Crash and Burn

April 24, 2012

     M,

     So the honeymoon is over it seems, and now reality is setting in.  No longer can we tempt each other to stay up all night making love, disregarding all Earthly responsibilities.  Your aura seems less vibrant, dimmed by sleep-deprivation and mental pressure.  I am also in a phase where I find myself needing to recharge.

     I feel as if you are retreating into your headspace, which I understand and respect, though I fear you are pulling away from me.  I want so much to help you through this transitional period, lending an ear or a shoulder as needed.  I hope that my sharing of this book with you has not triggered unpleasant thoughts nor the distance I am sensing between us.  I want to give you the space you need to grow as a person while offering all the love and support you are willing to receive.

     I wish for your soul to be at peace.

***

     We had finally gone on a real date.  We went out for sushi and a movie and I made a joke about how now I wouldn’t feel like he was just using me for sex.  That statement apparently offended him (due to it being too close to home, in hindsight) and he told me how much my words bothered him.  I apologized profusely for giving offense.  He looked as if he was in massive physical discomfort all through dinner.  I kept asking what was wrong, but he had no answer.  After the fact, I heard many different stories as to what was really going on that night: he didn’t actually like sushi (but apparently had to pretend to like it because I did…more mirroring), he was uncomfortable going out to dinner with someone that wasn’t his ex-girlfriend, etc.  In reality, I believe this was the day his ex-girlfriend actually broke up with him.  M. had told me that she informed him that she was dating our mutual friend, and he seemed a little bothered by it, but I didn’t think much of it since he had told me they had already been broken up for five months.  M. had received the phone call from her in my driveway before coming up to my apartment.  After the movie, he went straight home.  He did not even come inside.  I was crushed.

     We had gone to see the Hunger Games.  A few weeks prior, I had taken him out to the archery field to teach him how to shoot.  We thought it would be fun to do that before going to see the movie.  We had started a game of Cricket (like the darts game, but with a bow and arrow) but did not finish it.  For weeks, M. would make mention about needing to finish up that game, but was never available to.  It seemed like another way to keep me hooked, dangling the idea of a pleasant afternoon together in front of me, just out of reach.  In a similar way, he always told me that he wanted me to take him to the gym and train him.  Now it seems like it was a way to flatter me and mirror me at the same time.  The few times I have talked to him since, M. makes sure to tell me about his membership at the YMCA and how he has been making a point to work out.  I think he knows how much I was hoping he meant it when he said he would come work out with me, and continues to use it as a tool of manipulation to this day.  He even told me what a great cook I was, after the one time I made him a meal, and told me how much he looked forward to us preparing meals together in my little kitchen, but he never again came over to eat.  I think I only saw him eat 4 times in the course of the 9 months we spent together.  I was aware I was being compartmentalized from the rest of his life, but I believed it was a way for him to safely heal from his last break up and learn to trust again.  I never suspected that it was a way to keep all his lovers away from his “real life.”  He had claimed that he told his mother about learning archery with me.  I felt so gratified that he had mentioned me to his family.  I thought it was proof of him letting me further in.

     Up until the point where this letter was written, M. and I had been conducting a rather rigorous love affair.  He was working a late shift at a diner as a second job, and often didn’t get off work until 10PM or so.  He’d come over to my apartment and we’d make love all night, barely catching an hour or two of sleep before waking up early to go to our day jobs.  Before meeting M, I had begun a new exercise regimen involving rather intense weightlifting, and I was feeling supercharged in a way I never had before.  With all the endorphins from the exercise and the oxytocin from all the sex flooding my brain, I felt little need for sleep and stopped experiencing hangovers from drinking.  I felt like Superwoman. 

     Within two months of meeting M, I was beginning to feel drained of my power.  I was sleep deprived, strung out, and full of doubt.  He appeared to be feeling similarly.  He was cold and distant.  He’d answer my phone calls and texts just to tell me he was unavailable.  I believed I had done something wrong to push him away.  He stopped wanting to come over after work, giving me excuses about how busy he was with life.  He accused me of using alcohol on him like a truth serum, asking him questions about his past relationships when we were sharing a bottle of wine.  He began calling me manipulative, essentially projecting his own shitty behavior onto me.  If anyone was being manipulated here, it was surely the one that was being lied to about every little thing, not the one orchestrating a double life.  He was going on many trips without ever inviting me.  He took a past lover of his (who is a married mother of two) to the Salvador Dali museum so they could take LSD and wander around the museum all day.  He went to Bonarroo and told me he had to go by himself because he had always gone with his ex-girlfriend and he needed to get over that.  Sometimes we would go see some local bands’ shows together, but upon our arrival, he would socialize with everyone in the room except me. 

