A Year of Renewal and Change – and the Desire to Move Forward

Like most of the women (and men) here I was the dream supply to my narcissist. We met in July of 2012. I was running a successful design business with my husband and was adding a gallery to our endeavors. In this gallery we would feature quarterly exhibits that also featured one-night-only pop up dinners. When I shared my vision of what this would look like with a friend she said she knew the perfect chef I should partner with and so his study of me began. Our first dinner took place in January of 2013, to great accolades. I was on a high and felt a kinship with such a creative mind. Creative in a way I admired and seemed to in sync with my own creativity. We began planning the second dinner which would take place in April of 2013. For the planning meetings we would meet over coffee or lunch or sometimes after his work nights as he was chef at an area restaurant. We would catch a drink and talk among the other late night revelers.

My marriage of nearly 20 years had been slowly going doing hill for the last 10 years and seemed to accelerate even more so in the last 5. In retrospect, my husband too was a narcissist and I even remember sharing this very fact with my chef who I will call JC. JC seemed very sympathetic and told me about his previous marriage and subsequent divorce. How his recent girlfriend had accused him of cheating and had kicked him out of their apartment in January shortly after our first dinner. I started to feel a certain kinship with him as well and clearly remember wanting him to kiss me goodnight one night when I drove him back to his car. (He did not.)

We continued on with these creative endeavors through the summer and our third dinner in July of 2013. At this stage everything was nothing but business and friendship. That November JC was planning to open his own restaurant and asked me to create the branding for him which I of course happily did as a favor now that we had developed this amazing new friendship. The restaurant was set to open in late October of 2013. On October 26th I attended an event with some girlfriends that had a masquerade theme and found myself with several extra party masks and a little too much to drink. The next thing I knew I found myself texting JC to join me at the event. He said he'd love to but was out of town at a conference himself. We chatted back and forth a few times that evening and then bam, there it was, the sext. I had never received a sext from anyone, ever, and here was one from JC. The man who I has secretly wished would have kissed me 7 months earlier. I was thrown a little off. I texted back and asked him when he had crossed over to the "dark side' and he replied back in March when you drove me to my car. WTF? How did he know. Neither one of us had said or done anything to acknowledge the attraction.

Over the next few weeks we found ourselves texting more, no more sexts but clearly things had shifted. He asked me if I was looking for something public or private and I answered private as I thought about just how I was going to finally find the strength to leave my unhappy marriage. He all too willingly agreed with this I thought to protect me. He also said that he thought that our relationship would become more than just physical. (At this point it had not yet even been physical). But that was when he had me hooked. Here was this amazingly creative man who wanted me and wanted a relationship with me. How could I be so lucky?

One night a few days later I stopped by his restaurant after hours as I was just next door with some friends. The power had gone out and he was there waiting for it to go back on and keeping an eye on the freezers and food. We talked for awhile and finally the power came back on. He made no attempt to make any kind of move physically on me. We simply talked and he walked me out to my car. I finally said "well I hope at least we can hug each other goodbye" and we did, that was it. Hmm, now that left me even more confused. I texted him on the way home and we both joked about how awkward that had been. He said he was waiting for me to make the first move and I told him I was waiting for him to make the first move. About a week later we ended up at his apartment and talked over drinks. One thing led to another and we found ourselves kissing and undressing each other. But we did not have sex. I could not do it until I had separated from husband which I did 4 days later. We then met again 4 days after that and it was an explosion of everything I could have imagined and desired in a physical relationship. It was everything I did not get/have with my husband and it became a drug.

Due to the fact that our relationship was a secret (as I mentioned earlier, which I thought was to protect me) we did not date in public. We would hang out at his apartment or my gallery and explore each other in so many amazing ways. I brought my dinner groups to his now open restaurant and brought him gifts of champagne, a small hand made plaque with his logo on it and my heart (which I had to keep hidden). The truth is I did not keep this hidden. Since the beginning I shared the details of our relationship with my closest female friends. They knew from the beginning and have been with me all the way along this crazy journey.

