Empathetic Male's Story

Firstly, after writing this I have finally realised the true power of the narc - I am stunned at how much abuse I took while still returning for more, convinced that one day she would love me the same way and we would be happy.

The good news is I'm over her and will NEVER return. I am happy at last and moving forward with my life. I have a history of relationships with narcs but know that this will now stop.

I hope that others will find help through reading my story and I sincerely hope that I can help others through my own experience. We can make this together! :)

And now, my story.......

As she pulled up next to me in the pub car park on our first date and flashed me her beautiful smile, how could I have known that I was about to be subjected to the most confusing and disappointing 15 months of my life. But the signs were all there, her mild irritation in having to wait for the pub to open and after I'd walked in before her, her intermittent interest me and then the waiters saying that she liked “people watching” and the lie that her definition of independence just meant she wanted a partner who had some of his own interests.

On our second date she was oblivious that I was already waiting in the car park and she played a false act of her non-existent loving and caring abilities by sitting on the floor hugging the pub dog, a complete contrast to her almost non-existent reaction to the loss of her own dog a year later. Why did she run to her car and flee when I asked for a kiss before we left? Was it the loss of control or the 5 year-old behavioural paradigm that still controls her life?

I knew there was something wrong as I drove home and even said out aloud frustratingly, “Why do I always attract these fucking crazy women?!” So why did I come back for more?

She ‘cried’ down the phone saying that she really liked me and had wanted to kiss me but got nervous. I felt opportunities in the future for making her happy. The very next day she cooked me fantastic food and despite the cold sore that had developed from the stress of the previous day’s incident (and something for which I would be blamed for, for the rest of our relationship) she gave me the hottest sex I’d had in years, she took me for her own pleasure, it had started.

Despite the sex and my understanding that we had somehow consummated the start of a relationship, over the following days she carried on as if nothing had happened, she didn’t contact me and it was very confusing. There was no sense of ‘us’ and there never would be.

Even before we’d met there were signs, she looked sad in her on-line photograph and I wanted to make her happy. She knew she’d hook someone like me. And she was so insecure about having her photograph taken that she’d even reversed her profile image to feel better about herself. Who would have predicted the wrath I’d experience in the future whenever I’d point a camera at her.

There were hidden signs in her online messages too, like the fact that she really enjoyed spending Christmas alone on city breaks, that she had been excited about being charmed by soldiers with machine guns while travelling alone in remote places, and her reference to working in admin when she was actually a globally-renowned psychology professor. I didn’t stand a chance.

But now I was hers. The introduction to meet her son seemed a wonderful gift to both me and him, but was merely a ploy to enable her to spend more time doing things for herself while I looked after him. We would very rarely all do things together.

And soon she would be manipulating me with her mind-controlling tricks and flirtations and playing on my insecurities. Soon after I told her that I loved her, she became distant. I argued that I wanted to see more of her and she revealed her narcissistic rage for the first time. She tried to drive off but I stopped her and took the blame. She told me she liked the male dancers’ butts, told me how one of her male colleagues made her feel ‘energised’, fawned over male actors when I felt ill, ignored me when out at dinner parties and regaled me of stories of cute boys at work.

And then the big moment. The moment the carpet was pulled from underneath my feet. Minutes before she left for that four week trip abroad she told me that things would have to change. She didn’t have time to explain ... and she was gone. My mind was in a spin. What did this mean? The phone calls were difficult with her on the other side of the world, especially when she cut me off mid-sentence. I was in turmoil.

After her return, her friends were cuddling on that romantic ferry crossing but she was oblivious of me. She accused me of watching porn in front of her friends but we’d never even spoke of it and she tried out of nowhere to wrestle me to the ground. She wanted so much time on her own but I still loved her, I loved her even more. But her rage was waiting for me whenever I challenged her and it didn’t matter to her who heard it. And in the times that I felt I’d had enough and went to leave, I’d be physically stopped and reassured, plied with faked intimacy, wild sex and promises of moving in together.

