Aftermath of a toxic relationship

Occasionally, very occasionally something strikes me as being of such importance or relevance to my life that it warrants being recorded. Not as something of significance to anyone else but as an "aide memoire" for myself. This is one of those things, I know it is of importance because as I wrote it I actually had a tear in my eye.
Everyone who has been involved in a true "toxic relationship" will I suspect share certain behaviours. The first is the actual misery and helplesness of being in such a relationship and yet the almost paralysing fear and self-doubt that prevents us from simply leaving, the second is the need, when the relationship does finally and inevitably end, to repeatedly refer to all the incidents that caused so much pain and heartache, to explain the resultant feelings to all and sundry endlessly seeking explanations for the unpleasant incidents whilst searching for others who have been through similar experiences and share those feelings.
This has the unpleasant effect of keeping us locked into the relationship, if not actually physically then certainly emotionally. The world seems to be full of people who have been through dreadful experiences with "loved ones" and yet even though the relationship is over they are simply incapable of "moving on" and reinventing their life in a more healthy fashion. Ironically the "guilty" party (if that's the right term) seem to simply drift into the next relationship with scarcely a backward glance.
I left such a relationship in 2005 (not counting an abortive effort or two to resurrect it) and was left alone floundering around for answers to exactly what had gone wrong for the previous two of three years which had been, quite frankly, dreadful. I am not sure if the internet is a boon or a curse, but I turned to google to check exactly what had happened to me. The thing that kept leaping out of the page at me was a thing called Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It matched so much of her behaviour and our relationship. And yet not totally, there were discrepencies, maybe I was wrong, maybe I over-reacted, maybe my memory was playing tricks with me, maybe I just wanted to blame it all on her. I needed to find out more. I spent a few years reading articles, blogs and visiting boards and forums to check if she was a narcissist or not. Years later I was no nearer the truth, maybe she was maybe she wasn't, the net result was more of my life wasted thinking about her, I was still locked into the relationship in a strange way. Eventually I realised that whilst I may be emotionally still tied in I had to at least practically extricate myself from her life. Another two years was spent sorting out finances. contact orders, the joint business etc. As well as the actual time (and money) this all took I was also being exposed even more to her constant lies and demands, her blaming, her bizarre thought processes. They all upset me terribly. Eventually a settlement of sorts was met which enabled me to move home. have regular time with my kids and try to start a new life.
I love my new life. It is not what I wanted a few years ago but I have finally accepted my lot, I am trying to make the most of it, I feel as though I am gradually rehabiliating myself into the world again.. Its been a long, slow, process and its nowhere near over yet but at last I can see that there is a future for me, for my relationship with my kids, I can be "normal" again or maybe for the first time in my life.
And yet I still have thoughts about her, about what happened, about the injustice, the (mutual) anger and expectations. I realise that "no contact" or in my case minimal contact has been my salvation. Its given me a breathing space, it may be cowardly but I had to do it to protect myself because in a way she was right all along - she is stronger than me. If "strength" is what counts. Of course by repeatedly referring to her strengths she was directly referring to my weakness. And she was right. I was weak. Each time she said this to me and I didn't "get off the pot" I became even weaker. At some level she was aware of this, and disturbingly felt the need to keep rubbing my nose in it. This was her actual weakness, where a truly strong person might have encouraged me to be stronger myself she preferred to revel in making me into an underdog and keeping me there. This was NOT my imagination, this was what was actually happening. That was what was actually toxic about me and her, the rest of it evolved from this basic abuse of power.
So why the difficulty with moving on? The term the pseudo-psychologists and relationship experts (agony aunts) use is closure. I read many sites about closure. Most of them of course are aimed at women and advise them to go shopping more, have a makeover etc (such depth!)but hidden in there somewhere they refer to the stages of "grief" that we must go through to obtain this closure thing. They include denial, anger, acceptance and errr... a few others. It seems to me that it is possible in grief, as in child and adult development, to get locked in a certain stage that we simply cannot move on from. The stage we can easily get locked into is ANGER when we have been involved with a toxic person. The first anger we feel is anger at their abuse and often we only become aware that it was abuse after the event, the second anger we feel is at the injustice that the world allowed us to be treated like this, that no-one realises what we went through that no-one believes what it was like. The third anger we feel (and by far the most damaging and long-lasting)is the anger we feel at ourselves for letting it happen. For years after we parted I would get a surge of anger whenever I recalled an incident that humiliated me, hurt me, put me in a no-win situation, belittled me, used me and all the rest. As time has gone by I realise I now feel anger mainly at myself for not doing something about it many many years earlier when I (maybe unconsiously) saw the pattern of our relationship begin to emerge. All the times she put me down, failed to support me, failed to treat me as a human should be treated. I tolerated it. I didn't do what I knew I should do. I didn't stand up for myself. I wasn't a man. When I think of some of the things that happened I almost cringe with embarrassment and shame at simply accepting it.
What do we do with this anger? When we're dealing with a toxic person we "stuff it." Letting go of anger requires a apology. Simple as that. Once we have explained our upset, the ideal partner would recognise the damage to the relationship that has occurred and will apologise providing three conditions are met. Firstly that the anger is not simply the result of a misunderstanding, secondly that the angered party is not being abusive or manipulative themselves and thirdly that they value the relationship enough to put it right. This is where toxic people (and those with personality disorders in particular) cannot function. Firstly they are in general liars and thrive on misunderstandings, secondly they will always view the other party, even if that other party is merely insisting on fair treatment as being abusive themselves (entitlement) and thirdly they do not value any relationship as being above their need to win, to be right and to be perfect.
The logic is simple they will never apologise, barely even acknowledge that we actually had a reason to be upset or in my case that he events even happened! Therefore we cannot forgive no matter how much we may want to, therefore the relationship festers and we cannot get closure and move on. The dislike and resentment therefore continues. The second anger at the world in general not recognising what they have done to us and the sort of person they are we have to accept. The world is not actually that interested. Its like bent politicians-we get angry but that's the way the world is, we accept it because we HAVE to accept it. With these relationships we simply have to hope that he pattern continues with the next person and eventually more and more people will realise what they (the abusive ones) are like. The third anger (which is the most dangerous one) we can resolve. It involves recognising who we have hurt by our actions (or inaction.) Who we have really hurt, or allowed to be hurt is the child within us. In much the same way as I look at my son and daughter and truly realise I would do anything to protect them, to nurture them and to let them know just how loved they are, I realise I should do exactly the same to the little child who is deep inside me and hurting. I let him down. I allowed someone to hurt him possibly mortally. Its him I now apologise to. I'm sorry little Johnnie, truly, truly sorry and I vow never to let anyone hurt you in the same way again.