Hooklineandsinker Story

Hi all

I am sorry this is so ridiculously long but I'm genuinely confused. I'm wondering whether the man that I am still in love with, that broke my heart last March by dumping me, and then started seeing this other girl that he'd met at a wedding when we were still together, is a narc. I don't want to waste anyone's time on here because frankly what some of you have gone through is clearly absolutely horrifying hell, and I take my hat off to all of you for surviving those experiences, and I don't want to waste your time on here if in fact my ex was not an narc because although I am heartbroken and traumatised by his rejection, my experiences were not nearly as bad as some of yours. But I would really value people's opinion as to what has happened to me this year. I am absolutely drowning in cognitive dissonance - it feels as if I have wandered out of my own life (which was so unbelievably lovely this time last year when I started seeing him) into someone else's nightmare.

First a bit of background: I met him online. Ten years younger than me (although we look the same age - his age!) INCREDIBLY handsome and attractive, well-educated, upper class, professional, totally on my intellectual wavelength, a high achiever, well-dressed, tall, and a complete and utter gentleman (would help me on with my coat and then lift my hair out from the collar for me - that just melted me, would always open doors for me, pull out my chair in restaurants, carry any extra bags I had, etc......) After years of meeting nothing but assclowns, I finally felt like my dreams were coming true. I'm in a high-end profession myself so I felt we were so compatible on edcuational levels, professional background, and intellectual rapport, apart altogether from the INTENSE physical attraction I felt for him. And at the risk of sounding like a narc myself, I am considered very attractive, good company, loyal, confident and funny etc etc, so it wasn't like I had a huge inferiority complex around him or anything, or acted clingy or needy - I don't do that, either with men or anyone else. I have a very strong sense of self (or at least I did until he got through with me. Now I'm not even sure who I am or how to behave around men any more). I spent our first date with a huge smile spread across my face listening to him talk. He behaved like a committed boyfriend from DAY 1 (and you know how lots of guys can be assclowns and start flaking out on you pretty early. Not him. He was 100% in the relationship right from the start. Always the first one to call or text. Always reliable, punctal, thoughtful). Within 4 weeks of meeting me, he was flying me to Country X to meet his mother - we stayed at her house for the weekend. Within 6 weeks, he took a transatlantic flight to join me in California on a vacation I had arranged before I met him. We spent the most wonderful week touring the Napa valley (that's another thing I loved about him - his vast knowledge of wine, among so many other subjects). We spent another weekend at his mother's in Oct 2009, three months after we started dating. During that time he told me his sister, who was then living with his mother, had asked him was he going to marry me and he told me that his answer to her was "I definitely would not rule it out". When I heard this I nearly exploded with joy. I am 42 years old and have wanted to be married to the right man for so, so long. I have never been married. I just smiled lovingly at him and and hugged him and said "oh, sweetie!", but inside I was absolutely dancing with joy. At his work Christmas party he texted me that his work colleagues were asking did we have babies and he told them that our babies would be lawyers like their mum (ie, me). Again, I thanked my lucky stars, God, the Universe and everything that this wonderful dream man had come into my life, a man who felt the same way I felt and who wanted the same things I did, ie to marry and start our own family! It doesn't get any better than that and I could not believe my luck and was walking on air. We were together 8 months and I know to some of you that must seem very short, but the intensity of feeling meant that it felt like much longer.

However by February 2010, there were days when I sensed him starting to pull away and to emit a subtle hostility towards me. We had sex on Valentine's day (and my apologies for the explicit description, but it may be relevant in trying to figure out if I've been narc'ed, he gave me a massage and then gave me oral sex, but did not have intercourse with me). That was the last time he ever touched me sexually - five weeks from Valentine's day he broke up with me. I have NEVER come across a man who could sleep beside his pretty and loving girlfriend for nights on end over a five week period and never, ever initiate sex. During this five week drought I did not try to initiate either (not even to give him a BJ - he was obsessed with BJs too) as I was terrified of being rejected and I did not want to put any pressure on him in any way. I was afraid he was ignoring me sexually because he didn't want me to get pregnant and I didn't want to hear that from him, as I really wanted to have a baby with him. We never used contraception. This was despite a conversation over dinner at New Year where I told him explicitly that I wanted a baby (although he knew that anyway, and in fact one of the reasons I liked his online profile is that he had specified that he wanted kids. Plus I felt safe bringing up the topic because of his text at Christmas that our babies would be lawyers like me) and he said "we'll see what happens during the year".

