The Narcissistic Love Story 3

Who doesn’t want to make their relationship work, even if it’s with an undiagnosed narcissist? See what all Elisa did to keep her relationship alive in part 3.

Welcome back to part 3 of Elisa’s story which is the story of every victim of narcissistic abuse. By now I am sure that you must guess where the story is going… but there is much more to it. This is the reason why I chose to share this story with you. Let’s go ahead and see what Elisa has to say about her struggles.

In this part, you will read what efforts Elisa put in and what all she put up with for the sake of making her relationship work. This is the struggle of every narc victim, you will relate to it as you will read on.

You can read Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t read these yet.

Trigger warning — Readers are advised to be aware that some of the incidents in the story can be triggering as these are very common in narcissistic relationships.

Once again I have marked (in bold) the red flags, narcissistic traits, and other signs that one must look for when suspecting to be in a relationship with a narc. I have also added my comments at the end of the article on each incident worth your attention.

The Retreat

Tom and I attended a three-day weekend retreat. It was led by Retrouvaille couples who were also graduates of the program. They taught us a written dialogue communication technique and spoke to the group on different topics.

For those three weeks, couples were supposed to share a room and a bed, but Tom preferred to have his own room. The management didn’t agree to his request and we had to share the room but the room only had one bed. So, to avoid any further drama I brought an air mattress with me, he happily slept in the bed while I had to sleep on the air mattress on the floor. He never asked to swap, I also didn’t mind as I was thankful to at least share the room with him.

At the end of the weekend, we were assigned to write each other a letter. In the letter, he agreed to come back home but not immediately.

He came back and I called the domestic violence center and asked them to delete all the information I gave them. I was so happy that Tom had come back, hence, I didn’t want his name to be with domestic violence people.

While he was away that summer, I kept a journal of my thoughts and dreams I would have and all the symbols in those dreams. When he came back, he agreed to listen to me read him my journal and share my dreams. It was very important for me to share my nightmares, dreams, and thoughts that I had while he was away, as I always felt that all this belongs to him, just like I do.

He sat pretty much emotionless while I read my words and wept. When I was done he didn’t have much of anything to say about it.

I threw that journal away because I didn’t want any evidence of that horrible time (this, however, would have been helpful to me now).

My sister gave me an extra bed frame and mattress she had and I set it up in the second bedroom in our house across from the master bedroom. He wanted to sleep separately for a time. [I thought this was also good because he snored, which was another frustration. His snoring bothered me to a point that I couldn’t sleep. Sometimes I would leave the room and sleep on the couch. When I asked him to use breathing strips that might stop him from snoring, he refused to. He got mad at me when I recorded him snoring to try to prove to him that I wasn’t making it up.

We continued attending the monthly Retrouvaille meetings and he was very good about this as he enjoyed the meetings and the people who attended. We wrote the dialogue letters they taught us to write at home as much as we could, more in those first few months.

There was one time at one of the meetings when the topic of not being able to forget about hurts came up. During the meeting, I told him it is hard for me to forget about things that he’s done that have hurt me but he said I am wrong to not be able to let them go.

I raised my hand and asked the facilitator about this and they said it is completely normal. After the meeting, one of the other participants came up to me, kneeled and took my hand right in front of Tom, and told me I should not feel bad if it is hard to let go of past hurts.

Since Tom had a front-row seat to this, I thought it sunk in and he’d feel differently about it but instead, he just brushed it off and pretty much said the woman didn’t know what she was talking about.

The beginning of guilt or something new?

In September 2016, six months after we went on the Retrouvaille retreat, a man at work who I had just met was among the people I was speaking with about Retrouvaille.

From this conversation, he found out that my husband and I had had trouble in our marriage. With this information, he began flirting with me soon after, and for some reason I allowed it.

What was so strange about this was that Tom and I were doing well or much better than we had been, having Retrouvaille meetings and dialoguing. What was stranger is if you would have asked anyone I knew, they would tell you that I never had eyes for ANYONE but Tom.

