Silvergirl79's story
Silvergirl79's story
It's been awhile since my narcissist broke up with me, but I didn't really know he was a narcissist until I found this site today. I met him in January of 2009 through mutual friends. He's in his mid-30's, handsome, and I thought I'd died & gone to heaven. This guy has a résumé that would impress anyone, he's a West Point grad, a captain in the Army, a state trooper, a pilot... very highly motivated in every aspect of his life. I couldn't believe that such an amazing guy was still single... and mine! He traveled great distances to see me (I'm working on my M.S. degree in a college town), went out of his way to do nice things for me, and constantly complimented me. I was beautiful, smart, sexy... and he was so lucky to be with me. I had been divorced and single for 6+ years when I met him, and he was the first guy I ever let get involved with my kids - who promptly fell in love with him, too. He met my parents, my family, my friends and charmed the pants off all of them. Everyone was so happy that my time had finally come. There was only one close friend of mine who wasn't impressed with him. He knew she was one of my best friends, but when she tried to friend him on Facebook, he denied her request. He told me it was because he really didn't know her. She said that if he truly cared about me and wanted to get to know the people that were important to me, he would not have declined. Over time, he declined every single one of my friends that friend requested him. I think he always knew that I was temporary and wanted to keep it simple by not integrating his life with mine in any way. There were a lot of little red flags along the way, things I should have picked up on, but I was so infatuated that I didn't see them. Like, he could never really, intensely look into my eyes. Even at the height of the romance, he couldn't do it. I once asked him why and he told me it was because I was just too beautiful (even at the time, I thought that was BS, but I let him get away with it). I can remember laying on his couch watching a movie and every time I would turn around and look at him, he'd close his eyes and smile. Any mention of feelings, he'd joke that he was going to "get scared and run for the hills". Not wanting to make him uncomfortable, I kept the feelings to myself and just assumed that eventually we'd have that talk. He'd often regale me with heroic tales of what he had done at work, and a couple of times I followed up on the police reports and couldn't find proof that those events had actually happened. It seemed odd, but I still trusted him. After about 6 months, all of his compliments stopped. When I asked him why, he acted like he hadn't noticed. It was also my first long-distance relationship and I'm extremely busy with grad school, so I attributed it to those things. We'd see each other a couple times a month and talk/text daily. But the last two times I saw him, something felt different. In bed, where he was once a voracious lover, it seemed that he was treating me like his sister. His emails, which were few and far between, seemed more like they were from a business associate than a boyfriend. Where we had once texted literally around the clock, he suddenly stopped responding and would tell me that he forgot his phone at the house... when I knew for a fact that the thing was practically glued to his hip all the time. After we had established a certain level of communication (which was basically talking & texting off & on around the clock b/c we worked different shifts), all of a sudden he started accusing me of checking in on him all the time and told me that my behavior was very unbecoming. I was blown away since I wasn't contacting him any more than I always had. In fact, he was the one that used to contact me all the time. It seems that the minute he finally won me over, he no longer wanted me. The last time we actually saw each other when we were dating, we shared a bottle of wine and things seemed great (which in hindsight was probably because of the wine). After 8.5 months of dating, I dropped the L word. And the very next day, I got dumped. Not only that, he ended ALL communication, even though I begged for an explanation. I could not possibly begin to comprehend what had just happened. I was beyond devastated for months and months. I could barely function, I cried all the time in front of my kids and I almost dropped out of grad school (I'm on a full scholarship... I almost walked away because of HIM!). I felt like I'd just lost the love of my life. In reality, this guy was a total jerk, but all I could think of was how much I loved him & how I'd never feel that way about anyone again. About a week ago, I saw him randomly, we both happened to be a in a completely different town in the same store, at the same time. He saw me, too, and practically ran out. It was just like getting dumped all over again. One of my friends told me I needed to take the reins on my own life and stop letting this guy affect me so much. I came across another blog (Getting Past Your Past - http://gettingpastyourpast.wordpress.com/) that talked about mistaking grief for love. This seemed incomprehensible. How could I possibly mistake those two very different emotions? And yet, that's exactly what I was doing. Crazy as this sounds, all of a sudden I realized that I didn't actually love him as much as I thought I did. It was that simple. From that blog, I linked to this one and read the welcome page, which essentially outlines the definition of a narcissist. And for the first time, I realized that's exactly what this guy was. It always was about him and he was all about getting attention and having me stroke his ego. In less than a week, I've made more strides towards healing than I've been able to make in months. I feel like myself again; progress is good.
Girl on the Side
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Thanks for sharing
Thanks
Don't let go that truth