The Smear Campaign of a Narcissist

By the time you become aware of it, it’s already too late

There are few moments less devastating than when you discover the one you loved, the one you committed your entire being and devoted your life to, possibly married and had children with, is the very one who has been lying behind your back and creating a false narrative about you since the moment you met.

Unfortunately, this What the fuck? moment usually comes after the fact. After you’ve left or been left, after a narcissistic ripped out your heart and ate it in front of you, and once you’ve begun (or attempted to begin) moving forward toward recovery and healing.

For the sake of comparison, let’s pretend for a moment that there is such a thing as a normal divorce or breakup where two emotionally healthy people decide to go their separate ways. It’s possible that one or both of the parties may somewhat skew the past when getting into new relationships so that it favors them. Nothing earthshattering or pathological, just a bit of alteration that is harmless in its intent.

Of course, all of this happens after the breakup. So it’s easy to deal with because the “ex” has no clue they’re even being discussed.

Mere child’s play in comparison to what a narcissist does.

Ah, the beauty of a normal divorce. Never thought I’d be in a position to have wished for one, but here we are.

Divorcing or breaking up with a narcissist is anything but normal, primarily because so much of the pain a victim experiences comes after escaping the relationship. There’s a saying among us who have been on that road to hell with a narcissist at the helm:

If you thought loving one was bad, wait until you divorce one.

This is due to a couple of reasons. First, many victims of narcissistic abuse are not even aware they’re victims until after the relationship ends or is near ending. We live in a culture that doubts our pain if we lack the bruises and black eyes to show for it, so along with a narcissist’s tactics of gaslighting, love-bombing, and intermittent reinforcement, victims are apt to blame themselves for their own abuse.

The second and most devastating reason to explain why recovering after narcissistic abuse is so tormenting is because of the smear campaign, a calculated and duplicitous endeavor by a narcissist to virtually “set up” a victim from day one to not be believed once they later try to share their pain or tell their story.

Narcissists create narratives about the ones they’re with. They spin stories that benefit them and paint themselves as the victim so that when the mask slips or falls off entirely (narcissists wear different masks for different people to hide who they really are) and the real victim reaches that point of “ok yeah, I’m done” the narcissist has already prepared any audience to believe them instead.

Also, because narcissists are pathological liars and masters at manipulating others to buy into their charade, it is often only the survivor of the abuse who knows the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

However, since the stage has already been set against anyone who attempts to speak that truth, survivors then face the crushing realization that no one — or hardly anyone — believes them.

The double whammy being that moment when a survivor discovers this person they loved and trusted had been spinning this narrative about them the entire time they were together.

That moment of realization for me came in waves after I left my marriage to a diagnosed narcissist behind. Since I had also left the small town we lived and raised our children in, I wasn’t initially aware of the tales he’d been telling as to why I had left.

He was living two lives. In one, he was a devastated and bereaved man whose wife had up and left him and took his beloved children with her as she moved closer to the man she’d been having a salacious affair with. Naturally, everyone grieved for him. They invited him to dinner where he cried over his loss. Women baked pies for him. They felt sorry for him now that he had to live in that huge house all alone. What a sad, sad story, they said.

This narrative my ex was telling conveniently left out the fact that he was a sexual predator and I had uncovered his double life, which included grooming young immigrant girls (the same age as our oldest son) and exploiting their desperation to stay in the country. His story neglected to include the details of my devastating heartbreak at discovering what he was up to, such as having them sleepover when I was out of town, buying liquor for them and going to their parties, and setting the stage for at least one of them to return the following summer with the eventual plan to replace me in my life, my business, and my bed.

The real story, however, doesn’t go well with pie.

Narcissists are masters at taking a shred of the truth and manipulating it through exaggeration and bullshit in order to place themselves at the center of victimhood.

It’s a brilliant strategy, really, in spite of its abhorrent lack of principle or integrity.

In order to keep the actual truth hidden so my ex could continue his charade, which he still manages to a certain extent to this day (this was a really small town, people), he created scenarios that were based in a grain of truth then twisted and warped them into a story that cast him as the one to be pitied.

People we knew, even those I thought were friends, went against their basic instinct and bought into this narrative. Since I wasn’t around to defend myself, they turned their backs on common sense (and me and my kids) while allowing themselves to be hoodwinked by a master con artist who took pleasure in the gullibility of others and who he knew didn’t have the courage to call him out.

While he continued to milk the “my wife left me for another man and took my kids” narrative, and in between crocodile tears interjecting other claims such as that I was emotionally unstable, suffering from depression, and continuing my sordid love affair while my kids suffered from my apparent selfishness (I mean, how could I, right?), my days were actually spent with police, judges, and lawyers as my ex continued to stalk, cyberstalk, and follow my every move both online and off.

Where oh where was that steamy affair and “other man” when I needed him!

While I endured a punishing divorce in which he cut me off from our large income, compelling me to borrow money from my parents and max out my credit cards, he was traveling to Russia (maybe meeting the parents, who had to be about his same age, of his new import?), staying in nice resorts and renting luxury cars to pick up our kids for visits, and — with aforementioned import in tow — sprung for expensive dinners for our boys who excitedly shared the details with me later, innocently oblivious to the pain I felt hearing all about it.

Such as that time the “just a girl” (my ex’s description when I confronted him and he shamed me for thinking he would ever do such a thing with a girl her age) forgot her driver’s license and began to cry when she couldn’t order a drink and my ex spent the time consoling her as he would a child (my son’s words). “It was so embarrassing, Mama.”

But I digress.

And his double life continued.

~While I lived with my mother and my kids in her house, he remained comfortable in the 10,000 square foot home we had built together — with the majority of my belongings still there.

