13 Signs I Dated A Narcissist
I never recognized them at the time.
“Are you denying you just said this?” he was screaming at me, his eyes flickering with rage. “First you are telling me to leave and now you deny saying it?” he went on, his bags stood on the floor next to him, car keys in his hand.
My mind was racing, that was not how I recalled the conversation, but I was terrified of his reaction to anything I would say right now. My whole body was shaking, tears streaming down my cheeks as I was trying to process what had just happened:
A few minutes earlier we were cuddled up in bed, kissing passionately. This passion had become so infrequent in recent months that I cherished every second like a special gift. It was when I gently touched his already hard cock that he had mocked: “Of course, here we go again, all she is interested in is sex”. I had stopped for a second to appreciate the tease. I knew this personality trait well, trying to wind people up at any cost. I had struggled with it at the start, but he had explained it all and reassured me that there was never anything substantial to it.
He had also agreed not to wind me up about topics I felt uncomfortable about. Sex wasn’t one of those topics. I continued to kiss him but this time he pushed me away: “I am sorry, but I really don’t feel up for sex right now.” I looked at him confused, “I thought you were making a joke”
That’s when his mood changed instantly and words were exchanged faster than I could process them. Before I knew what was happening he was shouting and I was crying. I was a nymphomaniac, selfish, I couldn’t respect other people’s wishes, I was crazy and had crazy expectations from a relationship and he genuinely believed that all I wanted from him was sex.
This was the man I had promised to marry and have a family with. It was the man who came fresh out of a relationship where he hadn’t felt appreciated or loved for years, so I had made sure to tell him how much I loved him in different ways every day. It was the man I had spent every spare second with, prioritizing him over my family, friends, hobbies, even work where I could.
It was also the same man who I had sex with 5 times a day, nearly every day just months before this incident. It was him who had joked back then that “men can never have enough sex” and “if we ever have to do marriage counseling the first thing we can tell the counselor is ‘It’s not the sex.”
And yet here we were on our last night together before he would go away for 3 days of no-contact, fighting, about my sex drive and lack of feelings. I did not understand what had happened, or how our relationship had changed so drastically so quickly. It wasn’t our first fight, but it was the first one where I started doubting myself.
By the time we ended, I was convinced I had deep psychological issues, anger management problems, irrational insecurities, addiction problems, ADHD, no empathy, and no self-awareness. I was a bad mum, wife/partner, and friend to anyone, not very good at my job, and outright selfish. I even doubted my ability to communicate in my second language.
When we started seeing each other, I hadn’t been dating anyone apart from my husband since I was 21. I knew nothing about narcissists, manipulation or even what healthy relationships looked like. But the gut feeling was there from the start something wasn’t quite right.
1. Love-bombing
It all started with a serious amount of effort on his behalf. He told me he loved me before we had kissed, and “proposed” within a few weeks. We spent a significant amount of discussion around his views that I was “the one.”
I felt compelled to list out all my flaws and point out things that might annoy him if he was to live with me, but he wasn’t having any of it. No hurdle was too big, no hardship too great to take, no situation not worth the effort to end up marrying the woman he had been waiting for all his life.
Whenever I voiced concerns about some compatibility between us he reacted hurt. “This is very unfair, you don’t know me at all”.
Although I knew he had already proposed to 2 of his past relationships, part of me wanted to buy into this phantasy and believe that he had “never felt this way before in his life”. He was so selfless, caring, and committed that I worried he would get too attached and that I couldn’t live up to being the perfect woman he saw. But soon enough he had convinced me that in his 10 years of marriage he had never been happy, and I was his one true soulmate.
Narcists “build themselves up as the perfect partner, the better to gain your trust, affection — and, ultimately, adoration.” Suzanne Degges-White, Ph.D.
2. He was always the victim
From his childhood, he had been troubled with health issues, that his parent had failed to diagnose for too long. His sister had always been the favorite, been given all the attention and support while he had to work his way up. Work didn’t appreciate his skills, his boss hated him.
