Seeing Through the Manipulation

August 2013

Dear M,

     I’ve been giving your offer of friendship a lot of thought over the past few weeks.  Often times, I’m severely tempted to give in and make peace, but the further I stay away from you, the clearer my vision becomes.  You still seem to think that the only reason I am mad is that you had a second lover.  This could not be further from the truth.  I’m furious because I’m starting to uncover the grooming process you used to mold me into your willing victim.  I feel violated upon recognizing that you trained me like a monkey in your zoo to not ask questions of you.  When I asked about A that first time, you told me she was a “bitch” and that she was trying to rope you into a relationship, thus implying that these were things I should never do, lest I be labeled in the same way as that “bitch.”  You said it with such disdain, I never would have imagined that you ever harbored feelings of love for her.  If I brought up any other women, you would repeatedly reprimand me with a reminder of how you had “no room for jealousy” in your life.  When you left me the first time, you sent me a letter a month later, explaining that you left because I was trying to coerce you into being my boyfriend.  When you came back to me later, this act was repeated when I started getting close to you again.  You gave me the same sort of warning and began to disappear.  Thus, a severe fear reaction was programmed, linking me talking about being in a relationship with you to you disappearing.  I learned never to question my role in your life.

     I’m terrified to even be your friend because even in the short run-ins that we’ve had accidentally, you’ve found time to lie to me.  You told me you would come to a counseling session on Tuesday at 3PM when we both know you work at that time.  It’s as if you will say whatever you think will shut me up and keep me from asking questions.  It’s like the time when you said you’d hang out with me on New Year’s Eve and then pretended like you couldn’t remember ever saying that.  You have a flawless memory when it comes to remembering things that I’ve said that you can later throw in my face, but you never seem to remember the promises you make.  I start to doubt my own memories as you vehemently deny ever saying these things.  This, my friend, is called gaslighting, and it’s an intentional psychological manipulation used to unsettle your victim. 

     On top of all this, you mock me about the things I’ve finally caught on to.  You tell me you had felt something drawing you out when we ran into each other even though I know I think all of that is bullshit now.  In the same sentence, you tell me how all your friends were going to be there and you were trying to get as much socializing done as possible before the start of the school year.  It sounds like THAT was the pull that brought you there.  It had nothing to do with me.  You used these type of psychic connections to draw me in from day one.  You knew I ate it up.  I wanted more than anything to believe that I was somehow special to you.  I’m beginning to understand what it means when you say you have a “special connection.”  You tell me that I’m the only person in your life that you’ve had a connection with that has not come back to you.  I have a theory about this.  I feel that these people in your past, have all been like me, a source of narcissistic supply for you.  It’s probably a group of girls that worship you, that are tortured that they can’t have you, and eat up every bit of attention you shower on them.  They are people you can return to again and again, every time someone sees you for the con artist that you are and makes you feel “less than.”  You claim that you never had this type of connection with A.  Is that because she saw through your shit?  Or is this something you just say to me, knowing it will calm my soul to believe that I was superior to her in some way in your mind.  Every time you say something like this about her, you follow it up with “I hope you won’t say anything about this to her.”  On the initial level, it makes me feel like you are telling me a secret, bringing me closer to you, but on second look, I realize that the main reason you don’t want me to talk to A is that she blows holes through all of your bullshit and allows me to see you more clearly than ever.  She has already told me how you told her that you wanted her to be “the one,” words I never thought you’d even use.  You argue that you never said these things, but much like I was susceptible to your claims of psychic connection, content to maintain a sexual relationship with you based on our “spiritual harmony” alone, she may have needed a more concrete promise to ensure a steady source of narcissistic supply, things like a committed relationship and an assurance that she alone was the most special girl in your life.  You would reassure me of my specialness by saying you never had a connection with her and then turn around and reassure her of HER specialness by saying that you only introduced HER to your family and only called HER your girlfriend.  You tried to make me feel better by talking down about her, and she said you would do the same of me.

     And then you have the audacity to tell me that you’ve changed in 8 short months.  You claim that this was the first time you have used deceit, but your stories from the past sound riddled with it.  I am truly working to retrain my brain, erasing from it all the bullshit things you taught me to believe were healthy and desirable, like not speaking my feelings, not asking questions, being OK with an undefined sexual relationship…things I now realize have been responsible for a monumental emotional collapse.  In just 10 months, you were able to damage me in ways that 8 months of counseling have barely begun to untangle.  I have a hunch that you’ve been living this way for a long time, perhaps most of your life, and from the reading I’ve done, it’s unlikely for you to ever find healing, even with the help of a professional.  Moreso, it is unlikely that you even desire to change.  The claim that you are somehow a different person after 8 months is a disgusting lie, one that I can see through easily as you tell me how you have changed using the exact language and tone of voice that you have always used to lie to me.  Here’s a little test to see how much you’ve changed: show this letter to the girls currently in your life: MK, MLS, JC, and whoever else you’ve tried to woo.  If you really aren’t habitually doing this sort of bullshit, then it will just sound like your crazy ex is writing you hate mail.  A and S seem to know what I’m talking about though, and I get the feeling that you know exactly how to BS the way into the hearts of girls in your occult group as most people in cults are pretty susceptible to brainwashing and psychological manipulation.

     It pisses me off that you think I’m having such a violent reaction to A.  As if the thought that you ever stuck your penis inside another girl would take me to the brink of a mental breakdown.  Fuck you.  Seriously.  The bullshit that you have been doing to me for the last year and a half is really fucked up.  I don’t think you are polyamorous, I think you are a Narcissist using a multitude of victims simultaneously to make you feel OK.  THIS IS NOT THE SAME THING.  In situations of polyamory, one must take into account the feelings of all their partners.  It means acting with LOVE towards more than one person, not merely sticking your dick in them.  You have proven that you are not actually able to love one person, let alone more than one simultaneously.  You NEED people for your own self validation, but again, this is not the same thing as love.  So fuck you and your offer of friendship, fuck our special connection, and fuck all the bullshit you have put me, A, and God knows who else through.  Grow the fuck up and stop subjecting people to emotional abuse, because ultimately that is what you are doing.  You are destroying people’s sense of self worth all in an effort to improve your own, and that is unethical and reprehensible.