~While I obtained restraining orders against him for stealing my identity so he could track my every financial move, and also hiring a private investigator to follow me around (reminder: he lived in a different state), I struggled to get through the day and couldn’t sleep at night after being told by his own psychologist and a police sergeant that my life could be in danger.

~While he turned our beautiful home into his personal playground with young girls who were now dependent on him to stay in the country, I was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, and endured nightly panic attacks that left me housebound, thus keeping me from being social unless on a rare occasion when I dared venture out with old friends.

So how was he able to continue living this double life for so many years after I had left? And convince people whom I had been friends with to not only buy his story but oftentimes cheer him on?

Because of an orchestrated smear campaign against me that began early on in our marriage and set me up for future failure.

The reason a narcissist’s smear campaign is so destructive is because it doesn’t look like what you think it does. My ex didn’t go around bashing me or calling me names while we were together. He wasn’t complaining about me or telling others how awful a wife I was. In fact, just the opposite.

The way a narcissist works is to endear themselves to the person they’re trying to convince.

For example, I can’t even count how many times during our marriage that someone — a friend, an acquaintance — would say to me, “Wow, you’re so lucky because he really loves you. All he talks about is what a great mother you are!”

Meanwhile, he was telling me something altogether different at home where I couldn’t seem to do anything right by him. You can’t even handle your own kids, he’d say while comparing me to his sister, who routinely bested me in the motherhood department. He berated me for not managing my time better, such as when I asked to go get my teeth cleaned and could he watch our three children for an hour during the week (short answer: no, I needed to figure that shit out on my own, which led me to not see a dentist for over two years when my kids were small).

Over the years, while I remained inside with our children and he worked outside of our home, a story about me was already being written with the pen in his hand. He was the one, after all, who would be out in the community every day, shaking hands, making deals, having lunches with both friends and business associates alike. Thus he had an open mic to share what was going on behind the closed doors of our home…or what he wanted people to believe was going on.

Whatever the truth was, he warped it to fit his agenda.

So when I suffered from post-partum depression, his story was that I was needy, an emotional hole that couldn’t be filled. When he worked from sunup until sundown seven days a week (and he didn’t have to by any means) and I asked him to be at home just a little more to help with our newborn, toddler, and young son, his story was that I complained about the hard work he did for our family.

~When we talked about how difficult it was for both of us to endure the cold Wyoming winters (I had grown up in Arizona, he in Florida and California), his story was that I was suffering from depression and had never been happy in the town we lived — whereas he was thrilled to be there and the native Wyomingites loved him all the more for it.

~When we had a dance studio and he taught at night, often coming home and complaining that he was sick of teaching and wanted to quit so I shouldn’t schedule any new students, his story was that I wanted him to quit so he could be home at night (in truth, I begged him not to quit because our dance life was my only social outlet). This made for confusing situations when I’d have women call after speaking with him and who were told to schedule with me, thus when I said he’s not taking new students it appeared it was me making that decision.

~When we first began building our dream home, I argued against the giant ballroom he wanted to attach to it because a) we already had a ballroom in town and b) it wasn’t a smart realty investment. As always, he got his way and built the ballroom that remained unfinished until I left him. Later, when speaking to a realtor friend of ours (who ended up believing the “other man” story about me), she thought the ballroom was my idea and he was the one against it. Why? Because that’s what he told her.

Over the years, no matter the circumstance and unbeknownst to me at the time, a web of inaccuracy, distortion, exaggeration, and complete fiction was being spun for the sole purpose of painting me as the troubled one, and him as the innocent bystander who was just trying to do his best, work hard, provide for his family, and fill his role as a good community member.

His reputation remained intact in spite of his depressed, unstable, jealous, demanding, and unfaithful wife who would never be happy no matter how hard he tried to make her so.

Someone bake that man another pie already.

This is what makes the smear campaign so devastating. It’s that moment when you first discover the person you loved and trusted more than anything in the world has been working against you from the word go. That moment when you realize all the things you shared about yourself in what you thought was a sacred and safe space are now being twisted and used as a weapon against you to cast you in a negative light.

After the fact, it all started to make sense. Now I understand why certain people reacted to me the way they did during those last few years of my marriage. At the time, I couldn’t make heads or tails of why people who I thought were friends suddenly grew cold and distant around me. I didn’t understand why certain women looked at me sideways when I walked into a room. Nor could I figure out why spaces would grow quiet when I entered them.

And given that I was emotionally exhausted after enduring his growing cruelty and abuse that culminated in the discovery of his double life, I didn’t have the energy to figure out why people were treating me differently. Thus, without realizing it, the more I isolated myself and stayed home and away from social interactions, the more I helped him further his narrative about me.

So how does one deal with, recover, and eventually heal from a narcissist’s smear campaign?

There’s only one way:

First, you feel the heartbreak, cry, rage, throw f-bombs like beads at Mardi Gras (hence no children present), and make friends with the floor as you collapse in a pain-filled heap.

Then you get up once you’re ready (don’t let anyone tell you when that should be, only you get to decide) and move in the direction of away from this fictional story that has been written about you.

You can’t go back and change people’s minds. You can’t erase what the narcissist has already written in his fictional book about you. You can’t waste even one ounce of your precious energy needed for healing on trying to convince others not to believe the lies. And why would you want to? As I learned, anyone who goes against their better judgment, against their integrity and doing what is right, is not anyone you want hanging around anymore once you’ve left the pain, the agony, and the narcissist behind.

Besides, then you get to make your own damn pie, which will be so much sweeter with that added secret ingredient: the truth.

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