     My self esteem began to crash.  I was exhausted and now I was being rejected by someone I had believed to be falling in love with me.  He had always looked into my eyes in a way which I thought was unmistakable.  You can’t fake the look of being in love with someone, can you?  I wrote this letter ten days after having that addiction induced dream where M. took up every available space in my brain.  It seemed the minute I was totally hooked, M. started to disappear.  Still, I hung on.  I held onto all those promises of working out together, of dinners together.  He was telling me that everything was a result of him mourning the loss of his last relationship.  With these words “I want to give you the space you need to grow as a person while offering all the love and support you are willing to receive” I had set up the dynamic that was to allow me to put up with so much of his future abuse.  I believed I was a martyr, sacrificing my needs to allow him room to grieve and heal.  In reality, I was a sucker, letting this parasitic man use me as an ego booster whenever his “real” girlfriends were not giving him enough attention.

       As of April 24th, he had begun to devalue me, but he would not completely discard me until near the end of June. 

Narcissistic Abuse

April 15, 2012

M,

     Last night I finally slept.  It was the sleep of the mortally exhausted.  Usually after consuming half a bottle of wine, my sleep is like death, deep and unencumbered by visions.  Last night’s sleep was vigorous.  Hundreds of scenes and faces were flashing past my subconscious as I slumbered.  I can’t recall any of these snippets, but what I do remember is you, pervading my every thought.  I awoke filled with a sense of you.  I’m not even sure if I, myself was present in any of my dreams last night.  You hijacked my mind.

     When I’m awake I can at least exert enough control over my thoughts to get things done when needed, but as soon as my mind has a moment of idleness it turns back to you.  You are constantly running through the back of my mind, ready to jump into the forefront at a moment’s notice.  I suppose that it should be no surprise that in slumber you would so easily permeate my thoughts when I am defenseless against my subconscious.  Nonetheless, after fighting my way back into the waking world, I was struck with how deeply you had impressed yourself into my dreams.

***

     This, my friends, is exactly what addiction feels like.  Narcissists have a bizarre effect on their victim’s brains.  They dangle whatever it is you want most in life right in front of your nose like a carrot tied to a stick, but every time you start buying into this dream that they are promising, they yank the carrot away, leaving the victim desperate for more.  When the victim finally starts to think the Narcissist has truly lost interest in them and starts to move on, the Narcissist rushes back in dangling that carrot closer than ever.  Over time, the victim becomes obsessed with getting that carrot.  Every slight or bit of evidence that the Narcissist is mentally checking out makes the victim replay every conversation trying to figure out what they have done wrong to push him away.  Eventually every waking moment is spent dwelling on analyzing the Narcissist’s behavior, wondering when he will come back around with his characteristic adoration and promises. 

    Every time the Narcissist pulls away, an intense physical and emotional withdrawal is felt, comparable to that of a drug addiction.  This is how M. began controlling me.  He would get me hooked with ego-stroking and passionate love making, and then just disappear whenever I made a false step, such as asking him if he ever thought of becoming my boyfriend.  I quickly learned that to keep him around, I was going to have to drastically lower my expectations.  I couldn’t ask him honest, pointed questions, I couldn’t ask for a relationship, I couldn’t ask him questions about his past, nor about the other women in his life.  I slowly stopped asking.  Essentially, I handed over all the power to him, because every time I made a move, I realized it was the wrong one and I would be punished with emotional distance.  I let him lead, only daring to ask him to spend time with me once every couple weeks.  He would refuse to make plans in advance due to his busy lifestyle, so again, I learned not to ask.  All I could do was pitch suggestions that we hang out and hope he wasn’t busy at that moment and could carve out an hour or two for me. 

     I had always believed that emotional abuse looked like my parents’ fights: calling one another names, yelling, breaking things, making threats.  Today, I have a very different understanding of what emotional abuse looks like.  I have no other words to describe using someone’s emotions as a punishment/reward system designed to exert control over them.

From Soul Mate to Psychopath

April 14, 2012

M,

     It has now been a month since we first made love.  Far from abating, my feelings toward you have multiplied in intensity.  It seems as if I am genetically wired to be with you.  Everything feels so right.  I trust you to the depths of my soul.  I feel as if we fell from the same star onto this planet and have only just been reunited.  Suddenly the world makes sense.  We are not kindred spirits, we are of the same spirit.

