Invisible Red Flags

I've been thinking a lot lately about all of the red flags I missed (or worse, chose to ignore). They were there from the very beginning. Looking back, it's very clear that he was only ever using me to help his career. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but perhaps sharing these subtle (and glaringly obvious) things I overlooked will help someone else to see clearly.

The Business Meeting 
When I was introduced to my now soon-to-be-ex-husband, the VERY first thing he said to me was "Oh, you're American? I love Americans!" I was on vacation in Europe, and used to being the strange American who spoke only English, so to hear someone say that, in English, was refreshing and immediately intriguing. But what I now realize is that the reason he "loved Americans" was because he wanted to be one (I realize how American-centric and patriotic this sounds, but I assure you, I'm one of the least patriotic Americans out there. I don't think we are the center of the world, and I don't think that everyone wants to come here to take our jobs...but in this case, he had made it his plan to come to America YEARS before I met him, unbeknownst to me, and I was a shining opportunity for this to happen for him). When I was doing his greencard application for him (naturally--he wouldn't do it himself, after all!), I kept coming across interviews he'd given to magazines talking about how much he wanted a career in America, how his dream to was to work in Hollywood, and how his dream vacation would be a roadtrip across America. As our marriage was crumbling, one of his acquaintances from acting school confided in me that when he was studying in London, he was unconcerned with mastering the British accent and solely focused on learning the American accent, because he was determined to work in America.

What's more, our very first conversation established that I was in a position to be able to help him. I introduced myself as a writer, director and producer and that I worked in entertainment business management (all of which was true). He was an actor. It was like I was handing him a golden ticket to what he wanted for his career, and since all narcopaths are completely self-serving, that alone was enough to make him pursue me with vigor. In hindsight, it's no coincidence that his discarding of me began at exactly the same time I began interviewing for jobs outside of the entertainment industry. If I no longer had my professional contacts, I was of little use to him. And it was one month from the time I started my new job (in the tech industry) to when he left me, saying we had "nothing in common, and no future together." Curious timing, isn't it?

As we got to know each other more in the days and weeks that followed, his conversation was focused on how much he wanted to live in America, and how he'd been thinking of moving there. Of course, I was smitten, so I was thrilled by the prospect of him moving to my country! He asked me if I needed a roommate. I said we could figure something out. He was outright telling me that he was looking at Masters degrees in America because he wanted to be here so much, but I thought that maybe I had been the catalyst to make him want to be here because he wanted to be with me.  It's sickening now to realize that THE ONLY REASON HE WAS WITH ME WAS TO HAVE A CHANCE AT ACTING IN AMERICA.

Three months into our relationship, we were already discussing marriage, and he came to visit me. On day three of that visit, we got into an argument. I don't even remember what it was about, but I remember saying something to the effect of "I don't feel good about this." There were warning signs going off in my body. I felt uncomfortable somehow, but couldn't pinpoint it. I just remember feeling off. This set him off (it was the first time I'd ever seen him get angry). He said he would just leave. I didn't want him to leave--I wanted to talk about whatever it was that was upsetting me. Naturally, that didn't happen, and I thought I should just let it go and it would blow over. The next day, he told me that the night before had "set us back" and that "all future bets were off." This was his way of keeping me hooked. I begged for us to go back to the way we were, sure that we could get past whatever it was. Once I did that, things were fine. His plan was back in motion.

His final words to me when we were at the airport for him to go back to his country were "I came here to see if I should take this to the next level, and I think I should." Very businesslike for someone supposedly madly in love with me. It struck me as odd, and as if he'd been planning, but again, I was madly in love, and just excited that he wanted to take it to the next level with me! And after he DID move here, and had a number of unsuccessful auditions and wasn't making any money as an actor (and was unemployed totally), I think he realized that working as an actor here was going to be harder than he'd realized, and he immediately accepted a job on a soap back home in his country. That was when our marriage really fell apart, because now he had his fame ego boost back, he was working in his career--I and our marriage were completely superfluous.