***

      This letter was written when I finally was able to see through M’s bullshit almost in real time.  I had run into him at a local battle of the bands and he had approached me from behind, taking me completely off guard, as I was chatting up a new male friend.  M spent a good portion of his evening talking with me as I cried my eyes out, still sucked in by his act.  He was trying to be very gentle and sweet with me, luring me back into a “friendship” with him while his new lady friend, MK, sat across the bar, staring us down the entire evening.  I was aware of her presence, but since M was completely ignoring her at the time to give me his full attention, I did not feel threatened by her.  Any time I asked about her, he just repeated how he couldn’t be in a relationship with anyone.  As of today, they are publicly in a relationship, and have been hanging out together since the day I found out about A and confronted him publicly, which was 8 months prior to this event. 

     As we were talking at the bar, I suggested he go see a counselor with me if he was truly interested in repairing our friendship.  Without missing a beat, he said he was willing and able to do such a thing during a time which I knew he’d be at work.  Part of me was skeptical of the ease with which he agreed to this.  The more I think about this day, the more I believe that the content of our conversation was of little import.  His main goals were to rope me back in to his fucked up game, and to make MK insanely jealous by ignoring her all evening while talking to me.  In a conversation later in the week, he admitted that he had come with a friend who he ended up ignoring all night so the friend had left in anger.  This does not sound like typical male behavior, so I can only assume it was the female that had left.  I had played right into his game and was most likely instrumental in helping him emotionally manipulate that girl into the same jealous fucked up place I was in.

     I was not able to see all this immediately, but within a week of no contact, all the charm, flattery, and pleading melted away to uncover the obvious manipulation taking place.  Without hearing his pathetically patronizing “I’m so sorry” voice, I was able to listen to the actual words coming from him without buying into his emotional act.  A completely different picture emerged.  He was trying to placate me.  He was using me to manipulate someone else.  Furthermore, he was still lying to my face.  I was so angry with myself for not seeing it sooner.  He never attempted to contact me.  He only waited for my calls because he “knew I needed space and wanted me to make the first move.”  In reality, I don’t think he gave a shit if he heard from me one way or the other, but if I called and sounded plaintive, he knew I was ripe for manipulating.  More often than not, I was still furious and I would start yelling at him over the phone, which did not give him any emotional advantage over me.  He needed me to come to him in desperation.

     The frustration of that evening still lingers over a year later.  Just the other night I had a dream where I ran into MK and was desperately trying to warn her that she is with an emotionally abusive psychopath.  She must not see it yet if she is still with him.  After A and I blew such a hole in his game, he must be more thoroughly covering his tracks.  I imagine that she still thinks he is something special even though she has a sense of fear that he could leave her at any moment.  Perhaps he has whittled her down into accepting the open relationship he was trying to groom me into, flaunting in her face the fact that she alone isn’t enough for him, or perhaps he has her still believing she is his one and only even after saying for years that he could never be monogamous with anyone ever.  In the dream, she defends him, telling me what a great boyfriend he is and how much he has changed since the scandal of A and I went down.  I woke up so very angry that he is still out there causing harm to innocent people and that his victims stand by him and defend him.  It makes me feel so powerless to know that even if I tried to help, nothing would come of it.  So I blog and hope that somehow this message will get to those that need to hear it whether it be people that I know personally, or some random soul on the internet that finds these words by a fateful google search.  My soul is still deeply scarred by the actions of this man and my anger still burns under a surface that has been relatively calm as of late.

Seeing Through the Fairy Tale

August 2013

      I always told myself I’d never be one of those women that allow a man to rule over her, controlling her actions and emotions.  But here I am.  Looking back, I can see how I let you make me feel guilty for my feelings.  Every time I had questions or doubts you would throw my “jealousy” in my face and remind me of how unacceptable it was to you, making yourself out to be a saint.  I bought into your shit, even as I saw you being jealous of me, of other musicians, of your ex’s new boyfriend, of your brother.  You were just projecting your shit onto me, and I bought into all of it. 

     You trained me to doubt, not to question.  Then you trained me to not even ask for your time or company.  You needed your freedom and space.  You were grieving.  It was hard to be with a new girl.  We’d go out together and you’d leave my side for most of the evening.  You’d promise we’d go out together and show up at my house and tell me you feel too sick to go.  You’d have sex with me and leave immediately after because you had “other things to do.”  I’d tell you it was alright, that I understood.  You were busy, and were barely able to make that small bit of time for me.  I was thankful to you for bothering to show up at all.  All this time, I thought it was MY idea.  I thought I knew what you needed and was trying to provide it.  Now I see how you were laying out the cards from the beginning. 

     I believed you were so much better than me.  I thought you were so empathetic, kind, spiritual and insightful.  I felt like I had to be a great artist to deserve you.  Being myself was not enough.  Now I believe you are just a skilled liar with a memory like a steel trap.  Only once did I catch you messing up your story. 