     Everything you say and do resonates so deeply within me that it’s unnerving.  You are so psychically in tune with me that it often feels as if you know what I need more than I do.  I’ve never been one to let the man lead the way in bed, but I am ecstatic to let you take control.  You thrill me.  Your every touch awakens in me a passion I have never dreamed of.  When we make love I often want to cry with joy and fear at the amount of power you hold over me.  I am completely at your mercy.  Never have I been in this deep.

***

     Again I have to laugh as I read over the words I wrote at the very beginning of my “relationship” with M.  I was freaked out by the intensity he was creating, yet I conclude that it’s because we are kindred spirits, not because he is personality disordered.  I write of fear and how ecstatic I am to let him control me. 

     Going into this, I had no idea what sociopaths, psychopaths, and narcissists are.  In the last year, I have exhaustively studied Cluster B personality disorders, and I am beginning to have a fairly good understanding of how they work.  I have come to believe that M. is a covert narcissist, and he admitted to it when I questioned him.  Clinical narcissism does not work at all in the way I believed it to.  I had always thought that narcissistic people adored themselves and believed they can do no wrong.  According to my studies, the exact opposite is true.  Narcissists, in reality, hate themselves so much that they will constantly do favors, flatter, and brown nose their way into the good graces of everyone around them.  Their entire M. O. is to look as good as possible in the eyes of others.  They are not able to find worth by seeing it in themselves, so they look to others to validate and worship them so they feel approved of by their peers.  So while it seems like they are being a good friend, they are really manipulating you to believe they are great person because of all the things they do for you and say to you.  This is how they are able to manipulate a large group of acquaintances and keep up a facade of a nice guy.

     With lovers, this becomes even creepier as narcissists really want some high level worship from their closest partners.  To really hook a lover in, a narcissist will develop an entire custom personality suited to securing unending worship from her.  Whatever it is she desires most, he will become.  In my case, M. knew that I regularly checked my horoscopes, believed in spiritual connections, synchronicity, and the like so he flattered my scorpio traits and would make up stories where he had seen me out in traffic YEARS ago and that he just had this knowledge that we would someday be together.  He knew I liked to make jokes so he would always tell me how funny I was (even though he was never laughing when he said it).  He flattered my body and my looks as well as my brains, my job and my independence.  These were all things that I was hesitatingly proud of.  I was working out a lot, had a career in my field, and was living alone for the first time in my life.  I was proud of myself, yet I also judged these things harshly.  I thought I still wasn’t very physically strong, my job was sort of silly and not using much of my talent, and I had been single for almost 3 years (hence why I was living alone).  He seemed to sense my insecurities and especially flatter these traits. 

     Simultaneously with this, he was laying the ground work for excusing all of his future bad behavior.  He made sure to tell me he was polyamorous by nature but always insisted that I was the only woman he was with (keep in mind that he was still officially with his ex girlfriend at this point).  He used his lack of being over his ex as an excuse for every bit of bad behavior for the 9 month duration of our “relationship.”  Even when I found out that he had another NEW girl who he was calling his girlfriend, after almost a year of telling me he “couldn’t possibly be in a relationship at that moment due to mourning his previous relationship”, he still fell back on the “my ex girlfriend hurt me so much” excuse.  First, he claimed he couldn’t be in a relationship because his ex hurt him, and NOW suddenly he was IN a relationship with another woman and lying about it, because his ex hurt him.  I mean, even if his ex was the bitch he made her out to be (I’m sure she probably isn’t) that hardly excuses the rest of this nonsense.  The sad thing is that I bought into it for so long. 

     I had just begun feeling healed after being dumped by my ex fiancé when I met M.  It had taken the better part of two years to get over.  He claimed to be coming out of an equally intense relationship, so I naturally tried to be kind and loving while he processed the pain.  I knew I was in a place of strength and security so I took it upon myself to not demand too much of M. knowing he was in such a vulnerable place.  When I discovered that all of this story line was just a farce created to manipulate me, I was furious.  All the listening and sympathy I gave to him was just another way to control me. 

     Sometimes, I wonder why I’m still so furious after 11 months.  But really, imagine you wake up tomorrow and find out that your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend doesn’t actually have anything in common with you, and that they only want you around for your ability to worship them and make them feel good about themselves, having otherwise no concern for you.  You discover that everything you love about them is actually a lie, finely crafted to rope you into their bullshit reality.  Furthermore, they have another relationship with another person and an entirely different personality custom designed for him/her.  And that’s only the relationship you were able to find out about.  If they have lied to you this much, who knows what else they are hiding.  But here’s the thing, YOUR love is REAL.  You are completely and utterly in love with someone that has never existed.  You are left with this disordered man that is doing everything in his power to make you feel crazy so he can keep you under control but you still lust after that illusion that he created.  It’s a bizarre thing to see your soul mate and the devil incarnate reside together in the same shell of a body.

