Enpsychopedia Romantica's story

Buckle up, it's going to be bumpy post!

Nobody can quite understand my experience with my narc without understanding my past, so I will try to condense a life time into a few paragraphs here.

I'm an airforce brat. My father was career military; a practical joker, very handsome, had a great sense of humour, life of the party. Trouble was, when everyone went home, he was pretty much an empty uniform who didn't like kids. There was NOTHING there. Absolutely nothing. I read somewhere recently that psychologists are alarmed because kids are reporting their fathers only spend an average of 5 minutes in a one to one conversation with them, per day. My father, aside from insults, humiliations and bare ass beatings, spent less than 5 minutes in a one to one with me, all the time I was growing up.

His favorite insult was to say I was just like his brother, a psychopath--because I wouldn't cave, would do as little for him as I possibly could. I became a master of procrastination, and all other manner of 'civil disobedience' measures in the interest of my personal dignity. Nobody insults, beats or humiliates me.... Nobody. My brother told me I had the reputation within the family of being utterly fearless.

Actually...I was very fearful. I worried that he was going to seriously injure or kill me one day. Weirdly though, I would actually goad him a bit sometimes. Perhaps I wanted to see how far I could push before that little pulsating vein in his temple popped. I enjoyed angering him, causing him intense discomfort. It was war. I engaged the enemy. This was when I was 11 years old. Too funny. It had to be done. I couldn't just walk away from my house at that age and I sure as hell wasn't going to tolerate his treatment without some kind of push back.

My teen years were pretty tough. I was raped hitchhiking at 18 and slashed my wrists afterwards. I also survived an attempted murder in a back alley when I was about 19. I was almost homeless a few times while battling the opening stages of chronic fatigue syndrome. It had been misdiagnosed as being purely psychiatric. I couldn't think straight. I could barely walk a straight line. I was told I just had to "try harder". I honestly thought that prostitution was the only avenue open to me for a time, as it was something I could do lying down!!

A month after I was raped and slashed my wrists, my schizophrenic and slightly autistic sister drove us both to a mall about 20 miles from home and proceeded to take off on me. Typical. I may as well have been furniture to her. No empathy, no sympathy, no humanity in the sense we understand. But she really can't help it. I love her and feel for her.

Anyway, I provide this little vignette as an example of my father's behaviour. When I phoned him and asked him if he could please pick me up, as there were no buses he responds, "Why don't you hitchhike?" Now, you've got to understand he wasn't being callous, he was in the middle of a bridge game, entertaining and he had forgotten what had happened. That's a narcissist. That was my life.

I managed with great effort to turn things around in my twenties, but I still feel the after shocks of the first couple of decades. In my mid twenties I developed full blown chronic fatigue syndrome. Is it any f'g wonder? Prior to that I just had brain effects from it.

I finally qualified for permanent disability 12 years after the illness became full blown. Prior to that my life was work, collapse, work, collapse, etc...etc... In my late thirties I married a truly remarkable man. Kind, understanding in the simple unassuming way good men have of being understanding. He tends to get depressed and was very emotionally shut down. Being married was a blessing and a curse for both of us. Now I would define it as a pure blessing.

He gave my life structure, substance and meaning. I was deeply unfulfilled, but it was often difficult to trace the exact origin of the discontent. Was it muscle pain, poor morale, feeling unattractive? Could be any and or all. Was the total lack of sexual arousal on my part due to physical problems, psychological, lack of bonding, poor chemistry? I really didn't know. Again, maybe all of it.

Husband and I became like brother and sister. We rarely fought and have always had each other's back. He knows I want him to be as happy and unburdened as he can possibly be, that he isn't to stay home with me, when I'm not feeling well. He has to maximize his freedom for his and my sake. I have to live somewhat vicariously through him.

And this is the situation that the narc waltzed into. I had followed him, adored him from afar, on a few different forums for at least 8 years before I sent him a PM, after he vanished from one of the forums. I managed to track him down on another one and just pm'd him with a "hi, how are you?" I knew he was married and that chilled all desire. But hooo boy, he was all over me.

He said we should reveal our innermost thoughts and feelings to each other through stories from our lives. I told him I didn't have many as I'd led a fairly cloistered existence for 20 years, and prior to that it was work/collapse. Before that it was just too depressing to talk about.

He love bombed me like crazy, told me I shouldn't hold back, that I needed to write it out, talk about it, and that we were to help each other. He repeated that like a mantra. "We are here to help each other, we are here to help each other"NLP??? Uh huh...He told me he had a keen interest in NLP, so probably was a technique. I reasoned at the time, that NLP is used for both positive and negative ends. There was no way, I figured, he would ever practise any kind of induction on me as a kind of game.

