pumpkinpie's story

I am about 1 month out from having little contact (not none, unfortantely) with my narc ex. We dated about 7 months. The first month was the some of the BEST times I have ever had and the last 6 were the WORST times I have ever had in my life. My self-worth has been destroyed and I feel absolutely broken. I am so glad to have found this site as now I have hope for recovery.

I “met” him about 10 months ago. We were working in the same building but never talked. 2 months later, we talked for the first time and before I knew it, he was pursing me rather aggressively. I enjoyed talking to him. He was very caring, funny, intelligent, and attentive. We shared a lot of the same values (or so I thought) and interests. He sent me sweet messages when we weren’t together and seemed to want to spend any free moment with me. Everything was so intense. I had never felt like this before about anyone. I knew there was something unhealthy about a relationship that started so intensely but I chose to ignore it.

The first month was GREAT. We were both happy. In retrospect, there were several red flags / quirks that he raised early on but again, I ignored them. He was a wonderful man and made me so happy, what could be so wrong about someone like that?

Red flag 1: He only has 2 friends. One was a guy that he hadn’t spoken to in several years but they were going to reconnect because he was moving back into town. The second was an ex he had dated for “a number of years”. He bragged about how he broke her marriage but then said they broke up because he cheated on her. The bragging about destroying someone’s marriage…I didn’t get and never will but I guess it’s in line with narc behavior. One of our common values was honesty / integrity. He made it very clear to me that he would not tolerate any cheating or even flirting with another man. He said it was a deal breaker, I understood, I told him I expected the same, and we moved on.

Red flag 2: He was estranged from his whole family except his mother with whom he has very limited contact. I come from a very close-knit family but I know not everyone does and I didn’t want to be judgmental. He mentioned how he just remembers his mom and dad always yelling at each other when he was little, how he thought he didn’t want children but how he recently realized that he longed to have a family of his own. What struck me a “not normal” was how he became estranged with his dad. It happened after we started dating. His dad was visiting from out of town. My ex had a bad day at work and warned his dad of this when he got home. The dad asked a question and it set my ex off and he yelled “I told you I’m in a bad mood. Shut up and go sit down like I told you to before.” His dad packed up and left and they haven’t spoken since. I heard his dad had a bad temper so although I thought my ex-‘s behavior was horrific, well, who knows the whole story? That was how I reasoned it away anyway.

Red flag 3: By now, he was on his 3rd job in 3 months since I first met him. Every time, it was either someone that worked under him that was being “obstinate” or his boss “micromanaging” him. To me, a boss telling me “this is how we do things around here”…I’d take that as him/her doing her job and thank him/her for cuing me in. To him, it was “they hired me because they knew I could do the job and do it well. They should just let me do the job the way I see fit and things are going to get done. They mess with me like that and I’ll show them…” I thought that was weird but then again, I’m a pretty passive person and go with the flow. I didn’t see how what the boss said was “criticism” but I would later realize that anything that’s not praise is pretty much falls under the “criticism” category. I chalked this one up to him being a bit cocky. He’d always tell me about how so-and-so he worked with “loved him” or how “Mary was only able to get him to do xyz but I got him to do abc (which was always much more than xyz)”. I took all of that and bunched it under the “little too overconfident” category.

Red flag 4: Over-the-top reaction (irritation, anger) to little things. It takes a lot to make me angry so I just thought this was his personality and it was simply just different than mine. Since he only had these reactions at work and they weren’t directed at me in the first month, I didn’t see it as a huge problem. Little did I know…

