Mine!

My friend who is the mother of a toddler posted this tonight:

I realized that it is also exactly how a narcissist views all of his relationships. 

Today, my husband had his lawyer threaten to sue me for "psychological damages" to him for talking to his friends and family. That's right. He's still trying to control me, and keep me from talking about him to anyone, which, granted, he successfully did for three years. But now that I'm going rogue and contacting his friends and family to thank them for their kindness to me, and mention that I'm really sad about the way things happened, and that learning the truth was worse than I could have imagined, but I'm still happy I got to meet them...now he is FLIPPING HIS SHIT that his cover is being blown to those closest to him. 

Here is an excerpt from the letter my lawyer and I received from his lawyer today (her English is not great):

"Mrs. [my name] decided to break the electronic correspondence of her husband, his friends and family, and developed a campaign of intimidation, blackmail and threats. Indeed, she disclosed aspects of the private life of our Client, she talked to the mother of his son, who from that moment, prevented the contact of our Client with his son and threatened to use the media to undermine professionally. Now all these attitudes have created serious psychological damage and damage to the image of our Client, that if Mrs. [my name] do not stop immediately and do not send to all the people who contacted, a formal apology and equal request to our Client, will be the subject for compensation in action brought for that purpose. I hope that with the good offices of the Honorable Colleague to regularize the behavior of your Client, all this issues can be resolved in a civilized and concordat way the matter of divorce."

I like that I had a "campaign." It feels so...presidential. The best part is the part about the mother of his son. Yes, I did email her. And it was fantastic. I had never spoken to her in the three years we were together, but I thought about her often. I couldn't imagine how hard it must have been for her to have him leave her while she was 7 months pregnant. And the more he revealed himself to me, the more I had utter empathy for her, and wanted to let her know that it wasn't her. What's really great, is that she let me know that her husband had already adopted their son, their son already has her husband's last name, and their son calls her husband "daddy." What's more, I know that my husband hadn't seen his son in person since 2012. He almost never paid child support. And she had restricted the amount she allowed their son to see him on Skype, and at the point when he and I were last together in person, he hadn't Skyped with him in over three months. Yet he got his lawyer to believe that this was all because of me. And wants to sue me for it! 

It's really amazing. But it's also proof that he really did see his relationships as his and his alone. Nothing was shared. I was not allowed to interfere, or even HAVE a real relationship, with any of his friends (or mine, or my family, for that matter). He was always afraid that I would talk about him...that his mask would get cracked, and that people might begin to hear the truth and see him for who he really is. 

So, I was successful, I guess, in making him LOSE HIS SHIT at the prospect of his cover being blown. I actually didn't smear him to anyone. I was way more respectful than I wanted to be, and far more respectful than what he deserves. I didn't go to the press, even though I could have--and still can--and still might. I do have pictures of him with his girlfriend, pictures of him fucking her and holding her. The evidence is clear-cut. 

In fact, if he wants me to issue a "formal apology" (HAHAHA! NO.) to his friends and family, I COULD tell everyone the entire story, and attach the pictures. And my apology would read something like this:

"I'm sorry that your son/friend is a psychopath. 

I'm sorry that he's had/has you fooled, just as much as he had me fooled. 

I'm sorry that he fathered a child with another woman outside of our marriage, and now he's freaking out a little bit. He must be really hard to deal with right now.

I'm sorry that ever doubted what I knew to be true in my gut, even for one second.

I'm sorry that I continued to give him endless chances to hurt me, lie to me, and betray me, for the last three years.
I'm sorry that I gave everything I had to him emotionally, spiritually, sexually, and financially, and he gave me absolutely nothing in return.

Here's a picture of his dick in her twat. 

I'm sorry it's so veiny and ugly, and I'm sorry her vagina kinda looks like an alien face."

The Hiroshima of bombshells

I don't really have words to describe the interaction I had a few hours ago, and the information I learned from it, but I'm going to try.

The other woman called me today. I emailed her an apology yesterday for a nasty email I'd sent her in anger when I first found out about the affair. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had been extremely unfair to her, and that my anger needed to be squarely directed at my husband, not at her. So I apologized and gave her my skype name, should she ever want to talk in the future.

Five minutes after hitting "send," she tried calling me.

She called me a few times, and though I answered each time, she kept hanging up. Then she signed off. I thought maybe she got cold feet, which is understandable, so I sent her a message letting her know that I'm open to talk any time that worked for her.

Today, she called. I answered. And we spoke for over an hour.

The hangups, I learned, were because my husband was there in the room with her, batting the phone out of her hand and trying to break it as she called me. So she waited until he left today to call.

