I Used to be Property. Owned by a Narcissist.

The loss of my autonomy to the highest bidder — my abuser.

When we first met, I mistook his possessive nature for passion. I had never met a man so consumed with what I thought was love. I had never been the receiver of such affection and intense emotion.

So when he showed up in my life at a time when I couldn’t have been more starved for love due to a past of men who wouldn’t even hold my hand in public, I became easily drunk with the toxic cocktail he offered me to drink. A cocktail of power, control, and authority that had me sign over the deed to my body and mind that would take me nearly two decades to get back.

As is the case with emotional abuse, but specifically abuse at the hands of a narcissist, his need for control happened slowly and over time. It was in the little things at first, where I still felt in possession of my autonomy but rather enjoyed his crusade to ensuring that I was his and always would be.

It started as a game. He would make me swear that my body was his property and another man would never trespass upon it. In the first few years, he would playfully grab me in public just as a reminder of to whom I belonged.

I was being marked…as territory.

There was not a part of me that he couldn’t touch whenever he wanted. We had sex often, sometimes several times a day, during which he made me promise that on his deathbed (he always assumed he’d die before me) I would put him inside me so he could leave the world with a little bit of him still in it.

Having nothing to compare it to, with only the model of an abusive father who shredded my self-worth from a young age, it initially seemed like normal behavior. After all, the most romantic movies were filled with the “You belong to me” and “I am yours” tropes, thus I counted myself lucky to finally know what all the fuss was about.

When he had to know where I was at all times, keep in constant contact, and guard over my being as though I were a rare jewel in a museum, I chalked it up to his undying love.

I couldn’t see at the time how I was being set up. And how I was being marked…as territory.

Once we were married, the certificate and ring on my finger turned into titles of ownership.

Suddenly, I began morphing from a living breathing woman into an inanimate object in his eyes. Everything that I adored and fell in love with him for now turned against me.

“I was his” initially stood as a statement of my good fortune in having found a man who I belonged to in all the best ways. It didn’t take long before “I was his” became a symbol of something far more sinister as the years passed and I realized the agency I had at the beginning of our relationship had been forfeited.

As his obsession turned into possession, especially once we had children and I learned just how powerless I was while pregnant or at home with infants, his control became suffocating at times to the point that I tried to break free in smaller ways.

After reading the book, Codependent No More by Melody Beattie, I approached my husband about establishing some new guidelines in our marriage specifically as it related to money. He had not only been the one in control of our finances and allotted me an allowance every month to pay our personal house bills, but he also often derided me for choices I made with money. He was particularly harsh if ever I made a mistake, such as once when I added wrong in my checkbook and slipped below zero, which brought a $35 bank overdraft fee. He used this mistake of mine repeatedly to remind me of my faults, though I was in no way allowed to return that scrutiny.

In that same year, when we bought land for the house we wanted to build, he miscalculated the overall cost and once we’d already signed and the deal was done realized he’d made a $250,000 error — not in our favor. I was never allowed to address this or bring it up again.

So my goal of extricating myself from our codependent marriage, at least financially speaking, would be a good thing. Or so I hoped.

I prepared what I was going to say, and then when I had his attention gave what I saw as a compelling speech as to why I believed our marriage would be better served if we each were more autonomous when it came to money. He listened as I talked, breaking down the details as though I were an attorney proving my argument.

When I rested my case, he spoke.

“I will only be in this marriage if we are codependent. I won’t have it any other way.”

That was the end of our discussion. And considering at the time I had an infant with medical issues, a toddler, and a young son I was caring for and raising without much help and while also suffering from post-partum depression, I didn’t see any other way than to abide by my husband’s wishes and try to make the best out of the situation.

At the time, totally unaware I was being gaslighted on a regular basis by a man who would years later be clinically diagnosed as a narcissist, I believed my resistance to “being his” was my own problem. After all, I used to like it. Though at times his attention scared me, such as when he threatened to jump out of our high-rise hotel room after I tried to break up with him at the beginning of our relationship, I still couldn’t help but be swept away by his fervent displays of emotion.

These displays changed in form and lessened over the years. Where once he showed me off to other men like he would a new luxury car, his assessment of my value became focused on those traits I possessed that somehow threatened his position as master and lord in our marriage.

Thus, he reminded me often of my place. And that I was his and my body was his. My breasts and ass were frequent targets. His playfulness that I enjoyed at the beginning of our relationship now turned into admonitions, not so subtle reminders that I was there for his enjoyment and as such needed to make myself available at all times.

During the later years of our marriage, these reminders turned painful. He often came up behind me when I was cooking or otherwise occupied and press his fingers deep into my hips while pulling me toward him, digging into my flesh.

Sometimes when I was standing in front of him, he’d reach out and squeeze my nipple so hard I winced in pain, after which he’d laugh and say something like, “What? That’s still mine, you know.”

As his cruelty grew, along with his disinterest in me unless he needed something such as sex or approval, so did my loss in value in our marriage. I became collateral, no different than the possessions we owned.

His vocabulary also changed. He used the word “allow” whenever I wanted something or after I’d done something he didn’t approve of. I never should have allowed you to do that.

During the last years of our marriage, while he was otherwise preoccupied with a double life that included grooming young immigrant girls for his sexual pleasure, I was allowed to go out to dinner once a month with my closest friends. Suddenly I no longer had a husband but an authoritarian father figure who made sure the box I was in kept getting smaller and smaller to the point where I no longer had room to move.

When he was otherwise entertained with girls who were less than half his age, I became not only a liability — the proverbial ball and chain — but I also became a constant reminder of the responsibility he had to our marriage and family. Where once I was the cute puppy that held his attention and received all the treats he had to offer, now I’d become an adult dog who was more trouble than it was worth.

He doesn’t even see you as a human being, the psychologist told me.

Once my body started breaking down and the physical effects of long-term emotional abuse began to manifest, I lost even more value in his eyes. When I needed to go to the doctor or was taken by ambulance to the hospital after suffering another severe anxiety episode that I thought was a heart attack, I was admonished for being irresponsible. My being ill was a financial burden for him. I felt more and more like a bad investment that he regretted making.

It wasn’t until I found myself in the office of a psychologist who was an expert on narcissistic personality disorder that I finally realized my worth — and lack of in my husband’s eyes.

After learning the devastating details about the double life of the man I loved, including the fact that I’d married a sexual predator who preyed on young and vulnerable girls who were looking for a ticket to stay in the country, I threatened to leave him if he didn’t go to marital counseling. This is where I saw with clarity, with the help of the psychologist, that I was no longer a living breathing person to the man I’d married.

“He doesn’t even see you as a human being. More like a piece of furniture that keeps getting in his way,” the psychologist told me. “He doesn’t even see these girls he’s chasing as anything but objects to feed his supply. That’s how narcissists work. And he’s never going to change. In fact, he’s only going to get worse.”

So began my road of extricating myself from the lien on my person.

After escaping my fairy tale turned nightmare, I began the process of buying myself back. At first, trying to scrape together the initial sum needed to see myself as an asset instead of a liability was not easy. My self-worth initially appraised at a bargain-basement price, I was compelled to focus all my energy on building and investing and contributing to my value in the world.

But like any worthwhile investment, years of consistent deposits, patience, and trust in myself eventually paid off. As did the realization that my body, soul, and mind are not items up for sale. No one has proprietary rights over me. I am not a liability. I am not property.

I am a fortune.

And no one will ever again be able to put a price on that.

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