In his past relationships, he had been over-affectionate, invested too much so that his partners had taken him for granted or left. His wife had never really loved him, she had mostly used him for his money and as a personal chauffeur, played and manipulated him to get the life she desired.
The lack of guilt and responsibility he showed when he was cheating on her puzzled me at first, but then I didn’t know her, so I believed what he told me. His truth was my truth. When he left her, he had shown nothing but care for her, continued to support her in any way, paid all her bills, and made sure that his family would still treat her as their daughter in law. He hadn’t told her about the affair out of consideration for her feelings, but she had turned his family and friends against him.
Today, he is once again the victim, who fell in love with a “malicious woman” (me) who only tried to “inflict pain on his family”.
Narcissistic projection makes you feel sorry for him. It’s never his or her fault that terrible things happen. You can’t blame a victim — right? They’re the ones who were wronged. The narcissists believes they’re perfect, so clearly anything wrong in their relationships isn’t because of their behavior. They love to be the victim. On top of projecting blame onto someone else, they also grab the spotlight while others help them. Recovery Newsdesk
3. Inability to form meaningful social bonds
He was attractive, charming, funny, and great with children, the sort of guy you feel proud of introducing to your family and friends. When he told me that he hasn’t got any friends and struggled to maintain friendships because of his ADHD it made me feel special. I wasn’t just his lover but his best friend, work-buddy, and the only person that he could truly be himself with. But I didn’t realize why he was struggling to form meaningful connections until I witnessed it at work:
Lack of empathy
Forming meaningful connections requires empathy. Even at work, you don’t have to become friends but to form meaningful work relationships it requires a basic understanding of other people’s feelings, and appreciation for them as human beings and their needs.
The inability to understand that people work in different ways, have different needs, express themselves differently, have different approaches, or come to different solutions caused him to “fall out” with nearly everyone at work overtime.
Claire had put her feet on the desk in her first week, she clearly didn’t know how to behave and anything she did in her job had to be criticized from here on. Garry was stupid and didn’t follow quickly enough when he explained something to him. Bill was talking too slowly and had once picked his nose in a meeting. James was too old and didn’t know enough to be considered a senior. I witnessed countless micro-aggressions and open confrontation until I seemed to be the only person who enjoyed working with him.
“Some people try to be tall by cutting off the heads of others.” Paramhansa Yogananda
4. Lack of commitment
Once the love-bombing phase was over and he had successfully manipulated me into giving up a lot of my life to be with him, his lack of commitment became the subject of fights.
We had been ‘seeing each other’ for over a year but the date when we would finally be ‘official’ kept getting pushed out into the unknown. When I asked he would snap how I could be so cruel to expect him to do this to his wife during COVID.
He continued to go to marriage counseling, went on date nights and holidays with her. I was understanding at first, but as the months went on I started doubting things were going in the right direction. Over time the counseling session with his wife turned from “easing the breakup” and creating a “healthy friendship for the sake of their child” to asking her to come up with reconciliations plans. When COVID hit, they decided to spend every weekend together, and he told me to do things with my ex if I felt lonely.
Texting me every minute of the day during love-bombing turned into no-contact weekends where on return, he would happily report how he had made her cocktails, cooked for her, or taken her to family events. My gut knew he was never going to commit fully, but whenever I would bring it up, he would get frustrated: He was with me now, what more could I ask for? How did I trust him so little and knew him so little to question his commitment? If I would lean on him any more, it would only push him away further.
“If you speak up and own your feelings about their disrespect, they will blame you for causing a fuss, call you crazy, and use it as further reason not to commit fully to you. If you don’t say a word, [that also gives a] non-spoken message that you don’t deserve to be respected,” April Kirkwood, LPC
5. He was the expert
He was incredibly intelligent, well educated, and good at his job in many areas. I accepted that he really was the expert. For months I soaked up all of his advice and knowledge, happy I had found such a great tutor who selflessly helped me to progress in my job. But soon enough the day would come where I had been given a task that I wanted to form my own opinion on. We fought. We made up.
