Did your N tell you much about his past?

mine is very weird. Every thing out of his mouth was a lie with a sliver or truth or fact. Like where he was from and he had this family but once I met his mother, I got a different version of his life than he told. Oh the only reason I was introduced to his mother becaue I made him look good and stable. she really liked me and I liked her, but I am sure she knows her son is a bastard. She actually paid for our meals, for his rent, etc while she was her in July. I thought that was odd since he told me he was wealthy, blah blah. he was always good about getting peoples names, even if he met them briefly. He would later drop those names as people who were close friends...again to give him credibility. His two personalities are so hard for me to wrap my head around. One was the man of my dreams and the other one is a fucking nightmare.

I keep searching things for what I don't know. I found old pictures of his moving stuff out and desperately looked through them, not having any idea what I was looking for. Trying to figure out who the hell this person was. I am honestly not sure what of his past he himself remembers. He forgets major conversations we had and things we did. It is very weird.

My ex was definitely "mysterious." He wouldn't tell me anything about his past relationships aside from "shit happens." I now know what that "shit" is. As for his childhood it was mostly stories that seemed rehearsed and designed to elicit some kind of empathy on my part and feign some impression that those events made him who he is today.

This all sounds extremely familar!! Way tooooo familar! VERY VERY SECRETIVE!!! I am happy for this post, because it was one of the characteristics within the relationship that i found so odd, and sometimes wondered if i was just expecting too much. It's good to know it WASN'T JUST ME. Was it too much to ask for *really* being able to get to know the person you're with for *real*...?? Rather than bits and pieces of information here and there... that btw, would tend to change from time to time. He tried to make me feel like it was me who was being too demanding and suspicious and prying, just trying to get to know him.... and/or trying to have him clarify certain "facts" he had told me that didn't add up... nothing ever added up anyway!! So, because of this lack of sharing information about himself.... I used to always try to find ways to get him to open up more and address this "fear of intimacy".... a futile attempt (everytime) with a Narc! Glad i finally gave up. Oh... and yes, it was ALWAYS "poor him"... .ie., all i ever knew after 2 1/2 years about his exgirlfriends was... (1) they were "crazy"/bipolar (yea , right); (2) they cheated on poor him and cause him scars that would then cause him to hurt others.... (3) I never knew their names or ANYTHING else about them, or the relationships. Hmmmmmm......

I was never given any information about his childhood other than he "hated" his dad. I get the idea that his father was abusive in some way to him and/or his mother. The parts that I do know about are his exes. When I first met him, he had these "work meetings" once a week that lasted until 9pm. After a few weeks, he told me where he was really going--court ordered anger management resulting from his previous ex, who had him arrested for domestic violence, even though he swore up and down he didn't touch her--she would beat him. The story is that he and "psychobitch" as he referred to her, broke up many many times, and at the last breakup, she found out he had put a keylogger on her computer because he thought she was cheating on him. Why was this not a red flag for me!?! Anyway, poor N was arrested, put in jail for night, and ordered to do anger management. I felt so sad for him...how could that crazy girl do this to this sweet, innocent man? Fast forward to his breakup with the next girl, who was the girlfriend during N's and my affair. He "wanted to be friends" with her, so he went out with her three days after they broke up, got drunk on margaritas, and went back to her house to have sex. After he fell asleep, she went through his phone and found all the contact between me and him. She confronts him, she storms off and doesn't tell me any of this happened. Two days later, he is arrested at work for harassment. Of course I feel so terrible because I saw it as "all my fault" (if i wouldn't have texted, she never would have picked up the phone) so I pick him up from jail. He tells me she did that beacuse she was "scorned and rejected" by him. Red flag #541 and I still didn't see it. Here it is one year later and he is still trying to sue HER for accessing his private information...? She has a restraining order on him, which I am so glad is mentioned on our county's online court records system for all others to see...