He was such a beautiful person. There were some really odd idiosyncracies, but on balance, he seemed pretty perfect and he was so freaking HOT AND funny...and as it turned out---muuuucccchhh worse than my father!! My father wasn't fake. He was just an a**hole who didn't like kids. He never pretended to be anything other than what he was. He wasn't the human form of cancer that Narc was. He wasn't soul sucking parasite. He didn't present like an angel of light and mercy as the narc did; trying slowly over time to get me to drop my necessary defences, so he could move in to my heart.

We met twice, spent 8 days together, over the course of 18 months. It was bliss. Last November we talked marriage. He sent me photos of where we'd live, etc..etc.. I had gone through a hard couple of years, caring for a couple of months for my mother with dementia, buried my father and was feeling horrendous because my husband had a serious heart attack, a little over a year prior. So it was kind of like a fairy tale in one sense to feel so adored, so cherished, so understood. He was a soothing loving balm for my newly emerging tender heart, a heart that had taken such a pounding, one thing after another for over 40 years.

At the same time I have never felt more conflicted, more confused, guilty where husband was concerned. That was harsh. I was in true torment. I thought Narc was my only chance to be completely fulfilled in a relationship that was profoundly therapeutic. I would have walked off a cliff for him.

Then one day, in December, without a word of warning, it was all over. No emails, wouldn't pick up the phone. It seemed like it had all been a game. Can I push her to suicide? Can I make her leave her husband? How close can I get to that, before she discovers what's going on.

That's how it felt. I don't know what his motivations actually were. But here's the interesting part. The total and complete erasure, came just a couple of weeks after I told him that I wouldn't be taking my husband for any 50% of assets in a divorce, regardless of what the law decreed. It wouldn't be fair. Husband and I had some lousy chemistry, but we protect each other and he has provided for me. I earned a fair share through investing at home, and that was all I planned to leave with. I told him I would walk if I thought (a) his wife was being treated unfairly financially (b)if we couldn't make it work on his and my money combined. I wasn't going to take anyone for a ride.

I can't claim any real moral high ground here, other than, I wouldn't do what a lot of people would. They would take their partners for every cent they could get their hands on. I think this saved me. This is why he dumped me. The worm wanted the guy's wife and half his money. Didn't happen and never would. I had also kept my poor husband alert and aware that I was falling in love with narc. It was really hard on both of us Husband surely felt some rejection. He told me he was willing to let go with love if Narc was that therapeutic, made me that happy.

I have never endured such pain in my life. Was I humiliated, did I feel duped? REally...the grief was so intense there just wasn't room for any superfluous ego related emotion. I was retching from the betrayal, devastated by the erasure, moaning with the pain of abandonment.

The fourth day after the complete erasure, my husband emailed him that he better f'g quit playing mind games with his wife, better explain himself within 24 hours. He told him he knew my email password and narc's wife was bound to find the emails from him to me, really interesting! Narc never responded. Pride to the point of self sabotage. I convinced husband not to torture his wife any more than she had already been tortured. I immediately realized she had been victimized, too. Very much so.

After he hit "send" I said, "Oh, Honey...That is the SEXIEST thing you have EVER done!" Then we cracked a bottle of wine and had a wonderful heart to heart.

It'll never be perfect, but I have to say...my husband is a man; a strong, committed good person. I could have exchanged him for a cowardly sadistic toddler with an MBA and a driver's license.

And now...maybe you understand my desire to prank the creep. I told him that anything like the silent treatment triggered so much pain from my childhood, it's completely disabling on top of everything else. I almost enter a catatonic state. He KNEW this. We talked at length about it.

The cruelty, the callousness, tops anything, by far, my father ever did to me. Being raped by a stranger, who pulls off the road into the forest is like a pleasant forest field trip with girl guides, compared to the spiritual and emotional mauling of narcissistic/psychopathic abuse.

Am I going to get him? Yep. I have the time, the resources and no fear of retaliation. I am a fighter, and now you know why. To just roll over and let someone get away with this is just beyond the pale.

I've had a uniquely painful life. This isn't a pity party. This is a fact. I don't begrudge what I have lived through. I've tried to learn from it. If there is a college of hard knocks, there must also be a university of wrecking balls that threaten our very souls. I've risen above it. My spirit survives and thrives. It could have killed another woman, either by her own hand, or through a stress related illness. You don't mess around with people who have had to deal with several different traumas.

This bastard is NEVER going to do anything like this to another innocent victim. You don't pick up an abandoned pound puppy, love it into total trust and then gut it when it's least expecting it. He WILL pay.