Red flag 5: Paranoia / jealous feelings about almost any male I had any contact with. I got grilled early on about my past relationships, how long they lasted, if I had still kept in touch with them, etc. I was separated 2 years ago and he wanted to know if he was the first one I was seeing since then. He was, but why did that matter? Would I have been less desirable if he was the second? I still don’t get that one. I even asked after I was getting a little tired of his silly line of questioning, “why are you so insecure about so-and-so?” Obviously, this man was just a friend, not even a close one at that, and he was obsessing over him and I thought it was ridiculous and a waste of both of our energy to even continue to discuss this over and over. Well, that “insecure” word was a HUGE trigger. He blew up over that word and accused me of “criticizing”. I didn’t mean it in a bad way or to be derogatory. In fact, I wasn’t upset with him and said it in a half joking way but he took it to town. He was insulted, infuriated, who knows what else but I got screamed at. I felt like he was being insecure for no reason and so I stated it, just how I saw it. I had never in a million years guessed he would have responded with such wrath. I don’t even remember what he said specifically but I got the message he was angry and he wasn’t going to come over that night and he hoped I felt lonely because I deserved to. I get it now but I didn’t know what that all meant at the time. I was like “what just happened?”. Needless to say, I never used that word, ever again. I just stored in my memory who these “trigger people” were and I made an effort to be extremely transparent about them (let him know if I spoke to them or saw them in passing and any planned meetings, I would make sure I’d take him along with me). To be honest, I thought it was kind of an endearing quality of his (the insecurities) because he always acted like he was so in control and confident and nothing that anyone did really fazed him. I saw it as his vulnerable side (not to exploit) and it made him seem more human. It turns out he is full of vulnerabilities and insecurities and nothing that I ever did or could ever possibly do would be enough to allay his fears.

Red flag 6: “ I would marry you now if I could”. This one irked me because while I really liked him, I’m still trying to get out of my last marriage and learning how easy it is to get married but so hard and expensive to get a divorce! I was in no hurry to remarry. Maybe he thought he was being super-sweet. I thought it was kind of arrogant and selfish but I let it slide.

Red flag 7: He said it scared him but that he idolized me. That he had put me on this “pedestal” and he had surrendered his heart to me and that I could crush it whenever I felt like it. He said that I was his “happy pill” (he took what he called a “crazy pill” – ‘to keep people from annoying him so much’) and that he depended on me for his happiness. I knew I was doomed when I heard that because I would never be able to meet those expectations forever. That was a huge responsibility he placed on my shoulders and while I knew it wasn’t mine to shoulder and that his happiness was ultimately his responsibility, I decided to take it as flattery and not discuss it. I ignored it, just like I did the 6 red flags above.

So, other than that huge meltdown over the word “insecurity”, the first month was GREAT! He was so sweet and caring. We had fun together. He was happy and told me how much he loved me. I felt loved and in love. I couldn’t wait to hear from him and see him. Before I knew it, I was thinking about him all the time and I planned my days around his schedule as much as I could.

Around the 2nd month, he was having a rougher time at work and was bringing more of his moods home. I apparently had already started losing my “happy pill” effect and what I was doing for him was not enough to negate his bad mood. Then I got sick…REALLY sick. I have a chronic illness that flares from time to time…sometimes for a long time. He knew this though and he’s not totally unaware of medical stuff. My heart went from being normal and able to handle exercise to severe heart failure, all in the course of 2 weeks. I was put on oxygen and got to the point where I couldn’t even talk without being out of breath. He happened to be doing something that weekend so I couldn’t see him but he was at home (which is only 20 minutes away). He knew I was sick but somehow he conveniently “forgot”. I didn’t hear from him all weekend and I didn’t text him because he had company so I didn’t want to intrude. On Sunday night, I get a text and it says something like “Did you miss me? Tell me something sweet.” I’ve been panting and in bed alone for 2 days and this is what I got. Not a “How are you feeling?” I was shocked, hurt, and irritated and I responded back “Wow, are you not even remotely concerned about how I’m doing?” and I got an earful about how I’m being bitchy, how come I can’t say anything sweet, and how he hasn’t heard from me all weekend and he wants me to say something nice. It was like he was completely oblivious to what I was going through and we were on 2 separate pages. I’m arguing about how it seems like he doesn’t care about my health and he’s saying I’m being a bitch, I’m “riding him” about forgetting, how I’m critical, what kind of person am I that can’t tell him anything nice, and how he wouldn’t have texted at all if he knew all he was going to get was a reprimand. Again, I had no clue where this was all coming from. It seemed so bizarre. Maybe he’s drunk? But still, how can someone “forget” about such a thing and even after being “reminded”, be so uncaring and push his petty agenda of “say something nice to me?” What does that mean anyway?