A Child Masquerading as an Enlightened Adult

April 4, 2012

Dear M,

     It has now been a week and a half since I came back from Springfest.  It seems like it has been ages.  The first time you came over, I avoided looking into your eyes most of the night.  We made love in the dark and I regretted not being able to see your face.

     I started to make a point of looking into your eyes while we conversed.  I began to lose myself in them. 

     I have been in love plenty of times before, but never quite like this.  Our souls harmonize every single time we touch.  When we make love, I can’t tell where my body stops and yours begins.  Our breathing aligns and it feels as if we are sharing a body in a euphoric dance.  I left the light on in the hall last night so I could look into your eyes as our bodies melted into each other.  I was overwhelmed as I realized exactly how hard I have fallen for you.  I desperately hope you feel the same way about me. 

     I can’t tell if they way you act towards me is just your generally open and friendly personality or if it reflects your feelings for me.  I often get the sense that it is not just me that felt the entire world shift when we met.  This has been the best month of my life.  I have been sound of mind, body, and spirit with unparalleled amounts of vigor and confidence.  Becoming your lover at this moment in time has given me the biggest rush of vitality I have ever felt.  You have such beautiful energy about you.  I want to bathe in your light.  You unleash a passion in me that I thought was long dead.  You reflect the good in me.  You complete me.

***

     Lo, another reference to reflections!  This letter succinctly describes the feeling of falling in love with a Narcissist.  It was intense, passionate, and unlike anything I have ever experienced before.  It negated the validity of all of my previous love affairs because THIS was the soul mate I had been waiting for.  Suddenly it was perfectly fine that my fiancé dumped me years ago and I had been single ever since, because THIS was who I was meant to be with.  I felt I had put in my time learning to love myself and this was my karmic reward for achieving self actualization. 

     For me, M. represented all the things I longed to be.  I thought he was very spiritual and self-aware.  He claimed to be anti-judgment and jealousy, things that I struggle with.  He was a musician, albeit not performing very often. 

     Over time, I began to see cracks in this facade.  I discovered that his spirituality, rather than being a belief system of beauty and appreciation of all life, was more of a bastardization of occult thinking.  He believed he could achieve spiritual and psychological enlightenment through the recreational use of drugs, creating altars to Dionysus, making voodoo dolls which he masturbated on, using his partners for sex magick rituals, and participating in an occult church that believes that doing whatever you want with seemingly no regard to consequence is the supreme meaning of life (and of course orgies are somehow involved in their dogma). 

     I found his self awareness to be limited to pity plays that were designed to negate my ability to call him out on any of his behavior, because all of his silent treatments, flakiness, never making time for me, never spending the night after having sex with me, etc. was all written off as a result of his ex treating him poorly.  He was still “grieving” and it sometimes caused him to act out, and of course he was sorry that it was negatively affecting me but he was not able to do anything about it because he was in so much emotional pain.

     His judgment free and anti-jealousy stance was a laugh, because after a month or two of idealizing his newest victim, he changes the game to “pointing out all the reasons why she is inadequate and why he must leave.”  As for jealousy, he is as jealous as it comes.  The only jealousy he DOESN’T have room for in his life, is the jealousy of all the girls he is using in his triangulation games.  Why are they jealous of each other?  Because he is setting them up in such a way to play them against one another…constantly.

     Basically, what I was seeing was a child’s attempt at seeming spiritually awakened and in touch with his fellow humans.  I saw his feeble attempts and projected my own understanding of spirituality and human compassion onto him.  This is why I saw him “reflect the good in me.”  All I was seeing was a reflection of myself in him, based on his use of a few keywords.  Whenever I heard him talk at any length on these subjects, his monstrous and childish misinterpretations became apparent. 

     Unfortunately, I have come to believe that our sexual connection operated in a similar way.  I think he knew what I wanted in the bedroom and did his best to replicate it.  I bought into this fake spiritual connection and opened my body and soul to him in a way I had never before with any previous partner.  I trusted him completely.  When I discovered he was carrying on this same masquerade with multiple women, it hurt me in such a way that I can only describe as emotional rape.  I would have never let my defenses down that far with him had he been honest and straightforward about his intentions and actions. 