Her visits to my place became infrequent and she was too busy in the week to see me, even when I was working locally, often choosing to have male colleagues from work around for dinner or minions that had crushes on her. So I did all the travelling, a clever way to restrict my access to friends. And even after driving nearly 4 hours to be with her one weekend, she was too busy with her son to even stand up and give me a welcome hug and a kiss.

She continued to erode my self-esteem with her petty corrections and a disinterest in my achievements in any of my pursuits or work. After completing a gruelling endurance cross country race she just looked at me and said I was crazy. A kiss was out of the question with all that mud and sweat about. Beards were cool for hipsters but she hated it when I grew one and if I didn’t like her new hairstyle there would be hell to pay. And she would only talk about my successful business when her friends were around to hear.

Due to a new childcare arrangement that I hadn’t even heard about, we now had very little time alone at weekends with her son around. In the little time we could take together, she chose to sit alone and groom her thousands of Instagram followers in a desperate attempt to quash her endless needs of validation. I decided to join Instagram too so that we had at least one shared interest and I openly supported her feed, but the support was rarely reciprocated. In fact during the times that she was “too busy to contact me”, I’d often notice that she had been using Instagram for well over an hour. But I when I brought this to her attention she was outraged and accused me of checking up on her, being needy, high-maintenance and not trusting her. In response to my criticism she even set up a second account and started using it even more just to illustrate to me that she could do what the hell she wanted. She also suggested that my behaviour would only drive her to contact these people surreptitiously, which I later realised she was doing anyway with other men using an online messengering service. I was later outraged to learn that she had made plans to meet a male Instagram user one weekend who’d been making lurid remarks to her and told her so in an outburst that had me feeling that I’d lost my mind. And on Facebook I had no mention but her ex still featured prominently, as did her comment about that singer being the sexiest man alive, just as I left to go away for a week’s holiday. But there would be holding hands in bed at night and laughter. Was this all fabricated?

I knew deep down something was deeply wrong but my head was so muddled and the challenges to her were just becoming too painful. She even admitted to using inconsistent discipline techniques on her son to keep him on his toes, I’d never thought for one second she was using them on me too.

On one of the few times I decided to go off alone at short notice she raged at me as I left. I returned to someone that I didn’t know. I cowered and crouched at her doorstep in an attempt to avoid her son seeing this outburst of hers but she unleashed her tirade of abuse at me at full volume within earshot of him, screaming at me to fuck off from her property like an unwanted dog.

On the few occasions she met my friends at parties, I watched her play the room, disinterestingly chatting with those she’d consider of low value before discarding them for higher profiles. And money was an issue considering her stratospheric income several times that of my well-above-average earnings. And she made sure I knew it, utilising multiple ways in which to put stresses on my finances so I’d become dependent upon her.

And now came the downward spiral of verbal abuse, insults, sensory overload, repetition and stacking to confuse me, bringing me to tears and then accusing me of being unable to explain how I felt or to come up with examples of the things that had upset me. If I kept an account of these events I would be accused of being ‘calculating’ if not I was accused of being unable to explain and therefore incapable. I COULDN’T WIN. And there was her attention-seeking at the swimming pool, walking around topless in the garden in view of passing men and flirting with her gardener but never introducing me. I knew these were going on but even just mentioning any of them would be met by such rage and threats of rejection it wasn’t worth the heartache.

I’d even tricked myself into thinking that things were wonderful 95% of the time but it was the reverse for sure in retrospect. Everything would seem so wonderful in-between the rages, the classic push-pull cycles and she even invited me to move in just to make sure she kept me hanging on. But when we tried she didn’t want anything of mine in her lounge, no furniture, no books, nothing. These would all go in my own lounge....

Our expensive holidays together were a disaster due to the fact that intimacy and time together would be inevitable. She needed to be in control and required itineraries that took in all her desires and also wanted whole days to herself. She was disinterested in my interests and would dip-out whenever possible, she made jokes at my expense, tried to correct my interpretations of things and threatened to leave and find another hotel if she didn’t get her way or if I criticised. And then she’d do something outrageously sexy to bring me back on board...