In the fifteen years we were together I had no care for any other man in the slightest way because no matter what, Tom was my soulmate and I was only attracted to him and no one else.

But somehow to my surprise, I began a three-month affair with this man. I would tell Tom I was going out with a friend or a cousin and I’d come home at 12 pm and he wouldn’t even question it as he would be perfectly happy being home by himself working on his teaching portfolio or artwork or music.

Maybe, I was doing it all to get his attention, to get him to feel insecure, jealous, and ask me about my whereabouts, but no, he never bothered.

Tom had finally gotten an adjunct teaching position at a local college that would start in September. We had been planning our long-due trip to Europe at the end of August (this was planned before my affair started).

He was finally getting his chance after five years of blood, sweat, and tears from both of us. As the weeks went by I began dreading the trip as I was having this affair and I felt like I was falling in love with this other man.

One day during that summer, Tom told me to research tours I wanted to go on in Europe. I asked him to look at it together but he wanted us to do it separately and then put it together. I felt that was a waste of time and couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to work as a partner with me on it (just one of those little things I questioned).

The time was getting closer to the trip and I didn’t want to go feeling the way I did about someone else. I was completely distraught and confused day and night, living a double life that I told no other soul about.

I called in sick to work a few times and spent them with the other man. When I was with him, I felt free, and he gave me the kind of attention that I hadn’t felt from Tom in a long time.

I did whatever I could to make the ultimate decision. I called a couple from Retrouvaille who pleaded with me not to leave my husband. I sat with a priest at my church who was just visiting from Ireland. I didn’t know him and after I told him my story, he told me, “the heart wants what the heart wants”.

Lastly, I went to a psychic who I had seen a few years before speaking to a group of people about his psychic work and he did readings for people right there in front of everyone. I thought he was amazing.

He saw me for an individual reading. He was a self-taught artist and believed all his talents including his psychic ability were given to him by God. He believed in God.

I purposely told him close to nothing about my situation and he was able to tell me close to everything about it. He used tarot cards with images of his own paintings on them. From the images on the cards, he told me I had a major decision to make before the 8th month, that I was shedding my skin like the snake, that I was the “daughter of the great transformation”, that our relationship had reached its end and that Tom was someone who would be “not lonely, but alone”.

All of this and more made sense to what was happening and pointed to ending our relationship.

I think that even without consulting these people though, I had my stubborn mind made up. I started thinking about how I would tell Tom. I remember going to the other man’s house one morning and telling him I was going to tell Tom. I told him I am leaving him for you — is that what you want too? He was surprised but he didn’t stop me.

I went home that day and got up the nerve. Tom was painting the garage. He came inside and I told him I wanted to leave, I didn’t want to be married anymore. He was completely shocked, I don’t remember what he said but he couldn’t believe it.

I then told him I met someone, which I didn’t want to do but I felt I had to because it made absolutely no sense that I wanted to leave. He didn’t believe me when I told him there was someone else at first like I was making that up.

I remember sitting in the living room and he was walking around the dining room. At one point, I said to him, let’s move far away and get away from here, but I didn’t really mean that. I called him by his “pet name” and he told me never to say that to him again. I also told him that “it wasn’t like I loved the guy” but that wasn’t really true either.

While I sat there, what was strange is that I sensed in some way from his face and his body language that it was like he was contemplating how might all this work in his favor. I told him I felt that he didn’t like me, and I couldn’t be with someone for the rest of my life who doesn’t like me.

In one of those conversations on one of those last days, he told me very matter-of-factly, that he always wanted someone who was more feminine anyway… this didn’t really hurt me then, as I had Dave — “the other guy” — waiting for me. But, all these years later, the memory of that opened a wound that now added to a very deep feeling of worthlessness and self-condemnation.

The days following are a blur to me. Somehow I slept there for another day or two but then I left and stayed at my parent’s house.