     I can not claim that he cheated on me in the traditional sense since we were never in a committed relationship, but his manufacturing of a psychological and sexual persona that was custom designed to reel me in as deeply as possible while creating different personas for all of the other girls he was trying to manipulate was an emotional treason far surpassing some casual sex on the side. 

Letters from Springfest #3

March 24, 2012

***

    It’s now 4PM on Sunday afternoon.  My camp site is all packed up.  It’s a glorious day, perfect for going to the river.  Sadly, everyone is heading out.  Last night I took a nap until 4:30AM.  When I awoke, the campsite was desolate, but I could hear the sound of C.’s fiddle.  I followed it over to the jam tent and made some new friends who wanted to share a liter and a half of Jameson.  By 5:30, the power had gone out due to a bus on fire or something equivalently weird.  Naturally, everyone chose to climb aboard a golf cart and drive the crazy train down to the drum circle.  The circle was in such a remote field I never would have stumbled upon it alone.  The vibe there was crazed and jubilant.  I could see so many more stars in the sky than usual.  I watched the sun rise and somehow made it back to my tent. 

     Today I relaxed in a hammock down by the amphitheater, enjoying the cool breeze. 

     I can’t wait to see you.  I wish you were here.

***

     It has been almost a year since I discovered the truth about M.  I still go through phases where I am reeling in pain or I just shut down completely.  He keeps finding new ways to put himself in front of my eyes.  The latest is that he’s playing with his band at an art show that my best friend regularly participates in.  He has taken to attending the music festivals I regularly attend (though it was hard to ever convince him to go to them with me when we were still hanging out).  I’ve asked him repeatedly to stay out of my space but he feels this request is unreasonable and that he should be able to do what he wants, regardless of how it effects me emotionally.  It boggles my mind that I went three years as his acquaintance and only saw him out publicly twice, but now that I wish to avoid him, I see him twice a month.  I have not changed my social activities in any way so obviously he has changed his.  I wonder if this is yet another manifestation of his mirroring as he took one of my favorite social activities and is now participating in it with his new lady friend.  It also strikes me as a bit of triangulation between me and this other girl as well.  Not only is he hanging out with her publicly in front of me, but he is doing it in a social setting that I oftentimes tried to get him to participate in, but he would almost always turn me down. 

     It becomes bizarre as I see him pull the same stunts that he used to pull on me when we went out socially together.  They show up together and then he will just wander off for an hour at a time to chat up other women (one time it was me he ignored her for…here I was thinking he actually wanted to patch things up, but really he was just trying to create drama and jealousy since she could see us conversing from across the bar).  One time I even happened to catch him sitting inside the bar all alone, staring at the wall while she was out in the courtyard where all the music was happening.  I couldn’t help but wonder if he was just hiding out so she would wonder what he was up to and get jealous. 

     It kills me to think that after spending the last four years cultivating connections and friendships through the local music scene that I’d have to abandon all of that to avoid running into M. but I don’t see any viable work around at the moment.  I feel that this constant fear of running into him does not give me the space I need to heal and move on.  I feel re-traumatized every time I see the name of his band pop up on my Facebook news feed.  Again, the only reason I see it pop up is because of my ties to the local music scene.  I want to know what shows are going on around town so I get updates.  I could truly go no contact and shut off my Facebook profile and discontinue attending music events, but this would effectively downsize my social interactions to three people outside of school and work. 

     One of the more interesting aspects of the fallout from this huge betrayal is how paranoid my thinking has become.  Once I discovered that M. had the ability to be in a secret long term relationship with another woman while professing his desire to have babies with me, anything seemed possible.  One part of me thinks I must be crazy to think that he only speaks to me now to make other women jealous but he went out of his way to tell me how his “friend” was so upset about him talking to me for an hour that they actually left the bar.  He told me this as proof of his dedication to healing our friendship and making things right, but in all honesty, he spent much of that hour talking to other people while I sat at the table with them, crying.  It ends up being just one layer of bullshit on top of another.  How could my thinking NOT become paranoid?