The next morning, he comes over before work and I’m pale as a ghost, gasping for breath, and getting ready to go to the hospital for a heart biopsy. He knew that and didn’t even offer to come with me or ask me any questions. Do you know what he wanted? A kiss and for me to “say something nice” and “tell me how much you missed me”. I was shocked and infuriated. If I could have yelled at him, I would have, but I told him in the little voice that I had how angry and hurt I was that he didn’t give a damn about how I was doing. He pushed me to the ground, took the oxygen out of my nose and yelled at me saying I was being a drama queen and that he didn’t play “games”, he didn’t believe I was sick, that I was a bitter bitch that hung onto anger from the “past” (from last night and now this morning), and that I was “pushing him away”. He stormed out and I didn’t hear from him for at least a week. I went through the tests, the news, and the noxious treatments that followed…alone. After a week or so, I went to work for a few hours (I’m self-employed, no benefits, and a single mom). Apparently, I was looking pretty sickly because everyone was asking me if I was ok. Except for him. He said “mmmm…you look ‘sexy’. I missed you”. A few people had asked me if I had gotten assaulted. See, I get really pale and get dark bags under my eyes like I’ve gotten punched in the face, but the narc sees that as “sexy”. I was repulsed. He then texted me that he was going to see his female friend (the ex) and this is the only day the kids aren’t home so he’d better hurry up if he wanted any. I didn’t respond and I get a text back “So? Jealous? Are you still mad?” I wasn’t angry so much as I was hurt and disgusted and I certainly wasn’t “jealous”. I was numb. The non-response apparently angered him further so that got me another few days of “punishment” of not hearing from him.

Needless to say, I never quite felt the same way about him after that. I didn’t understand why and how someone could be so cold and heartless. It was cruel. It was evil. I can’t remember why but he came back. He apologized and I guess I still had lingering feelings and it must have been convincing enough that I let him back. We had some good times but mostly bad because I wasn’t well. That’s when I realized he was a “tit-for-tat” kind of guy. For example, one day I was overmedicated on my heart medicine and so everything looked blurry and orange and I was dizzy and nauseated. I didn’t feel good and I was weak. We met for lunch and because I wasn’t my usual “upbeat” self, he decided he was going to be “cold” to me because that is how he perceived I was treating him, although he very well knew I was not well. Again, it was a time when I needed his help physically and emotionally and he wasn’t there. He was cold, irritable, and eventually downright angry. We were in bed that night and I was feeling sad. He was raging about something and I got up because I was going to throw up. I fell in the bathroom and broke my leg. I couldn’t get up but he was so pissed at me that he just left me there. I went to the doctor alone the next day (no surprise!) and he goes missing for a few days. He comes back to apologize and while we’re talking, my phone beeps. I didn’t check the phone so I have no idea who is texting me about what. All of a sudden, he starts raging about how it’s more important to me to be “connected” to the rest of the world. Then he gets all paranoid about how the male neighbors have probably been coming around to help me and that I must be messing around on Facebook. I have no idea where any of this is coming from and it looks like he’s going to go on so I asked him if I could at least lay down because my leg was hurting and he said “No, you’re going to sit right here, just like that. I don’t care what kind of pain you’re in and you deserve it anyway.” Well, I just had it and I told him to leave. Then I sent him an email and said how mean he was, that I was done with “us” and why. He shows up late the next day and apologizes profusely. He obviously can’t explain where the rage came from. He barely remembers even having it. Of course he has no explanation why he’s so cruel and uncaring. He then asks me if it would be too much if I silenced my phone so he didn’t have to hear the text messages coming in and if I wouldn’t check them while he was there. I agreed to that. Then he asked what I thought we could do to make things go better. I said something about him being so “snippy” lately (believe me, “snippy” is a very mid word for his moods and it was pretty constant)…big mistake. That was like the word “insecure”. I was called the most horrific names and threatened. But this time, I was like “ok…you’ve had nothing nice to say about me, you think I’m the worst woman on the planet that can do nothing right, everything I do makes you angry, your actions tell me you don’t care about my well-being...so why are you with me?”. I again told him to leave. I was done. I was exhausted. The first month was all “up”. Then there were “ups” and “downs”. Now we were just “down” most of the time, and I was tired. He even said he “lived passionately” and that his life always consisted of “highs” and “lows” and he continued to live although his “lows” were often “very low” but because his “highs” were “very high” and exhilarating. Call me “boring” but my life has always been more even-keeled. I admit, the “highs” are great but I can do without the “highs” being not as high if the “lows” weren’t so low. It was like a rollercoaster ride and I couldn’t deal with the unpredictability of his moods and demands. I felt diminished to nothing. I didn’t know what else to do. Nothing I did seem to ever matter. One minute he’d say I make him feel so loved and he has never felt this way before. The VERY NEXT minute, he’d be telling me how I had never loved him and used him. If I tried to argue that and mention to him what he said a sentence earlier, he’d deny it and suddenly he’d be arguing about how I always had to be right and I was never satisfied until he admitted he was wrong. I was just so confused, all the time. What I had working for me was that this had never happened to me with anyone before and that I had been through a year of therapy since my husband walked out on us so I had learned a lot about myself. I’m not an angry person. I’m not an argumentative person. I don’t have to be right all the time and in fact, I don’t usually care about being right. It’s rare that I get into discussions about right and wrong and I and the people that I associate with (including my ex-husband) usually discuss, don’t argue, and see plenty of gray between “right” and “wrong”. I am not a critical person. I am a caring person and I know it is normal to feel very hurt that someone that supposedly loves me has turned his back on me when I’m physically very ill.

