mynah's story

Is he a narc, or was it mostly my fault?

Hello everyone,

I just joined the forum after reading for many weeks, and I am still not sure if he was a narc or if the problem lies more with me. I'm 35, female, and had been in a 10-year relationship from when I was 20-30, and then this was my first serious relationship after that, but the pain of the breakup feels comparable. please be warned, this is a very, very long post.

We met on December 31, 2010 - he's a musician and I had been invited to DJ at his show. We met briefly then, exchanged interested glances, but I remember seeing him with someone at the time. A few months later, I was invited to DJ at his brother's bar, and that evening, he walked me to my car, and we sat and talked for hours, and eventually kissed - absolutely magnetic. He did tell me he was dating someone but that it was casual, and that he had been in a very long relationship prior (11 years that had ended 6 months ago). He also said he had learned that he couldn't really date more than one person at a time, even if it was casual. So that was that. But it had been so long since I had felt that kind of magic, and I kept thinking about him, and we eventually got in touch via fb (I think I initiated it) and ended up meeting again, and seeing each other several times over the next month. He told me the woman he was dating didn't live in our city, and that it was very casual and open, and I told him that I could feel that our connection might be intense, and that I didn't want to continue forward with him unless we were exclusive. So after a few days of thinking, he told me he didn't want to share me either, and after that began our whirlwind romance. For 6 months (from March-October) things were high romance, very sexual, but also very romantic - we spent days on end together, in both of our homes, and it seemed every minute we weren't together, he wanted to be with me, at times to the point where he seemed almost clingy and I would be the one saying I needed a little space to do my own thing.

The twist comes in here - I have been diagnosed with depression and was on a low to medium dose of anti-depressants over the last few years, but I had wanted to be off them for a very long time. He was very encouraging about me coming off of them, he was wary of medications (even though he appeared to be a borderline alcoholic) and said he would be there to support me, etc. So over the next month, I weaned off. And that's when the trouble began.

You see, over the last few months, I had noticed very small things - he didn't like any other men speaking to me, and didn't like me DJ-ing (kept saying he couldn't date a performer, even though he is one himself) was even jealous at times when I went out with my female friends because he thought I would end up with someone else (I had given no indication of being unfaithful). Sometimes when I had a scratch or a bruise he would ask me if I had been with someone. But these things were few and far in between, so I didn't put them together. But I have to admit I felt a little suffocated, and I sometimes went out of my way to do my own things, just to have my own time, which he didn't like at all (despite saying he wanted to be with a strong independent woman). As my meds wore off, the depression set in, and I left for a week of meditation, but he insinuated that he didn't know if he would be able to handle being without me... and due to the anxiety this caused me, I left the retreat early even though I knew it was good for me. And into 2012, things alternated between passion but also my growing depression (I think I had weaned off the medicine too quickly) which he really did stand by me for, staying with me in bed, reading to me, etc. It was around this time that he said something like "You'll always have me because you're distant" (which I thought was odd but let it go). Around May someone threw a baseball through his window - I asked who it was and he said it was a customer from his brother's bar who'd been thrown out - thought it strange but didn't see it for what it was. It seemed like we spent time enough together that he wouldn't have time for another woman, he used my laptop and sometimes left his facebook, email logged in, didn't hide his phone, didn't hide anything really, at least so I thought. I completely trusted him... and wrote off his sometimes anger and possessiveness as a cultural difference (he's South American).

He also constantly told me he loved me, as I told him too, told me he could see us spending years together, started to say we should move in together. I loved him intensely but was concerned bc he barely scraped by, taking odd labor jobs to support his musician lifestyle, and also the excessive drinking and late nights that accompanied that life, and so I said I had to think about it, especially as I thought I might want marriage, children, etc. Around this time he ended up getting a full-time job but would occasionally comment bitterly about it, if not to me directly, to a few of my friends he had met and befriended.

In June I went to India for 3 weeks to visit family and told him I would think about moving in. I came back in early July and while I was away had thought about it and thought I do want to devote myself to this man, and work on things with him. But I knew something wasn't right. He didn't want to see me for a week after I got back, and the day he saw me he said he wasn't ready for a partner in life (he's 43) because of the long-term relationship he had been in before we met (despite the fact that we had already been together a year and a half). I noticed there was a girl making comments all over his fb pictures, asked him about it, he said she's just a fan of my band. Long story short, he deleted me off fb, started getting very distant and strange, didn't want me to come to his shows, had me banned from the bar (a la the baseball through the window girl?) and there began 3 months of crazy back and forth, what looks like some of the narcspeak posted on this site, subtle devaluations of all the things that made me me and what he used to seem to love about me, telling me he loved me in the morning and that he couldn't be with me in the afternoon, telling me to wait for him, then ignoring me when i would respond back, asking me why i loved him, and then ignoring me when i responded, saying things like i'm a sand castle, there's nothing to hold on to (i should have heard that then) and always denying the presence of the other woman. i stopped eating, lost 15 pounds, almost lost my job, isolated myself from my friends, and finally attempted suicide at the end of september.

i don't think it was a cry for attention on my part - i already suffered from depression and the amount of pain this situation added to my existing state - i just wanted to escape it all. after this he didn't speak to me for a month, which hurt immensely and also pointed to his detachment from me. when i wrote him and said i understood that it was over, he immediately said he loved me after weeks of silence, and we saw each other again, and the same thing started for about two weeks - during which i received word from a 3rd party that there was, indeed, another girl who was in fact claiming that he was her boyfriend. i confronted him about this, and he turned into a person i had never seen - he had his sunglasses on so i couldn't see his eyes, he was almost frothing at the mouth, told me he hated me, called me the c-word, and clenched his fists threatening to hit me - and then said he wouldn't let me turn him into a bad person. even after this he kept denying that there was anyone else. i fled from there but kept trying to make sense of all of this, even after this... sent him emails, pleading for explanation, pleading for some sense of restitution - nothing. and so another few months went by, with me continually checking his fb from a different profile (it didn't work out with the other girl, surprise!) and generally living like a zombie. finally about a week ago, after a month of nc, i went to his house to speak to him, because every cell in my body still longed for him, and i felt if he would just look at me and speak to me directly there could be some humanity restored. he opened the door, looked over my head like i wasn't there, and then he called the cops on me. they told me just to go home, luckily.... but i'm still in shock.

and here i am, still not getting it, still feeling like i might die without him, obsessing about the new other woman in his life, wondering if it was all my fault for being distant at times. i've lost so many friends, lost my self-respect and self-esteem, feel self-destructive. i'm in therapy, i take medication, i do everything i'm supposed to but sometimes nothing helps. i don't understand what happened, after all. was he a narc, or did i deserve this treatment bc of my depression and bc i didn't fully conform to how he wanted me to be? i am confused bc he was really there for me during some dark times, but then did a complete 180, and that is what has really turned my head inside out. during the early part of our extended breakup he left me a letter saying he was in love with me but he didn't trust me with his heart, and that he had depended on my weakness and was afraid i would leave him once i was "strong" again. i just don't understand, and even after all this, i still imagine he'll remember what we had, what we were together during our good times. i'm haunted by those memories, and unable to live in my own present, beating myself up continually, feeling like i lost a "great thing" even though everyone says it's irreparable, and that he wasn't good for me, and even my friends were shocked by the changes he went through bc he had charmed us all, to the point where the ? is asked, is he just evil, how could there be no remorse or compassion or anything in someone who had seemed so sensitive, who had cried about the wars in the world, who was a poet and a dreamer and an amazing writer... can anyone help me make sense of this?