     It’s so weird to revisit these old letters that were written in those first few weeks of falling in love.  I believed I had finally met the sweet, gentle, open-minded, adventurous, loving, empathetic, expressive, beautiful, elven, musically inclined, long-haired hippy man of my dreams.  It never once occurred to me that he could be lying to my face from the get-go, and I certainly never believed he would be capable of living a double life or desire to live that way.  I have never so completely misread a person before in my life.  The great catch 22 of narcissistic betrayal is that my trust in my instincts was completely shattered as a result of learning the truth, yet it is my instincts I need to trust in order to make a clean break and not allow this cruel person back into my life.  Every time I open myself back up to doubt and start to listen to his pathetic excuses for his behavior I feel myself getting sucked right back in to his dysfunctional world.  The reality is, there is NO EXCUSE for treating another human being with absolute disregard for their personhood, to use them as a pawn in a game of triangulation and mind-fuckery, and as a way of sexually acting out against a girlfriend that they claim to resent, all while reassuring the victim that they are with them because of their “special connection.” 

Letters from Springfest #2

March 24, 2012

***

Now it is 3AM on Saturday morning. 

I recently returned from a Tornado Rider show.

*** 

      Scratch that.  Apparently, after my consciousness-bending experience of being completely and utterly lost in the dark in a swarm of sleeping hippies in the woods, my mind was suddenly too exhausted to come up with five sentences to jot down.

     At the moment, it is 11:30 AM on Saturday.  I made a pot of oatmeal with fresh blueberries for breakfast which I paired with a banana.  I even waited in line for the bathroom this morning so I could at least wash my face.  It was a pretty responsible morning as far as hippy camp goes.  I ate my breakfast in the rain, proud of my success at eating well and self-reliantly.  I feel as if I can hold my own in this world.  I see the families here with their young children and I’m thinking to myself I CAN DO THIS.  So often these days I find myself contemplating the meaning of my life.  Not the meaning of life in general, but in the very specific and personal sense.  Why do I do what I do and what is my ultimate goal?  What is it that I truly want from my meager span of time here on Earth?

     I think I want this.  I want my job to enable me to take time off so I can go gallivanting in the woods, communing with nature and with myself, challenging all the social morals that are rampant in this country.  I want to make random new friends who are just as jazzed to be alive as I am.  Because we are all here together.  Everyone here is so REAL!  Almost all of the pretension from the outside world seems to have been left at the entrance gate.  I feel myself attuning to the vibe of the place as I slowly allow my defenses to fade away.

    I keep losing track of my thoughts as the rain pattering against my tent leads to daydreams about making love to you in this sacred place.  On a drizzly afternoon, it’s easy to see you lying here next to me, smiling into each other’s eyes, sharing this world.

     I can see how this could be the meaning of my life.  I would have a sense of community, something I struggle with out in the real world.  This makes me excited about someday starting a family.  Having a child doesn’t mean you have to give up everything.  You would think that this isn’t the best place for kids, but with so many adults sharing the watch, the kids would be hard pressed to find too much trouble.

     I’m not sure of how much of a hopeless romantic you are, but I suspect you have a hint of it.  When I envision this life with you, the image becomes crystal clear.  If you could have been here with me this weekend, my body would be overloaded.  Mixing my love of this place with the thrill of a new love just beginning is an overwhelming thought.  You would fit so perfectly here.  A weekend like that would cement a bond so firmly it may never fade.  It gladdens me when I realize that you wanted to share all of this with me.  I long to share all of it with you someday.

     You truly came out of nowhere and completely swept me off my feet.  At a time when I was feeling so numb, you reawoke my senses, giving me cause to believe in rapturous love again.  I hope you feel even an inkling of this. 

     I hate to get so far ahead of myself but we have such an intense connection that it is difficult to not get swept up in things.  I have always been attracted to you but I was unprepared for the psychological connection.  Your mind thrills me!  Our physical postures fall into unison.  In just the two days we have spent together, I have fallen completely for you.  I’m in a campsite full of beautiful people but they all pale in comparison to you.

     I keep wondering if this is real.  My first instinct is to trust you completely.  I want you to be as excited about meeting me as you seem to be.  I hope this isn’t a short-lived phase.  I can only pray that I have made as big an impression on you as you have on me.

***

     Oh my.  Where to begin?  In this letter, I basically point out ALL OF THE WARNING SIGNS and promptly disregard them.  Mind you, I wrote this letter after hanging out with this guy TWICE.  There were many moments in our early conversations where I got the feeling that he had somehow found my Livejournal online and read it in its entirety.  So many things he said to me sounded so familiar, I swear I had written them.  My Livejournal however, had been long abandoned and to my knowledge, is not connected to my name in any way.  Therefore, I dismissed this thought as paranoia and slowly settled into the thought that this guy was actually just my perfect match.  Unfortunately, if someone who is seemingly perfect turns out not to be, the truth of how they accomplished that deception is a terrifying thing to discover.  It’s interesting to me that I express so much doubt at the end of this letter.  It’s as if I knew in the back of my mind that it was all too good to be true.  Even still, I wrote that my first instinct was complete trust.  I’m generally a very instinctual and intuitive person and rarely has this led me astray.  My run in with a narcissist was the first time my bullshit meter completely failed me.