I didn’t realize until much later that at this point he had decided that we couldn’t work together and plans for our own business venture were put on hold. Once he told me: “I am actually really good at my job and I wish people would stop challenging me on everything and let me do what I am good at”. When he listed me all the reasons why his wife was a better fit for him, this was one of them: He wanted to be in a relationship where he didn’t get challenged on subjects he was the expert in.
But the area that really got to me was relationships: He was the one seeing a licensed counselor for relationship advice, while I had no one to turn to and it made me question my instincts so many times. For example, when I pulled him up on his 180-degree turn and he used all the jargon and explanations his marriage counselor had given him on how relationships work and fade over time.
At the time, I was oblivious to the fact that this was advice a counselor had given to a 10 year married couple, 2 different individuals and it was all based on a truth discussed during their sessions, a truth in which there was no other woman in the picture.
“There is no debating or compromising with a narcissist, because they are always right,” Nedra Glover Tawwab, LCSW
6. Constant comparison
Even at the start, I felt uncomfortable how much he was comparing me or our relationship. He told me a lot of things about his wife that was none of mine or anyone’s business. I often found myself defending her or trying to explain her behavior from guesses since I had never met her.
Then he was comparing my exes pointing out how horribly they were treating me, how ugly they were in comparison to him. And later he went on to compare me to his wife again, but this time it wasn’t in my favor anymore.
“I love that I don’t have to think about food when I go over to hers, she always cooks” (I didn’t). “She just knows me so well”. “She is a better person than you”
We didn’t fight a lot, but when we did it would always escalate to a point where I felt he was going to break up. When he threatened to break up if I was not going to be able to control my “blow-ups”, I reminded him that he had told me how much he had been fighting with his wife, and how many times they had actually broken up after fights. His response I will never forget:
“Yes but with her, there were always valid reasons. I would always come back after a fight and understand what went wrong, with you there aren’t. You just blow up over nothing.”
7. He was insecure
I knew he was manipulative, but I wouldn’t have looked into NPD if my counselor hadn’t brought it up, because I knew he had very low self-esteem. He confided in me with all his struggles.
He told me how insecure he was about so many things and inevitably I was feeding his ego by re-assuring him, making sure he knew how much I admired him for who he was. Contrary to what I had thought, Narcissism is not about high self-esteem, it stems from very low self-esteem. I thought he was so humble for such an intelligent, successful, and great man.
People with covert narcissism also rely on others to build up their self-esteem, but instead of talking themselves up, they tend to put themselves down. They might speak modestly about their contributions with an underlying goal of earning compliments and recognition. Or they may offer a compliment to get one in return. Maury Joseph, PsyD
8. I was isolated
Since our relationship started out as an affair and no one knew, isolation just seemed to be part of the deal. During the love-bombing phase, it felt amazing. Only us, best friends, lovers, desk-buddies, I didn’t need anything else. But when the self-doubt started I felt lonelier by the day. 1 1/2 years we dated in secrecy, any fights or gut feeling that I had, the only person I could turn to was him.
But isolation in a relationship isn’t just about friends and family. He would complain whenever I worked overtime that I wasn’t spending time with him. I had stopped going to my sports class because this was one of the few times we had together. I stopped socializing at work. Not that he would ever directly ask me to give those things up, it just “happened”. Why would I want to spend my time speaking to colleagues about useless stuff when I could be spending that time with my soulmate.
Narcissists will use manipulative comments like “Why do you bother spending your time and effort on her when you don’t even like her?”; or “I paid for this car, so of course I get to say when you can use it”; or “I thought you loved me? Why are you spending so many hours at work?”.