His past seems to fall into 3 categories: 1. Secretive, hinted-at stuff that never got clarified. 2. Him portrayed as a hero (I suspect much of which was wildly exaggerated or lies). 3. Him portrayed as a snivelling wimp (I suspect much of which was closer to the truth and designed to evoke sympathy). These would vary by the day, and intertwine into an impenetrable, incomprehensible knot of gibberish that turned my brain to much trying to make any coherent sense of it.

what the hell is that!! That is one thing that annoyed the hell out of me. His "mysteriousness" and how he never opened up about his past or prior relationships, he even admitted that he was in denial about certain things - like coming to terms with why his parents split up and I understood and realized what happened like after 2 months because its just common sense and the truth was right there standing in front of his face. Like you are an adult, how can you be in denial about REALITY. I know, I know. All I know is that he has deep unresolved issues about his past and all I ever heard was "I knew this CRAZY girl who....". Narcissists are seriously mentally ill, I pity them.

about the abuse (parents), unfair expectations (wife) and selfishness (children)- not to mention the inability of his workmates to recognize his brilliance, genius and superiority. As long as he was idealizing me, he was so glad I was different to all of them. Between idealizing and devaluating me, I was just as bad as they were,and after D&D I was even worse. I just can`t figure how I managed to change so much in 10 months lol, I still felt exactly the same. Cretins, aren`t they?

I had a similar experience to Sea, Susan32, and some of the other members. St. Narc shared ALOT about childhood very early on, but being out of the relationship for a little while I realize that it was all meant to induce guilt/sympathy and get his hooks in me that way. I think it's a control thing. They want you to know what THEY want you to know. They want to share the things that will hook you and gives the illusion of intimacy. I noticed you said that he knew everything about you. Sometimes to fill the silence that is soooo frustrating to have with someone we love, we tend to talk more about ourselves in hopes that our partners will follow suit and open up. A narc will then use that info as ammunition at a later date. They're clever and sadistic SOBs!

The ex-Psych prof did some verbal diarrhea early on, giving away TMI. He talked about how his cold lack of feeling scared his parents so much he was put in a mental institution-that sounds too weird (and in some ways, too credible) to be a lie. He NEVER brought up past relationships with women, tho he claimed he treated me the way he did because he had been "abused by beautiful women." A common Narc trait is comparing the current partner with former wives/girlfriends. The ex-P took it to a level of weird comparing me to fictional female characters in "War and Peace" (so I somewhat envy women whose ex-Narcs brought up REAL ex-wives/ex-girlfriends) He talked about how animals and children were scared of him. Oh.... and he brought up his masturbation habit. He'd talk about how he preferred the company of men to women, said he shared a house with 7 other men at the University of Virginia, he adores his famous Daddy... but he didn't talk about previous relationships with men either. He lacked the honesty to admit to being gay or bisexual. Once, he angrily said,"I'm NOT gay! I'm normal!" He masked it in virulent homophobia. Here's the frosting on the cake... he was paranoid that I'd "seek out his former acquaintances in Massachusetts." He'd try dissuading me from going to the Bay State, calling it the Land of Neurotic Puritans. He feared that I'd go there. He talked A LOT about himself early on... in the ensuing 3 years, he got increasingly secretive. When I asked about his father during the final D&D, he went behind my back accusing me of making sexual advances on him(???) In the end, I didn't know much about him. He's not one of those Facebook/Myspace Narcs who flaunt themselves. He liked being mysterious.

It was always, always about him. All about his childhood (on the first date). How horrible his dad had been, and still was, even though they never spoke to each other, and how his mother treated everybody else better than him - he is an only child. He would tell anybody who would listen how awful and how unfair things were for him in every aspect of his life. It got really embarrassing on some occasions and I would just sit there cringing. BUT people would fall for it and think what a great guy he was and how in touch with his emotions he was. Little did they know he was just after NS. BUT he never really went into great detail about his past relationships with women - he was very coy about those unless it served some purpose to get me on side. I now realise just how much he kept hidden about the OW. BUT in order to be a good liar you have to have a fantastic memory and on occasion that let him down and that's when I would have my light bulb moments and began to plan my escape. He could look me in the eye and lie at the drop of a hat. In the end I could even see his brain cranking up because his eyes would flicker but I ultimately just got to the stage where I couldn't even be bothered to pull him on stuff because I was so over it all and was tired of the arguments or ST. I was slowly detaching myself from all the drama. I just needed to get the hell out of it once and for all and am so glad I have. Dee x