Alongcameanarc

I was married prior to Ex. I met my first husband in high school. I was young, naive. He was a few years older. My boss.  

When I was 16 my parents moved us light years away from where I grew up. It could have easily been Siberia. My 16 year old self felt like it was Siberia. We moved from one of the most populated areas in the US to nowhere. I was resentful, rebellious, looking for excitement in a sleepy tiny little town 100 miles from absolute nowhere and in walks Mr. Party. Looking back he was wrong on every level, but I was young, naive and in love. I caught him cheating once. He begged my forgiveness. It was a mistake, forgive me please. Sigh. I forgave. Little did I understand what was to come. 

Shortly after high school graduation my family moved yet again. 18 hours away to be exact. I was heartbroken. I was leaving my friends. I was leaving him. 

After about a year of phone time he moved to me. Still unwilling to make a permanent commitment but he was back. He was still Mr. Party. I was working towards a degree and didn’t have time to party, so he partied without me. I caught him cheating again. I was just a glutton for punishment I guess. I forgave him. 

Time passed and he ended up taking a job in LA. I had no intentions of moving to LA as his girlfriend. All of a sudden he was hot and heavy to get married. I think going alone scared him a little. We got married and moved. I found out I was pregnant about a year later. Somewhere in there he started leaving me at home alone more and more to go out with work friends. I suspected he was cheating but never caught him. When our first child was about 6 months old he took a different job and we moved again. Child number 2 and child number 3 arrived in very quick succession.  Once he became comfortable with his new work friends, he was right back to going out more and more.  He told me I was welcome to come along but he wasn’t staying home. He knew I couldn’t go. He was staying out very late almost nightly. I suspected he was cheating but never caught him. We had one car and he took it with him to his outings which made it hard to catch him. 

 I couldn’t take it anymore. I told him I wanted to move back to where my family is. Either he find a job there or Im going without him. 

He found a job fairly quickly and we moved back. At first he settled in and seemed content, but that didn’t last long. New work friends and more partying. Baby number 4 arrived. He had a vasectomy shortly after that. 

His employer closed their doors, laying off the entire staff. He found a comparable job within days, and that’s when things took a decidedly noticeable and weird turn. He started going on out of town ‘work’ trips for trainings. Because of all the driving he demanded he take our new minivan rather than his older daily driver. He came back from one of his ‘work’ trips with a car trash bag attached to the passenger door. Huge red flag. I didn’t mention it to him, but realized it was time for some investigating. He had a whole string of email addresses. Same password for each and every one. He was using 2 different ones for porn purchases. He was using one to communicate with a woman he worked with at the site that was closed down. She had moved 5 hours away after losing her job. They were meeting 1/2 way at a motel every week or two.  Using yet another email he was coordinating early withdrawals from his IRA to fund his affairs. 

When I confronted him about the affair, he of course became defensive. I asked how many woman. He said he had ‘only’ slept with 3 others besides the current one. So if he’s to be believed, he slept with 4 women in 9 years of marriage. Add those 4 to the 2 I know about prior to marriage we are up to 6 he is willing to admit to. 

Our divorce took almost 2 years to complete. I was awarded sole legal and physical custody of our 4 children, as well as a small cash settlement and my minivan paid off. His girlfriend broke up with him almost immediately after our divorce was final. 

Those are the highlights of our marriage and divorce. Side note he has had a long string of girlfriends over the years. Cheated on every single one. He finds a new one before leaving the old one. He remarried maybe 6-7 years ago. They worked together. She was married, he was living with a girlfriend. She had school age kids. It was super messy.

Along came a Narc about one year into our two year divorce. 

I’m not a therapist. My ex hasn’t been, well at least to my knowledge anyway, diagnosed narcissist.  What I do have is 23 years, and counting, of life experience that has left indelible marks. Scars. 

Why did I spend years making excuses, years of covering up, years of feeble attempts at justifying what I eventually came to see is unjustifiable and wholly inexcusable. This is my journey to find the pieces of me he chipped away day after day, year after year. 

But this is not only a journal of Narc’s exceedingly bad behavior but also a testament of God’s faithfulness. I have to give glory to God. Every evil intention Narc directed my way turned back to him. Every evil finger point, every false accusation, every gaslit recreation of events shined back on Narc. This is a testament to the power of my friends and community lifting me up in prayer. God’s hand was evident every step of my divorce.

