Welcome to Narcissist Apocalypse, everyone. I am Brandon Chadwick, and today we will be doing a debrief for the re-release of Blanche's story. And we will be doing key takeaways and themes of Blanche's story, the fear, obligation, and guilt of Blanche's

story. But before we get into that, we do have a content warning for this episode, as we do

discuss physical abuse and suicidal ideation in this story. And for those of you who have not

listened to Blanche's story yet, to give you some

context of her story. Blanche was 19 when this relationship began. She and her ex had known each other

since middle school and high school. So when they reconnected, there was already a big sense of familiarity here with these two.

She described herself at this time as having low self-esteem and being a people-pleaser,

someone who didn't like conflict and really felt the need to fix things.

And Blanche had never been in a serious relationship before,

and she thought to herself that

relationships just take work.

That was her belief, and that's something that an abuser can exploit, and this person did.

And early on, the abuse control here looked like jealousy.

He wanted to know details about her past.

Every person that Blanche had ever been with.

And when she answered honestly, he would use those answers to shame her, call her names.

And then after that, after the shaming, after the name calling, he said he did that because

he loved her so much and couldn't stand the thought of her being with anyone else.

A friend tells Blanche that that wasn't normal. She brought this information back to him.

Blanche brought it back to him. His response was, why are you telling people about our business?

So right here is the beginning of isolation that occurs in Blanche's story.

And from there, the jealousy just kept on moving. He made accusations of Blanche checking out

...