***

     Today I backslid a little bit.  I saw his new primary relationship partner show up on Instagram and I clicked over to see what was new.  I had been actively avoiding doing any such thing for the sake of no contact, but for some reason I succumbed to temptation.  I saw that she had been on a recent trip to Mexico and immediately wondered if M had accompanied her.  I clicked over to M’s Instagram feed where I saw exactly what I had feared: he was also posting photos from Mexico.  I immediately felt jealous as it sunk in that here they were a year and a half later, still together and traveling the world in tandem.  For a moment I felt that familiar doubt that maybe he really was just too broken from his last relationship to take me seriously and that now he is in good, healthy relationship with someone else.  I’ve spent the better part of the day reminding myself of a few key things: 

• He was already working on this girl when things ended with me.
• He used me to triangulate with her on more than one occasion at public events.
• He acts exactly the same towards her as he did with me when out in public, distant and cool.
• She is friends with A (the other woman when I was dating him) and still chose to date this doofus knowing how shitty he treated her.

     I can only conclude that she is only the primary relationship that he puts forward as his public relationship and lord knows what else is going on behind the scenes.  I never would have suspected his shitty behavior had I not been confronted with very damning evidence and it is likely he has stepped up his secrecy since that PR disaster.  He has been denying his relationship with that girl since day one so I doubt he would even acknowledge it to me now if confronted.

     The bottom line is this: I finally can acknowledge that it does not matter what is going on with this girl.  I personally, do not ever want this word-twisting evil person back into my life.  I have no room for emotional mind-fuckery and vague communications that make me feel insignificant and undeserving.  Chances are good that the other people in M’s life have not learned this about themselves yet, and hopefully M will be the catalyst for great personal change for them at some point, if he doesn’t manage to destroy them completely.

     Reading through this, I’m tempted to laugh at statements like “I felt like I had to be a great artist to deserve you.”  Now that I understand more about how Narcissists pick their targets, I realize that my artistic ability (or lack thereof) played absolutely no role in how much I was “loved” by M.  My art was just another way to control me.  By heaping on praise about my work, he would ensure that he was getting that much deeper into my good graces and trust.  I’m fairly sure it would not matter what I was actually creating, his praise would be the same, with the same intended result. 

     Now I am with a true artist who understands that the act of creating must be the purpose of art, because the glory of fame is fleeting as fans move on to the next great thing.  Never once have I felt that I needed to be better than I am to deserve his love.  Through this whole ordeal with M, I have learned exactly what my strengths and weaknesses are.  I do not need my relationship to define me.

Old Habits Die Hard

March 3, 2013

M,

     Today I long to reach out to you in love.  I have always done my best to listen to you, to hear you.  I want to hear you now, but my fear is so great that you will only take the opportunity to mislead me, feeding me the story you want to believe, forever hiding behind a mask of deceit.  There is a part of me that believes that we have enough love for each other to heal this hurt.  I’m so used to loving you and understanding you.  I’m having the hardest time getting used to hating you and feeling confused by you.  Everything always felt so clear as I tried to meet your needs to the best of my ability, giving you space and not prying into your life. 

     But then, maybe you never really wanted to know me, nor for me to know you.  It hurts me so much when I realize how much of your life you were hiding from me.  I truly believed I was special that you had let me in at all.  Oh, how the truth burns!  There were so many moments when I felt we truly understood each other.  Don’t you miss that?

***

     Note that this was written one day after the previous letter.  I suppose that is quite indicative of what was going on in my brain at the time.  From one moment to the next I was swinging wildly back and forth between love and hate for this person who had proven to be a lying manipulator.  He had admitted to his treachery, yet I still wanted to believe in the illusion of love and confidence he had created.  This was when I was still deeply suffering from cognitive dissonance.  I believed in two M’s.  One was the man that I had a deep and spiritual connection with and the other was a traitor and a liar who had never loved me and had only been using me for sex on the side of his primary relationship.  One minute I would be in love with the soul-mate, but the next minute I would hate the traitor.  This flip-flopping was extreme for months after I had made the discovery that I was the other woman.  I started coming to the realization that speaking to him would deepen the illusion and that the more time I spent away from him, the clearer things became.  If I was not being fed lies, I could examine the evidence without interference and see the truth of things. 

     This realization became the motivation for ultimately committing to “no contact” with M.  The more I communicated with him, the more pain and turmoil I would experience as my brain futilely attempted to reconcile these two personas.  In a sense, even my own personality was splitting as one part of me was still playing the part of the understanding lover that wanted to work things out and fix whatever was causing him to act out, and the other part of me was an angry victim of an emotionally abusive man.  It helped me greatly to start communicating with others that had been through similar drama with their Narcissistic partners. 

     I stumbled across a forum entitled Psychopath Free where hundreds of members share stories and support every day.  As I begin reading so many stories that sounded similar to mine, I began feeling anger towards these abusive partners I had never met, and felt empathy for the victims of their mind games.  Eventually I was able to direct that same anger towards my abuser and give myself the empathy I had been withholding from myself.  Only then was true healing able to begin as I accepted that I was not stupid for being a loyal enabler to an abusive partner for so long. 

     After reading story after story of the fairytale courtship turning into a psychological nightmare, I began to understand how so many victims are duped by practiced Sociopaths.  Until you have been drawn in by one, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to see them coming.  Because they take such care to present themselves as that perfect partner you have been looking for your whole life, it’s much easier to take things at face value than to approach with skepticism.  It also appears that they hone in on people that are especially susceptible to falling for their act.  In my case, M targeted women in their 30s that had been single for some time.  Seemingly they had dated enough jerks and were holding out for someone truly special to come along.  When M walks in on the scene pretending to have all those characteristics that we have been holding out for, it’s all too easy to fall for the deception.  I thought “finally, here is the person I am meant to be with.  This is why I have been single for years.  I know this is the right person for me,” etc. etc.  It makes the revelation that I was duped by a con artist that much harder to swallow.  I was so sure that this person was someone special, yet in the end he did not have the slightest regard for me. 