They met in January, and the affair began right away. He's been living with her all year. Each time he left me, he moved in with her. She showed me his suitcases and his PS4 (that I bought him). She's close with his parents, and talk to them almost every day.

"I want to tell you everything, but I don't want you to be hurt any more than you already are. I respect you as a woman, and I don't want to hurt you," she said.
"I promise you that there is not much that would surprise me at this point. I've already lost everything, and I don't really think I can be hurt any more at this point."
"You have no idea how much I have lost. You can't imagine."
"I can, and I'm sure that he is also bleeding you dry, just like he did me. And I know that you have even more to lose financially than I did."
"It's so much more than that. I want to tell you, but I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want you to tell him."
"I promise I won't tell him. I never want to speak with him again. Can you please tell me?"
"I was pregnant. He wanted me to keep it. But I didn't want to. I didn't want that life."

Somehow, even though this was new information, I knew this in my gut. I nodded and said "I know." And I then began to cry. "I'm so sorry for you. I'm so sorry that you had to go through that."

"So that was why he left me one day in March, then? That's why you were in the hospital?" I continued.
"Yes. His parents called to let him know I was dying. I also tried to kill myself two times after that."

I cried again. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I almost killed myself too, last fall. He almost killed both of us."
She nodded.

"All I have now is my money. I have nothing else. My life is shattered," she said.
"I understand. I never had money, but he took all of it."
"I know," she said. "I told myself that he must have no money because he was sending you all of it, so I paid for everything for him."
"I knew that you paid for everything. I found the receipts for the flights. You even paid his way back to me. That was extremely kind of you."
"I paid for everything."
"I know he spent his money on child support and taxes--"
"He didn't pay any of that. I paid all of that. Because I thought he was spending all of his money on you."
I laughed. "Sweetheart, in the three years we were together, he paid for nothing. NOTHING. Not one bill. I paid for everything. We were both paying for him."

We talked about many things, most of which are a blur. But she really did seem to know all about everything. He told her as much, if not more, about his life than I knew. She knew about his exes, how he was also abusive to them. She was a victim in this just as much as I am.

"I can't imagine how you must be feeling. I promise you, I am not with him, and I will not be with him. I don't want him in my life. I want him gone. He's coming by to get his things later," she assured me.
"I don't want him either. Don't be alone. He can be so violent when he's angry. And right now, his entire web of lies has exploded on him. He must be short-circuiting. I can't imagine how angry he is. Be very careful."
"I know." She nodded.
"Call me or text me when he's gone to let me know that you're ok. I'm worried about you."

We thanked each other, and we apologized to each other again. We empathized, even though we were on opposite sides of the issue, we'd both been destroyed by the same force. She sent me love and hugs and kisses, and I sent the same back to her. She said to call any time I needed anything, and I told her to do the same.

He will not control us anymore.

The Discard

I keep mentioning the "Narcissistic Discard" and the day I was discarded. I thought I should explain that a bit. Essentially, once the narcissist obtains new "supply" (usually a new lover who gives him attention after his current lover has begun to see through his facade or question him/assert her needs in any way), he will literally "discard" her like one would throw away a piece of trash.

This happened to me one Sunday in March. He had come back from his work assignment 6 days earlier. This time, he said, he was back "for good" and we were finally going to be together, and live together as husband and wife. But a few days in to being back, I noticed that he was quiet and distant. I asked him what was wrong, and he said that his parents were getting older and needed him there, and that he missed his friends and family. I said "Do you not want to be here?" and he said "I don't know." I thanked him for his honesty, but asked him to please let me know more about that as soon as he'd thought about it.

The next day, we got into a huge argument wherein he accused me of wanting a divorce and ignoring him. None of that was true. Also, I had gone for a drink with one of my closest female friends earlier in the week. We'd had it on the calendar for weeks, and I offered to cancel for him. I asked him if he minded, he said "No, no, of course! Go!", I only stayed out for an hour, but when I came home, he couldn't believe that I actually went KNOWING that he was "sad and lonely". I had been looking forward to him being back for the past year, and now he was turning things around to try to make it seem that *I* didn't want *him*, which couldn't have been further from the truth. He stormed out and didn't come back for hours. I thought that we would talk about it the next day, and that like all of our arguments, he would be over it quickly, and I would be the one to be hurt for awhile.

The following day was a Sunday. I got up before he did, and took the dog for a long walk. When I came back in to the apartment, he had his coat and shoes on. I asked him where he was going, and he said he was going to Starbucks to get some coffee, even though I had just made a pot of coffee before I walked the dog. He insisted, and I didn't say anything.

