he controlled everything! he built his career in a country he knew around his family.

in the beggining as in all relationships it was bliss then marriage and babies came and he was knocked of the top of the list and he hated it stating he should be treat like a king in his own home!

its taken a me to hell and back.

Thank you for sharing your story here for others to read. Thank goodness you have broken away from your narcissistic partner.

Money, and control of it, is a stressor in any relationship. It does seem that men who are narcissistic feel entitled to rely on the income and efforts of the women around them, in my experience. And it is that feeling of entitlement that, in part, defines them as being narcissistic.

When all else fails, they will employ their charm to gain your sympathies. It does take time to see things for what they are because, as I’ve noted multiple times on this site, once one’s heart has assigned itself to Love, it is nearly impossible to sift through the emotions to see what is in front of us for what it really is.

Once one has decided that there ought to be more and made a firm decision to leave a narcissist, life does reshape itself. Another attribute of narcissists is that they somehow get you working to do everything that serves them and their interests. After you have liberated yourself, you are free to pursue your own again. It sounds like you have done this, Michele, and my heart feels happy for you.

I had been in a relationship with a Narcissist in the past. I didn’t know the correct term, I just know he killed me emotionally. One day I just walked away. I was pregnant with my youngest daughter and refused to expose her to what I had been exposed to.

Back to the present. Before meeting my spouse, I didn’t really date for about five years. I worked FT and went to school FT. I didn’t have time or any desire for a relationship. To be honest, I was afraid. Well, I got to the point where I was ready to meet someone. I was soon to finish my degree and it was time. We met online. I was just messing around trying to figure out how the dating websites worked and he starts sending me messages.

I wasn’t attracted to him at all! He was ten years older than me and looked way too straight-laced for my tastes. I am a 70′s child… he doesn’t own a pair of jeans. However, he was a Christian and seemed very moral and together. Nice house in a nice neighborhood… the works. His previous wife had died a little over a year previous to our meeting from complications from surgery. She was young. The marriage before that lasted 25 years and ended in divorce. From what I could tell, he was a good catch.

I decided I needed to stay away from “my type” and try something “safe.” My daughter was 7 at the time we married. My other children were grown and out of the house with their own relationships/families. We knew each other a very short period of time when he started talking marriage. He was driving 20 miles at night to see me after he got off of work, even when I asked him not to. He constantly wanted to be with me when he was not working. I never felt completely comfortable with him, but I chalked it up to him being on a higher social economic level than I was used to.

Anyway, we married after a couple of months. I know! Big mistake!!! It wasn’t long before things started going downhill. He would get upset over nothing and give me the silent treatment. He started ranting about my little girl, saying she was a monster and I needed to get a grip on her. She was and is a great kid! Concerning her… she has a wonderful “daddy.” He is not her biological father, but he has been in her life since she was 20 months old. In their hearts they are father and daughter to this day. My husband thought he would be able to put an end to that relationship because it wasn’t “legal.” He was dead wrong about that, but he tried. No way would I have allowed that, and I was in disbelief that he wanted to keep her from her daddy. Things remained the same. She went to her daddy’s every Friday night.

About a year after we were married, my oldest daughter, who was visiting from out-of-state, noticed behavior she did not like between my husband and little girl. She interpreted it as him grooming her. Long story short, we were caught in the web of DCS for two years. It was a nightmare, and I sided with my husband over the older kids. Our relationships were all but destroyed, but I knew he was not a child molester. He was very over-bearing and liked to have all the attention, but I did not believe for a minute that Leah was in any danger. He had done nothing to her. She was questioned many times. However, I assumed it to be possible in the beginning, and left the house with my daughter. We moved in with my mother. We ended up having to live apart for two years. During that time, my relationship with my husband was great. The romance was back. I spent every Friday night with him when my daughter was at her dad’s. Finally, we got the okay to go home.

All went well for awhile. Soon my husband was back being the same old way. He refused to just enjoy my daughter and let me be the bad guy when it came to chores, etc. He wanted to be in control of everything. Meanwhile, I was just emotionally tired! My elderly mother moved in with us right after my daughter and I went home. He was wonderful with her… he had lost both parents a few years before. He helped take care of her and was generally supportive.

One of my daughters had to start coming out and spending a few hours a day with her while I was at work. My husband didn’t want to be tied down with her all the time. Understandable. My daughter was never totally comfortable being around my husband, but he liked her and they got along. He did complain all the time to me how the kids (my grandchildren) were totally out of control and something needed to be done about it.

