Grrrrrr

Re. your question, my personal experience with my exN was I got d &d'd lightning fast after i'd caught him cheating [again] and told him it was the final straw. I wasn't strong enough [and was too blindly "in love" to end it with him but I told him "Ok, I need some time out & we need to acknowledge this & work on this properly." He spent a whole night trying to talk me round, begging, crying, raging blah blah. After a few hours, when he saw it wasn't working the magic mojo of "alrighty, under the carpet this all gets swept, now come here & have a cuddle" he said he got up & went to work & never came home again. So, for me i saw it as a mix of exposure / me losing that doe-eyed "you're so wonderful exN" look in my eyes & the prospect of hard work to get me back under his magic spell.... = d&d and disappear. He tried a few times a couple of months later to do giant, ridiculous hoovering - full of compliments, praise, disgusting flirting etc - but when I didn't respond in kind he gave up pretty damn swiftly. He still lurks in the background & I heard from him again the other day after months of nothing. And I have heard that many narcs simply never disappear altogether & I'm so sorry that you live in the same town as him & have to see the knobhead every now & again. But, I do honestly believe that exposure, us seeing them without the mask & knowing them without the mask, and not falling for it if they try their mojo again.... while sometimes they just challenge the narc to work harder or do another hit & run like you say; I think these definitely are all things that will add in a giant way to the possibility of the narc finally giving up & going away. Fingers crossed for you :) Ava xxo

Even though I am no longer next door, I do still see the narc at school. Yesterday he crossed the street so he and his "child" wouldn't have to walk by my daughters and me. Grrrrrrrr. Then, after school, he was chatting happily with one of the other moms, and it brought up all of this old anger that he could never chat with me at school--he avoided me like the plague and actually took different routes to school so we wouldn't be seen together. He chatted with this woman and then, when he left, grabbed her hand and squeezed it. No problem being close and friendly with anyone but me! Ugh. I have been doing well just being grateful I found out the truth, and with replacing the sad thoughts with hard facts about what he was doing the whole time, but it's still hard. He just walked away from the whole thing--two women's lives destroyed (and how many more who knows?), not to mentioned that distress for my children and the ongoing damage to his own foster son. "Grrrrrrrrr" is the only word to describe the feeling. But I used to growl and then pounce. I know I can't pounce anymore or, rather, that NC *is* the attack that really hurts.

I lived in a tiny town in north Idaho when the exN and I parted ways. It was one of those places where people give you the steering wheel wave too. I got one from him one day and just stared straight ahead. I was getting good about giving the steering wheel wave, too, and had to force myself to STOP once I moved back into civilization. It would have broke NC to flip him the bird. Plus we were driving on compact snow and ice and taking a hand off the steering wheel better be for a GOOD reason. I still felt slimed afterward, felt obsessive and preoccupied for a couple of hours afterward. Narcs don't get it. He doesn't think you "see" him for what he is, and if he ever did, he's buried it under Narc denial and bullshit long ago. He'll discard you like trash, or he'll keep coming back no matter what YOU do, it has nothing to do with YOU as to how he either hangs off of your butt like a leech or discards you completely. It's whatever bullshit runs through the Narc's head that causes them to do what they do.

Strange, I passed the POS on Tuesday and acted as if i didn't see him through my tinted windows and sunglasses. As to the question if they know you figured them out? Frankly, I know XN knows "the gig is up". But since he has no conscious, he can careless. Therefore, I can careless. I had no triggers, no feelings at all for him. The XN has been dating a stripper for longer than 6 months or so... Narcs are with you for selfish reasons, once they get what they want from you, they leave and search elsewhere. They are users and predators. Stay strong....

Are you from Texas?