The beginning. 

This was one of those times Narc truly came out of left field, blindsiding me with the sheer absurdity  of his rage. We went from point A to point B by way of Timbuktu. I believe it was sometime around early 2017. Our youngest daughter was begging to get a dog. We already had two dogs but one favored me exclusively and the other dog favored the Narc first and then me second when he wasn’t home. Our daughter wanted one that was hers alone. The Ex took our daughter to the county animal shelter to look around. She picked one of two sisters recently transferred from an overcrowded kill shelter, but the dog she picked hadn’t been spayed yet so we had to wait. My daughter and I went back after the designated quarantine time to bring her home. As it turned out she wasn’t doing well after her spay, but her sister was up and around and begging us for attention. Daughter asked to bring the lively sister home instead. So after paying the fees she was ours. We named her Belle. They said they believed Belle was approximately 9 months old. It was quite obvious Belle had been abused and neglected and had never been inside a house before. She wasn’t potty trained so we had no choice but to kennel her while we were at work. Belle came to us with partially healed cigarette burns and cuts and she was terrified of Narc, cowering any time he came near her. It was obvious her abuser had been a man. She was open and loving toward daughter and I from the first moment. 

After a month or so of kenneling her she seemed to grasp potty training well. Narc said we should let her free range our home while at work. We moved into our new build home 10/2015, and I was hesitant to let her loose. I left for work at 6:45am  Monday-Friday. Narc left an hour later. I didn’t know he had let her free roam our home that day until I returned  home after work to find all exposed electrical cords chewed to extinction. Lap top, phone, lamp cords, my curling iron. Everything had been chewed to small pieces. Back to kenneling. 

 After about a month Narc left Belle out without discussing with me again. While at work I received a text from my son after he returned home from work. Our love seat had the entire front shredded off and the love seat was on the opposite side of the room. I pulled my phone out to see the picture sent to me and all I could do was cry. My boss rushed over to me and asked what was wrong. I turned my phone around and showed him the picture. My boss said oh shoot, i will give you a minute. 

I cried for days. Every time I walked into the living room I cried, I just couldn’t help it. It was all I had and it was ruined. Saturday morning rolled around and the Ex angrily announced we were going to Ashley Furniture to look for a new sofa set. We picked out a new set for our living room. 

The next weekend we had all of our adult kids over for dinner. Narc behaved as usual. Standoffish, not engaging with any of us. We were talking about the new couches. I joked that thanks to the dogs, I can never have nice things. Maybe you can guess where this is going. 

After all the adult kids left, Narc was in full silent mode. No eye contact, pretending I wasn’t speaking, acting as if i wasn’t in the room. This went on for weeks. I tried repeatedly to get Narc to talk to me. Alternating rage and back to silence. No explanation. On and on the days passed. Then one day, probably 6 weeks later, he blew up at me and stated: I work my ass off to provide you with nice things. How dare you tell your kids I don’t provide you with nice things. I was gobsmacked. What? What are you talking about? He raged that I had disrespected him, telling the family he doesn’t provide for me. I told him everyone in the room knew we were joking about the dog’s destruction, not Narc, but Narc doubled down on my ‘disrespect’ of him.

I endured 6 weeks of alternating silence and rage, just to be lied about and falsely accused. Narc regurgitated that false claim against me again and again from that point forward until our divorce. Every time he was angry, which was often, from that point forward until I caught him cheating he brought out the accusation that I told the family he doesn’t provide nice things. 

Along came a Narc
Who made me his mark.
As he studied me online
He mirrored my values to make me believe he was a man I wanted to be mine.
Little did I know none of his charm could he sustain.
So after we married and 2 children later so began his narcissistic reign.

He discovered me online in a divorce chat group, my unknown voyeur for months. I was in the midst of a divorce from my first husband who had cheated and left me with 4 very young children. He silently watched as I conversed with others going through similar situations. I expressed my frustrations with my soon to be ex’s excessive pornography use, his hiding of money and ultimately taking early withdrawals from a work IRA to fund his affairs. His disinterest in being a father. How easily he moved on from all 5 of us barely looking back. My total distain for infidelity.

After months of watching me, in rode my white knight, mirroring every single one of my beliefs. Oh how naive I was.

It was a mostly ‘online’ affair for quite a while, moving to phone contact and eventually meeting in person. He was overtly charming and had a pretty face. I was hooked.