Welcome to Narcissist Apocalypse, everyone.

I am Brandon Chadwick and today we'll be doing a debrief on Dove's Story.

And we do have a content warning for today as we do discuss physical abuse in this debrief episode as well as sexual coercion, and we do discuss strangulation

in this episode as well. So those are your content warnings for today. And for those of you

who have not listened to Dove's story yet, here is a summary. Dove grew up in a loving and

supporting home. She describes her early life as being healthy.

Dove knew the abuser for four and a half years before they became romantically involved.

They met while living on the same property, stayed in touch over the years, and had what felt like an easy friendship.

He was charming. He was extroverted, he was fun to be

around, he shared about his past, including painful experiences with his parents, and Dove had

lots of empathy for that. And then, when neither of them were in a serious relationship,

the friendship shifted into something romantic. They already had this history.

It felt like there was a foundation there. And then very quickly, the relationship became very

intense. And Dove went to live and work with him briefly. They were together in very

close quarters, living in a fifth wheel and working together on a bathroom remodels. And slowly

Dove began feeling like

she was in trouble. She was being trained to anticipate invisible rules. She could walk past him

in the kitchen in the morning and later she would find out that that really upset him because

she did not stop to hug him at the right moment. She was expected to know what he needed

before he even said it. Then,

if she did not meet these expectations that she did not know existed, she was then punished

through sulking sour moods or getting a really big talking to later. And at the same time,

...