     Ultimately I chose the route of no contact and have successfully avoided speaking to him for the past nine months.  I have only run into him once in that time, and I have been able to keep myself from checking up on him via Facebook or any other social media.  I finally realize that every time I see, speak to, or read about him I get thrown right back into cognitive dissonance as I begin mourning the loss of a partner I never truly had.  Strict no contact has allowed me to slowly regain my sanity and peace of mind.  That process was not easy.  By far, M was the hardest addiction I have ever had to break.  Through the process I learned how much intimate relationships truly mean to me and how much of myself I was sacrificing for the sake of maintaining this deeply flawed one.  I’m hoping to take this knowledge and apply it to all my future relationships, ensuring that I treat others with the respect they deserve, while demanding they do the same for me.  Never again will I let someone abuse my trust so thoroughly.

No Turning Back

March 2, 2013

M,

     The other day I told you I would feel calm for a week or so, but that no longer seems to be true.  I used to be able to buy into your words and seek comfort in them, but this time I realized that the very words you were trying to comfort me with are the very same ones you used on me last time, right before you met A and for the duration of time you were dating her.  Those words have begun to sound hollow and over used.  It has been almost three months and my heart still feels raw.  The most random things will trigger me.  I attended a crystal bowl meditation at the yoga studio the other night.  I didn’t really know what to expect.  When he started sounding the bowl linked to the root chakra, I was astounded by the penetration of the sound into my body and mind, the way it filled the entire space leaving no room for anything else.  My body panicked as I sat cross-legged with my back rigid against the wall and my head pressing back into its firmness.  Chest heaving, I sobbed silently with my eyes closed, my posture constant.  I had a tremendous urge to flee but at the same time I was paralyzed.  As soon as the sound ceased, my mind instantly calmed.  None of the other bowls had that effect.  Today however, I ran into A and was fine.

     Later I went to a play about love and it felt like every other scene was wrenching my heart around.  I could feel the heart break of every character, the unrequited love.  It’s exhausting to watch a play like that.  The happy ending even caused me pain.  I wasn’t happy when the lead character looked to be the only one ending up sad and alone, but at least I had company for a moment. 

***

     I recently was reading about the way that Narcissists bond their victims.  To paraphrase: the Narcissist will create a fear environment by hinting at abandonment as they emotionally detach and distance themselves from the victim after an intense love bombing stage.  They will then periodically swoop back in and use sex and flattery to calm the victim down.  The endorphins released by sex create a sense of peace and well-being in the victim, taking the place of their normal fear state that has been cultivated by the Narcissist.  Therefore, the victim comes to equate the Narcissist, their abuser, with peace and well-being even though quite the opposite is true.  I think this is what I was referring to in the first few sentences of this letter.  I would always turn to M when I was feeling at wit’s end, after weeks of being blown off by him.  During these conversations, M would go back to flattering me, telling me how much he had missed me and how special our connection was.  All the days of him avoiding me would dissipate into thin air as I let myself be calmed by his empty words.  After I learned the truth of his other relationship, he would still try and calm me down using the same lines about how he was single and just learning to be alone (even though I kept seeing him out with a new girl time and time again).  Now that I understood that he could say these things to me, straight-faced WHILE he had a girlfriend, I stopped being able to believe them.  He sounded so sincere as he reassured me of his commitment to bettering himself and his intention to seek counseling.  I had to tell myself again and again that these were the same things he had been saying in order to deceive me the first time.  I would be an idiot to believe them now.  Sure enough, over one year later, he is STILL always hanging out with that same new girl that he was so reluctant to acknowledge.  I bet if I asked him tomorrow, he would still deny that he was even dating her.  Part of me would still want to believe him.

     This realization was one of the biggest things that has allowed me to finally move on.  Once I realized that he would just feed lies to me, our interactions became completely meaningless.  The illusion of the soul mate had been irreparably shattered.  I had no choice but to see him as the shallow liar that he was.  I knew that by attempting to remain friends with him, I would only be giving him permission to continue lying to my face.  Every conversation with him left me in agony as the depth of his betrayal sunk in.  He had always lied to me.  I could not trust a single thing that had ever come out of his mouth.  Our friendship had been based on lies.  My love for him had been based on lies.  This man who I had thought to be my soul mate was someone I did not know at all. 

     At this point, I had begun attending group counseling sessions at the college.  I had a tremendous amount of anxiety about attending the first session as I was emotionally distraught over M,  and I did not think it would be fair to start things off by hysterically freaking out for an hour in front of college kids ten years younger than me.  I attended an emergency counseling session prior to the group meeting, where I was able to have my hyperventilating, sobbing freak-out so I could go to the first group meeting and calmly introduce myself like a non-crazy person.  The counselor was a middle-aged man I had never met before.  My regular counselor was in a session and this man was the one available for emergency needs.  He barely said a word as I poured out all my fears and insecurities, gasping for breath as I told him the whole horrible story about M.  In all honesty, I didn’t get much from that counselor, but that session did prevent me from going into hysterics at group, so it served its purpose.  I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt much crazier than I did in that counseling office.  Here I was, a grown woman, having an epic meltdown over a man.  One of the things I have learned through this entire ordeal is that human relationships are sacred and imperative to our well-being.  Betrayal is a huge deal and can rip a hole in one’s psyche.  To my knowledge, I had never been cheated on or otherwise betrayed in my past so all of this was new territory for me.  Additionally, in the time I had spent with M, he had managed down my expectations about what relationships should be like.  We only hung out once every two to three weeks and rarely spoke on the phone.  Most of our interactions were in the form of sexual text messages.  I kept telling myself that this was good enough and that I was glad to have all that time to myself so I could pursue my own goals.  In reality, I was starving for attention and becoming depressed from his lack of time for me. 