Over time hearing continual put-downs, doubts, and jealous comments leads to giving up all of the things that give you your own identity. You become a diminished version of yourself that you don’t even recognize anymore. Someone the narcissist has moulded to suit their own lifestyle and needs. Amy Milnes
9. Words were his weapon
English is my second language, and while I always thought communication was still one of my strengths, I doubted my ability to express myself during this relationship more than anything. Every fight left me feeling so drained and misunderstood. I had become so sensitive and emotional and jumped to conclusions when we communicated, that I didn’t recognize myself.
He always came across sophisticated and convincing when he spoke, something I had admired. He expressed himself so well when he spoke about his feelings or reactions if I had done something wrong. It made it easy for me to understand my mistakes and apologize. I felt I couldn’t match his level of communication, whatever I would say or raise, it would somehow end up being my fault.
At one point I reverted back to written communication because it was the only way that I felt I could clearly express my feelings and get my thoughts in order before speaking to him about it. “We really need to learn how to speak to each other, it’s not normal to message over talking” he would say, and I agreed. I suggested seeing someone to help us communicate, but he was outraged: “We are not even official yet and already needing to see a counselor? That’s not normal for a relationship”.
Only when I started reading up on “Narc-speak” and arguments with a narcissist I started realizing that it was never really about my inability to communicate my feelings, it was about his inability to understand my feelings.
Ever get the feeling when talking to the narcissist that you are in some kind of alternative reality where communication is not about relate to another human being but more like being at war? This would be because you are. Well, to be more accurate, they are, you just happen to be the target. NarcWise
10. Double standards
One day I was upset and fed up with work, I told him I might start looking for another job. He instantly reacted hurt, how could I do this to him and leave him? We had promised that we always wanted to work together. I reassured him that I wasn’t really leaving, I stayed. A few months down the line, out of nowhere, he announced that had applied for a few different companies. I supported him through the interview process but also said I hoped he would stay and that I would miss him if he left. He got upset: A loving, caring girlfriend would have noticed how unhappy he was at work and put her own needs aside to support her partner in whatever was best for them. We were a couple now so it shouldn’t matter anymore if we worked together or not.
I mentioned his tendency to wind people up before. I haven’t read anything about it specifically, but thinking about it, it’s a great way to put people down, picking on their flaws, and when they feel bad about it, it was only a joke. The interesting part is that he couldn’t stand if someone tried to wind him up, he would get furious.
Narcissists expect others to hold a narcissist’s feelings as sacred and supreme. When a narcissist has needs, they expect others to accommodate.Yet when others express emotions, those feelings are often ignored or ridiculed. Should someone ask something of them, narcissists often become irritable or label the other “selfish” or “demanding.” Dan Neuharth, Ph.D., MFT
11. Compulsive lies
We started as a lie. His wife suspected us right from the beginning, but every time she had found a clue, he would come up with new stories and ways to prove them. After he split up with his wife, he went on tinder, just to play the game, just for me to play the game. He said he never spoke to anyone. A few weeks later someone contacted his wife on Instagram and told her that he was having an affair with someone at work. To me, he admitted then, that he had been talking to people on tinder and had been telling a girl about us. To her, he said that it was most likely someone at work who was out to get him and destroy his reputation.
I really wanted to believe, that I was an exception. Perhaps because he shared everything with me, and claimed that I was the only person in the world he could be honest with. After he left, the unraveling began: I looked back at so many situations and uncovered lies, white lies, small lies, big lies. They were always there, from the love-bombing phase to the end.
Narcissists lie effortlessly and are very convincing. They experience pleasure from lying because they lack the normal range of human emotions. They are empty and bored, they lack empathy for others, and they do not feel shame or remorse. This emptiness also enables them to lie with minimal effort. They can look people straight in the eye and lie quickly and guiltlessly, even when confronted with probing questions and evidence of the previous deception. It is also easy for them to deny the lies, make up excuses, and project their own behavior on to others, which is, of course, a lie in itself. NarcissistAbusseSupport.com
12. Manipulation
There were times when I could see through his manipulation. Sometimes I would even challenge him. “Are you having your kids tomorrow?” he had asked. “No, I had to swap days because my ex had a work emergency”. “You know that it’s scientifically proven that children need stability and consistency especially after a breakup”. I told him that I thought co-parenting with my ex should be my exes and my concern and not his. He got angry, reacted hurt, his statement had nothing to do with trying to control me, he was merely stating his opinion and one should be allowed to state opinions without feeling attacked for it.
