TheTruthWillSetYouFree's long story

My story is very similar to everyone’s here. I was 25 and at the tail-end of a 7 year relationship with a nice, normal guy when the narc first reached out to me. He was someone I had gone to school with when I was younger and actually had a crush on in elementary school. I lost track of him after he dropped out of high school to join the military. We were friends on Facebook, but never interacted until he started being heavily active on my page by commenting and liking my posts, then eventually messaging me and asking for my phone number. At the time, he was at the Wounded Warriors inpatient program a few states away for PTSD and a brain injury sustained while in the military. He began texting me constantly and calling me every night, talking for hours about his experiences in the military and his past. He told me within the next month he would be getting out of the WW program and coming back home –he wanted to meet me. I soon finally ended the relationship I was in with the normal guy. We agreed we had grown apart over the years and needed to move on.

So when the narc finally came home, I agreed to meet him and from that moment, it was magical. I felt like it was love at first sight. He wanted to spend every minute with me and treated me like a queen. He would parade me around in front of his friends and family and would always comment about how he didn’t know how he got so lucky to get a girl like me. I was wary about making things ‘official’ with him since I had just gotten out of a relationship, but he basically pressured me into it by saying he needed a title with our relationship or else he would see other girls. I did make him wait a few months before the relationship got physical and he always said he had never worked so hard to win a girl before.

The biggest red flag was he was still married. When he was 23, he had married a girl in another state whose brother was with him in the military. They had only been together a few months (long distance) when they had a courthouse wedding. She has a child from a previous relationship and together they had another child within only about a year of being married. But soon their relationship disintegrated and they ended up separating – with him kicking her out and her moving back to her home state with her two kids. They had been separated and had not seen each other in almost 2 years by the time I came on the scene. When I asked why they were not divorced, he said it was because he wanted his step son to continue to get his military benefits but once either of them found someone else, they would pull the trigger on the divorce. She confirmed this for me over the phone– that their marriage was over. Since they separated, he had dated SEVERAL girls… none seriously, though. I did learn he has slept with hundreds of women in his life… normally that would deter me, but it didn’t with him. Before him, I only had two partners – both of which were men I had been in serious relationships for years. To him, I was the Madonna.

A few months into us dating, he got into a fight with his family (dad and step mom) and they kicked him out. I allowed him to move in with me temporarily until he was able to find an apartment. He lived with me for a month, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. He is “retired/disabled” from the military because of his injuries so he is unable to work. While I worked every day, he stayed home and did the house work and helped his grandmother out in her yard. Everything seemed perfect. Then he was able to get his own apartment. Within a couple of weeks of him moving out, the shit hit the fan. I knew when he was in high school he had problems with drugs and that was why he had joined the military – but I thought he had straightened out. Well he ended up running into some of his old drug buddies at a gas station. I didn’t think anything of it until he started ignoring my calls and texts. He had given me a key to his apartment, so one night when he didn’t answer, I showed up unannounced. I found him and one of his old army buddies in the kitchen smoking meth. METH! I couldn’t believe it. I was so livid, I (stupidly.. hindsight is 20/20.. I knew nothing about drugs until this point) started hitting him and smacking his face and telling him I wasn’t going to let him ruin his life. I threw his key at him and told him it was over.

A few days later he showed up at my apartment in tears over what happened and begging me to take him back. After a very long discussion, I said I would give him another chance, but he had to get help for his drug use and if he did it again then I was done (again, I was ignorant to drugs at this point). Well, two weeks later the exact same thing happened again. I was over it for good. I ended up messaging his “ex” wife on Facebook to ask about his past drug abuse and if she had to deal with it, and that completely opened up a Pandora’s box of shit. She told me EVERYTHING. She told me to run fast. She said when they were together, she came home one night with her two kids and he was there with another woman he had met off the Internet. He told her their marriage was over and he wanted her to leave. She said he and this other girl slept out in a vehicle outside their family home that night because she ended up locking them out. Then she went backwards from that point and told me all the dirt from their relationship – that he had been seeing another girl in his own state the entire time they were together long distance and he had triangulated them against each other. She said she felt like she won a prize when he finally picked her and quickly asked her to marry him. She still Facebook stalks the other girl to see what she is up to (she is now married with a child). Then soon after they got married, he ended up giving her an STD because he cheated on her with another girl who was also in the military. She said he would leave for days at a time and go on drug binges, then show back up like nothing had happened. He was protected by the military and all of his comrades. She said he was addicted to porn, had profiles on DATING SITES and was talking to other girls online and exchanging nude photos. She said he blew through money on stupid things like strippers, drugs and motorcycles with no regard and they were always struggling financially. And yet she stayed through all of this until HE finally kicked her out. She said she has been jealous of me because he seemed to treat me far better than he ever treated her, but she told me he will suck the life out of me and I need to stay away or else I will become a shell of a person like she had become.