     The most simple and easily accessible tool of deception is the basic lie.  At this point in the game (TWO DATES IN), quite a few lies had already occurred.  The first lie was that he was a high school English teacher.  The reality was that he was a substitute teacher that had a long-term (6 week) sub position in a high school English class.  This lie was uncovered very soon after its original telling, and I dismissed it as “close enough” to the truth to be acceptable.  A far more insidious lie was that he had been single for three months.  In reality, he was still in an open relationship when we met.  It did not formally end until he and I had been dating for about a month and a half, when his girlfriend decided to leave him to be in a monogamous relationship with another man.  This lie I did not discover until nine months later when I finally got the balls to ask his ex girlfriend for the information directly.  When I was upset by her response, she tried to reassure me with “But we were in an open relationship.”  This just pissed me off more since everyone was in the loop except for me.  I knew I was not in a monogamous relationship with M. but the one thing I always asked for was openness and honesty.  The idea of having an “open relationship” where the point is to lie to all of your partners to make it seem like you are being exclusive with them seems like a hypocritical mess to me.

     I guess the point here is, had I seen that first lie about his job for what it was: A LIE, than perhaps I would not have been surprised at all the other lies that followed.  As it were, I swallowed that first one whole and kept myself blind to the obvious for many months after.

     So here I am at a hippy music festival, daydreaming about starting a family with this guy, while he is back at home, still in a relationship with this other girl.  He had told me before I left on this trip that he would love to come with me but he was unable to on such short notice.  Interestingly enough, he made plans to go to Bonnaroo shortly after, which is a similar, yet much larger, music festival and did not bother to even invite me.  He claimed that he had only been there with his ex girlfriend and that it would be too emotionally hard to have a different girl go with him.  Upon his return, he told me that while he was on copious amounts of LSD, ecstasy and goodness knows what else, that he began to meditate on the meaning of love and came to the conclusion that he did not actually love me.  I wonder if this realization came before or after he woke up in a port-o-potty and spent half the day thinking that he finally had done so many drugs that he caused irreparable brain damage to himself (his words, not mine).  The words he wrote to me on the subject were:

“I reflected a lot on my past relationship and had some forgotten memories triggered by having been there the year before

it was obvious to me when looking back that she had fallen out of love for me at least a year ago based on how she treated me, and our personal dynamic

I tried to look the other way, or I interpreted in ways that weren't accurate

but at the end of it all, a year later I thought, Wow, I wish she would have had the courage or knowledge to cut it off with me then when she realized the fire had gone out

it would have been so much easier for me then

I feel now that I have to build my self esteem from scratch

After that trip I couldn't help but start taking other people's emotions more seriously and I feel I've gained some new insight about love

I don't think I have the same romantic feelings for you that you have for me

And I don't want to go any farther in hurting you”

 

     Curiously enough, his way of remedying this situation was to start dating a new girl WITHIN ONE WEEK, and then slowly begin the process of reeling me back in so that in 3 months time he was in a relationship with her and sleeping with me on the side.  Neither she nor I knew about the other.  It was a funny interpretation of going “any farther in hurting you.”  Now this was the SECOND time he had put me in the role of “the other woman” without my knowledge. 

     In summary, I found myself with a man that was projecting this image of peace, love and harmony, freedom of expression, understanding, openness, and all of the things that I value, while in reality he is living a clandestine life of deception, two-facedness, hypocrisy, and complete and utter disregard for those people in his life that he claims to care about the most.  And somehow, I had no suspicion.

Letters from Springfest #1

                                                        March 23, 2012

Dear M,

     I figure that you, of all people on this Earth, would understand the experience I’m having right now.

     I wish with my entire being that you were here having these experiences with me.

     Everywhere I go, I find myself daydreaming about what it would be like to have you here.  I imagine looking over at you and smiling and realizing how abundantly full my life feels with you in it.  I imagine you smiling back as you also realize what a perfect moment in time this is.  My soul resonates beautifully with yours.

     I wish you were here so the joy reflecting off your face would be mirrored in mine as we both revel in the joy of life…of experience.

     I swam in the river today.  I imagined you there and how you would look with the sun reflecting off your hair…how warm your body would feel after the chill of the river.

