The Narcissistic Love Story 1
This is the story of everyone who fell victim to narcissistic abuse.
Hi there,
I welcome you to the first part of “The Narcissistic Love Story,” which is a story of everyone — you, me, and all those who fell victim to narcissistic abuse. Just like your story, this one also started with the feeling of finally finding the perfect partner or, let’s say — the soulmate.
This is the story of Elisa*, who fell in love with Tom in the most romantic way. He was the guy of her dreams, swept her off her feet with his grandiose romantic gestures and promises. But, little did she know how it would all turn out for her. She ended up with PTSD, four miscarriages, and other mental and physical health-related issues.
Below is the form Elisa submitted as a prerequisite for scheduling sessions with me. You will be able to see her challenges and how bad her PTSD symptoms were.
(The screenshot is from the original form and consent from my client is taken to share it and share her story with her name changed.”).
The screenshot is shared with the client’s consent
The screenshot is shared with the client’s consent
She narrated her story, which has elements of hope, love, and abuse, just like every story of narcissistic abuse.
Toward the end of each part, I will give a summary of red flags, and what went wrong to help you understand and see the problems more clearly. This will help you avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
Let’s go ahead and read Elisa’s story, which she narrated in her own words.
The beginning of an innocent start
Tom and I met in our college in 2000 when I was 18 and he was 19. We fell in love very sweetly and slowly. We met in our first year of art school. We were both very creative. He was also a musician, played the bass guitar, and was part of a rock band.
We were friends for a year as I had a boyfriend that I was still dating from high school. I started hanging out with Tom — his company and little gestures were always sweet and impactful. Once we went to an amusement park and got a keychain of our picture together.
My boyfriend and I would fight quite often and he’d scare me by saying that he is breaking up with me, but then he’d come back. During one of the fights or say the breakup periods, I put this keychain with Tom and me, on my keys and my boyfriend saw it. He ended up getting so angry that he punched me in the face and cracked my tooth.
I don’t remember the hit hurting that bad but I was really upset about my tooth. My contact also flew out of my eye and I drove home half-blind. My mother called his mother and told her he should stay away from me.
I began spending more time with Tom. He asked me to be his girlfriend a few times but I thought I should wait at least a little while. But it didn’t take long before I told him I would like to be his girlfriend.
We had an amazing romance — everything I ever dreamed it to be. He told me I was his soulmate and I felt the same way. We did everything together, went on adventures, and were so happy to have found each other. He placed me on a pedestal. He told me I was made for him as our birthdays were nine months apart. I was perfect and beautiful to him and to other people he was noticeably proud to have me as his girlfriend.
We had a good 5 years that were very happy and life was just exciting, peaceful, and enjoyable.
During these 5 years, sometimes we would get into arguments and I remember being very confused by some of them but they happened rarely in the beginning. I remember he would even draw a skull face on his calendar to denote the fact that we fought that day, yet he also numbered the times we made love on his calendar.
After our college graduation in 2003, a weird thing happened when Tom and a really close friend (whom we both went to school with for those 4 years) just stopped talking. In some ways, they competed with each other as artists and that had something to do with it from my understanding. Tom was fine with the relationship ending. I never really understood why or how he just let that go so easily. I never really questioned and paid much attention to it.
We both got entry-level jobs in graphic design and were content. We didn’t have any other friends outside of each other. We only wanted to spend time together and social time was spent with family (his brother, his parents, my parents, and sometimes my cousins).
The romantic proposal
We got engaged in July 2006 when we were 25/26. He met with my parents secretly and asked to marry me. He planned a very romantic proposal at an amusement park where we went a few years earlier for our first vacation together.
He planned for us to go on a rollercoaster at night at the same time fireworks were going off into the sky — so we were on the rollercoaster seeing the fireworks right above us. Then he proposed to me, and I of course said yes.
During that time my aunt was diagnosed with cancer and she passed away soon after our engagement. At the same time, my younger sister began acting out (doing drugs, sleeping around, a suicide attempt all while away at college) and my father enabled everything she did.
All of this brought a lot of stress on my mom which affected me being a very empathetic person. All this eventually affected me and Tom. He didn’t like that I was bringing my family’s issues into our relationship. Looking back on this, I agree and wish I had somehow handled this better, but of course, I wasn’t as knowledgeable on emotional management or how to handle stressful family conflicts/dynamics.
In January 2007, we were very excited when he moved out of his parent’s house and into an apartment in his grandparent’s house. Our gifts to each other throughout our relationship were always so thoughtful and showed how much we loved each other.
We had a stack of photo albums that had an area next to each picture where you could write a little note about the photo. That year, as a gift, he was able to get all the photo albums (8 albums of 1500 pictures) from me, from my parent’s house and he wrote a note to me about every single picture in each album.
