new and really really struggling

Hi everyone. Firstly, let me say that I am really glad I have found this site. I read the book and have been reading everyone's stories and already feel a lot of solidarity.

I should probably start with my story which I hope isn't too long, please bear with me as I could really use support from women who actually understand what it's like having been with a narc. No one else understands.

When I met my narc I was 20. He was 28 and the owner of an online magazine here in New York City. I had been staying with my mom the summer before returning to NYC for school and she had been in a TERRIBLE relationship with one of the worst narcs I'd ever seen. He ended up going to prison after I left.

Needless to say I was in a daze and suffering from PTSD from the abuse I suffered from both he and my brainwashed mother.

I was more or less a zombie when I started interning for my narc. A few months into the job he came on STRONG. I knew he had a live-in girlfriend so I never put any thought towards him even though he's incredibly good looking (it really blows when narcs are actually handsome). He took me to "interview a band" one night and ended up saying incredibly sexually explicit things to me and tried kissing me and touching me. Meanwhile his girlfriend was texting him frantically because he brother had just gotten into a car accident. My narc ignored it. I should have walked away and never looked back right then.

Of course as time progressed he got more and more aggressive with his courtship and I kept bringing up his girlfriend who he assured me was over him and knew about him seeing me. He went so far as to stay with me in my DORM ROOM one weekend telling me his girlfriend didn't care. Turns out she was in Florida and had no idea I existed.

This went on for 6 months until I realized he wasn't leaving her like he promised. And so I attempted breaking it off with him. He freaked and claimed he had dumped her.

That's when the real nightmare began. He lives in the Bronx in a two family house with this mother and his older 36 year old brother. In the ensuing year after he "dumped his girlfriend" I was never once allowed over. I was never once allowed to meet his family. He would never ever answer my calls—he'd only call back a while later.

He would tell me I was his girlfriend and yet I was not allowed into his life in any real way. He turned 29, then 30 and was still coming to my college dorm to see me. I was perplexed and miserable. When I asked why I couldn't stay with him he would threaten to break up with me or he would tell me I was crazy or he would leave and I would fall apart.

I was suicidally depressed. When my bday came and went he did not spend it with me. I had made reservations for my brother, his wife, my narc and I and he didn't show up. I sat there next to an empty chair wanting to kill myself at the table. He texted me saying that if I brought another guy out later that night our mutual friends would know and would tell him.

He didn't spend any holidays with me and never explained why. He would just threaten me if I asked.

Finally after a year of this I discovered that his ex was living with him the entire time. I LOST IT. He tried denying it and then explained they weren't together, she just lived there and sometimes slept in his bed, and that sometimes he was just bored of me and it was nice having her there. I hung up on him.

Three weeks after that he was calling me and texting me non stop. He had bleached his black hair blonde (my color) and begged me to meet him, whereby he got down on one knee in a bar and fake (clearly fake) cried and made a scene in front of everyone.

Naturally he retracted his proposal the second I took him back (there was never a ring of course).

Finally I was allowed over to his house. But ALL of his ex's things were still there. Literally everything, and it stayed that way for months even while I begged for him to move it. It was a reminder of all of the pain I had been through for the last 1.5 years and yet it didn't move—always an excuse.

Then I noticed she was calling and texting. I also noticed that all of my stuff was being moved and put back oddly. When I called him out on it he'd say it either didn't move or he moved it to clean—though the surface underneath my things was still dirty.

I then noticed that my things had stopped moving so explicitly, however, definitely different. When I found lipstick on a piece of tissue paper in his bathroom trash can, and after he vehemently denied knowing where it came from I checked his phone.

He had called his ex twice that day alone, had been texting her but erased all of her texts except one that came through right before he turned his phone off (a habit of his so I wouldn't see her texts), but the worst thing were pictures of all of my things on his phone.

He had about 8 pictures of my stuff from different angles so he could put it back. I shut down. I literally just went numb. I packed my things and as I walked out the next day he said, "sorry I fell out of love with you." This was after he spent the night before trying desperately to have with me, then throwing my things outside, then crying, then telling me I was crazy, then trying again to have sex with me.

Again, after hoovering and pleading I went back about a month later. I should mention that throughout all this time he would ignore me for days. Not text me during the day, not call me to say goodnight. Would not hang out with my friends. Would become cold and mean and tell me I was stupid and brought nothing to the table—followed by "just kidding." He tore me down relentlessly.

After going back again, I AGAIN found lipstick on a towel this time in his bathroom. He had been terrible to me after I lost my job and so I dumped him again.

I found out I was pregnant a week later. This was about 5 days before christmas. I was 22, just lost my first job, was pregnant and single because he was treating me so terribly. When I told him, he came over, sat as far away from me as possible and started working on his laptop.

He said he would take me to get an abortion the next day. When I tried to discuss keeping it he became hysterical, not even letting me speak about it. The next day we went to the doctor and scheduled everything. We got dinner afterward. I had been trying to talk about getting back together and spending christmas together and discussing keeping our child. He tore into me and told me I needed to change and that I was the fucked up one. I went home alone and met him the next day to take the pills to miscarry.

He stayed with me that night and laid in my bed as I crawled into the bathroom doubled over in pain—the kind of pain that is literally indescribable. I couldn't breath, speak, stand, sit, cry. I just gagged and bled and crawled my way back to my bed. I was hyperventilating, so when I crawled into my bed he just looked at me and pulled the pillow against his ear so he wouldn't have to hear me. The next day he left me alone and I begged him to let me just stay with him for Christmas and he said no. So I rode a train 7 hours to Virginia, still bleeding, still sobbing from it all. He didn't care.

To keep this from being even more of a novel, I will just say I ended up going back and the treatment continued. More cruelty, more lipstick on towels, more denial and crazy making. I left AGAIN, begged to be taken back AGAIN, and then once rejected I started NC.

That's where I'm at now. It was 6 weeks no contact until tonight when he hoovered. I stupidly replied and he just said, "i'm not trying to interfere or anything..." He literally messaged me to remind me that he doesn't want me anymore.

I'm so sorry for the long note, I just need help. Just some confirmation that he is a narc/sociopath. That leaving is the right thing to do. I don't want to respond to his most recent text but I don't know if I have the strength.

Thank you so much for reading my story—I promise not to write this much again.