     I must say that it has been quite a relief to finally be able to watch movies and TV shows again without feeling every ounce of pain experienced by these fictional characters.  For the better part of a year, I just avoided watching anything but food and music documentaries, for fear that any dramas or romantic comedies would be too emotionally triggering.  I was in so much pain that I felt it best to avoid most media, including listening to music, for fear that it would trigger more pain.  I found that meditation music was the only genre that did not bring up jarring emotions.  Even classical music was too emotionally loaded.  I have always loved reading, both novels and non-fiction, but with the PTSD symptoms I was experiencing, my ability to concentrate was completely shattered.  I could not stay focused on the page.  Increasingly frustrated, I began dropping these activities out of my life rather than try and force myself to enjoy them.  This past week marks my first successful attempt to read a work of fiction for pleasure since the ordeal with M. began.  I was able to read two novels in a week, both with sad endings, and not be reduced to tears, nor forced to put it down prematurely due to an inability to concentrate.  This past weekend marks two years since the initial D&D (devaluation and discard), so this has been a long time coming.  It has felt very empowering to begin reintroducing activities that had meant so much to me in the past as I slowly heal and feel less triggered by them. 

Psychological Violation

February 24, 2013

M,

     Now that I know of your condition, I have pretty much become a completely inconsolable wreck.  Part of me pities you for your inability to ever know love as I have, part of me fears you and part of me hates you with a seething rage I have never known before this.  The idea that you have most likely tricked girl after girl into thinking you are their soul mate makes my stomach churn and my heart feel as if it is about to burst into flames.  The idea that everything I felt for you was based on lies burns me to the center of my existence.  You made me into a willing participant in a mindfuck that violated my very soul.  All this time you were coaxing me to let go of fear, to open myself to you.  And I did.  I gave of myself and my body more openly to you than to any other lover of my life.  You took that and ran, all the while jealously guarding your own precious psyche.  How fucking unfair. 

***

     The first few months after discovering M’s disorder were a conflicted time.  I was still so programmed to empathize with him, to try and understand him from the inside out that I couldn’t help but pity this broken man and wish there was some way I could heal him.  I had the mistaken belief that with my unconditional love, I could cure what had been broken for most likely his whole life.  If I just continued to sacrifice my morals, my self-worth, and my emotional needs in order to gain validation and security, perhaps I could make this man believe in his own self-worth so he could stop using others to create the illusion of self-esteem.  This was the catch-22 of the whole situation:  I wanted to continue allowing him to use and abuse me in order to get him to stop using and abusing me and others. 

     Rage was the main thing that kept me from pursuing this course of action.  Reality was finally starting to sink in as I realized that the damage most likely went far beyond A and I.  I had contacted one of M’s other female friends and although she denied being a victim of his poor behavior, she did allude to his “jedi mind tricks” and the numerous episodes of heartbreak his actions had caused to other women over the years.  It began to sound as if the game he was playing with A and I was just the latest incident in an oft-repeating pattern.  As much as I wanted to believe that what M and I had was special, it was becoming apparent that my love for him was based on a ruse he had created, more than any reciprocated feelings.

     Eventually, I was able to admit to myself that this man had never acted with love towards me. I started hearing the “concerned and loving” tone in his voice as the patronizing and superior tone that it truly was. I started to realize that my insecurities were stemming from his poor behavior, and not from any lack of fortitude on my part. Once I could no longer listen to his words without seeing through his façade, it became absurd for me to continue trying to maintain a friendship with him. Everything he said sounded insincere and hollow.

     I began experiencing symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as I came to terms with the idea that I had been in love with a disordered abuser. Though I admit that I was never raped in the sense of having someone force themselves upon me physically, I could think of no better way to describe what had happened to me than as a “psychological rape.” M had presented himself to me as a certain kind of person, lying to me every step of the way as I fell deeper and deeper in love with him. He knew exactly how I felt about him, yet he had continued the charade with both me and A for MONTHS as he whittled down my self esteem and willingness to stand up for myself. As A and I compared notes, it began to sound as if we had both known a different person. It became apparent that this “soul mate” of mine, was someone that I did not truly know at all. I began to question who it was that I had said all of those loving words to, who I had let touch my body in such intimate ways. I felt chilled as I realized I had no idea who I had been allowing into my bed for the last nine months, and no idea how many other beds he had been in during that time. I felt violated, yet my body still ached for this monster. The cognitive dissonance became physically painful as I tried to sort illusion from reality. My brain flipped back and forth incessantly between loving this man and being absolutely terrified of him. The constant battle raging inside my brain was taking its toll as it distracted me from everything and caused a state of perpetual exhaustion. It was becoming glaringly obvious that I could not handle this alone, so I sought the guidance of a counselor.

     I discovered that counseling services were available to me for free as a student, so I made my first appointment and tried to hold onto reality until then.

Overcoming Jealousy

January 20, 2013

M,

     I am still so angry at you.  I’m angry that you aren’t here spending this beautiful day with me.  I’m angry for all the beautiful days you spent with A.  I’m angry because I still believe she meant something more to you than I did.  I’m angry because I believe you were in love with her but not with me.  I’m angry because I believe you are still lying to me and favoring her.  I don’t know why you say such horrible things about her while continuing to spend time with her.  I’m mad that you had to break things off with her in person but you were content to cut me off via phone conversation.  This is the pill that’s hard to swallow.  I was ok being a once in awhile no-commitment friend if that is all you were capable of.  I never wanted to be on the side watching you give yourself more completely to another.  I’m mad that you won’t even let me make peace with you.  Your toxic words cut through my heart and your lies make it impossible for me to trust your apologies.  I’m angry that for months I have been pouring my heart out to you, and you listened silently, with a guilty conscience.  You lied to me about your past relationships, your job, your drug use, and God only knows what else.  I hate that I can’t trust you, you who I trusted so much…

***

     Reading over this letter, I can see exactly how twisted my thinking was about the entire thing.  I was still under the impression that he honestly cared about his girlfriend, rather than seeing that he was using us both.  Looking back, I can see how he was playing us against each other every step of the way, creating jealously and competition even during the process of discarding both of us.  I suppose he was trying to keep us fighting for him so he could salvage at least one of our addictions to him, ensuring continuous adoration and attention until he found a more submissive replacement.  Lord knows I was still trying to stay in love with him, but the rip in his mask was finally so large that I could no longer lie to myself.  I knew he was not someone I could keep in my life after what he had done to me, yet I was still so addicted to the illusion of him as my soul mate.