General Disrespect For My Time, Needs and Desires
This was always present, in forms ranging from subtle to blatant. It started, subtly, with what I call "The Patience Test" (something I only realized was a thing after briefly dating another narcissist last year who did the same time). He would keep me on Skype for HOURS while he did whatever he pleased, yet I just had to sit there at the computer and wait for him. He would play videogames, cook dinner, spend hours laughing to himself at YouTube videos he was watching, all while he was on Skype with me. I now realize that it was to see if I would sit there and wait for him. And I always did. I played into the game. If I said something like "Why don't you call me back when you're free?" or "Let me just go do this thing while you're doing that," his answer was always "No no no! I'll be done in just a second. I'm sorry! Thank you for waiting!" and then he'd continue doing what he was doing.

Another great example was our wedding. We got married in a civil ceremony at the courthouse in his city in his country. I needed a translator, since the ceremony was in his language. I asked my friend Mary* to translate for me, since she was literally the only person I knew in the country aside from him, and she and I had been friends for 9 years. I trusted her. The morning of the ceremony, he called his friend Sophie and said "How's your English?" I asked what he was doing and he said she was going to translate. I said that no, I would rather have Mary translate because I knew her and trusted her and he got angry and said "Ok, fine!" Then, when we got to the courthouse, he listed Sophie as the translator. Sophie, a woman I didn't know, and who, unbeknownst to me at the time, turned out to be HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND, translated my wedding ceremony. Mary sat in the audience as my "witness." (As an aside, his other witness, Susan, also turned out to be ANOTHER EX-GIRLFRIEND. Fun fact, he had no friends aside from ex-girlfriends. Of course, I didn't know any of this when he first introduced them to me. He called them his "sisters.")

Probably the biggest example of this was when he accepted a job in his home country, a week after getting his greencard here in the US, without asking me how I felt about it. Naturally, I was devastated. He had JUST moved here to be with me, FINALLY, after a year and a half of us being long distance, he had JUST gotten his greencard, we were FINALLY going to be able to start our life together as husband and work, with him being eligible to work...and he was leaving. He pretended to ask my opinion about it, but when I said "Well, this is not ideal..." he made it clear that if I said no or protested in any way, I would be "blocking his career" and he would "resent me forever." So I really had no say, and he'd already told his agent he'd take it before he talked to me, anyway.

Overarchingly, I had no say in anything. It was what he wanted, when he wanted it. Whatever worked for him was expected to work for me, and when it didn't, I was "dramatic" or "needy" or "unsupportive."

Really Obvious Stuff 
These ones don't even really need explainations. They were obvious signs of abuse and signs that he didn't care about my feelings even a little bit:

• He was consistently rough with me, even in intimate moments. Beyond that, he was downright violent at times. Though he never technically hit me, he would grab me and leave bruises, throw things (including a full suitcase, once) at me, slap my butt HARD out of nowhere, make sounds so loud into my ear that it popped my eardrum (even after I told him it was too loud...and then once my eardrum did pop, he got upset at me for crying because my eardrum popped and I literally couldn't hear and was in pain), which leads me to...
• Sex was consistently terrible. Terrible. It was all about him and what he wanted, when he wanted it, at all times. This probably deserves its own post, actually. He was rough, and even our very first time, he said "Wow, I'm actually making love! I can't believe it! I'm MAKING LOVE TO YOU! I never make love. I prefer to fuck." His idea of "making love" had no love or tenderness in it whatsoever. I remember thinking "Seriously? This is making love to you?!" but didn't say it. 
• He constantly criticized my weight/breast size/any other imperfection he could find. But then when I would get upset about his words, he would say "Well if you're so self-conscious about it, why don't you change it?!" Just go on a diet/get a boob job/whatever else he wanted me to do to 'fix' myself. He never understood that it wasn't that I was unhappy with myself--I was unhappy with his criticism of me. Unfortunately, it did take a toll on my self-esteem after awhile, but thank goodness, I always retained enough inner strength to recognize, deep down, that it was him who had the issues and not me. 

There's much more, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot, but this is a start. If you recognize any of these things happening in your relationship, take note. These are not things that healthy people do to people they love. These are things that users and abusers do.

PS - If you haven't already seen this video about emotional abuse in relationships, it's required watching.

*names changed to protect privacy

So much changes in a year

A year ago today, I took the trip which made me realize that my marriage was over.  I hadn't seen my husband in 4 months, because he was working overseas. So I booked a flight early on to visit him at the midway point of his assignment.

