Had Enough's Story!

Here it goes! This is my story with my Narcissist!
I’m not very good at writing and expressing myself, but I will give it a go and see how much I can describe.
To give you a brief background about myself I am from a Middle Eastern origin and do not live in the US/UK or Europe. Surprisingly enough reading through the book I learnt how narcissism is not any different in any culture, religion, background, etc. A narcissist is simply a narcissist no matter where he was raised and what his background is!

My unfortunate story stared 5 years ago when I met my narcissist, it was absolutely love at first sight, extreme passion, spent every second of the day together and heavily enjoyed each other’s company. The first warning sign which I ignorantly ignored was few months into our relationship, he hacked my facebook account to read my emails. He found an email from a guy he was jealous of, who had just sent me a very normal “hello message” and I replied very casually and put in a wink smiley somewhere in the reply . I was not interested in the other guy what so ever and only had eyes for him. He went ballistic and started accusing me of flirting behind his back, I put up a fight at first, but being scared to loose him I stupidly gave in and started apologizing and asking to be given another chance. It was hell, but we eventually got back together, but for sometime he continued to bring it up!
I am sooo ashamed of myself for letting this happen, I am such a well educated women with a fantastic career, very high moral standards, and great supporting family. I had so much self respect, I do not know what got over me, and allowed myself to be treated this way.
We continue our relationship, for another year, we have our on/off breakups mostly because he is not serious about commitment, and I wanted a serious relationship. So I decide to leave him and move on with my life. That’s when he comes back with a romantic marriage proposal and of course I’m suckered into accepting. It was like all my dreams had come true.

I introduce him to my parents, they have no major objections, he seemingly seems compatible and a good match. So we start the wedding preparations, which were a nightmare because he hardly would help out, and just create tension, but I was too excited to care. There were of course other signs through out this period, but again I was too blinded to notice.
After we got married that is when I started to feel something was not right but I was not able to put my finger on it or label it with a name which now I know is narcissism.

His behavior was confusing me because he loved me and was attached to me in an obsessive way, I was flattered at first how attached he was to me, how he needed me by his side every moment of the day, the minute I’d get back from work he would shower me with kisses and hugs, and I was not allowed to leave his sight. In my head I would keep saying this must be every girl’s dream. However if we had the slightest argument, he would suddenly change faces and swear at me and call me and my family the most horrible names. For no apparent reason, it would be over something very trivial not even worth mentioning.

He had also started isolating me from my friends, refusing to socialize, after making plans with people, last minute he would ask me to cancel because he doesn’t feel like seeing them or decided that he doesn’t like them anymore. I start making up excuses all the time. He evens shows a lot of selfishness in our intimate life, and would never care to satisfy me. It would all be about him. Things continue for another year, but I’m still not sure things are so bad, because he has this wonderful loving side that I’ve never seen another man have. I keep living a lie, and creating a false wonderful image of him in front of our family and friends.

The second year when he got more comfortable in his surroundings, that is when things got the worse, and he exposed him self and his controlling abusive ways. He would do things such as:

• Empty a full bottle of water over me when we are arguing
• Spit at me for saying something he doesn’t agree with
• Have huge anger fits and yell at me, if I gave him the wrong directions to a place or anything went wrong in our day, that I had no control over
• Terrify me for choosing an aisle that wasn’t the fastest moving when doing the groceries
• Blame me for everything! If something is wrong in his life, it was my fault
• Hardly ever help out with the house (although I work much longer hours)
• No concept of unconditional respect, if I made what he considered a mistake, I am to be punished
• Destroyed my self confidence, kept saying he is stuck being married to me, wish he never married me and married someone else.
• Kept saying I do not add anything to his life, which is not true
• Would threaten me with divorce, he would say if you do this I will divorce you
• Throwing stuff at me and breaking stuff around the house
• Financially abused me, made sure all my savings are in account in his name
• He always felt I was his property, something he owned and can do anything he wants with it
• Extreme jealousy and general controlling behavior
• Unrealistic large ego
• Never content or satisfied, always wants more
• Had no privacy, would always search though my phone
• If I wanted to meet friends must always leave very early, so he never has to spend a minute alone at home
• And much much more

Given all this I started pulling away from him, but still didn’t tell anyone anything, I was too afraid of the idea of divorce and my family finding out. I am an only daughter and extremely loved and protected, I knew they would lose it if they found out I was being treated this way.

And then 6 months ago, he was recklessly driving my car, and got into a car accident which was his fault completely because of his horrible attitude. My expensive sports car was destroyed from the back. I was very supportive although it was my car, and said it’s OK don’t worry about it, we will sort it out. We then have to go to the police station to sort out some papers, we wait for sometime then were asked to come back another day.

We go two days later, outside the police station he asks me for a copy of the documentation needed, I couldn’t find them, and he goes insane because of the time wasted finding them, one person enters the police station before us, and it means we will have to wait a bit longer. He always has a ridiculous sense of time urgency, although we have no where to go to afterwards. He just goes insane mad and starts punching the steering wheel and hits the front glass mirror and completely breaks the middle mirror and the front glass. And drives back home and tells me to go to the police now and sort this out and leaves me trembling in the car. I have never been so scared before in my life, I have no clue what to do! So I decide to call his mum, who I was on very good terms with before and she had always told me if you need anything contact me. It was the very first time in our 2.5 years of marriage that I tell anyone anything. I call her up and tell her what had happened. She and his dad speak to him and I think it is over. He calls me and asks me to go back home, I find him waiting for me at the door, he pulls me by the hair and tells me to call his dad and say everything is OK, all that while holding me by my hair. After I do that, he starts slapping me in the face and punching me in the stomach and throwing me to the floor, calling me a traitor for telling on him. I gather a few things and run to my parents place, and terrified I do not tell them anything other than we had a fight. My dad calls him up to sort things out, not knowing the truth, and he comes picks me up and I go home.

Things never got back to normal from that day, few weeks later, he continues with his ways, I just had enough and decide to leave him. I go to my parents place and tell them everything! They were beyond shocked, because they had loved him and treated him like their son. I didn’t want a divorce at the time because I still loved him, and believed he will change!
In the process I realized how much I had changed, and how unhappy I was. I felt like I lost my soul, my identity, my strength, my confidence, everything that made me a unique wonderful woman before. I was always scared of his reaction, I lived in fear of what he might do. I used to have a beautiful spark before and now only sadness is left in my eyes. I lost so much weight and looked physically ill. It was not a healthy way to live, I deserved basic rights of love and respect.

We separated for four months and he continued his unhealthy characteristics and just asking me to come back with no recognition of his faults. Just come back! After much thinking and long nights up crying and feeling so sad for myself, I ask for a divorce, he fights it and starts promising to change, but I decide to be strong and move on with my life. He actually even begs me to stay and it breaks my heart to see him this way, because I do not want to harm him, but decision was final. We have been divorced two weeks now. It is very difficult because I do miss him a lot of the times, we had great memories as well, he has been in my life every second of the past 5 years. And sometimes I think what if he really has changed and I missed that opportunity. I then try to remind myself how horribly he treated me and how I never felt security with him. I deserve unconditional love and respect. I should have never allowed myself to fall to such a predator.

I hope with time I will learn to love again and put this nightmare behind me and let go of any feelings I have left for him.