Mind you, we got back together several times, each time he came back asking for forgiveness. I thought maybe how he reacted with my failing heart and my broken leg was a fluke. Afterall, how could someone act so cruelly? My wishful thinking. There are people on this earth that CAN and WILL apparently do that, EVERYTIME. He kicked me out of his house after I had a seizure and he had medicated me to make it stop (I drove to his house so I had to get someone to drive me home…of course, not him!). He didn’t check on me for 3 days afterwards. I called him once when I was having the beginnings of a seizure and he said he’d come see me after half time which would have put him at my house 3.5 hours later. Then I get a text saying “if I can get out earlier (he was at a bar with a friend watching football!), I will. You know how much I love you and care about you, right?”, to which I responded “I’m going to the ER and no, I don’t understand that you care about me”. I thought that was a reasonable response, truly. Well, I got paragraphs after that about how I was being bitchy again and that because I’m not being nice, he’d teach me by not coming over and that should be a lesson that if I want him to be there, I need to be nice next time.” I still don’t know what narcs are at this point and I’m just infuriated and disillusioned at how cruel a man can be. Of course, I don’t hear from him for a while, then he appears one day and by that time, I’ve lost sensation in my arms and legs and can barely walk. I must have looked REALLY bad that day (unlike the day I looked “sexy” when I had raccoon eyes) because he seemed surprised and actually carried me upstairs when he saw I could barely walk. He raged about something that night too but I’ve been too sick and frankly it has happened so many times that I don’t even listen anymore. The next morning, he just got up and mumbled about how he was tired of all the fighting and how he didn’t think we had a future anymore and walked out. I got a text later that day saying that a drug store down the street had a walker and maybe I could walk better with that. How kind.