It was right around new years eve when I started to notice things change. I saw the champagne bottle I gave him on a new years eve post of facebook and was a little hurt that he did not share it with me. One of my friends and I stopped in a week or so later at the restaurant and ended up having a conversation with one of the waiters about new years eve. We shared what we did with him and he told us what they had all done that night at the restaurant and after midnight... which included a group outing to another restaurant for late night drinks, he named several names including JC and then said "and JC's girlfriend". I thought WTF? I did not even wait to hear another word, I tuned to my friend and said "I'm leaving" and walked straight out of the restaurant. Without saying goodbye, nothing. The texts started coming in, "where are you" "why did you leave" "I hope everything is OK"... Somehow it ended up with him telling me it was a girl from his hometown he had recently reconnected with. She lived in Indiana. Then a light bulb went off in my head. He had told me of planned trips to Indiana to visit a friend. Most of the time the weather was uncooperative and I remember texting him to be careful if he ended up traveling.

He and I would have long text conversations (which by now was the only way we communicated except when we saw each other in person). He made it clear that we were just FWB. I so desperately wanted to maintain our physical relationship that I agreed to this even though I knew I was in love with him. This began the repeated attempts to end things with him. I would say I needed more out of a relationship and he would say that was all he had right now to offer anyone. He did not have the time for a girlfriend because of work, etc. But little things caught in my mind. How did he have 5+ hours to drive to Indiana? So our affair continued on like this. We would hook-up once or twice a week and every time I would allow my heart to get hurt. I started to keep a calendar of the days we met up and the days he did not respond to my messages and sure enough there was a pattern. I was his Thursday and Saturday night on the way home from work fix and he would disappear Sunday through Tuesday. On these days he would hibernate in his apartment as narcisssists do. They need to recover from all of the people they really dislike in the world. Recharge and put their masks back on.

I would say I knew this is who he was since about February of 2014 and I accepted it. Maybe it is because I am all of those things that make me a perfect supply. I knew we would never be anything more than FWB but I had convinced myself that was good enough for me. The physical was so dynamic so unlike anything I had ever experienced I was addicted. We would even have conversations about our mutual addiction. So he was never the narc who told me how much he loved and needed me (except for sex), he never promised me anything, he told me truths (which turned out to be missing key details) and I fought myself to leave the relationship and move on every couple of weeks.

And then the craziest thing happened, at the end of September he suddenly went public on facebook with his new relationship. He posted it in his status like a big huge announcement. JC is in a relationship with LMC. WTF? He did not even have the nerve to tell me. I don't remember much other than being heartbroken and trying to understand how this could be if he was still sleeping with me? It again disconnected from him. And then two weeks later the bomb fell, he was now engaged!! WTF? WTF? I asked him outright if this was true, I must have asked him 10 times before he finally admitted it was true and said he was in love with her. She was someone her knew from high school (again someone out of his distant past he had reconnected with) and even more crazy she lives in Mexico!!!

So she is engaged to this man she has NO CLUE about who has been cheating on her with me (and who knows how many other women) for months. Turns out they reconnected in May and have seen each other 3-4 times between now and then. So I'm in shock. How can he profess to be in love with her. How can he sleep with me while he is in this relationship with her (I did not know about her until late September). But even since then we have been together twice, neither of which I am none too proud of but in a way I feel like she is the other woman, I have been the mistress for over a year now. But I know, it is not me he is engaged to. I would not wish that on anyone, as I know and have known for almost 9 months just who he is. He is a sociopathic narcissist.

So that's where things stand. I am addicted to our sex. I am afraid of not finding anyone else to meet these needs for me as well as offer the creative thinking and conversations we share. I am afraid of being vulnerable with someone new. He is thrilling and comfortable and even engaged he is not going away. So that leaves this up to me, which I know ALL TOO WELL. It is something I have tried to do countless times. And every time my desire to be "friends" with him gets in the way. I know we can not be just friends. We can not be anything to each for a very long time. I need to leave, this time for good.

My closing thoughts are on the girl, the fiance. I want to tell her. I want to warn her. I want her to know. I am afraid she is going to leave her entire life as she knows it in Mexico and come here in two months to be with him. She is so in love with who she thinks he is. But she will get hurt. And it seems like this just needs to unfold for her, for them. As I will be nothing but the crazy jilted lover. No one would ever believe what I say is true, he is that good at the game he plays. My friends all know and support me in so many ways and for this I am so thankful but now I need to love myself as much as they love me. Tears are falling as I know that once again I am facing the truth of who he is, what we can never be and just how much it still hurts and breaks my heart. He has so much potential, he is so lost and he is so broken, I have nothing but tears and sympathy for him as well and all of the other women who cross his path.

Here's to the end of 2014 when my divorce becomes final and the beginning of everything new and loving myself in 2015.