In the days leading up to my trip to see him, I felt a sense of dread. Every time we spoke in those days and weeks before I saw him, he had become increasingly hostile toward me and dismissive of my feelings. I had been incredibly sad and depressed ever since he left months before, yet I couldn't talk to him about it. Any time I tried to bring up my feelings, he told me that I was bringing him down, and that I was being unsupportive of him, and that he was tired of hearing about it. Most of our conversations quickly devolved into arguments and him yelling at me if he even heard a hint of sadness in my voice.

So I stopped saying much. I pulled back and quit reaching out to him. I became afraid to open up to him, because I was so tired of fighting. I accepted that I was alone in my feelings. I didn't even talk to my friends or family about it, because I knew that he would be angry if he found out I went to them instead of him. So I was sad and depressed and incredibly lonely. And exhausted.

It was a big deal to me that I wasn't even excited about seeing him. On every trip prior, I had been counting down the days and minutes until I could see him again. This time, I was dreading it. I knew that things were not going to go well. I knew we were going to argue. I could feel that our marriage was crumbling.

This feeling was further confirmed as I arrived to my airport. I called him to let him know I would be getting on the plane soon, and he informed me that he had to work and wouldn't be able to pick me up. I said "Ok, no problem," but I apparently sounded too sad, and he immediately began to scream at me that it wasn't his fault he had to work and he couldn't believe I was pissed at him for not picking me up. I tried to remain calm and tell him that I understood and that I wasn't angry, just disappointed, and he continued to scream at me. I had to put the phone down. I was crying, there in the airport, at the gate. About to board a plane to go see him.

It took me until a layover in Paris for me to say to myself "Ok. You're halfway there now. Just be excited about this." I still wasn't excited, but the dread had started to recede a bit.

When I arrived at the airport there, his dad picked me up. And I spent the next 9 hrs with his dad. As soon as my husband came home, he gave me a peck on the lips and then turned on the tv to watch his team's soccer match. I even said "Hey, it's not like I just flew 3000 miles to see you or anything..." He put his arm around me and continued to watch soccer.

That night, we went to bed, and he stayed up playing video games. Any silly ideas I had of a blissful reunion were out the window. After a little while, I asked him to please come to bed and at least hug me. So he hugged me for a minute or so, and then got back up to play video games. I asked him to please stop and come and lay with me so we could hold each other and catch up, since we hadn't seen each other for four months! He grudgingly did. But of course, it started an argument about how I was being so selfish, and why didn't I just tell him if I wanted him to come to bed (I thought that was what I did?).

The argument kept going from there. All of the sadness and insecurity I'd been feeling for the last 4 months bubbled up. And he only saw it as an attack on him, and me being unsupportive of him, because I dared be sad that my husband had left. Then he uttered the phrase that will stick with me for the rest of my life, and the moment I knew I couldn't be married to him: "Don't ever make me choose between my career and you, because I can tell you right now, you won't win."

In that moment, I stopped speaking. I don't know that any phrase has ever hurt me so much. I just hung my head. My heart dropped. He finally said what I had known for months now--that I was not his priority and never would be. It devastated me. I began to cry quietly.

"What, so you want a divorce now?! Is that what you want?!" he yelled.
"No, that just really hurt me to hear. I want us to work things out. I don't understand what happened."
"I don't want to talk about this anymore!"And with that, he went back to playing his video game.

And I laid in bed and cried. When he finally did come to bed, he was angry at me because I was moving around too much, because I was emotionally upset and also jetlagged and couldn't sleep. "You just don't stop, do you?!" He fell asleep, and I moved to the floor, where I would have more room since he was taking up the entire bed.

That was night one. The rest of the trip got worse from there.

Part of the reason I went to visit him then was that I had a friend getting married in a neighboring country that week, so we were going to go to her wedding. On the way there, I got a call from the friend who was sitting my dog that she was no longer able to dogsit. I began to cry from the stress, and my husband yelled at me, saying "If this is how you're going to act, we're not going to go anywhere!" I told him that it was sad that he couldn't just be supportive and help me try to think of a solution. He told me that I just had terrible friends, and if it had been HIS friends, this never would have happened.

When we finally got to the hotel, we were able to get in touch with one of his friends to take over watching the dog. I was relieved, but utterly exhausted. As I got into bed, he said "You don't seem happy that my friend is taking over," and I said "No, I'm very happy, I'm just really tired and need to sleep." And he proceeded to yell at me about how much better his friends are than mine, and he was going to text my friend and give her an earful about what a terrible person she is. I said "Please don't do that. Please just let me handle it when I get home. She's my friend, so please just let me deal with it later."