     The past year has been a long process of reading and learning about Narcissists and how they are not capable of loving anyone, not even themselves.  Though they appear to be holding themselves in high regard, they are in fact creating an illusion for their adoring public to buy into, providing them with the worship they crave.  I’ve come to the conclusion that this was the only value A and I ever had to him, and that he did not love either of us more than the other.  In reality, he loved neither of us, even though he had said those words to her. 

     A and I tried to form a coalition against him, using our combined forces to see through all the bullshit he had been feeding us, but eventually M fed us so much poison against each other that we had to split ways.  He was making us both fear he was going to go back to the other, planting seeds of doubt in our minds.  She was convinced that M was dumping her so he could come back to me, and I was convinced that he was madly in love with her and mad at me for ruining their relationship.  Every interaction was tainted with doubt and suspicion.  I was haunted both day and night as I began even having nightmares about them getting back together. 

     Today, I believe the illusion has finally disintegrated completely.  When I think of M’s face, I no longer see my soul mate.  I see a sick and twisted individual with his mind bent on manipulating people and always having one-up on everyone around him.  It sickens me to realize that there are people out there that play with hearts the way others play a hand of poker, but that realization has helped me fine tune my ability to read people.  I believe I can now spot someone with ill intention about a mile away, and while my guard may be at an all time high, I can’t believe that this is a bad thing now that I understand how deeply destructive these toxic people can be. 

     I suppose I’m still pretty angry, but not because I believe he loved her more.  I’m angry that he would go to such extremes to keep me at arm’s length, knowing that he was just using me as a girl on the side while he emotionally tortured and abused his girlfriend.  I’m angry that I was a tool to make her jealous.  I’m angry that she was a tool to feed his ego.  I’m angry at how docilely I played right into his hand time and time again.  I’m angry at how steeped in drama and chaos everything turned out to be when I pride myself on being such an honest and straightforward person.  I’m especially angry at how angry I was for such a long time after finding out the truth.  Anger becomes damaging when it’s held onto for such a long time, and I was overflowing with so much anger for months after discovering the truth.  It took its toll on my body, my brain, and my heart. 

     I had written this letter while laying in the grass in front of the music stage at the Scottish Highland Games.  It was a gorgeous day outside, and I was daydreaming about what it would be like if he had been there next to me on my blanket, sharing the experience.  So often he had let me down, making excuses for why he could never do things with me.  I never could understand how someone who claimed to like me so much could never have time to be with me.  Nowadays, I have been spending my time with someone who says he loves me AND wants to be an active participant in my life.  It feels every bit as amazing as I imagined it would to lay in the sun together, not wondering when and if I will ever see him again, not worrying that he’ll be going off alone to a party later that night so he can flirt with all his lady friends as a “single” man.  It feels really awesome to be respected and loved for a change.

Layers of Hurt

January 6, 2013

     One thing I was unprepared for in all of this was how many layers of hurt I would be experiencing.  Firstly, my ego and pride are bruised as I realize how foolish I sounded as I explained to you how I liked our “barely there” arrangement, where I saw you just often enough to pretend that we had some sort of relationship, and you had the space to get your life back on track and pursue your hobbies and interests.  Little did I know that even more of your time was being taken up by an actual girlfriend…someone who believed she was in a relationship with you because she was.  And you sat there and listened to these words come out of my mouth and you said nothing, or worse yet, agreed with me.

     On the next level, I feel intense betrayal.  I can’t even fathom how many lies you have had to tell me to keep up the illusion that you were a free agent.  It makes me weep to think on all the times you told me that you couldn’t be and didn’t want to be in a relationship, but this whole time you were, and it was with someone that wasn’t me.  I trusted you with my heart and my soul and you lied to me, knowing that the truth would bring pain.  It is the malicious act of lying to my face which I find so hard to wrap my mind around.  Direct questions responded to with straight-faced lies, a skill I have never been able to hone in my personal life.

     Not only have I lost the ability to trust you, but I have lost the ability to trust myself.  I have always relied on my intuition and my ability to read people in order to steer clear of dangerous situations.  My heart has never been so wrong.  While all of my friends and family could see things so clearly, I alone blinded myself to every red flag, convincing myself that these were good things…the space, the distance, the infrequent phone calls.  In reality, I was giving you all the space you needed to deceive me, never questioning the lies you fed me.  I never once suspected a thing.  I was so thoroughly duped.  It makes me crazy to think I handed you the power to hurt me so deeply.

***

     I had always heard stories of wives being shocked that their husbands were leading double lives, with second houses and families on the opposite side of the country.  I always thought to myself, “you fool, how on Earth did you not see it?”  I had this belief that abusers were uneducated drunks, and easy to spot a mile away.  The women with them must know they are being abused, and choose to stay because they think they deserve that kind of treatment, or have known nothing else.  I pictured the woman, night after night asking him where he had been so late, as he gives the same old “I had to work late” excuse.  M had always provided me with more information than I needed about what he was up to each day, so that I never had to ask where he was or what he was doing.  He would often tell me he was having dinner with his parents.  As soon as I felt a little jealousy rising about him hanging out with other people, while making no time for me, he’d tell me how busy he was with band practice.  His family and his music were two things I had told myself I was not allowed to be jealous of.  I knew these things were important for him to get his life back on track, so I never questioned it.  I literally thought I knew where he was every moment of every day because he had offered up the information without my asking.  When I found out about his double life, I was blindsided by exactly how many lies he must have told me about his whereabouts to cover up his relationship.  He must have been texting me from her house feeding me lies on numerous occasions.  The thought of him spending time with her, while lying his ass off to me via text was enough to make me want to vomit.  When I met up with A, she had told me she had seen texts from me come in and he lied to her face about it, saying I was “just a friend.”