About an hour later, he came back. I asked him if he wanted to talk, and he said "Yes, I want to talk about how I'm leaving you today." Just like that. Casually, coldly, no emotion. He said it as if he was saying that he was going to take the garbage out now. Which, in a way, was what he thought.

In that moment, I shattered. I don't fully remember the rest of the conversation (really more of a monologue, because I literally lost the ability to speak. My voice tightened to the point that I could barely squeak a sound out, and I was reeling so much that I didn't even know what I would say if I could.) He said something about how we had no future together, we had nothing in common, and he didn't want to be with me any more. He said it was for the best. And he began to pack his bags.

I remember physically collapsing. I could no longer hold myself up. Luckily I was sitting at the kitchen table when it happened. I remember punching the kitchen table, asking him to please wait and talk to me and help me to understand how he could say those things. I remember going into the bedroom and screaming and coming out and begging him again to not go, to talk to me, that we could work things out. I was shaking uncontrollably. And then I stopped crying and went numb.

I laid on the couch for the rest of the time he was in the apartment, while he was packing. I didn't move or make a sound. I couldn't. Teardrops rolled out of my eyes involuntarily, but I was no longer crying. Just leaking, I guess. I stared straight ahead for hours. I was frozen.

He came to the living room, with 3 bags packed, and asked me to call him a cab. I told him that I wasn't going to help him leave, and he would have to do that himself. He got angry, and said I was being selfish, and why couldn't I just help him? He then said that he would stay at a hotel until his flight in the morning. I said ok. Then he asked if he could just stay here one more night.  I said "If you are really leaving me, I think you should stay at a hotel." Again, he couldn't believe how selfish I was.

He walked out the door. I found my tears and sobbed again. The dog whimpered and barked. It was over. I laid on the couch the rest of the night, unable to move.

The next day, he called me while I was at work (yes, I went to work the next day, because I couldn't bear the thought of being in the apartment without him, and thought I could maybe focus on something else...I was wrong) and asked if we could talk. I said I had nothing to talk about. He left me, he'd made his choice, I wasn't going to stop him. He begged to come over and talk. I don't remember agreeing, but I must have.

When I got home, he and all of his bags were back in the living room. The first thing he said was "I can't believe you didn't even call to check on me to make sure I was ok last night!" I actually laughed. HE LEFT ME, and he expected ME to call and "check on him" to make sure he was ok?! "I don't know this city well, and luckily I found a hotel, but my parents couldn't BELIEVE you just left me alone like that! In my culture, we would NEVER do that to someone we love, and my mother will never forgive you for that!"

Then he said he wanted to hear why he should consider taking me back. I told him I had no reasons, and that I wasn't going to beg. He'd already made his choice, and all I could do was accept it. Because the truth was, that Sunday was the worst day of my life. Watching him walk out the door was the hardest mental picture I'd ever experienced. The only thing close to it was seeing my Grandpa on his death bed, emaciated from cancer, and hours away from dying. But even that was expected, and I'd made some peace with it before seeing it. This...this was new.

Over the next few days he admitted that he didn't actually have a flight booked. Every day he promised that he did, but then it came down to it, and he didn't. And he realized that he loved me and just wanted to be with me, but needed to go back to his country to "close doors" and "get his head on straight." But what that really meant, I know now, was go back to his supply. Be with her for awhile more. See what else he could get out of her, and then decide if she or I was better.

But I knew in my heart that I would never get over how I felt that day, being tossed away as if I and our 3 years together meant nothing to him. Even if he "got his head on straight," I knew that mine, for the first time, was beginning to be on straight, itself. And the day after he left, I actually woke up happy and relieved that he was gone.

What was that thing about a woman scorned?

If there is any silver lining to all of this, it's that it has made me tap into a deep, unbridled anger that I didn't know I was capable of feeling. This must be what those highly-trained martial artists use to snap through concrete blocks and stuff...because I just snapped my bathroom towel rod in half. And then I threw a St. Anthony statue out the window just to hear it shatter. (Backstory, the statue was given to me by his friend whose best friend he's been cheating with for all but one month of this year. She knew all along, but rather than tell me, she sent me a St. Anthony statue to "protect my marriage." Didn't work, dumb bitch. What works is saying something like "Hey, maybe you should stop cheating on your wife, you fucking asshole!" So it was very cathartic to hear it shatter. Also, I'm not Catholic, so I'm not gonna go to hell for shattering an idol of a patron saint.)