Other times, I was completely oblivious and puzzled. It was after a fight that he had asked: “Do you ever feel like, no matter how much we love each other, we are simply not compatible?”. From that moment, this was a frequent topic. I felt tired and drained constantly having to prove our compatibility until I questioned it myself. It felt so wrong, and I just longed to see the guy again who loved me for who I was. It took me a long time to understand his motivations: He needed the breakup to be amicable because he was scared that I would tell his wife if he just left. Our fights became “the issue”, “the proof that we didn’t work”, he just couldn’t cope with my anger, he was so unhappy, he got angry with his son because of a fight we had, he hated himself for the person he was when he was with me. He couldn’t support me in the way I needed or give me all this reassurance I was craving. At one point he had convinced me into believing that he would be better off going back to his wife, who suddenly possessed all those qualities he lacked in our relationship.
He was right about one thing though, we were not compatible, nor would I ever want to be compatible with a relationship with a narcissist.
Most people can identify when someone is trying to manipulate them, and avoid them completely; but the narcissist has a very stealth, underhanded way of manipulating those around them, especially their partner. Amy Milnes
13. He moved on
Going through the break up was the hardest thing I ever had to go through. It was grief over a person that never existed and the future that was promised but never even started. It was anger over the lack of empathy or care and the lack of acknowledgment that there ever was a relationship. It was the pain of acknowledgment that it was never real.
How could someone who acted so caring and understanding treat others the way he has treated me and his wife? How could someone that I loved so much make a 180 turn in such a short space of time? How could someone who once believed to have found his soulmate, just walk away and not try to work things out? How could someone who had believed to have found the love of his life, discard the same so quickly? And how could someone, who broke up saying that he still loved me the same, and will always care for me, just move on from one day to the next?
Every day after the breakup I had to see him and speak to him at work and every day I struggled to cope. Places we have been to and songs we listened to still make me cry. But he had moved on, moved in with his wife within the month and threatened me to never contact him again. He never apologized or showed any sign of remorse: “You are being unfair, I was always honest with you”. “I am sad that you are struggling, but there is nothing I can do… you yourself have removed that option with your actions, not putting any blame, just stating the facts”
Don’t expect the narcissist to share your grief. Once the message sinks in that you will no longer be feeding their ego, the narcissist will likely soon move on to exploit someone else. They won’t feel loss or guilt, just that never-ending need for praise and admiration. This is no reflection on you, but rather an illustration of how very one-sided their relationships always are. Crystal Raypole
I moved on
No, I am still single and I probably will be for a while. My blatant ignorance of the existence of narcissistic abuse has kept me in the dark far too long.
Working through it all, over and over again has helped me a great deal to understand the relationship, him, and myself again. The support I got from my friends, therapists, and countless articles and books has helped me to trust myself and my gut again. And it has inspired me to speak up and share my experience.
I don’t see myself as a victim. When going through all the signs of narcissism, I could even identify myself in a few. Although I didn’t know anything about Narcissism, my instincts have been strong enough not to surrender completely, my gut has kept me fighting back even when I had no idea what was happening and what I was dealing with.
I got out and it has been a massive learning experience. No matter how much anger and pain I feel, I know that I will come out on the other side stronger, wiser, and healthier. I feel fortunate that it ended as “quick” as it did. Fortunately for my incredible support network. Fortunately that he so quickly found his new supply and I don’t have to go through the hoovering phase.
But I know that many others aren’t as lucky. I hope that one day anyone in an emotionally abusive relationship will find this or similar stories when they have just a gut feeling that “something isn’t right”.