     I had run into him a few weeks prior at a concert, and I finally had a chance to have it out with him now that I knew the truth.  For the first time, I was able to hear the tactics he was using to manipulate me in real time as I blew holes into his facade.  I heard him mirroring A, as he used direct quotes from her to fake empathy for how I must be feeling (I knew because I had spoken to her prior and she told me some of the things she had said to him).  I heard him projecting his own bad behavior onto me as he told me how bad I was for contacting A in the first place.  I saw him switch mid-sentence from anger to a pity-play when he realized that I did not, in fact, cower in the face of his rage, but rather rose to meet him.  I saw him cry crocodile tears for the first time.  His girlfriend had warned me that this was something he did, but I had not personally seen him cry before…most likely because I had never rose up against him.  I heard him try to rationalize away almost an entire year of shitty behavior.  I heard him lie to my face when I confronted him about the fact that he wasn’t even single when we first met (which had just been confirmed that very evening by his ex-girlfriend).  I felt like I had developed a sixth sense for seeing through his bullshit.  Not a single word out of his mouth was honest.  It was 100% psychological and emotional manipulation.  He had been doing it since the day I met him, but only in that moment could I see it clearly.  This man, who I had loved with my entire being was a complete farce.  He was an abuser.  He was broken.  He had no sense of morality or empathy.  He was a Narcissist.  In my opinion, he was evil. 

     Now I can understand how these women were fooled for so long.  A high-functioning Narcissist does not leave an obvious trail of evidence to follow.  He knows the doubt and insecurity you are feeling as a result of his behavior, because he has orchestrated it.  Now he will use that doubt and fear to control your behavior and emotions to keep you in line with his agenda.  Theirs is a mind game, and unless the victim is well-versed in psychological manipulation, some of the tactics are very hard to see.  It has taken a very long time for me to shift my view of him from “soul mate” to “abuser” and to forgive myself for being blind to the truth, but little by little, things are snapping into place. 

Letting the Cat out of the Bag: Contacting the Other Woman

December 20, 2012

(with this post I am breaking format and including the letter I wrote to the other woman instead of a letter I wrote to M)

A,

     I have been M's lover for the past nine months (with an exception of July-Sept). I met him at [his band’s] show and I thought things were going great until he left me because things were going too fast for him. He came back a few months later after dating you for a short time. During these nine months I have believed him to be my soul mate and a very important person in my life. I have listened to him talk about how he doesn't trust women and I felt special that I was the woman he could trust. So it turns out there is more than one woman he can trust.

     I had asked him about you and he spoke as if that was in the past. Apparently it's not. I lowered so many of my expectations to stay with him as long as I have, only asking that he tell me if he took on additional lovers so I could make the choice to leave if that grew to be too much for my heart to bear. He obviously does not respect me enough to grant me that.

     I hope none of this comes to you as much as a surprise as it did to me, or that you at least had not deluded yourself as thoroughly as I have. I know he loves to praise the ways of polyamory, but as I understand it, all the participants are supposed to know that is what they are a part of. I hope I have it wrong for your sake, but in case this is important for you to know I wanted to return the favor you did for me. I was able to figure it out by your Facebook posts on his wall, but I only saw them one week ago.

     I know that if he finds out I contacted you he will probably never speak to me again and that thought hurts my soul. I understand if you feel the need to confront him though. That's what I did. I'm willing to talk on the phone or in person if you feel the need to discuss this more thoroughly. I will be completely honest with you as that is the virtue I praise above all others.

Sincerely,

D

***

     I had spent the previous week going back and forth on whether or not I should reach out to A.  I wasn’t sure if my inclination was motivated by sincere concern for her, my own pressing desire to know the truth, or my wounded heart’s need to lash out at M in some way.  I analyzed all the possible ways I could approach her.  My ego wanted to ask her pointed questions without revealing my own entanglement in the situation, but my brain knew this would only make her suspicious and not lend itself to any meaningful discourse.  In the end, I decided to put myself entirely out there with my first contact and place the power in her hands.  I wanted her to know the truth and hoped she would communicate with me, but I was terrified of her reaction. 

     I sent off this message via Facebook right before heading out to my company Christmas dinner party.  She responded within the time it took me to walk the five blocks to the restaurant.  She gave me her number and asked me to call.  It was only during that first telephone conversation that I found out she was his girlfriend, but I still thought maybe she had just slapped the title on their relationship without consulting M on the subject.  We had a tear-filled chat for about half an hour and we made plans to meet up later that evening.  I spent the company dinner in a daze. 

     A few hours later, she and I met up at a local pub and compared notes.  We bought round after round of Irish Car Bombs, commiserating over what an asshole M turned out to be after we were both duped into thinking he was the most perfect man on the planet.  I got drunker and drunker, crying my eyes out and revealing to A the entire timeline of my relationship with M, giving her the sordid details of how he and I had been sending each other sexually explicit texts up until I found out about her.  A’s best friend was also at the pub and when she got wind of my involvement with M, she became incredibly hostile, making it clear that she believed that I only revealed myself to A after being dumped and that she thought I  knew M had a girlfriend the whole time. 

     The culmination of that evening was when A suggested that the most reasonable course of action would be to take a photo of the two of us kissing and post it up on Facebook and tag M in it.  It worked.  Within minutes he had unfriended her and we had a tremendous laugh over imagining what must be going on in his mind in that moment. 