Another week goes by and he says he has something very important to tell me so could he come over. I was numb (physically and emotionally!) so I figured what the heck. He tells me how he has been thinking about all the times he has left me and while he still doesn’t understand why I say his love is “conditional” (he really doesn’t get it) and why I get so upset, he realizes what he did was very mean. He said for the first time, he thought about why he left me and he realized he was having a pity party because I had ruined “our” dreams of being together and having a family and that I had taken everything away from him when I became sick. He said he was being selfish and that he should have been there as my partner and that he was so sorry and that he wants to be there from now on. While I’d never gotten an explanation before (and I still don’t know that I understand the explanation), I had gotten many apologies and promises that he will always be there from now on. By this time, I was devastated and angry. Of course, my anger then angered him and he went on and on about I kept holding onto the “past”. The past was a week ago! And when you keep repeating the same thing over and over, it’s not that I’m rehashing the past, but I’m bringing up a pattern and explaining to you why I don’t believe your apologies or promises anymore. I had forgiven him in the past, otherwise, he wouldn’t have had all those chances to hurt me again. But I’m not going to take another chance at him doing that to me again. Laying in that bed the next morning, I told him that I wasn’t able to feel or move my legs anymore and he still walked out. Does he know how that made me feel? He said he did. I said bull.

So here I am today, a month after that. I’m getting aggressive medical treatment and while I’m still walking (more like shuffling / limping) and have better use of my arms, everything is still day to day. I’ll most likely be wheelchair-bound, it’s just a matter of time and what kind. I still get texts from time to time from the narc, asking if I have forgiven him yet and have I let go of my anger and if not, I should because that’s not healthy (ha!). Some days he’ll ask how I’m doing but I know he doesn’t REALLY care. He’ll ask me if I miss him and “us”. Today, he said “ I know you doubt me and have good reason to but I really do want to make it up to you and help you”. I’m just disgusted. I’m also sad at what has come of my self-esteem and self-worth. I have nightmares about being left and his cruel words.

But I am so happy that I’ve found this site. I’ve been reading relationship books to figure out what went wrong. I knew pretty early on that he wasn’t well but I didn’t know what was wrong. He’d always chalk it up to depression and that he always had a bad temper but believe it or not, that it was much better now that he was older! I figured he was antisocial but that didn’t quite fit and NPD didn’t seem to either because most books focus on grandiosity part, which wasn’t that apparent to me. It wasn’t until I saw the “narc talk” on this site that I knew that’s what he had. That was HIS TALK and now I understand what it means! It all makes sense!! I didn’t see it before because the things I had read always talked about how narcs need to associate with the best people, best things, etc and my ex doesn’t really show that as much although now I do see some of the preoccupation with objects (expensive things) looking back.

His favorite lines were “talk to me”, “say something nice to me”, tell me what you like about me” at weird times and I was like “huh?”. Especially after our 1 month “honeymoon period” and him being so unbelievably cruel, I didn’t really have anything “nice” or that I much “liked” about him so I had little to say which angered him further. Although he wanted “honestly at all cost”, when he wanted to hear nice things and I told him I didn’t have anything to say (i.e. during an argument), he’d get upset that I wouldn’t make something up to make him feel better. The hypocrisy was extremely confusing.

The last few months, we fought about sex a lot. That used to be the only time I’d get compliments about “how beautiful you are” (mind you, I’m 80 lbs, over 5 foot tall, and an adult – I’m “skeletal” from being sick for months and he thinks that’s “beautiful” – he’d probably think I’m obese at my normal 110) but towards the end, that changed suddenly. He wanted me to wear obscene make up that made me look like a whore. He wanted me to wear skanky looking stilettos although he knew I couldn’t walk in them because of a foot problem. He told me to “practice walking in his driveway” (which is very steep!). He said those things turned him on and partners should sometimes do things for the other (“make sacrifices”, is what he called it) even if it makes you feel uncomfortable, just so the other person can feel good. That was his reasoning (“me sacrificing for him”) when he’d have sex with me when he had just raged at me for hours and was STILL mad at me. Sex made his anger subside and then he could sleep. Meanwhile, I felt like a piece of meat. He once tossed my body to the ground because I “ruined the mood” when he said “talk to me” and I said nothing. I had no idea what I was supposed to say and he was playing out some disgusting fantasy that I couldn’t even begin to understand. When that happened, I was beyond humiliated and just left his house. He didn’t see anything wrong with what he did and the more I explained what it made me feel like, the more infuriated he became. It was that way with everything. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t see why his actions and words were SO OFFENSIVE…until now. It is scary that there are people who really don’t see it. I hate the disease that I have but I’m sure glad that it’s not NPD. To have no empathy, to be so socially offensive and inappropriate, to be so self-absorbed and if that weren’t enough, to not have a clue that you are that way…that is awful. My ex DOES have some idea because he did tell me during one of our early arguments that many people have told him that he’s arrogant and selfish and told him to see how he would feel if he were in their shoes and he looked at me and said, “I can’t put myself in other people’s shoes. I can’t see their point of view. I’ve tried and I can’t do it. I don’t have empathy and I don’t know why”. In all honesty, I thought he was exaggerating because my ex-husband told me the same thing about “not having empathy” but he does. He’s lacking in some areas and has some narc traits but he’s not a narc. So I thought he was something like that. Nope. He truly does lack it completely.