At some point, whether it was that first day or another after I told him, we argued about who the person was and how I was in contact with him. I told him that I kept Dave’s phone number listed as someone else’s name on my cell phone. He took my phone and said he wanted to call the man.

I got the phone back and we ended up on the kitchen floor, the phone in my hands under my body and him on my back. It was the only moment in all our time together that I honestly felt scared that he might physically hurt me. But luckily he didn’t.

There were so many times in my relationship with Tom that I wanted him to physically hurt me just so I could have something to prove he was causing me pain. But he never did — he would never allow me to have any kind of power, it seems, that would prove his bad behavior in any way.

I never thought to record any of our conversations or fights in all those years. Smartphones weren’t so big back then either. Recordings would have been helpful as maybe I would have been able to prove to somebody or to him that he was abusive, but otherwise, it was too difficult to explain to anyone the confusing arguments we would have and what I would come to know as gaslighting, but only too late. I used the term “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” to describe him years before I read anything about narcissism.

Divorce — the beginning of my actual suffering

Somehow, we actually met at the courthouse and led for an uncontested divorce together within weeks of telling him I wanted to leave. One day he called my mom and said to her “Elisa wants me to say I’ll take her back, but tell her that I’m not going to do that”.

There were so many times over the years that people would suggest I “play hard to get” when he left me or ignored me or did not beg me to come back. I would never do it because that wasn’t me and it wasn’t true — I always wanted him back and I was always scared that if I didn’t beg him to come back, maybe he would leave. So maybe that was true all along. If it came from me, he’d have no responsibility for it.

I wrote an email to his mother saying I didn’t want her to write me back, but that because I did care, I wanted to tell her that what I experienced from Tom in our relationship was narcissism and he may have a hard time with relationships going forward. Even though I asked her not to respond, she did, and the title of her empty email was, “Seriously?”.

I was shocked and angry at this and remember telling her you and your husband walked by the holes in my walls and never said a thing — she never responded again after that… I also sent a card to his grandparents who we lived with and told them I just didn’t feel I was where I was supposed to be anymore but I loved them very much and would always remember them.

The moving on?

In October 2016 I moved in with Dave.

We then had to sell our house. Tom wouldn’t allow me to have any communication with him other than over text. Texting him was infuriating and I was not allowed to call.

He told me he was losing weight, he couldn’t eat, and couldn’t concentrate. These were all things that I experienced MANY times when he ignored me or left me.

It was happening to him now, but he never believed it (or cared?) when he caused all this to happen to me. And, I don’t think he even made the association with me having experienced those things because of what he had done to me. I didn’t tell him this because I felt so bad for him.

Tom had written the divorce settlement — we did this all without lawyers as it was an uncontended divorce and we both didn’t want to spend money on lawyers.

In the divorce settlement, he split all our money 50/50. He also stated he would get most of the items in the house that we shared.

I did, however, want all the concert tickets from my favorite band that he had kept with all his other concert tickets. For some strange reason, he refused to give these to me, saying “that’s silly” in a text when I asked him for them.

In April 2017, we sold the house for the same price we purchased it for, six years earlier. He made it impossible for me to go to the house (I had agreed to hand over my keys to him) and so the only time he gave me to take my things was the day before the closing. It was too late to get a (free) garbage pickup, so I had to just leave a lot of things on the curb.

The next day the new owners did a walk through and since the garbage was there, we were required to pay $1000 to remove what would be free if I had had time to call for a garbage pickup. I didn’t want to pay this because it wasn’t fair. Tom and I had to go into another room to discuss what we would do. I ended up crying uncontrollably as he stood over me, his last attempt to control me, and the last words he ever said to me were, “why don’t you just kill yourself?”.

To be continued…

Comments

“So, to avoid any further drama I brought an air mattress with me, he happily slept in the bed while I had to sleep on the air mattress on the floor”

We all can be angry and nasty at times, but what Tom is doing here is more about punishing Elisa and showing her her place in the dynamic. All his actions communicate that he will have the upper hand and the last say in the end.