A couple years earlier, when all hell broke loose, this same daughter had told me that my husband had tried to come on to her. My oldest daughter said much the same. He made them very uncomfortable, and he talked bad about me all the time around them. Of course I made excuses… they were taking him wrong, etc.

I couldn’t imagine that he was seriously coming on to them. After all, we went to church every week together!! He did, however, put me down all the time. He treated me like a child in front of my friends, and always used his “parent voice” with me. It made me crazy, and people didn’t like how he treated me.

Okay, this wasn’t suppose to be this detailed, and I have left so much out!!! Time passes. He is difficult to live with, but the house is so big that we could stay out of his way most of the time. I couldn’t leave him and my daughter alone though, because usually there was a huge fight and of course I was going to defend my daughter. That never went over well. If he didn’t go so overboard I may have been able to judge more fairly. He is very extreme in his emotions.

More time passes… he starts spending more and more time back at his computer. Mostly ebay and solitaire. He gets stuck on things. Well, he had quit having anything to do with me a long time past. When I approached him, I was told I was fat and unattractive. I was a size 10/12. It broke my heart. Still, we go to church every week together. I begged him to go to counseling, he refused. We had spent thousands on required counseling during the DCS nightmare.

I understood his point, but knew we needed help. We had been through too much and we needed some outside help. Still, I felt that he was basically a good man. Sometimes I would see a shadow… sometimes I just knew there was a dark side to him, but could never see the shadow clearly enough. That said, I KNEW we would be together forever, I KNEW he had my back, I KNEW he would never cheat on me. Well, guess what? I uncovered several affairs going on at the same time… most with women my grown daughters’ ages. This was while he was on a 9 week European vacation with another woman two years older than him that he had met in the previous Spring. I still can’t get my mind around it all. I filed for divorce before he came home. I tried to keep my mouth shut once I uncovered the evidence, but it only worked for about three weeks.

The first four weeks he was gone, I begged him to come home. I knew something was wrong, I just didn’t know what. I couldn’t fathom what I was hearing in my mind and heart. Sometimes I just know things, but this was just was not possible! When I told him I knew about his slut, he came right home, hoping to save the marriage. He still has not lost hope. Thing is, he is screwed. He spent all his savings and retirement on traveling, and honestly he has a big spending problem!!! He retired less than a year after we were married. He counted on my insurance and income.

I went back to school again to get my teaching certification. I had to quit my job with good benefits to do my student teaching. He was not happy, but he didn’t attempt to go back to work to fill in the gap for awhile. Instead, he put me down and berated me for quitting a good job that I hated. All this time, all this negativity, day in and day out, got the best of me.

Towards the end there, it was hard for me to get up off the couch and get motivated to find a job. I had lost all of my confidence. I didn’t think I could anymore. You have to believe in yourself… when you lose that you are in trouble. I had more or less given up.

When he left on his trip, he pretty much gave me the impression that if my daughter and I didn’t straighten up and be more respectful that we were going to be history. Not in those words… but for the first time I was really afraid that things were worse than I let myself believe. The story goes on. I am now living in my little house with my daughter and we are very happy.

The life is coming back into me slowly. I did get a teaching job a couple of weeks ago! Everything he told me I wouldn’t be able to do, I have done… by the grace of God. He still tries to get me to come home with all the gloom and doom of the world situation he can muster. I haven’t changed my position… but inside sometimes I want to so bad. I miss him. I love him. Is this normal? Until recently, it would even make me feel better to get some negative attention from him. Like a drug fix. It’s crazy. When will all of this stop? When will I stop loving him? Sometimes I feel like it is killing me. The pain doesn’t hurt as bad for as long, or as often as it used to, but it is still there. I have come a long way to getting my joy back, but I have so far to go. Today has been a very hard day.

The originator of that comment never did return with his story.

When I launched this blog, it was more or less a journal of my personal pain and experiences. After seeing how this level of honesty resonated in the comments this blog received, I have done my best to share tactics and content that can actually help people reach inside themselves and process their own experiences and pain in a productive way.

I’ve been away from my Narcissist Ex for more than 5 years now and the effects of that relationship are still impacting me, although not in such a profound way as they once did. So, I am healing still myself.