And I did stay away, although he texted and called me all the time telling me he missed me and loved me for about 4 months until he became sober and came crawling back. I had a horrible time during those months – I lost several family members, including one to suicide, so I was very vulnerable. HOWEVER. He told me he was finally going to move to the same state as his “ex” wife and child so he could be with his child who was 4 years old at the time. He had told me when I first met him that this was his plan. After a happy month together, he moved across the country. He said he wanted to try long distance with me, but that lasted about a week before I realized he was spending every single second with his “ex” wife.

Even though all of that was bad, the nightmare didn’t start for me until after he was gone. About a month after we ended it, he reached back out to me and said he loved and missed me. A few days later, I got a message from his “ex” wife at 2 am saying he was currently strung out on meth and laid out in the street while she and her kids watched from the car and she didn’t know what to do. I told her to call the police, but she didn’t. Then she told me that they were back together and trying to work things out. Uh what??? After she had told me for the last year that things were over between them and she never wanted to go through that hell again.

It has been over a year since then, and during that year it has been a hell of triangulation. He has pitted me and his WIFE against each other multiple times. Whenever I feel like I have finally let go and go no contact for a month or two, he finds a new way to contact me and suck me back in because I feel so desperately in love with him. He came back home to visit his family this past summer and came to my house. We ended up having sex, and after that time he started love bombing like never before. He went back home a few days later, but kept up messaging me. I soon found out that he has his wife were actually “together” during that time… so he cheated on his wife with me. I confronted him, and he said he couldn’t help himself because he is in love with me and SHE knows it.. but it’s just convenient to stay with her because they live in the same city and share a child. He said she knows that if he didn’t have to move because of the child they are, that he and I would still be together. Fast forward a while, and he convinces me to try a long distance relationship with him again. I’m like.. why the hell not, I don’t have any other prospects. He convinced me I should move to where he was so we could start a life together.. because things had been pretty great when he lived together before. I was sitting on my couch one night when his “ex” wife starts blowing up my phone. She starts texting me to tell me that she and “my boyfriend” have been sleeping together the entire time we have been ‘in a relationship’ and that I’m a dirty whore for sleeping with a married man and I will be alone for the rest of my life. Just really out of line things. He didn’t deny it.. but again, said he was sleeping with her just for the convenience and because she is an easy lay. He yelled at her for days and blamed her for meddling in our relationship since the beginning, which she admitted she had been trying to break us apart since he first moved there and realized she still had feelings for him.

After a few more back and forths, he finally went silent for a couple of weeks. I got a message from his now wife saying he was bad off on drugs and had decided to enter a rehab. She said she wanted me to know because she knows I love him and he loves me. But she said once he got out of rehab, they had decided they would start a new life together and move in together and be a family after all. She said this was his last time to prove he could be a good husband because she is getting older and needs to take care of her kids. I was devastated. I wanted to die. But I accepted it and I moved on. Until three weeks later, I got a message from him out of the blue saying he had busted out of rehab and he loves me and still thinks of me and yadda yadda. I called him out on being back with his wife and he said “Well I don’t think it’s actually going to go anywhere, yet again. She knows I love you, but we can’t be together because of the circumstances.” I felt validated that her stupid fairy tale wasn’t working out and he hadn’t changed. Until a few days later, he told me they were getting a house together and he really wanted it to work this time. And that is where I am today. Feeling stupid and used, like a pawn in their sick relationship together.

He is a diagnosed narcissist. It says so in his military medical papers. I didn’t know what that meant, though. I have been seeing a therapist for the last 6 months who has really helped me get my confidence back, but I can’t help feeling like shit about it all. Mad at myself for allowing it to happen and falling for his advances to win me back. I feel bitter and feel like I’ll never have a relationship again because I can’t trust my own instincts. I have tried no contact so many times, but I have thought of him every single day since I first met him two years ago. It’s hard to let go of the fantasy of someone I thought was my “one.” I just live with the constant fear that one he day he may actually change and become the man I always dreamed of.. only for me to be left out. I know he won’t change.. I just need to accept it.

Sorry for the novel. Thanks to anyone who read all of this. It felt good typing it all out. I have been reading on this site and others about narcissism, but it just hasn’t seemed to really sunk in yet. I am hoping this time it sticks. I want to move on with my life.