, hurtful relationships in order to really see that I am worthy of kindness, love, and compassion in a relationship.

I had to see clearly what abuse was and what I will no longer tolerate in any relationship in my life.

I’m writing about this today because I truly believe that in order to change the world into the kind, loving, peaceful place we all wish to live in, we have to bring abuse into the light of day. We have to talk about it. We have to call it out when we see it and demand to be treated differently. With respect and kindness.

Because abuse is happening all over the world. Abusive relationships are a microcosm of what’s happening all over the planet- oppression, power games, and control are dynamics that are going on at all levels of our society.

The change starts with each one of us in our own personal relationships. It starts with seeing that we are all worthy of love and kindness and that there is never an excuse for abusive behavior. There is never an excuse for someone to control you, belittle you, or exert power over you. Never.

When we each see that we are deserving of this and nothing less, that’s when the world will be forced to change.

It starts with us loving ourselves enough to know that we are deserving of kindness.

Here are some signs from my own personal experience that you are dealing with someone who is abusive, rather than a genuine spiritual teacher:

1. Using spiritual techniques to their benefit. Like to twist your mind to show you that abuse is not actually abuse. Or that their abusive behaviors are caused by you.

2. They talk a good talk but don’t walk the walk. For example, he says that he is a man that promotes true equality between a man and a woman, yet acts superior and disrespects the women in his life by putting them down, controlling them, or verbally abusing them. Listen to your gut if what someone says and what they do don’t match or something seems off.

3. Saying that having sex with you or other students would be healing for them. There is no form of sex that is necessary for spiritual growth or learning. Everything you need is within you.

4. When you share with them an authentic desire of yours, they tell you you’re wrong and then tell you what you really want. They know better than you and what you really want.

5. They tell you their teachings are amazing, groundbreaking, enjoyable etc. Basically, telling you how you should feel about them. That is the beginning of manipulation and abuse- They determine how you should feel and if you don’t agree completely, it’s not tolerated. An authentic teachers shares a perspective and then leaves it up to YOU to determine how you feel about them.

6. Getting involved in a relationship with you. This creates a power imbalance in the relationship where abuse thrives. Since you looked up to him as a mentor and teacher, you are likely to then defer your judgment to his and this creates and environment that is ripe for abuse. The abuser can use this imbalance of power and their influence over your opinions to their advantage- to get you to think what they want you to think-for their benefit.

Since they know all your vulnerabilities and insecurities from working with you as a client, they can use them against you or to manipulate you so you are under their control. This is why many psychological and counseling professional organizations prohibit romantic involvement between therapist and client. The harmful effects of this type of relationship have been well documented.

7. They constantly tells you how good, loving, well-intentioned, enlightened, etc they are (fill in the blank). Think twice about anyone that needs to remind you or declare how good they are to you. Most likely, they’re probably not truly who they say they are and are trying to convince you or manipulate you to believe otherwise and ignore your own feelings about them and instincts.

8. When you decide to leave their teachings, their program or the relationship if you are in one with them, they try to keep you there by saying things like, “you can’t keep running away from this forever, you’ll have to face it someday,” or, ”you can’t escape the lessons you have to learn.”Basically, using spiritual justifications and their “superior” knowledge to keep you in their fold or to prevent you from leaving them. There is no spiritual justification or lesson to learn from staying in an abusive situation. Perhaps the only lesson that needs to be learned is to run- run away as fast as you can.

9. They have created an exclusive group of followers with themselves at the center where only they can decide who is good enough to enter, or who is swiftly discarded when they don’t tow the line. AKA, a cult. Enough said.