People Keep Asking Me the Same Question
How did you not know who your husband was?
“If only I was younger, I would marry him,” says my aunt. Followed in her thick New Yorker accent with, “He’s so handsome! He looks like a Kennedy! And he’s so successful too. I told your mother he’s such a catch!”
Suffice it to say…
I wasn’t the only one who chose this tall, handsome, charming hunk of disaster. No one said, “Whoa, lookout momma! That’s a narcissist! Danger Will Robinson.”
Nope, nada. On the contrary, everyone loved him.
They were all like, “You go, girl! He’s a winner!”
I married a narcissist. I walked my naive twenty-four-year-old self willingly down the aisle. This is what is frightening about Narcissistic personality disorder. In our relationship infancy, the narcissist is appealing.
There is a reason we don’t initially detect the narcissist.
And it’s not just because I was a nineteen-year-old college student in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Or that we were whooping it up at college parties more than engaging in the deep conversations of the world.
Narcissists won’t generally reveal themselves until we’ve made a commitment to them. It’s tied to the disorder. Narcissists seek to win and accomplish what they desire. They hide while they achieve their goals.
If they showed us their evil compadre we would never enter their world.
And remember, the charmer is immensely captivating so we would never suspect.
Making my situation even less obvious, my ex-husband was a covert narcissist. This is a narcissist who is not openly arrogant or obvious. They appeared laid-back and easygoing because they are passive-aggressively controlling and manipulative.
Their arrogance hides within them, a smug belief they are superior. There’s no need to voice it. Certainly, others already know this and if they don’t, well, they don’t matter.
Believe me, had I attended college with my husband rather than dated and married him, I wouldn’t believe me. I would read this piece and say, “No way, I knew that guy in Scranton and he was the nicest person in the world.”
And I wouldn’t blame them for saying that. Because look at what I did? I believed it enough to entangle myself with him permanently.
I put him on a Pennsylvania pedestal.
I think this suffices to explain the beginning of my marital mystery.
Here are the other reasons I missed a Narcissist
- I was young and I had never heard the word, Narcissist. And I certainly didn’t know what a lack of empathy meant nor had I ever encountered an individual who didn’t possess empathy. I come from a big family of first responders who are overly empathetic. Those who live well outside of their four walls. I unknowingly attracted the opposite someone who lived solely within their own world.
- I didn’t understand my own personality. In marriage counseling, I would learn I was a pleaser, a fixer, and an enabler. An enabler is an overly caring person who tolerates repeatedly bad behavior. In reality, we should only give people two chances to hurt us in the same manner. After that, we are simply allowing and tolerating poor actions. I tended to live through rose-colored glasses and see the best in people. I also made excuses for that less than appealing side of his. None of these aforementioned qualities are unusual to those of us who gravitate towards narcissists.
- I didn’t understand the family of origin. Many people grow up in homes with some degree of dysfunction. Because of this we often play roles within the family. I was a pleaser and a fixer. I went out into the world and attracted myself to a golden boy. A man who was the oldest and only boy and could come and go as he pleased. We simply picked up where our families had left off. He remained the selfish kid who did what he wanted and I made sure his world went round.
- I was self-sufficient. I was raised by an extremely strong single mother. In my day-to-day life, I didn’t need assistance with things. I figured out what needed to be done with our children, the bills, the mortgages, the cars, the house, etc. Because I put few demands on him he could remain in his world. As our children got older, I needed more help, primarily with getting them to activities. Once I started to impose boundaries the charming narcissist was replaced more and more by his evil twin.
- I was a party girl. My husband and I were both overly social, the life of the party-goers. We loved to laugh. We were similar in many of these outward ways. Between having a natural joy of life, and being self-sufficient I wasn’t really needy and therefore, I didn’t detect the magnitude of the lack of emotional intimacy between us.
These are some of the reasons I didn’t know I was marrying a narcissist.
Even after he was diagnosed with Narcissistic personality disorder I rejected it.
Until I couldn’t any longer.
Watching the persona my ex-husband projects with his new fiance throws this woman back to Scranton. The attentiveness, the way he appears to care about what’s important to her, and how he seems to treat her from the few encounters I have seen or our children have witnessed.
Only reinforces what I know about Narcissistic personality disorder.
Narcissists won’t reveal themselves until we’ve made a commitment to them. There’s no fanfare. No…Whoa, lookout momma! That’s a narcissist! Danger Will Robinson!
All you hear is…
“You go, girl! He’s a winner!”
While you keep charging towards that tall, charming hunk of disaster.