So I didn't even bring up the subject of how our sex life had disappeared. However as this period wore on I began to feel less and less desireable, attractive and feminine, and it killed me. Every morning we were together he would spoon me for a while, but it never led to sexual intimacy.

Going back to Christmas - once again I was invited to stay at his mum's with himself, his sister and her husband. My ex and his sister cannot be in the same room together as there is so much hostility between them and sure enough, a fight broke out at the dinner table and she stormed out of the room. My ex and I, at my suggestion, took some whiskey and a cigar outside and sat and talked about what had just happened. Naturally I expressed my views and feelings on the subject, for which I was later to be punished. The reason I told him that I couldn't believe she had done that in front of a guest (me) was to open the topic and create space for him to talk about how it had affected him, because I thought maybe he was too embarrased by her show of temper to talk about it (I mean, anyone would be embarrassed by a family member behaving like that in front of a guest, no?) Anyway he started to talk about it and did not stop for about a week. He would later tell me that he had to "put up with a 15 minute rant from YOU about it, while I was dying inside". He gave absolutely no indication of "dying inside" on the night in question - just a lot of hatred and contempt against his sister. All I really said was "wow, I can't believe she did that in front of a guest". He then took the topic and ran with it. In no conceivable way did I rant for 15 minutes. Have you ever tried to just TALK fo 15 minutes straight? It's nearly impossible (unless you are teaching a class or something), never mind RANTING for 15 minutes straight!

At the end of Feb we went on a ski weekend, which turned out to be a complete disaster. On the first day, we were trying to make our way down an unpisted, lumpy, rocky, grassy, steep slope, which was absolutely terrifying. I lost a ski and it slid away. He began to talk to me as if I was some sort of mental incompetent - really patronising and nasty and sort of "god, how did I get stuck with someone as stupid as you" type tone. He found my ski and I put it back on but the going was so bad that I ended up taking off both skis and just sliding down the mountain on my ass. I can't tell you how terrified and upset I was. However he just took off down the slope and left me there. It took me a good 20 minutes to get myself down, and I found him standing chatting with two other guys and he never even asked was I ok. On the second night we went out to dinner and we were kind of talking about babies. Because I had felt him pulling away from me in the weeks leading up to this (most noticeably the lack of sex) I had asked a friend what to do. She suggested that I say to him that he was absolutely right, it was too early for us to talk about having a baby, and we should take our time about it (even though I am 42 and sometimes wake up with acute anxiety that it hasn't happened for me yet). She suggested this to try and make him relax about the issue so he wouldn't feel pressure (although he was the one who first brought up having kids - he talked about them a LOT and we would joke about it but he knew I really did want a baby) Anyway in this restaurant I said what she had advised me to say, and he said really dismissively and coldly "yeah, I'm not having a baby with someone I've known for 6 months". Now, while objectively that is a reasonable position to take, it hurt me to my very core not just because of his dismissive tone but because this was a man who for MONTHS had been telling me and texting me things like "you're so beautiful. Where have you been all my life?" "You make me want to be a better man" "I so totally adore you" "You are just beautiful in every way" "I feel like I want to share everything with you" "Take whatever you want of me" "We have our whole lives to do X, Y or Z". He would text me every single morning with kisses and every single night to say goodnight with kisses. He had told his sister he was thinking of marrying me. He told me things about his life on our first few dates that he had never told anyone else. And now suddenly I'm just some girl he's "known" for 6 months? I was very hurt and felt very downgraded all of a sudden and snapped at him "I would have thought I was more than just someone you've known for 6 months". He kind of backed down and said that of course I was, but things were extremely tense between us for the rest of that evening and all the next day, and I was to be punished for snapping at him (the only cross word I ever said to him in 8 months) when he was breaking up with me a couple of weeks later.