Tonight, I realized that because his cell phone was on my phone account, I had access to his cloud storage. Apparently he didn't realize this either, but every photo he's ever taken on his phone was there. I dug deep. What I found confirmed what I already knew (that he'd been cheating and lying about it) but WOW was I unprepared for the anger I would feel upon finding pictures of them in bed together, in various states of undress, and in various states of his dick being inserted into her (seriously...he photographed that...) without a condom. He took her to his team's soccer matches. He took her on trips out of town to visit his other friends (HIS FRIENDS ALL KNEW!). He was with her on the night before my birthday, and on my birthday (when he couldn't come on the trip I planned for us because he was "helping his dad"). Every day before he came to see me, he was with her. He was with her, shirtless, on the beach.

I now regret that I filed for "No Fault" divorce. I wonder if it's too late to change that?

I hate him. I HATE HIM.

Unfortunately, this was what I needed to see to kill any hope of him changing. I almost believed him that he "never cheated on me." I thought maybe they just had an emotional affair but nothing else happened. But no.  It's also helpful that he recently gave a TV interview, answering questions about his sex life, what kind of woman he prefers in bed, how he "hates jealousy," how he's juggled four women at one time. I can't imagine how he thinks that will help his public image, and I can't imagine why his PR rep let him do the interview. But it's humiliating to me, because as far as anyone there knows, we are still married.

It's true what they say...once a cheater, always a cheater. And a narcissist won't discard you until he has new supply. He had his new supply since February. He discarded me in March. At the time, I didn't understand how he could just announce he was leaving one Sunday morning over coffee. Now it makes sense. He was already with her. She paid for his flight back. He was set.

It was the proof I needed to harden my heart against him. But wow. Just wow.

The Other Woman

Today was one of those days where I woke up in a thin tank top, looked in the mirror, thought "I should really put on a bra to walk the dog..." but then immediately countered that thought with "Fuck it, I have nipples. I HAVE NIPPLES. If Jennifer Aniston could get away with it on FRIENDS, I can get away with it for 10 minutes on my street. So it's that kind of mood I woke up in, so seems like as good of a time as any to talk about the Other Woman (why did I capitalize her? she doesn't even deserve capitals).

Like the good textbook NPD Narcissist he is, my husband lined up new supply waaay before he and I were done. It's now the end of July, he left because I told him I wanted a divorce two weeks ago, and from what I can tell, he started his relationship with the other woman somewhere around January, when I actually thought that we were getting back on track and were going to work things out. Oh, me and my eternal, delusional hope.

I didn't believe she existed. I actually trusted him, and defended him at every turn to, well, EVERYONE who said "There must be someone else." I really, really didn't think there was. I didn't think he would do that. I even had a truly gifted, famous tv psychic tell me there was someone else, and I didn't believe him. He was right. Everyone was right. After he left me out of the blue (known as the "Narcissistic Discard") in March, and then came back after a string of excuses which went through most of April, all of May, and he finally moved back in in June, it didn't make sense to me why he had to leave me to "close doors" and "get his head on straight." Now I know that the door he needed to close was to the bedroom of the other woman who was paying for his flights.

I'm sort of unhealthily obsessed with thinking about her at the moment, but not in the "What's she have that I don't have?" way (the answer to that is easy: she has money). There is part of me that wants to warn her, but I know that she wouldn't believe me anyway, and I would just come off looking like the bitter wife who doesn't want anyone to be happy. That couldn't be further from the truth, actually. I wish so much that my husband could be happy, but I know that he won't be unless he decides to work on himself...and that will never happen, because he truly believes that everyone else is the problem, and that he has no issues. And I wish for her to know the fresh hell she's about to get into with him.

I know she's in love with him. I remember that euphoric, fairy-tale phase myself. I saw her facebook messages and her emails and her love poems to him (not so fast, she's not creative...she copied and pasted poems by well-known poets and sent them to him). But I know that he's only using her, just like he used me, and he's not capable of real love. She has fallen deeply for his charm and stunning good looks (because damn him, he IS stunningly handsome--I guess a life lived without feeling even a shred of guilt or remorse helps to fight the signs of aging as much as any anti-wrinkle cream). She's already paid for round-trip flights for him to leave his bitch of a wife. She described herself as his "lifeline" and handed over her credit card to him so that he could use it whenever he wanted. She's in deep. And, where I had no real money to spend on him, but spent my life savings on him anyway, she DOES have money, and from what I can tell, a lot of it. When I confronted him about her, he tried to prove his "love" for me by actually saying "Being with her would solve ALL of my problems. She is the perfect escape because she is fucking loaded and I would never have to work again!" (followed by "But I came back to YOU!", you know, as if he was doing me a favor by big, important, famous him coming back to poor, little old me--it was a sneaky backhanded compliment/put-down sandwich, with a side of guilt-trip sauce, which he excels at).

