BrokenBlonde's Story

Just finally figuring it out

About 6 weeks ago, my boyfriend of almost 5+ years broke up with me. He said he was just too "worn down" and couldn't do it anymore. After a month of trying hard to get him to try and make things work, I finally figured how why he wouldn't try -- there was someone else.

Which leads to me why I'm now reading this blog. After a few sessions with my therapist, she raised my attention to the fact that he might be a narc. Everything I've read on here and talked to her about matching is personality so much.

It all started almost 7+ years ago. We worked together. Well, in the beginning, we basically sat on the same floor and were in the same department. He was married, two kids -- and his wife had breast cancer. I barely knew him. But over time he started to come over and visit, he chatted about work, etc., and eventually we started to get coffee every morning, then lunch. Then the little gifts showed up at my desk from him, then the emails, the phone calls, until finally he professed his love for me one night at drinks. At this point, I was just so flattered that a man in his position, that an older man, almost 12 years older than me, was interested and he made me feel so good. For about 6 months, we carried on an affair -- he would come over in the morning, send me sweet emails, buy me flowers, send me love notes professing how lucky he was to find me, that he knew from the moment he met me that I was the one for him -- that he used to walk down to another floor at work to just get a glance of me when I sat there, that he was insanely jealous of one of my good guy friends that he thought I was dating. All this made me fall head-over-heels in love with him, even though I knew it was wrong. And within a few months of that first drink outside of work, we were sleeping together and he was all about me. It was apparent to everyone in the office that he was in love with me -- to the point that our SVP pulled him into his office and told him to knock it off and not to do anything that would cause him to fire him.

Then his wife found out, she called me, said she was so hurt because the one thing she always thought was that her husband was honest and a good man. At this point, I backed away from him -- but he still pursued me. He would send me emails saying he had to leave his office because he was crying and he missed me so much. This carried on until his wife died. Rather than calling me on his cell phone, he'd find pay phones to call me from, he'd book business trips on the same trips I was going to so we could spend time together. And he lavished me with gifts, small and big, and wrote me nightly letters -- sometimes over 20 pages, professing how much he loved me and all the dreams he had for us. How he was so glad to found me and he would never let me go, that things were hard with his wife, but one day I'd be his. That he'd never been able to talk to anyone like he could talk to me, that he felt alive again after everything that happened with his wife.He would write about how the other guys in my life before him just didn't know what they messed up, how special and sexy I was. The sex was amazing, he seemed perfect. He understood me in ways that no one ever before had.

Then his wife died...and we continued on after that. About 9 months after his wife died, I met his kids for the first time. 2 sweet girls, 10+8 at the time, and slowly I became part of their lives. I went on family vacations with them, they spent the night at my house, we spent quality time together. We did this for almost 3 years. The guilt of how we started was always over my head and whenever we'd talk about it, he would just say it would be fine. He wouldn't go deeper. He never sought counseling for him or the girls after she died, despite my pushing him hard to do it. But I kept going along with him. We took great trips, he seemed to be there to support me. But he always kept things on the side -- things with the kids, his family, etc., -- and when I pushed him to talk about things, he never did. I, on the otherhand, shared all my feelings with him, my ups and downs, etc. And he was always there supposedly, according to him "boosting" me up.

Over the past year, I noticed things had been different. Everytime we'd talk about anything with depth, he'd push me away. When I had to face difficult things in my life, he was there, but in the end, it seemed like he resented me for needing or asking him to be there. The sex went downhill. He could barely keep it up, which I thought was because of his age. When I'd talk about marriage and kids, he'd always say "yes, that's what I want, BUT" -- there were strings attached, first it was the kids had to like me, then it was that he wanted a more stable job so we could move into together into a different house since the house he is living in now is the one his wife died.

But it never happened...he never committed. We talked about getting married in early November, moving to Portland for a new job, staring a new life -- and I was thrilled. But then at Thanksgiving, something awful happened with my father and it completely turned my world upside down. And when I needed him most, all he could do is criticize my family and would get frustrated that he couldn't make me happy -- which was hard to do given the situation, I was unhappy in general, not due to him. But it was the toughest thing in my life I had to face up until that point. And at Christmas, when I was stuck in a hotel room all alone, and he was with his family down in Florida, I broke down and said I couldn't keep doing this if I had to spend all the holidays alone, etc., and if he couldn't be there, we needed to break up. I was so alone and hurt at that point, that I told him that what I really wanted was him to be there...and was sad that he wasn't...

Which brings us to now. He says that moment I broke his heart, and emotionally abandoned him at that point. All the while, my life is still in turmoil, and I needed him most. In addition, his work world was going bad, he was told he'd have a hard time finding a new job, and no matter how much I tried to tell him that there was more to life than his job -- that we should focus on how we could be together no matter what -- he never seemed to even go there.

And at the end of January, I started to see him pull back a little, I thought it was because work was hard, etc. I was finally started to come out of my fog with my family and started to put more energy into enjoying my life with him --setting up nice dinners, making plans for Valentine's day, trying to plan weekends away. But it turned out it was too late. On February 11, after going out for a nice dinner, he seemed so cold and out of it and I finally asked him what was wrong and he just said -- I can't do this anymore, I'm too worn down. We talked for almost 2 hours after that where he unleashed years of things I'd done that he resented me for, that he never said anything about, and things that he felt that were not how I was feeling at all. He said I wasn't there for him, didn't appreciate him....

So for almost a month after that, I was so lost, I kept trying to get him to talk to me, to try to fight to save our relationship. And he humored me a few times with long talks, emails, etc., but he kept saying "I just can't do it". Finally, I looked at his email and knew why. He had started something new with ANOTHER girl at work -- in another department, but the emails read just like he written to me years earlier. Some, almost word-for-word. And worst of all, I found out that he had been emailing her from my bed, going to house before we broke up where they both expressed their feelings for each other, and professed his love to her the day before we broke up. And on Valentine's Day, I found this email he wrote that broke my heart because it read so much like what he used to write to me --- how for months he'd been wondering if she was married, how he had been in a state of denial that he felt this way about her, that he couldn't believe such a smart, funny, kind woman could care for him, that it was a start of a long, wonderful journey with her and the it all felt so good. It broke my heart. Within 48 hours of breaking up with me, after being together for over 5 years, he was already in love with someone else.

Once I confronted him with it, and also told her, he told me to just leave him alone. But it all makes sense now. The minute I stopped being his support, making him feel good, making him address the real problems in his life, the minute I needed him to take care of me in more than a superficial way, he turned to another woman. Just like he did with me when his wife was sick. And like he did with that wife, when he left his first wife. He has a pattern...but this time he kept saying it was because I emotionally abandoned me. That he couldn't make me happy...and the joke is he kept telling me that he'd be honest with me and wasn't cheating.

It's been 2 weeks since I found out about her. They are still together despite the fact that I told her he was cheating on me and has a track record of it. Now when I see him, which is very infrequent because purposely try to avoid each other, he is just cold and sometimes even smug. It hurts so much to know that he's moved on to someone else and that he's saying all the same things he used to say to me to her.

My problem now is how do I move on? How do I stop thinking of them together? How do I realize that this is his pattern?

I know he's not the man I thought he was, I was blind for so long. I gave so much of myself to him and he kept so much to himself in fear that I would see the real him. But now it all seems like it was a lie...he never loved me, especially when he could just fall in love with someone else so quickly.

Does the pain ever go away? How do you get over someone betraying your trust like he does?

And do Narcs really come back? My gut with him is that he's now moved on to his new supply and won't be looking back...which hurts even more.