A couple of weeks later we attended my best friend's wedding. There was a girl there who was practically drooling over my ex. Every time I went to find him, there she was, gazing up at him like a starstruck groupie. He is extremely good looking. His body language while he was talking to her was very open but he swears that nothing happened between them (although I don't know, because I did take a nap at the wedding because we were staying in the same hotel, something else he got pissed off at me for doing - I asked him would he be ok on his own for a while as I was exhausted and needed to lie down for a while and he said "I'm always ok" (see below), anyway there were people at the wedding (my friends) that he had met before and liked and got on with so he wouldn't have been drifting around on his own, which I knew, or else I would not have left him on his own - he could have come up to our bedroom with me and had a lie down and a cuddle, or even, perish the thought, some actual sex - he could have come up and had a refreshing nap himself along with me - he could have asked me to come have a drink with him first - he could have asked me not to go for a nap in the first place, but he did none of these things and instead punished me a couple of weeks later by breaking up with me). I didn't give this matter of seeing them talking together a lot at the wedding a second thought however as I am not the jealous type and from past experience when someone is with me it is because they love ME and want to be with ME and no one else. I have NEVER in my life been given cause by a boyfriend to feel jealous. To my knowledge I have never been cheated on. However a couple of months after he broke up with me (or so they both insist) he started seeing her. She's the most boring dweeb I ever met, she's not even pretty, she has nasty hair and a hook nose and thin lips and chunky calves. I am so much prettier than her. I have NEVER heard her say one interesting or funny thing in her life. All she does is sit on a couch kind of hunched up and silent, like some sort of ghost. WTF?

I am so bewildered as to what he's doing with her. Do narcs get bored with NS from a specific person and need to conquer someone else? Or are they more likely to stick around when the other person is a complete dweeb? I read that even if you do act totally submissive and codependent and caretaking around them, they will eventually despise you anyway. So you're damned if you do (have a strong confident personality like mine, because they will envy you this and punish you and start to try and break you down) and you're damned if you don't (have ANY personality, like her, because they will despise you for being so submissive) - they will leave you either way? I want her heart broken the way mine is. I want her to suffer too. I HATE her for having the nerve to think she could openly flirt with MY boyfriend in front of me at a public event, not to mention her arrogance.

The week after the wedding he became completely distant. No more kisses in his texts - it was like I was suddenly a business acquaintance instead of the beloved girlfriend he had made me believe I was for the past 8 months. Finally he broke up with me three days after my birthday. He took me to dinner in a lovely restaurant on my birthday (and apologised that it was not the more expensive restaurant next door, to which I of course said not at all sweetie, this is lovely too) but I could hardly swallow the food because I felt so sick with nerves because I knew what was coming. I actually had to go to the bathroom with some diahorrea in the middle of dinner due to feeling so sick with foreboding. But I still had to sit there and pretend everything was fine. We spent the night at my house and needless to say, no sex or even cuddling.

I am utterly heartbroken and cannot stop wanting him and missing him. We texted intermittently since March (he was sending me hugs and kisses at the end of May). When I heard about him with her back in July, I threw up for 24 hours. I couldn't even keep water down. The extent of the trauma and rejection, firstly being dumped after this talk of marriage and babies and how I made him want to be a better man, and secondly finding out he's with such a stupid whore a matter of two months after me, after being so completely loved and wanted for at least our first six months, is so devastating, and as I said, I am having trouble reconciling the reality of my life now with what it was only a few short months ago.