“He sat pretty much emotionless while I read my words and wept. When I was done he didn’t have much of anything to say about it”

Showing no emotions and taking no initiative to make it up to Elisa for the pain and emotional turmoil that she went through are two examples of an absence of empathy in Tom.

“When I asked him to use breathing strips that might stop him from snoring, he refused to. He got mad at me when I recorded him snoring to try to prove to him that I wasn’t making it up”

Anything can happen but how can a narcissist be imperfect? How can he have a problem and how dare Elisa point it out? Just a typical narcissistic reaction.

“He just brushed it off and pretty much said the woman didn’t know what she was talking about”

Just as every other time when Tom expressed his sense of superiority, smartness, and intelligence by ridiculing others, he did it once again the same thing. He ignored the views of a professional by saying she doesn’t know what she was talking about.

“Maybe, I was doing it all to get his attention, to get him to feel insecure, jealous, and ask me about my whereabouts, but no, he never bothered”

It is our nature to crave the attention that we need. Any attention is considered good attention by our minds when it comes to a relationship that is deprived of attention and care.

Elisa is doing all this to somehow grab Tom’s attention be it in the shape of anger, possessiveness, jealousy, or just re-establishing his control.

“In one of those conversations on one of those last days, he told me very matter-of-factly, that he always wanted someone who was more feminine anyway”

It is a direct attack on her self-esteem and self-worth which were anyway going down each time she was trying to win Tom over. Narcs love punishing their victims with direct attacks on their looks, weight, mannerisms, or on something that their victims are sensitive about.

“It was too difficult to explain to anyone the confusing arguments we would have and what I would come to know as gaslighting but only too late”

All the victims of narcissistic abuse find themselves in this situation where only they know what they are going through yet they cannot explain it, express it and make anyone understand what it is that’s killing them slowly.

This is where most of the victims begin searching for the meaning of it all and discover narcissism, gaslighting, and narcissistic abuse.

“Even though I asked her not to respond, she did, and the title of her empty email was, Seriously?”.

“I was shocked and angry at this and remember telling her you and your husband walked by the holes in my walls and never said a thing”

There is always one of the parents in the family of a narcissist who would refuse to acknowledge the issues and stay oblivious to them. This is where it all begins, whether that parent itself is a narc or someone who is the cause of the dysfunction of the family which eventually made the narcissist.

“He told me he was losing weight, he couldn’t eat, and couldn’t concentrate”

What do you think is the purpose of telling all this to Elisa? To make her feel guilty about her actions, and to punish her further.

“I did, however, want all the concert tickets from my favorite band that he had kept with all his other concert tickets. For some strange reason, he refused to give these to me saying “that’s silly” in a text when I asked him for them”

Remember, punishment is the top priority, and refusing to give things that hold any emotional value is just another way of it.

“He made it impossible for me to go to the house (I had agreed to hand over my keys to him) and so the only time he gave me to take my things was the day before the closing. It was too late to get a (free) garbage pick up so I had to just leave a lot of things on the curb”

Refusing to coordinate, punish and make the victim responsible for the consequences is just another tactic that Tom used on Elisa here. Even though on one side he is showing that he wants things to go easy by opting for a non-contested divorce, on the other hand, he is not letting go of any chance to make everything difficult for her.

I ended up crying uncontrollably as he stood over me, his last attempt to control me, and the last words he ever said to me were, “why don’t you just kill yourself”

I am sure you can sense the lack of “Empathy” here.

So, what advice do you think you would give to Elisa if she was your friend? Do you think her having an affair with Dave is unethical and what Tom is doing to her is justified? Do share your thoughts.

If you think that maybe now Elisa’s nightmare would be over after the divorce then you are wrong. This is just the beginning of the PTSD symptoms which made her life a living hell.

It will be shared in part 4, till then keep yourself safe, seek help if you need it, and talk to your friends or a professional. After all, you deserve a life filled with harmony, peace, and love.