That sent him into a rage unlike any I've ever seen. In his mind, I was putting my friend's needs (to not be yelled at) above his need (to give her a piece of his mind) and was choosing her over him. He saw it as the ultimate act of betrayal, told me he hated me and wanted to be as far away from me as possible. His screaming was so loud that someone from the hotel had to come up and ask him to please be quiet, because fellow occupants were complaining. He then announced that he was going to sleep in the car and didn't want to see me.

I laid in bed, shaking. I had never been afraid that he may hurt me physically before, but his rage terrified me, and I didn't know what he was capable of. It was especially scary, too, because I was in a foreign country where I didn't fluently speak the language, and he had the car. I thought he might just leave me there (since he'd informed me earlier in the day that he didn't want to be there anyway, and if we weren't married he would have gone instead to see his soccer team play hours away). I began to think of ways for me to get home without him.

He came back into the room a bit later. Of course he wasn't actually going to sleep in the car. I stayed as far away from him in bed and he eventually tried to put his arm around me. I didn't sleep at all that night.

When I look back at all of the beautiful pictures that were taken during that trip, all I can think of is how sad and scared I was. To me, those pictures show the beginning of the end of our marriage, and of the person I thought I knew. There's one set of pictures in particular that were taken at my friend's wedding...we were off in the corner by ourselves, but the photographer had spotted us and took a whole series of pictures of us smiling at each other, making funny faces at each other, and finally of him hugging me tightly. I remember in that moment feeling so loved and happy to be with him, despite everything that happened at the hotel the night before. What I didn't realize until after I saw the whole string of pictures weeks later was that he had seen the photographer taking pictures of us, and immediately after hugging me, gave a "thumbs up" and a wink to the camera. It hadn't been real. It was posed on his part. I was just an unaware participant who thought that he was hugging me because he loved me and wanted to do it in that moment. Basically the entire ordeal is a metaphor for our entire marriage.

The day I came home, I passed a kidney stone and developed a UTI. Being with him for 10 days had literally made me sick. My body was trying to tell me something, but it took my brain awhile longer to finally really listen.

In the beginning

Today is a sad day. Some days I just wake up and know its going to be a sad one. Sometimes it fluctuates from minute to minute or hour to hour between sadness and anger. But today is just overwhelmingly sad.

Today I sent the agreement to the divorce attorney, along with her retainer fee that cleared out the little bit of savings I had. Today I formally started the process to end my marriage..the marriage I thought would last for the rest of my life. The marriage I thought was so perfect and I felt so lucky to have found.

That's the hardest part. It wasn't always bad. In fact, it was consistently fantastic for awhile. It felt like a fairytale, which I guess should have been a red flag, but instead, I just enjoyed it and thought that "This must be what a GOOD relationship feels like!" There were always little things that turned into bigger things that turned into red flags, but I thought that every couple had problems, and those were just ours. I knew that no one was perfect, myself included, and I was dedicated to working through everything together. I loved him so much. Unfathomable amounts of love. I still love him. The truth is, I will always love him, despite everything. And even in the end, we still had some great times, and great days. 

In the beginning, we would talk for hours every single day. We had everything in common. He told me how beautiful I was, he listed off my positive characteristics like it was a grocery list. I thought that had finally found the person who really saw me for me, and who liked what he saw. I thought he saw my value, where all others had taken me for granted.  I felt so lucky and so blessed to have finally found a man who reciprocated my love and who thought I was as special as I thought he was.

Even in the bad times that followed, I kept coming back to that. I came back to the beautiful, romantic way we met--I was on vacation that I almost didn't take, at an event I wasn't even invited to and almost didn't go to, in a country where I didn't speak the language. I thought about the dreams I had before I met him--literal, actual dreams--which showed me not only his city, but our future. I even got his first name in a dream. I thought of how neither of us were supposed to be in the place where we were when we met. It was all fate, I thought. I truly believed that. I believed that he was my soulmate, and that I met him because I'd finally done enough work on myself to attract someone like him.

I was so wrong.

