Darling.girl's Story
Darling.girl's Story
It is sobering and reality-inducing to read all of your stories. It makes it more difficult to keep justifying that I was truly loved. The most compelling hard evidence confronting me from you all is the fairy tale to nightmare plot. It was too good to be true. I'll try to be coherent after just checking FB to find that my "true love" is implementing the same strategies with another married woman as he implemented with me (a married woman). I wish I could take more time to be coherent before I write this, but I am so livid, and devastated that I need to "get it out."
How he "knew" that I was vulnerable, I don't know. We hadn't been in contact for over 30 years. We dated briefly in high school. He was a "bad boy" and I knew I was only along for the ride for as long as it lasted. I was in another relationship. Story terminated. 30+ years later he finds me via an online social networking site when my marriage was in the pits (no statements made about marriage on said site). Are these people psychic? I was vulnerable. I was craving the love missing from my marriage. He told me he never stopped loving me since high school. He said he never loved his wife of over 30 years with whom he had 3 children. He teased. He flirted. He seduced. Why are you contacting me now? Ahhh. His wife had a degenerative illness. Getting ready for Life.2 perhaps? But I overlooked that, enthralled by the ostensible "true love always returns" story. I was struggling financially. He was wealthy. 5 star B & B's. Cristal champagne. Smartphone purchased for me to make "communicating easier." I was his "darling, sweetheart, sweet ___." There was going to be a future when he divorced his wife when she went into long term care as a result of her illness. Ostensibly they agreed to this beforehand as she didn't want him "to be a martyr." But all this blew up when we were "caught" by my family. All of a sudden, he couldn't "abide our halfway solution." He couldn't function or enjoy himself thinking about me. Curiously, he claimed that he was "wrestling with demons" and "suffering hard" what he had done to me and my family. Apparently, not hard enough that he wanted to make good on his pledge of a future with me. For a year and a half, this man only had text or email contact with me, jerking back and forth. Sometimes, refusing to answer my attempts at connection. Finally, he re-engaged. Ahh. Hope, I thought. No, just his narcissistic wounding when his wife took a turn for the worse and he was faced with caring for someone who needed diapers and constant attention due to her illness.
I resonate with people who said they missed or overlooked the red flags. 1) Saying he married and stayed married to a woman for over 30 years who he claimed he never loved, 2) He sought me out when his wife was starting to get sicker. Who does that to his wife? And what does that say about me that I didn't have the ethics to tell him: "in sickness and in health?" Why did I think that if he was capable of doing that to his wife of 30 years that he wouldn't be capable of doing that to me? No, I was special. I was his true love.
Another similarity. The sex was beyond mind-blowing. Good god, how could he pass that up? I couldn't imagine that he could replicate that with someone else. Surely, that alone would keep him tied to me. "We have nothing like this," he said referring to he and his wife. Naive.
It was only recently that he finally gave a definitive answer that he didn't want a future with me. Ostensibly because he "couldn't accept collateral victims." Really?! How did he think two married people were going to be together without "collateral victims?" Interesting, how early on he said, "We both know this won't be painless." When I called him on that statement, and pasted his own words from an email he sent me, his response was: "I have not read your pastes of previous correspondence. I am not interested in the past. I am not an introspective guy." Well, some truth.
That's the story in short. A lot of it omitted. What I'm now experiencing is what I've read others are experiencing: roller coaster emotions (he's evil to I love him), obsessive thoughts (It felt so real. How could I have been so mistaken?), desire for revenge (I now know how people can be provoked to the point of murder in rage {no I'm not a danger. I just understand}, grief at the dissolution of the fantasy life that I thought I was going to have, jealous that he waved his wealthy life style in front of me saying that it was going to be mine and it won't ever be, nauseated that I trusted someone to give my love and self to so completely.
I need this forum, badly because no one else seems to get it. The narcissists really break your spirit.
Thank you all for being there... for being willing to help. I'm a mess. Sometimes, I think I won't make it. And I suffer this, even though the husband I cheated on has come around and loves me beyond measure. The narcissists twist your soul, your ethics, your sense of what's right and we/I were/are complicit in it. I rage to the heavens.
darling.girl
Yes, I've had to hold things
Red flags & Lies overlooked or missed
A few more red flags
Sooooooo Familiar
Same guy?
The Actual Words of a Narcissist... the selfishness & evil
darling-girl
The Seduction
...more of the story - idealization and devaluation
Welcome to Narcville,, My
And I rage to the heavens
lillymarch, sending prayers for your healing
Rage & other feelings
You deserve to get your life back
Thank you
Welcome, Darling Girl