Goddess76's Story

I am now two months out of the 4.5 year relationship with a narcissist. He ultimately left me. I thought I would start to feel better as time passes, but I don’t. I feel the deepest pain, sadness, loneliness and paralysis than I ever have in my entire life and have for quite some time now – the worst being the last two years. I feel so hopeless, like this pain will never end. It feels like the world is closing in on me. I don’t see the path forward. Any emotional relief I feel is short lived. Pain and sadness is my new baseline. I have cried almost every day, and usually many, many times a day for the past two years. I feel like a lost cause. I don’t know how to help myself. None of the many things I have tried have brought much healing and I always revert back to this horrible state of constant pain. I fear I will never get better, although I have to believe it is possible. Here is my story:

We met online. I remember gazing at his picture and feeling something… attraction, intimidation, excitement. We met in person and these feelings intensified. My heart was racing. I was so into him and he was so into me. The classic love bombing took place. I thought I was falling in love with my soulmate. There were so many undeniable synchronicities and areas of compatibility between us. It was the best courtship ever! We had so much fun together, amazing sex, the works. I felt so fortunate to have met him and he said he felt the same. Six weeks later, he initiated the first “I love you”. I said it back and we must’ve said it to each other hundreds of times that night. Tears in our eyes at the intense connection we felt towards each other. We made the best love I could have ever imagined that night. He asked me to be his girlfriend and my response was a no brainer. I was so thrilled. I was 6 months out of a 10 year marriage at the time and was not looking for a relationship. But, you know what they say, you can’t control when you fall in love and man was I in love!

Then there were these lies and inconsistencies that kept coming up. Mostly surrounding the level of support he was giving his ex-wife. He tearfully told me that he had cheated on her which is what ended their marriage. He said that he had so much guilt for what he had done, that he felt enslaved to her basically. They have two little girls together. He was incapable of saying no to her for anything. He was paying child support an alimony already and going above and beyond that by paying her rent when she asked, paying thousands of dollars for beauty pageants for their girls, being at her beck and call for pretty much everything. I thought, “this poor guy should not have to live his life indebted to her because of his indiscretions”. We talked through the lies, each time I felt would be the last, but it wasn’t. I helped him gain assertiveness, learn to have boundaries and tell her no, which gave him more freedom and allowed him to stop bleeding out financially like he was. Then there were lies about his sexual history. I’m a therapist, so I was seeing that there was a bigger problem going on here than what meets the eye. It became clear he was a sex addict. He vehemently denied it at first and was so offended I would say such a thing. Over time, he owned up to it. We sought therapy together and I asked him to get his own and he complied. Of course he was dishonest throughout the entire process. The lies continued and I eventually asked him to take a sexual history polygraph. He refused for over a year and a half. With each new lie, I would ask again and he would ultimately refuse each time, telling me I needed to work on my trust issues and that it is inhumane for me to ask for such a thing.

We got engaged in April 2014 and moved in together shortly afterwards, blending our families. I grew close to his girls, loved them like my own. We had a beautiful house, ran it so well together, co-parented fairly seamlessly. I was so happy with my new family and felt so fortunate to have such an amazing partner who clearly felt the same way. Except that the lies continued. Three months after moving in together, we had a big blow up. The gaslighting and deceitfulness was undeniable in the situation, although he denied all of the inconsistencies I was bringing up for three days after that night. I was relentless. I was being lied to and I knew it. He finally broke down and started admitting to things I knew to be truth. I asked for a polygraph again at that point and this time, I was not backing down. I insisted that we see a therapist who specialized in sex addiction who could facilitate the polygraph. This is common protocol for sex addicts as they almost never fess up without being forced in this way. He knew that I would not back down this time and so he did what any skilled narcissistic, grandiose, manipulative sex addict would do – he tried to fake the test. He researched how to pass one, practiced deep breathing several times a day for weeks leading up to it.
I will give some relevant context before continuing. I found out, through trickled truth over time in our relationship, that he had multiple affairs on his ex-wife. During their 5 year marriage, he recounted over 20 incidents of cheating on her (I later found out it was more like 60). These included one night stands with women and men he had met online, illicit massages, paid sex and several transsexuals – a huge fetish for him. Not to mention ongoing, in secret, porn and masturbation. He swore up and down to me that he could NEVER to that to me. I was his soulmate, he loved me so much, would never want to hurt anyone like that again. I also knew that he had cheated on almost every woman he was with up until that point. He told me a lot before the polygraph, but of course not the most pertinent things for me personally, being his behavior while in relationship with me. So, having all of that knowledge of his history, and the ongoing lies to me, I had to have a surefire way of knowing that he was being sincere, hence the polygraph.