So what I'd really love to say to her is:

"Sweetheart, GOOD LUCK. You will need it. You will also need a lot of money, because in the three years we were together, he paid for exactly one bill. One! Oh, and he also paid for my fitness bootcamp, because he hated the way I looked (more on that in a moment...) Despite the fact that he was working and making a good salary, and was getting a lot of press and fame from his work, I saw none of that money. He will use you, until you catch onto the fact that using you is precisely what he's doing. Then he'll be shocked and hurt that you could even SUGGEST that or think of him that way. It took me a really long time to figure that out, but lucky for him, he already had you taking care of him (though I was still paying the rent and buying the groceries and paying for the wifi and the cell phone he was using to call you).  

I know you're trying to move mountains to get him a job. I did that, too. My GOD the mountains I moved. If I had applied that kind of effort to my own career, I think I would have won a Tony by now. But I did it for him, just like you are. He'll seem to be a little bit grateful, but it will never be enough, and at some point you'll wonder if all you're doing is worth it. It's not. I assure you, it's not. You're gonna come out of this depleted, exhausted, and significantly poorer than when you started. You'll struggle to figure out where it all went wrong because it was SO PERFECT in the beginning and no one had ever said the things he said to you, or swept you off your feet the way he did. No one had ever made you feel more beautiful or more special or more important. It was blissful, yes, but it was calculated on his part. He got you. You couldn't help but fall in love. We all have. Another pro-tip: get on some good birth control. His ex didn't, and he left her with a baby and empty promises of paying child support. Luckily for me, I got an IUD early on in our relationship, and he only left me with a dog. He even bought one bag of dog food, one time.  

You will also need more strength and confidence than you ever thought you had. He will never stop talking to and hanging out with beautiful, single women. Even if you're not the jealous type--I wasn't, either--your insecurities will get the best of you and you will start to hate the person you've become. He needs more female attention than any one woman can ever give him, and he will fly into a rage if you so much as ask who his new female friend is. He will tear you down with putdowns, sometimes after he compliments you (Example--"You are so beautiful. You are truly beautiful inside and out. I'm the luckiest guy to have met you...but, what are we going to do about your boobs?"). He will criticize every little bit of you that he once claimed to love, because he hates himself and has to project that onto others to feel better. He thinks he's fat and ugly and his nose is too big, and guess what--soon, he will be telling you that you are fat and ugly and your nose is too big. Literally, the last thing he said to me, on multiple occasions, before getting on a plane would be "Make sure you go to the gym every day. Promise me?" Not I love you. Not I'll miss you. Go to the gym. And then the first thing upon getting off the plane when I greeted him at the airport was "Ohh, I see someone has put on a little belly." Yes, HE had gained 30 lbs in the two months since I'd seen him...I had stayed the same. But according to him, *I* was the one who put on a belly, and shouldn't get angry at him because he was just joking, and I'm too sensitive, and if I'm going to act like that, he was just going to leave me now. 

Don't think that he'll ever return your empathy or validate your feelings. He won't. Your feelings are a threat to him, and he'll wish that you just didn't have them. He'll dismiss you, and if you dare express something to him that he doesn't agree with, he will scream and yell until you are the one apologizing for feeling or saying anything. Nothing you say or do, or think or feel will ever be right. And when you let him know that his screaming at you is not ok, he'll say it was nothing, he was joking, and you take him too seriously. It's a mindfuck. No matter how many times you try to explain yourself more clearly, and without emotion, and as gently and carefully as possible, he'll still explode and he will never "get it." 

Oh, also, hang out with your friends and family NOW. Because though he will encourage you to have friends and family, he won't actually want you to talk to them or correspond with them in any way, because he thinks you'll be talking about him. And if, let's say, you DO get near-suicidal and decide to reach out to your best friends and closest family for support, that will be your biggest, most unforgivable mistake to him. The irony is that even though you'll try to go to him first, he won't hear you, and if he does, you will be made to feel guilty for being sad, because it brings HIM down, and it means that you are being unsupportive of HIM. But he'll make it very clear that though he doesn't want to hear it, you are not, under any circumstances, allowed to go OUTSIDE of the marriage with your feelings. So you will be alone. Utterly, devastatingly alone. I can't prepare you for the amount of alone you will feel. If you want, at that point, you can reach out to me. Please reach out to someone before you start Googling what kind of pills you can overdose on to end the pain the fastest. Thank God, I did. I went against his wishes and told my friends and family, and got a therapist. You should do that, too. 

I know there's more I'm not thinking of right now. And there may be things that will be new to you that he didn't even do to me. Just...good luck. Bolster yourself. Your world is about to blow up."