Reasons he might be a narc:
- withheld sex from me for 5 weeks. I have read that they do this to punish you. When I later asked him why, he said he "hadn't felt like it". I am extremely sexual when I'm with the right person so this really distressed me
- told me that when all his friends started having sex as teenagers he could never see the point of it because he found it boring. Who ever heard of a teenage male finding sex boring? Red flag?
- weirdly unmoved by sex, weirdly distant during it. The most enthusiastic thing he did was to kind of roll his eyes back in his head when he was getting a BJ. Passionless except in the very early stages and even then not particularly worked up. NEVER kissed me open-mouthed with tongues - in fact hardly kissed me at all ever on the lips. He took to just making kissy noises at me whenever I would arrive at his apartment, instead of actually kissing me. Which can be endearing and sweet and funny but you want the real thing too. When I asked him about it he said he didn't like the taste of the toothpaste I used. So I switched brands and told him I had switched, but still no kissing with tongues. Ever.
- kind of obssessed with blow jobs and would give EXTREMELY precise instructions about what exactly to do with my hands and mouth while I was giving him one.
- didn't seem to be able to come inside me - would always have to pull out and masturbate over my back, and said if I wanted him to come inside me or I wanted us to come together, I would need to blow him for a good while first (this wasn't him being mean, he was just explaining the way his body worked). I am used to men getting very excited just by being inside you and not needing loads and loads of warming up beforehand. I am used to them getting excited just by the very act of touching you and pleasing you. He didn't. No spontaneous early morning erections either, which are pretty normal for most men - again, I would have thought it was normal for a man to get aroused just by cuddling his girlfriend in bed. Such has always been my experience anyway.
- repeatedly mentioned that he had absolutely no sexual boundaries at all and would try anything
- asked me for anal sex and when I said I wasn't thrilled with the idea and had tried it before and that even though I had had an orgasm from it, in the end it was just too sore, he told me he adored me and wanted to be in every part of me, which of course made me relent and say "Oh sweetie! well then of course we can do it!" In the end we never did. I suggested it one day and he just reacted like I had asked him to do a really tedious task, kind of sighed and said, not today, it takes too long, or I'm too tired, or something.
- wanted to ejaculate on my face (I said no initally, but because he said oh, you don't know how amazing the feeling is of looking down and seeing your come on the face of the love of your life, I was relenting. I never did this, I am happy to say)
- wanted to ejacluate on my breasts (I consented, but only as an alternative to the above). This was part of a fun dressing-up/role play/fooling around thing we were doing one night which I did love - I am naturally slightly submissive sexually and now I feel so ashamed that I still want him to dominate me (not that he really did during sex - it was just more me imagining it) not cruelly or anything, but just be in charge, and I am ashamed to say that I still masturbate to thinking about him
- didn't seem all that interested in actual intercourse, which I love
- every time we had sex it would end up with me on all fours and him just hammering away at me like in porn, and even then he would have to pull out and finish himself off. There was always an excuse as to why he didn't come inside me. He was dehydrated. He was tired. He'd had too much to eat/drink. He was too stressed from work. His orgasm was "too big". How were we ever supposed to have a baby?
- told me that he periodically had fantasies about committing very violent murder or assault and because of his medical/forensic knowledge he would be able to commit murder and never be caught, and his mind would race and it would be all he could think about for days, and the only thing that would calm him down was to watch very violent horror or porn, in which it was the women that were being very violent. Red flag?
- watched a lot of porn. During our five week sex drought I got up one morning to find him at the computer cataloging his porn collection. Who gets out of bed ignoring their beautiful loving girlfriend and goes to watch porn instead? I NEVER came across such behaviour before.
- during his 20s he went to a lot of very wild sex parties, like the one in Eyes Wide Shut, S&M dungeons and places like that, where you could have sex with anyone anytime, any way. Also did a lot of cocaine in his 20s. Also told me he was borderline alcoholic in his 20s but that was because he was so miserable in his job.
- very pessimistic and critical most of the time, complained a lot, sneered about other people a lot, everyone was incompetent except him
- oddly joyless, never heard him belly-laugh, never seemed truly happy except fleetingly in the early days. I just assumed he was a bit depressed because of leaving clinical practice, or the demise of his family (he got back from his sister's birthday dinner and told me that he believed his family of origin was basically dead, as in completely non-functioning), the fight with his sister, his absent father, etc etc.
- wants to move to the countryside to "get away from people"
- HATED talking on the phone, everything had to be by text
- his reason for dumping me was "I don't feel listened to, I feel like I'm always behind you, I feel squeezed by this relationship, I've lost myself in the past few months" (see, this is what makes me feel like maybe I was the narcissistic one. Isn't that what people feel like when they are in a relationship with a narc? The only thing that's stopping me believing that I in fact was the narc and not him is that I read that if you even ask that question it means you can't be a narc, because true narcs would never even ask themselves that question. I am very interested in people's opinion on this?) Also,NEVER IN MY LIFE has anyone told me I'm a bad listener, or just out for myself, or whatever. Quite the opposite. My friends tell me a lot how great I am, how loyal and honest and fun. NEVER did I put pressure on him to do things so I have no idea where this "squeezed" thing comes from. And doesn't the "squeezed" (= I'm under too much pressure) thing contradict the whole "you don't listen to me" (= I'm ignored) thing? I mean, it's one or the other, surely? I asked him when he had started to feel like this and he said a couple of months ago. He clearly didn't value me or the relationship enough to bring this up with me as soon as he started feeling that way, and while we were still together, so we could talk about it and I could change whatever it was in my behaviour that was making him unhappy. I believe that if you truly love someone, you won't just jack in the relationship at the first hurdle but will be willing to sit down and discuss things and put them right. I asked him why he never brought this up with me AT THE TIME and he said that in a previous relationship he had always sat down with the girl and discussed the relationship but with me he felt he couldn't. Which of course hurt me deeply. It was more like "you did something that pissed me off three months ago, so SEE YA!". I was given NO CLUE as to what I was doing wrong so had no idea that I was behaving in a way he didn't like. I was just living my life and planning nice things for us to do (he is not a native of my country so I really wanted to be a home away from home for him, and to show him my country and all the beautiful and interesting things there are to do in it), and just being myself. I think it basically boiled down to he wasn't getting enough attention, although I was always hugging and kissing him and listening to him.