It was December 6, 2014, a date I will likely never forget, when he took the polygraph and failed miserably. Nothing has been the same since. I feel forever changed, damaged. He told me he had cheated on me for the first 16 months of our relationship – mostly illicit massages, including paid oral sex and had also seen a woman he had a purely sexual relationship with for over 10 years and had also cheated on his ex-wife with. I fell apart. I couldn’t function. Our therapist recommended inpatient treatment at the Meadows for both of us. I was much worse off than he was at that time and voluntarily went in for their 6 week inpatient program. I didn’t have insurance, so he took out a 401K loan and paid the close to 50K for my treatment. It was a joke, caused more damage and trauma ultimately and I left halfway through. All of the “professionals” urged me to wait a year before making a decision about the relationship. I shouldn’t make such an impactful decision in my traumatized state, and they all preached so much hope for the relationship now that the healing can begin. Horrible advice. He is a narcissist, treating his so called “addiction” would never change that and the likelihood of a narcissist changing is pretty nil from all of the research I have done. I wish I knew then what I know now.

His ex-wife got wind of my treatment and demanded records, stating that she needed to know what I was in treatment for since we had their girls half the time and I was a “parent figure” to them. After a 10 month court battle, the judge ordered that if I did not give up my entire medical record for her to see, I was to no longer have any contact with his children. I wouldn’t release my records and could no longer have any contact with his children. I was heartbroken all over again. He felt terrible initially, overwhelmed with guilt and shame. After the year mark, and with both of us working individual 12 step programs and a third together as a couple (Recovering Couples Anonymous), in addition to seeing several therapists, I recommitted to the relationship. In hindsight, trauma bonding was in full effect. I was so broken down, so dependent on him for so much, plus we had “gone through so much together”, that the idea of leaving at that time did not seem like an option. I had worked through many of my trauma symptoms, felt love, compassion and respect for him again – feelings I wasn’t sure would ever come back. Up to that point, he had been willing to do anything for us to stay together and he went to great lengths to that end. He told me he would never leave me, would spend the rest of his life making this all up to me. There were all kinds of struggles still, but I had hope for us and attached to all of the hope giving parts of our reality at the time. I was able to let go of my shame and embarrassment of my story and wanted my family back together so desperately that I was ready to release my records in hopes of doing so. This would mean that his ex would become aware of his addiction which scared him to death, but he was ready to face those consequences and let the chips fall as they may. For a brief time, we were on the same page and things began to look up.
Then there was an abrupt shift for him. He began questioning the relationship and the devaluation began. I became the reason for all of his problems. He treated me like an enemy. He would say in angry rages that he didn’t want to let go of his addictive behaviors, that I was constantly shaming him. I shamed him heavily and treated him horribly the first year after the failed polygraph, but that had all stopped. I felt so hopeless, downtrodden, could hardly function all over again. I was so confused as to what was going on. I was concerned for him with all of his erratic moods. Sex and intimacy pretty much stopped altogether. He cut me down constantly. I could do no right. He told me in mid October of 2016 that he wanted to split up. I begged him to stay. I offered everything in my power to continue the relationship. Agreed to make changes regarding everything he had been complaining about. But, he had laser sharp focus of getting out the door and moved out 2 weeks later. He has been so cold and aloof in the little bit of contact we’ve had since. It’s like I never meant anything to him. None of my love, my help, staying by his side after all he had done, none of it matters. I feel so sick over it all. I feel like he sucked me dry of all the good I had to offer. I gave the relationship my all, loved him madly. I feel so depleted and drained, like he took something from me that I don’t know how to get back.