Tag: trauma

Was I Dating Another Narcissist?

Photo by Shifa Sarguru on Unsplash

After being married to a covert narcissist for sixteen years, it took me some time before I was ready to get back out and date. I wanted to focus on myself and heal from the psychological damage prior to letting anyone new into my life. I was very cautious with the men I met, paying close attention to how they spoke and treated me during our initial interactions.

My Unicorn

I tried to protect myself from making another mistake of dating a narcissist by purposely not talking about my likes, dislikes, wants or dreams to prevent men from mirroring me to make themselves look compatible. When I finally met someone of interest, I asked him a series of well thought out questions for two weeks straight. Questions like, what do you do when you are angry, what’s the main thing you want to accomplish in the next five years and what are your love languages? As I got to know him, he seemed very unique. Different from any man I met in the past from the way he thought and analyzed things. I began to call him my “unicorn”. The more questions I asked, the more I was drawn in by his appeal.

He told me he was a “giver” and “confident” man. Not confident in an arrogant way, but confident in himself and what he brought to a relationship. He was a “giver” in how he liked to treat the women in his life and his understanding that you need to constantly date a person while in a relationship to keep the connection and spark. All great things that lured me in.

Our Relationship

I let my guard down. This can and will happen depending on the situation. As the weeks progressed, the conversations became somewhat boring. I stopped bombarding him with questions and he didn’t spark up intellectual conversations. We lived in two different states, therefore, the phone was our only means of staying connected. I tried to include him in things going on in my life to get his valued opinion. If I didn’t specifically ask for his guidance or opinion, he didn’t engage in the conversation or he would change the subject. Even in conversations where I explicitly expressed something was bothering me, he didn’t engage. A characteristic I chose to let slip by in the beginning. However, I began to notice how he loved to talk about himself and his day. If I didn’t actively engage in the information he was sharing, he expressed that I wasn’t showing interest in him or his well being.

Red Flags

He gave me an engraved jewelry box two months into our dating. I thought it was a sweet gesture. However, when I received another engraved jewelry box six months later for Christmas, I realized he didn’t know anything about what I liked or disliked. I don’t wear jewelry. When I questioned him on what he knew about me, he got silent for a moment and then replied “no”. He immediately tried to rectify his response by spewing out a number of irrelevant things he claimed I liked which were all things he “liked”. It was very apparent at that moment that he knew nothing about me nor did he care.

Additional red flags that arose over the course of our relationship were the instances of gaslighting. If I expressed certain things he said were mean or hurtful, he immediately replied with, “you took it wrong”. When expressing my feelings on how he made me feel low or invalidated, he told me what I did to him (blameshifting). He also couldn’t handle constructive criticism and often raised his voice in frustration when I simply questioned aspects of things he brought up in conversation for further understanding. However, the biggest red flag was his use of the silent treatment and he used it often. The silent treatment is a common tactic used by narcissists to control and punish people when they feel slighted.

Was I dating another narcissist?

We didn’t date long enough for me to make a full assessment based on prior experience; however, I did notice enough red flags to say he definitely exhibited narcissistic traits.

The challenge you have to face in this scenario is two-fold:

  1. Are you being vigilant enough to see the red flags as they are raised?
  2. Once you see them, what will you choose to do or what action will you take?

Hopefully, you won’t have to go through every dating experience after surviving a narcissist living “on alert”. However, paying attention to signals, and trusting your new, stronger, more aware and confident self, means you’ll be better equipped if you do encounter a narcissistic personality again. You now know what it looks like, feels like and what you are most certain of — is that you will not let anyone break you down again.

Was it My Fault, An Abuse Survivor’s Story and Guide to Navigating Narcissistic Red Flags. Click here to order.

My Transformation Out of Narcissistic Abuse

sad woman in despair
Photo by Anh Nguyen

My Soulmate 

In 2002, I married my soulmate — the man I dreamt about meeting since I was a little girl. The man who was perfectly in sync with my thoughts and feelings. The man who knew just what to say and how to say it to make me feel like the most special woman in the world.