- very boastful about his achievements "I was the best (at his previous job)", "I'm an expert in X", "Guys like me don't grow on trees" (he said this to a friend of mine minutes after me introducing them) "I was so good at what I did". "I captained X team to success"
- has only one male friend in his own country and one in mine, and no other friends
- has a love/hate relationship with his sister. Called her something nasty to me one time. Then told me he adored her a few weeks later
- was allowed to do whatever he wanted as a child/teen
- was in boarding school and told me that for his last few years at school he just shut everyone out and spent all his time on his own, not talking or interacting with anyone else
- called his adorable 3 year old niece something quite nasty and dismissive (not to her face but to me in private)
- when I heard about this new slut I went over to his place unannounced because I was so distraught. We talked for two hours but most of the time he was glaring at me with vicious hostility and looked as if he would like to strangle me or something. That was SO hard to take in the same apartment where I used to be welcomed with open arms.
- VERY aggressive driver and believed he was the best driver around
- behaved almost like a robot in airports to suppress his rage, couldn't cope with the queueing and all the other tedious security stuff, very angry at all the procedures
- I sensed suppressed rage in him a lot of the time - not at me but in general (or maybe secretly at me?)
- always saying " I don't get angry" "I don't get lonely" "I don't get jealous" "I'm always ok" (whenever I asked if he was ok if he seemed upset)
- displayed irritation at being interrupted in the normal flow of conversation
- I felt his body stiffen with irritation once while I was hugging him goodbye after dropping him off at his place
- said "I only say things once, I hate to repeat myself" (translation: so you better pay attention when I talk - if you don't get it first time that's your problem)
- obsessed with his own privacy
- doesn't watch TV, read newspapers or listen to the radio, except one show - and I read that Ns don't engage with the outside world if they can help it?
- big fan of the writings of the Marquis de Sade, and let me tell you that if you've ever even opened one of these books you will know that they are so sickening that you will immediately become extremely depressed and won't be able to get the sick images out of your mind. I read a paragraph of one in a bookshop once and nearly threw up. I was so upset I texted him and told him how upset and shocked and sickened I was. I got a lovely text back from him saying that "in the same world as all those horrible things is a cuddly boy who loves you very much and would never let anything bad happen to you". It's this type of thing that makes me think that I'm misjudging him horribly and he's not an N at all.
- his favourite movie is about a serial killer who kills families and then arranges them around the room with bits of shattered mirror in their eyes so he can see his own reflection in them. I asked him why this was his fave movie and he said that he admired the cop who was on the trail of the serial killer, but he also expressed admiration for some of the stuff the serial killer did, so I wasn't sure which character he admired more
- one time we went to the cinema and he was being quiet and distant and didn't hold my hand or touch me at all in the cinema, and sat with his body angled away from me. Similarly in the car on the way home. We got back to his place and he assumed I was coming in to spend the night. I got upset and started crying because of his aloofness and asked him whether he geuninely wanted me to come in as he had been so distant and hadn't touched me once the whole evening and that I loved him touching me. When he saw my tears he said "Oh dear" in a really patronising, dismissive, stupid-emotional-woman-now-look-what-I-have-to-deal-with type way, or as if I was a child or something. He apologised for not touching me but it was pretty perfunctory. I was still sitting in the car when I started to cry and he got back into the passenger seat to apologise but he didn't hold me or soothe me or comfort me or kiss me.
- I had the distinct impression that I was not allowed to express anger around him about the ordinary everyday stuff people get angry or irritated about, because he totally denied himself the expression of his own anger, so therefore no one else was allowed to express the emotion either. When he said "I don't get angry" I would say, but sweetie, everyone gets angry from time to time, it's normal, everyone feels lonely, everyone gets jealous, but he never agreed.
- he told me he suffered from a phobia where he hates people touching him (there is an actual medical term for this but I forget it). I said did that include me and he said no, never me or his mum, but everyone else. One time he was in a supermarket and got so panicked about people being too near him that he had to go and stick his hands in a freezer cabinet to try and calm himself down so he could get out of there. I could never reconcile this phobia with his extremely wild and experimental sexual past. If he hated being touched by strangers so much, then why all the group sex etc when he was younger?
- I think he had the false humility thing going on too. He used to say all he wanted was to be "happily useless" and "to be left alone" and would describe himself as having been "shat into this world" (kind of a horrible thing to say about your birth)
- his dad completely ignored him as a child and it was left to his mum to practice playing catch with him in the garden or to go to his sports games to cheer him. His dad never bothered with him.
- he told me that there had been women he had ended up in bed with "literally within minutes of meeting them"
- would get extremely depressed and paranoid when hung over (more than a regular peson who just feels exhausted and ill). He called this "The Fear"