     I imagined holding your hand, walking down the paths.  I imagined your arm around me as we listen to a moving piece of music. 

     Yesterday, I got lost at night.  I couldn’t find my campsite.  Everyone had gone to bed and I went for one last bathroom run but when I tried to head back to camp, I had mis-remembered the location of our site by ten degrees.  I searched and searched and after an hour of trampling through other people’s campsites with a super bright flashlight, I happened upon C. participating in a jam tent with an adorable Reese Witherspoon look-a-like (who happened to be wearing overall shorts) with a powerful blues/funk style voice.  This was at 4AM.  By the time C. had wrapped up and showed me the way home it was 6AM.  I had been crying with frustration over being so lost but I ended up having a beautiful night.  So it goes at Springfest.

*     *     *

      So the most “exciting” thing that I have learned about while studying narcissism is something called mirroring.  Essentially, the narcissist will study their victim and learn about what makes them tick.  They will find out about their hobbies, their passions, and dreams and use that as a mechanism for achieving closeness.  They do this by incorporating parts of your personality into theirs, becoming chameleon-like as they take on new personas for every new victim. 

     Looking back on this letter, it’s amusing to me that I used this very term to describe the imagined look of joy on both of our faces.  I have come to realize that this is exactly what was happening from day one.  He knew what emotions to feign based on my facial expressions.  M. used to look at me with such love and devotion expressed on his face; I could never understand why he could never say the words “I love you.”  It seemed clear from his expression that he was feeling nothing less than love for me.  Now I understand that he was merely copying the look on my own face, hence why his words would never match up.

     When I met M, he was presenting himself to me as a deeply spiritual person, well-acquainted with things like Reiki and philosophy.  He came across as the most loving, accepting, open-minded and non-judgmental person I had ever met.  As I was interested in Mediaeval Fairs, he would often bring up Game of Thrones, telling me how much I’d love it.  He would even recommend the books, though he had not actually read them.  He knew how much I loved the Lord of the Rings and acted as if it tickled him when I told him he looked elven.  He made sure to have his copy of The Hobbit lying on the kitchen table when I came over.  He said he was re-reading it before we went to go see the film together.  The movie outing, of course, was never to be.  He even once went on an archery expedition with me and acted as if he thoroughly enjoyed it, but declined every further invitation to the range.  I could go on and on about all the things he did to make me feel close to him, but really, none of the things I’ve listed thus far sound troublesome.  In fact, I was aware of some of these things in the moment they were happening.  He acknowledged outright that he had not read the Game of Thrones series. 

     The trouble only became apparent to me ten months after we met, in the middle of making love.  He said to me that I was the only woman he had ever wanted to have babies with.  I immediately recognized this as my own thought, and in fact my own words.  He had finally claimed ownership of something that was so uniquely mine, that I could not for one second believe them to be his thoughts.  This was the moment when reality as I knew it began to come crashing down.  Why on Earth would this man claim such a preposterous thing? 

     It was this moment that ultimately led to my discovery of words like “sociopath” and “narcissist.”  I had googled something like “when someone uses your words as their own.”  Mirroring is the ultimate weapon in the Narcissist’s tool belt.  By mirroring the victim, they can gain the victim’s trust much more quickly than they could by actually getting to know them in an authentic way. 

     I believed I had met my soul mate.  That was the only explanation I had for the way our thoughts and bodies fell into such synchronicity with each other.  When I discovered that this feeling was a hoax meant to gain my trust and trick me into lowering my defenses, I could only describe the experience as emotional rape.  So much for souls that resonate beautifully with one another.

Lost at Sea

     When dealing with a narcissist, it’s as if you are standing on the deck of a lurching boat.  The ground itself becomes unstable as you constantly try to reorient yourself to an ever-shifting horizon. 

      I met M. almost two years ago.  I instantly knew that there was something special about him.  Almost immediately after we started dating, I began composing letters to him in a journal, hoping to chronicle what I believed would become the most life-changing relationship of my life.  In a sense, (albeit, not the sense I was anticipating) I was absolutely correct.  Being involved with a narcissist has easily been the most traumatic and life-altering event in my 32 years on this planet. 

     As I continued writing, my letters to M. became confused, sad, panicked, and then angry and hateful as I began to understand the clinical definition of narcissism and see him for what he truly is, rather than by the distorted reflection of myself he was pretending to be. 

    My intent here is to reproduce the letters in their original form, and follow them with a present day deconstruction of them based on my current understanding of events and the nature of this personality disorder in an attempt to regain my footing on solid ground.