Slowly, that loving and considerate man began to change.  I was married to a charming, charismatic man to the outside world who demeaned and abused behind closed doors. My husband became manipulative and controlling, making me feel guilty for any and everything that went wrong in his life or made him feel devalued. He began to demand all of my time and grew angry if he didn’t receive it. I stopped doing activities with friends to please him. I began walking on eggshells, thinking about every action and choosing my words carefully to avoid conflict. If I didn’t do what he wanted, when he wanted, or how he wanted it done, I was belittled and called selfish. Whenever I expressed things he was doing to me in the relationship that invalidated my feelings, he turned the conversation around to what I did to him. It was always about him, his wants and his needs. He was never satisfied no matter how much I tried to please him and everything was continuously my fault. The real truth about him was that he didn’t become this man.  He was already like this, masking his true self when we met. 

Lack of Empathy

Whenever I was sick and required medical attention, he was angry with me complaining he had to take me to urgent care or the ER never showing any compassion for my well being.  Yet, he demanded I show empathy and take care of his every need when he was sick. He expected rewards and compliments for taking care of his children. If I decided to treat myself to a hair day or nail day, I was called a horrible mother for thinking of myself and leaving him to watch the children.

I hit my lowest point when my husband had an affair and decided he didn’t need me anymore. An affair he blamed me for because he didn’t feel “loved”. His verbal abuse ramped up to nightly rants in an effort to force me into signing a separation agreement I didn’t agree with. I lost eleven pounds during this time. I couldn’t eat because my stomach was a roller coaster not knowing what each day would entail, I couldn’t sleep because he kept me up all night ranting, and I couldn’t think straight due to sleep deprivation. I had to threaten to call the police one night during one of his rages because he just wouldn’t let up no matter how much I asked him to stop. He told me he was wasting his time being with me.  I served my purpose and he was ready to move on. I was a selfish, vindictive bitch for forcing him to stay when he didn’t want to be with me.  

When the mistress decided to leave and return to her husband, my husband mourned her for months often crying in bed at night. He began to accuse me of cheating. He constantly complained about the number of texts and phone calls I received to the point that I resorted to always having my phone on vibrate. I began to call my family and friends during my commute to and from work to connect with the outside world. He checked my phone records and called back numbers on my phone he didn’t recognize. If I was five minutes late coming home from work, I was automatically accused of being with another man and kept up all night having a senseless argument over seeing a man that didn’t exist. 

I lived in mental chaos for years until I looked at myself in the mirror one day and didn’t recognize the woman I had become. I was frail and weak with no identity. I lost myself conforming to a man who repeatedly emotionally and verbally  abused me.

The Transformation

After 16 years, I made the decision to leave the relationship. I was once a strong, independent, ambitious and vivacious woman who became mentally broken and living with PTSD. I wanted a safe environment for my children; and I wanted “me” back.  The moment I stepped foot into my tiny two bedroom apartment, was life altering. I closed my eyes as tears rolled down my face in joy while I stood in silence enjoying the peacefulness of freedom. It was the most freeing and uplifting experience of my life as if 200 pounds had been lifted from my shoulders and I could breathe again. 

As I collected my thoughts and cleared my head over the days that followed leaving my abuser, I began to devise a plan to heal my mind, body, and spirit. 

Here are some of the tools I used to identify, address and overcome my situation. 

  • I began to read and educate myself on the signs and symptoms of emotional and verbal abuse putting a name to what I experienced 
  • I discovered therapeutic journaling as a way to heal from my experience. Performing a mental brain dump of my entire relationship often crying as I put words to paper
  • I saw a nutritionist and got on an eating plan to heal my body from years of chronic stress
  • I started an exercise plan to assist with my mental health and mood
  • I began meditating ten minutes before bed every night to clear my mind for restful sleep. Something I wasn’t accustomed to getting
  • I made a list of ten affirmations to state every morning in the mirror before leaving for work to rebuild my self esteem and confidence 
  • I wrote a list of goals I wanted to accomplish over the next year to begin making up for all the years of lost time
  • I created a list of activities I wanted to do over the next six months
  • I scheduled time with family and friends to reconnect and spend quality time

Was it My Fault, An Abuse Survivor’s Story and Guide to Navigating Narcissistic Red Flags. Click here to order.