Reasons he might not be a narc:
- I saw him cry twice, once when talking about a dead uncle to whom he had been close, and once in bed in the small hours of the morning after the fight with his sister (see above). I read that narcs don't feel real emotion, so wouldn't this be evidence that he's normal? Plus he once told me "I cry every week"
- once when I was feeling a bit down and weepy and he texted to see how I was and I told him, he was so sweet and supportive to me. evidence of empathy?
- another time I was feeling a bit fat and I texted him this and he texted back "You're not fat! You're beautiful!". This doesn't sound narc-y to me.....
- he did always apologise when I called him on something (which I suppose in reality was only twice in 8 months because we never fought)
- was very generous with money - took me to the best restaurants, spent over a grand on two dinners one time. Bought me lovely shoes on a whim and a lovely matching handbag, both expensive, as a congratulations for getting a job. Posted on Facebook that he was "very proud of his girl" the day I got the job. That behaviour is loveable and normal and emotionally generous. I have read that narcs are usually very stingy with money and certainly with praise. More evidence of normality?
- once when I was upset about not having enough money coming in he came over to my place and helped me with a job search, leading to a job I eventually landed (see above), He also contacted his dad to see could his dad help with getting me some work. Again, thoughtful and helpful?
- when I had to prepare for a presentation at work he spent a few hours going over it with me and listening to me deliver it and asked me questions on it to make sure I knew it backwards, which was really sweet. He became a bit critical in the middle about something and I withdrew and sat down and wanted to take a break because I was feeling insecure and a bit weepy and nervous, but then when I got up again and began rehearsing it again and finished it he said it was fantastic, he was really supportive and sweet. Not narc-y behaviour, I would have thought?
- when I was upset about something else one time he hugged me. I read that narcs don't feel empathy but this would appear to be him feeling empathy?
- when I was upset about my car not starting (it was to be used as a wedding car the next day and I was so stressed about potentially letting down my best friend and her husband-to-be) and rang him in tears and left a voicemail he called me back and was very sweet and comforting to me (this was the week before he dumped me so it wasn't the initial charming phase, it was right at the end)
- very close to his mother
- bought his sister and her husband a nice romantic weekend in the countryside and offered to babysit their two children - again, nice and considerate
- he paid my gym membership and is continuing to do so until it runs out in Feb 2011, just so I can take my little niece to the baby pool there. This is clearly generous and decent and more proof that he's not a narc?
- see above about the violent porn: he did call these episodes of violent fantasy "a mental illness", which demonstrates self-awareness, no? And narcs are not self-aware really, are they?
- if he was a really nasty sadist he could have broken it off with me on my birthday, or the week before which is when he started to become very distant, instead of waiting, as he did, until my birthday weekend was over. This surely demonstrates consideration of my feelings?
- while we were together he was ALWAYS the one to text me first in the morning, with kisses and wishing me a good day, and also every night I got a loving text with kisses and a goodnight. He was always very attentive that way.
- said a number of times that when he's done with something, he's done with it, which would contradict the theory that narcs can't let you go because they like to keep you hanging on for future supply.
- he runs marathons to raise money for a health charity - a selfless and non-narc-y thing to do?
- he told me that on some evenings when we had a date, he would go to the driving range after work first to get out all his aggression because he didn't want to be angry or tense around me. Also considerate behaviour?
- he never "raged" on me or got abusive in ANY way, although he never told me I looked beautiful or pretty when we met for dates either.....