As you’ve described, I did see moments of regret that led me to believe that he actually did care about whether or not his actions were harming me but, on the day of my mother’s funeral, he acted without remorse and later indicated that no apologies were required because he hadn’t done anything wrong.

My friends were also relieved when I finally was free of him. They had been advising me all along that he was “not a nice man” but I just couldn’t see it until the day of Mom’s funeral.

Here is an awesome quote from a television series I’ve watched that relates to being in and recovering from a relationship with a narcissist:

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. Tom Stoppard”

I am uncomfortable with the phrase, “skillful woman”. It implies willful and applied intent. Very few people with a narcissistic personality disorder know what they do. They only know what they can do makes them happy and they can not grasp why it causes pain to others. They only know a vague sense of guilt, and offer dumbfounded apologies when pressed. There is never an epiphany for a narcisisst. It is a sickness caused by an injury to spirit.

I am still healing from a 16 year involvement with a narcissist, and I can tell you from my own personal experience, they are not on “the game” 24-7. This is what draws all of us in and keeps us there. We know we feel bad, but we get such glorious glimpses of wholeness to be had, if we were just a tiny bit better. I can understand the feeling of being dismantled. But it does not mean being taken apart, it means being rendered naked.

The stories and anecdotes that you allude to, are what we all need to hear, take to heart, and heal with, why not share them and share healing as well? Are you baiting the theater to create an attentive audience?

My break with my “soul mate” did not cause shock to my friends, but much relief . Some of them were praying for that break-up.

It is to their credit that they stood by, in banishment, while I was being manipulated to isolate myself from them. They voiced opinions that reflected unfavorably upon the “us”, faulted the “him” and worried for the “me”. It was for this unforgivable treason that they were not to be included in my life as it was at that time. I am ashamed to say I co-operated in their exile. And I say now I am much blessed by their nearness and support and willingness to forgive.

I won my battle for the freedom of my heart on July 20th, 2011, I am now re-building a happy, wise and loving life. I get by with a little help from my friends.

Thank you for posting your story to the site. It certainly does sound like you experienced a roller coaster ride that was very unpleasant. I’m sorry that you had to go through that.

Your pain is very fresh. I can only offer this solace to you. It will lessen with time and you will eventually reach the point of being able to see things for what they were.

To me, it sounds like you are fortunate to be away from him. Since he felt that his kids were too loud, maybe he was looking only for a woman to take the care of them off his hands. Narcissists ARE users.

As soon as possible and if the rest of his belongings are of no value to you, put them on the curb so you will not have to be reminded of him daily. I know that having my Narcissistic Ex’s belongings around the house served as nothing other than a daily reminder of his lies and ultimate betrayal.

The next thing to do is STOP communicating with him, if you are. He doesn’t need to know how you feel. Closure is something that you will have to find for yourself for it seems that he certainly doesn’t care enough to explain himself to you.

It seems you that you left your comment unfinished. I do hope that you’ll come back…

I guess it’s the closure problem, he moved out of his home in July, moved in with me, in nothing flat by the end of August he’s uncomfortable, move to Sept. he is unhappy and it’s all because of me…I’m loud, the kids aren’t happy, we moved too fast…HE asked me to marry him !! We set a date for Sept. 5, 2011 knowing we probably couldn’t pull it off by then. He said more than likely it would be Christmas. On Sept.2 with the kids and did not return until September 6, 2011. He was already seeing a woman from his job…I knew immediately where he was as he introduced her to me several months ago , she had adopted 3 special need children… a collegue who he respected and was his “friend.” He didn’t have any that I had ever known. I just knew…this angered him yet refused to tell me where he was… so the next weekend he disappeared again and he said he was moving in 30 to 60 days. So, he left me no choice but to gather what dignity I had and I told him he had to leave right then. He acted like I was hurting him! He took their clothes but will not come and get his furniture etc., finally called and said he was NEVER coming to get them. Haven’t heard from him but have seen him in his new car…

I have never experienced such pschological pain in my life. I am still suffering greatly, I’ve even felt like I didn’t want to live. I see a therapist on this coming Tuesday because I am just not the same the person,anxiety ridden, insomnia and endless thinking and processing of “what the hell just happened to me.”

I am somewhat comforted by

You are more the welcome to my reply. I’ve made it my cause to be here for people who are reaching out for love and support after being traumatized by a narcissistic partner.

Phoenix