But then, there were times when we would fight and he got so mad at me that he wouldn’t answer my calls at all. When he was living in the apartment, there was a time (or two or three?) that I got up very early in the morning and drove to the apartment, parked across the street, and jumped out of my car when he was leaving just to see him and plead with him to talk to me. He either got in his car and drove off or said a few words to me—probably that he wasn’t ready yet and got in his car and left. I would leave defeated, go to work, and have a horrible day.
I remember after ignoring me and/or not talking or seeing each other for a time, I would get through to him, we’d talk, and we would have this dramatic coming back together. At least one particular time, I remember we planned to meet at a park we loved. After not seeing him for a while, I would be so excited to see him again, I would make myself up as pretty as possible. We shyly met at a spot in the park and talked and I loved feeling that desire to be intimate with him again, show me how attracted he was to me, and tell me he loved me again.
Fights and make-ups went back and forth long enough to be noticed by his family. His mother suggested we see a therapist. I assumed I should find a Ph.D. who would be professional enough to understand us both and suggest a way to help our relationship and future conflicts.
Soon enough the therapist we saw separately told me that Tom could not empathize and she told Tom that I was immature, which was always his argument.
The fact that he couldn’t empathize was downplayed but the fact that I was immature was now the main problem because the therapist proved him correct.
Now the question was, will we go ahead with our future plans to get married or not?
The wedding???
In August 2007, as I suspected, Tom was unsure whether he wanted to marry me, so the therapist told him we should not speak for two weeks and after that, Tom should call me and tell me whether he wanted to marry me or not.
This was not what I wanted to do and those two weeks were very difficult.
He called me up after two weeks and told me he did not want to get married; this was a month before our planned wedding. I was completely heartbroken. We weren’t breaking up, but I had to scramble to cancel everything with the wedding while begging the vendors to hold my money because I promised them the wedding would still go on.
We continued therapy with the same therapist — she told us we should date a bunch of people (since we were only each other’s second girlfriend/boyfriend ) which made no sense because we were engaged — she should have been helping us to stay together. It was weird for me so I decided to give ourselves a chance to prove the therapist wrong.
I planned a trip to the seaside and convinced Tom to go along. We had an amazing time — we were so happy to be together and prove our therapist wrong.
As the months went by, I would ask Tom if we could set the wedding date again — it was all up to him and he would get mad that I was “pushing” him.
He wanted to see me be more mature. Once I remember I went to the beach by myself and spent the day there. I told him this so that he could be proud of me that I did something independently (even though I was in the middle of getting my master’s degree, I worked full time, and I took care of myself…). Was he proud of me? Not really.
About six months later he agreed and the wedding was put on again. The therapist told us she didn’t think we should get married, but we loved each other and knew she was wrong. She also left me a message letting me know she would be bringing a guest to our wedding which I never invited her to! I left her a message saying we did not want anyone at our wedding who didn’t believe we should get married and that was the last I spoke to her.
The big day finally came and we got married in 2008.
The wedding was beautiful. I still remember his face as I was walking down the aisle. He was smiling and wiping tears from his eyes. We had taken dance lessons and did a choreographed wedding dance to our song, “Beautiful Tonight” by Elton John. I was so nervous to dance in front of everyone but he talked me through each step. Everyone was surprised when we started dancing and just blew up into applause when he dipped me at the end.
After the reception, everyone lined up in the courtyard as we left and he picked me up and carried me across the courtyard we waved to everyone as we left.
STORY TO BE CONTINUED...
Summary —
Wow, that’s just the start of something more than a rollercoaster ride. I am sure you must have felt the highs and lows of Elisa’s story while reading it. Usually, a Hollywood movie would end right here, and we assume that now they will live happily ever after. This is where we go wrong. Life goes beyond getting married to a person you want to and trust me that this is just the beginning of something more dramatic and narcissistic.
I have highlighted the points and commented there, as those points are where you can see the red flags and other noticeable things that can save you from being abused in life.
You can clearly see how Tom was diagnosed as someone who was unable to have or show empathy and at the same time, he could not control and manage his emotions well. At the same time, Elisa felt the need to prove to him that she is mature enough. This kind of contradiction and contrast are very common in a dysfunctional relationship. It is also a good example of projection.
There is much more to Elisa’s story. Stay tuned to read the second part, where you will see her post-marriage life and challenges.
The names and locations have been changed to maintain the privacy of the people in the story. It was very kind of my client to let me share her story with the hope that it would benefit the readers.
Feel free to comment with your thoughts and what you think about Tom and Elisa. What would you have done if you were in her place and what would you have advised if Elisa were your friend?