But I do believe that he also believed this. The problem is, that he believed it for self-serving purposes. And he's believed it for everyone he met before me, and for everyone who will come after me. Everyone is the next perfect love. Everyone is the one who will solve all of his problems. I wasn't special to him, I was just the one who served him best in the moment when he met me. He was still in love, whatever that meant for him, with his ex. Yet he had just broken up with a different girlfriend--a different woman than the one he was still in love with. I also found out just before he left that he had ANOTHER relationship going while he was with the girlfriend while he was still in love with his ex. That third woman was still in the picture months into our relationship (it's amazing what one can figure out by women who suddenly blocked me on facebook at the time, and by the ones who have done the same thing recently). They were dropping like flies for months after we first met, and he admitted that some of them were in love with him, but he didn't  feel the same way about them, because "he can't be everything to everyone." But I let it slide, because I had also had past loves, some of whom I was still in contact with. I also had to let a few guys down easy--ones that I was casually dating, because I knew as soon as I met him that I wanted to be with him and no one else. I thought we were in the same boat.

We weren't. 

I guess the silver lining in all of this is that he showed me how much I am capable of loving someone, and the extents to which I will go to for love. I had never felt more connected to another person, or to myself and my spirituality. I've never been a pray-er, but I was praying for him and for us every night. I counted the days until I could see him again. I wrote gushing love emails and sent cards and little gifts I would see that reminded me of him. I was a pretty amazing girlfriend in those early days.

Then I started to realize that he'd never bought me anything. He'd never once given me a gift, not even on Christmas or for our anniversary or my birthday. In fact, in the three years we were together, he was never with me on my birthday. There was always work or something more important, or, this year, he was with the other woman out at  a club...when I'd scheduled a vacation just for us. 

I went on vacation alone. 

I had a king bed and a hot tub in the honeymoon suite, alone. 

I went to dinner on my birthday, alone.

And what started as a sad day just turned back into an angry one...all I have to do is remember the way things went down in the last year, and how virtually nothing I ever gave, emotional or physical, was reciprocated. I have to remember the person he was in the last year or two instead of how good it was in the beginning. 

I'm sorry you're here.

If you're here, I assume it's because perhaps you, too, accidentally married a narcissist. Or maybe you're dating someone who was SO AMAZING but is now critical and blames you for everything. You're worried something is off, so you googled, and you ended up here. I can't tell you how many times I googled, and how many red flags I ignored. And I still married him.

So, welcome. You're in good company, but I'm sorry you're here.

I bet people warned you, didn't they? They warned me, too. His dad even warned me. He always asked me if I was ok, and if his son was being "gentle" with me. He wasn't, but I lied and said he was. His friends all told me to have patience with him, because he's "a child who will never grow up." I didn't listen. I married him anyway.

I thought I could change him. The worst part is that I thought I was over thinking I could change people. I thought I'd learned my lessons, and I just KNEW that he was the right person for me, my soulmate. . I really, truly believed that. I never even believed in "the one" but he made me believe it. I knew that our love could overcome anything

But then I realized it couldn't.

Then I realized that he was not capable of loving me...not in the way I loved him, anyway. He literally couldn't hear my feelings without getting defensive and flipping things around on me, blaming me for feeling sad, for crying, telling me how fucked up I am and how many issues I have to solve. Because nothing was ever his fault. And I believed him, for awhile. But then I stopped apologizing for myself, and stopped trying to explain my feelings for the 72323883849th time, because I always thought that "No, THIS TIME, if I just say it THIS WAY, he'll understand and stop yelling at me." He never understood. I could never make him understand.

And now it's over, or at least in the beginning stages of being over. I contacted a divorce attorney. I just have to pay her, and send the agreement, and then he gets the papers. I'm not so naive as to think that he'll let go without a fight, but all I know is I want my life back. I want my friends back. I want my family back. I want to think about something other than him. I haven't thought about myself or what I want in so long. It's strange.

I can't even identify some of the emotions I'm feeling. I go from sad to angry back to sad almost every other minute. I'm hurt. I feel used. I feel stupid. I think "Maybe I should just keep trying! He was SO CLOSE to changing! I saw hints of vulnerability and he seemed to really hear me now!" but then I realize that I've been stuck in that cycle of hoping and waiting for three years, and I can't do that to myself anymore. It's all awful and confusing, and the only way I know how to deal is to write.

So here I am, and here you are. I'd love to hear from you. Let's help each other.