She had banned me from going on holiday with her and her son after yet another argument about moving-in, but she changed her mind just days before so she’d have someone to look after her son and get some time to herself. I had to spend some of the holiday trying to find somewhere to live back in the UK. The evening before we left to return home I cried as I realised everyone else would be going home together with their families. We never would be. She patted me on the back in consolation like patting a dog. I was going home to move into a new flat, without any help from her.

Could things get any worse before I found the strength to leave? In a word, yes. She threw me out of her car on the M5 because I asked to go with her and her son to London, she tried to throw me out of her car 200 miles from home and when I refused, abandoned the car on a pavement with me in it, stormed off for 15 minutes and then verbally abused me for the three hour journey home. And any requests for changes in her plans would be angrily-received.

And so the beginning of the end, the final realisation that I couldn’t take this much longer. That one time that I decided to sit where I wanted when we were out at dinner. She brought this up later in an argument – yes, I did to PISS YOU OFF

I’d seen two counsellors during the relationship as I felt I was losing my mind. The first had told me my feelings were valid and hinted of narcissism, but I was convinced this wasn’t the case. I had been BLINDED by her mind-control. Surely it couldn’t be. When I mentioned this to her she told me to fuck off to the counsellor so we could validate each other....

The second counsellor had us in together but chose to work on me as the anger in her was seen to be unworkable. I was taught over two months through CBT to give her the “benefit of the doubt” as she had requested, to show her affection when she was angry and to take responsibility for my own insecurities. The narc didn’t recognise that power struggles even existed but chose to suggest we came from “different angles.” She just carried on as she was and showed no interest in what I was learning during counselling, until I decided to stop. Then I was criticised for not asking her permission. And when it was finally suggested that she had issues in accepting responsibility for her part in the relationship breakdown, she told me to fuck off again and put whatever spin on it I liked. She took no responsibility whatsoever.

And so the final chapter, on holiday with her parents in Australia. After only three days together, I received another tirade of abuse within earshot of her whole family for questioning her about designs for her house. I was accused of being “fucked-up” and screamed at in the face to “fuck off and buy my own house” while being grabbed forcibly by the arm. She had regaled stories of how her son’s father had used violence against her, but now violence was being inflicted on me. That night and for the first time ever during our relationship, I turned down sex. I was then accused of leading her on. It must have come as a huge dent to her ego.

Only a few days later she was outraged at me for asking her again about a computer password. But this time I stood firm as the counsellor had told me, I stood my ground and asked her calmly not to be so rude to me. She soared into a new level of outrage, shaking my arm and screaming in my face that I needed to apologise to her. Apologise to her for what?!! There was nothing left and nowhere to go. Her mother was getting upset with me too. There was no love anywhere here. I had to go. Within minutes I was whisked away without even getting a chance to say goodbye to her and her son and was soon on a train to Melbourne. There was no contact from her so within 4 days I was back home in the UK wondering what the fuck had happened to my life, but strangely feeling better after escaping the chaos.

10 weeks later as I write this, I never received a true apology. I was accused of running away every time we experienced difficulties and again on this final occasion. I made contact with her three weeks ago just after I’d discovered this website, in a last-ditch effort to prove that she isn’t a narc. But after receiving an incisively hurtful tirade of abuse that focussed on all of my insecurities that left me in tears and then finding myself apologising TO HER for upsetting her, I knew this was for real. She is a NARC. She even had the audacity to leave a message of apology later to try to hook me back in.

And as an EMPATH I loved her for all her faults and just wanted to make her feel loved, wanted, secure and safe, all the things that deep-down she probably wants, but doesn’t FEEL. I feel sorry for her, sorry that she will never experience love, sorry that her life will never be fulfilled, and sorry for the next guy who gets hooked-in, and the next, and the next.....

I am so much better out of this and now have time to rediscover myself and eventually find someone that will love me the way I love them.

The hell has ended.

I am free and happy! 