Other recurrent issues we ran into:
- Everything was about right or wrong. He claimed I always had to be right but that was a total projection. And most of the times, issues weren’t about right or wrong but somehow he had a way of making it so that it became right / wrong, black / white. There was only one right way to do everything…his way.
- Any good I ever did was forever erased from his memory the minute I did something “wrong”. Everything became about what was “wrong”, then “wrong” apparently happened “all the time” (not just this one time), and “good” or “right” NEVER happened or happens. EVER. Oh, do I loathe the black and white, all or nothing thinking!
- Everything that I or anyone said to him either was praise or “criticism”. He was very quick to react to anything not positive with anger / rage. In every healthy relationship, if someone does something that bothers you, you bring it up nicely so you can talk about it and work on not letting it happen again. We agreed to that and of course, every little thing I did that bothered him, he’d let me know, not even in a nice way. If I said “what you just said / did, that hurt my feelings”…that was “criticism” and not only do I hurt from what I just brought up as a problem, I would hurt from his reaction to me calmly stating something. The unfairness of it all was baffling. His explanation for it one day was “ok…I see what you’re saying. I guess it’s not fair but I am who I am and that’s how I’m going to react. It’s ok for you to tell me if I do something hurtful but know that I will respond to you defensively and be angry at you for pointing that out but deep down, I know I’ve done something wrong. Maybe if you don’t want double the hurt, you should just keep your mouth shut and trust that I’m sorry for what I did”.
- And as you all know, words would be manipulated and twisted. Before you know it, a simple statement has morphed into an argument. You have no idea how you got there, what it’s about, where it’s going, or which side is up or down. I have never felt so confused, crazy, angry, and hurt, all at once. And that’s when they say “you’re certifiably crazy”, just to drive the point home that they’re fine and you’re messed up.
- My “love” for him got measured by each and every little action. If I didn’t have “his drink” in the fridge in the house instead of the one in the garage, I didn’t love him. If there wasn’t one upstairs by the bed, I didn’t love him. If I irritated him by letting cheese drop and burn in the oven, I didn’t love him.
- He would become child-like from time to time and literally jump up and down and throw a tantrum and say “Why can’t you just turn back to the woman I fell in love with…the one that made me happy all the time? Please, just go back to making me happy!!”. Then minutes later, he’d be the angry, threatening man and say “I gave you so many chances to change back to woman I loved but you refused because you’re too obstinate and proud. Now you’re out of chances and you’re going to be alone. You pushed me away like you have all the other men. And you’ll never find another man”…and he leaves.
- One day more recently, I asked him “what” exactly did he have (i.e. which personality disorder because I knew this wasn’t depression) and I think he knows because he was mandated to receive counseling for years when he was a child until he was old enough to “walk out”. He responded “ I’m SUPER simple. I give what I get (tit for tat). I don’t do unto others as I want others to do unto me although I DEMAND that others do unto me how they want me to do unto them. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I am extremely reactionary and defensive.” When I saw that, I knew I HAD to be done with him. I have that text saved so if / when I waver on my decision, I can look at it and remind myself why I chose the path that I am on today.

I’m sorry it got so long but thanks for reading. I am sorry any of us are here but I’m so glad to have found you all!