It's embarrassing but

I can't stop staring at the computer screen where I see him hover and love bomb his ex through frequent Facebook communications. I can tell by the activity time stamps. Yes, the activity time stamps. How pathetic is that???? Every day I follow their communications pattern. They exchange messages all day while at work. Then often in the evenings the activity stops for hours. For both of them. Then I know they're spending time with each other. I feel paralyzed. The dull nausea leads to complete apathy, it absorbs my every thought, it makes me a shitty employee, a shitty mother and a non-existent wife.

He used to do that to me. He used to message me every hour and made me feel so special, so interesting. After he swept me off my feet by catching me completely off guard on a drunken night, my sexless boring marriage felt so insignificant. I got to the point where I despised my husband for being so plain, so non-charismatic, so uninteresting and introverted. I wanted out of my marriage. I wanted my future to be exciting and fulfilling, next to a man who gets me, stimulates me intellectually, who is handsome and socially successful. I was completely blind, acting like a single woman who is madly in love and won't stop in front of anything.

A few intense months later, I get a few red flags, and what seems like my very first discard, with almost no devaluation… I'm saying "seems" because I still can't tell whether it was just an act of extreme jealousy (that's how he explains it). To this day I feel like I can't tell for sure. That's how skilled he is.

On that occasion, desperation lead to intense research, which in turn lead to awareness. Textbook NPD.

Apparently narcs love married women. I was great supply for so many reasons. I basically satisfy every narc need according to Goldie's checklist of narc's dream supply, all except home base. I immediately went NC.

For two months I held onto my NC as the only way of keeping my head up high post-discard. Through my NC I was showing how happy and successful I was without him, how I didn't need him , how he thought he destroyed my family but I was completely unfazed by him and I was back to being a perfect wife and mother. I used NC as a way of getting back at him, protecting my shattered heart, and my pride. I did get some clarity back and I did alleviate the pain, my dignity was slowly pieced together with his every attempt to talk to me that I brushed off. But I was in no way on the way of getting better. It was just a cosmetic NC while I waited for the hover.

The unavoidable hover arrived on a work trip we had to take together with a few other coworkers. NC became impossible and we were sucked back into the vortex of passion, this time amplified by months of NC and by a deeper, more mind-boggling type of love bombing. He begged me every night to have a baby with him. We had sex like never before. The scandal, the drama, the incredible chemistry. It was all back, and now it was even more intense.

I've been back from that trip for a few weeks now. I'm trying hard to enforce NC again… but this time I feel like he cast a much more powerful spell on me. He made a few more attempts at restoring the relationship we once had by sending sweet messages and offering to see me whenever I wanted and telling me how much he cares and how he's there for me when I'm ready. I ignored them. Then he started complaining about my NC like a child who got one of his favorite toys taken away: why is it so hard to communicate? why can't we have the discourse we once had?

As I proceeded to remain low or no contact, he eventually turned to his ex for comfort. And here I am. Madly in love with an illusion, replaying in my mind our nights together, his words, his body, while staring at a computer that 's showing me constant digital proof of his relationship with another woman. And of how I now don't exist for him anymore.

I can't unfriend him on Facebook. Please don't ask me to do that. It'll show my weakness, it'll show how much I care. And I don't want to give him that.

NO I don't want a relationship with him. Every time I think of a future together I see a bleak, heartbreaking, terrifying movie. Every time I'm around him I feel like I need to have a shot of vodka. I'm nervous, on edge, I'm not myself. And, most importantly, I'm ashamed of being an adulterous woman, I'm ashamed of how I allowed him to destroy my family. I'm ashamed of what I did and I don't know who I've become. I feel guilty towards my husband and my daughter and I can't always function normally around them anymore.

These things are helping me keep NC. A part of me wants to be with him again but no matter how obsessed and in pain I am today, I know that I'm going to get over this one day and I'll be ok.

My life with my husband, on the other hand, seems to be the unsalvageable victim. It's a daily reminder of my behavior and of the N's influence on my life. The N took my marriage from me. And he knows that.