Or maybe he's not a narc but is something else? Just a bit damaged from being sent away to boarding school at age 7 and having his dad ignore him during his childhood? Or maybe BPD? Or passive-agressive? Or clinically depressed? Or perfectionist? I really don't want to do this beloved man a disservice by painting him as someone very nasty in the event that he is not. Does anyone have any ideas? I am so broken hearted. I cannot BELIEVE it has come to this. I cannot understand how someone can be SO in love with another person and a mere 6 months later, have this apparent total personality change and just throw the whole relationship away. I feel that him being with her so quickly after me has totally cheapened everything we had together. I see from a lot of posts on here that narcs never really leave and always come back to make sure they have you hanging on. To me that sounds SO good right now. All I want is to be back with him. I am so terrified I will never meet another man to whom I am so attracted both physically and intellectually and will always feel like I "settled". I want her heart broken the way mine is. I HATE that he's with her, but my only consolation is that she's WAY more insecure than me and so she will no doubt be miserable before too long. Her father is in prison and I did wonder whether he targeted her because he knew she would be needy. Her whole body language screams needy, clingy, insecure and lost. I also can't believe that he drives 2.5 hours to see her most weekends, whereas I live 20 minutes away. I can't believe he is prepared to go to such trouble to be with her. It makes me sick to my stomach to imagine that he might be behaving so lovingly and sweet to her, not just in the beginning but he might continue to do so just because she's such a bore and a drip that she will never ever contradict or do anything contrary to what he wants, so he will continue to be nice to her forever. On the bright side, if he is a narc, he will tire of her supply sooner or later and kick her to the kerb as well. If he isn't a narc, he will simply get bored with her because of her vapid and vacuous "personality" and her total inability to relate to him on an intellectual level.

I just want back the loving, attentive, handsome, intelligent, sexy man I fell in love with.

Recently I called him on his personal phone while drunk and the call kept getting dropped before connecting. I began to wonder if he had blocked my number, and felt physically sick at the thought of him doing that, but next morning I found out that he hadn't when he replied to a text I sent him (not an emotional text, just a text about the evening I was having out with friends. He will always reply to my texts as long as they do not have any emotional content in them). I was overjoyed to find that he had not blocked me. I am always so happy whenever he replies to one of my (infrequent) texts. Crumbs from the table. I want him back so much. I then called his work phone and left an "I miss you so much" message. He did reply to my text but no acknowledgment of my call. Aren't they supposed to be the stalkers, not us? What is going on? Do you guys think he's a narc or not? I have been NC for a couple of weeks now but even before that I would only ever text him once every couple of weeks.

Thanks so much for reading this.

F