     She thanked me again and again for coming forward to her.  M had begun the process of a long, cruel discard of her and she was already beginning to feel the ill effects.  She admitted that she wasn’t sure if she would have been able to escape had I not revealed myself.  After spending the previous summer near suicidal, I thought maybe I knew what she meant and was glad I was able to help.  I, for one, felt more able to walk away from him than ever before, but there were still some huge obstacles to overcome.  The largest of these was the tremendous cognitive dissonance that had been created with my discovery of A.  M had an entirely different life than what he had revealed to me.  He had a girlfriend that he wasn’t afraid to say “I love you” to and had introduced her to his family.  He spent holidays with her and they went on trips together…all the things he had denied me because he “wasn’t ready for a relationship.”  Everything I knew about him was wrong.  He was not the sweet, honest, empathetic person I thought he was.  He was not the wounded ex boyfriend of a girl that treated him roughly.  He was not my friend.  In fact, he told A nasty things about me and tried to make it look like I was the one in the wrong.  He would turn around and say the same things about her to me.  The way he spoke about A made me FURIOUS.  In fact, that was one of the biggest mistakes he made with me.  By letting me see him wrong her so repeatedly, he stirred up something in me that he couldn’t wrap his mind around…empathy for HER.  Watching his behavior towards her was the one thing that allowed me to see how he truly is: a heartless, manipulative monster.  Without empathy, you aren’t fully human, and that is precisely what narcissism is, a psychological condition caused by a lack of empathy for others.  You could say it’s a sort of brain damage. 

     It’s still so difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that perhaps M is not physically capable of love for another human…that never in his heart was there any love for me, but looking back on his behavior, everything adds up.  It is only my belief in this that has spared me from the devil’s hand for so long.  If for one second I let myself believe he had the capacity for love, I’d be right back in it, trying to win his affection.  This is how deeply the addiction lies, that is caused by the early stages of a narcissistic relationship. 

Harnessing Anger

December 19, 2012

     Today I have harnessed anger.  I double checked my text messages to see what I was doing the day of November 20th, the day she posted a photo of you with a banana in your pocket while standing in her kitchen.  The caption reads “Is that a banana in your pocket?”  The obvious sexual nature of the comment is only further enhanced by the fact that on that very same day you made love to me in your bed, I took self-portraits of myself in front of your house representing my longing for a family, for children.  I took portraits of myself sitting nude at your mother’s piano, of myself at your kitchen table, holding your pen hovering above your religious charts and studies.  I bet when I go to look at that photo of you that you will be wearing the same shirt I saw you leave in, as you rushed off to go “help your family move.” 

     All day I have been tempted to share this with her, to rat you out, to give her the same anger I have needed to walk away…the anger she unknowingly gave me.  Part of me wants to return the favor and part of me just wants to wound you.

     I’m glad she was brave enough to out herself as your lover, a strength I never possessed.  I was too filled with fear of rejection to stake any sort of claim.  I’m trying to wait a few more days before I make my final decision on whether to contact her, knowing that my doing so will probably burn a bridge with you forever.  I know it’s not something I should do in the heat of passion, until I know I am prepared to face the consequences.

      I hope I can stay this angry for awhile.  It is the most empowered I have felt in ages.  I fear the day you try to contact me, that I will fold to your will, but part of me hopes I will have the strength to declare, “I will not sacrifice myself for you any longer.”

***

     First off, I have a few things to admit.  In the blind rage of those first few days, I had misremembered a few things, namely the date I had seen on the above mentioned Facebook post.  The banana photo had not, in fact, been posted on the same day I had been at M’s house.  I was off by a few days.  However, the two events DID happen within the same week, right before Thanksgiving.  That being said, the depth of my blindness truly astounded me.  I literally could not believe the evidence that was right before my eyes.  He had even admitted to having a sexual relationship with this girl and I still could not properly wrap my mind around it.  I had spoken to him on the phone on Thanksgiving day and we chatted about his family.  I was at my father’s house on the other coast of Florida, sad that I could not spend the holiday with M.  I so desperately wanted to meet his family.  I imagined they would all be tall, blonde, blue-eyed and gorgeous, just like him.  That same evening, he went over to A’s house to play Balderdash with her friends and celebrate the holiday.  This was something that took weeks to sink in.  He treated A like a real girlfriend.  He introduced her to his family, he took her to public events with him, he spent holidays with her, he called her his girlfriend, he told her that he loved her and that he wanted her to be the one.  These were the things that hurt the most.  He was doing and saying all the things I wanted to do and hear, but with her instead of me.  My hurt and rage was unprecedented. 

          I immediately wanted to tell A everything, but I was afraid that she was already in the know and I was the idiot that didn’t know M had been fooling around with multiple people.  When I confronted him about A, M told me there were many other women and there would always be many others (later, he claimed he only said this so I would not specifically target A and tell her what was up, but I have a feeling there was some truth to his original claim).  I thought maybe she knew she was just a casual girl on the side and was fine with her role, and that by contacting her, I’d look like a crazy idiot.  On the other hand, even if she did believe me, SHE might go crazy and take things out on me.  She and I had a few mutual friends on Facebook, so I contacted one and asked him if she seemed like a down to Earth girl that could handle me approaching her with my side of the story.  He gave me the green light and said she was a cool chick.  Still, I waffled back and forth on which path to take.  The urge to destroy M was second only to my desire to be with him, no matter the cost.

     In the end, my lust for honesty and my pursuit of the truth won out over my sick addiction to M.  I decided to contact A, setting in motion the course of events that would finally open my eyes to the truth and begin the very long process of healing.

Slowly Opening Eyes

December 18th, 2012

     Today was day one.  It has now been over 24 hours since we last spoke.  I’m still feeling the effects of denial as I still imagine talking to you, seeing you, making love to you.  It was a fairly productive day; I tidied up my house a bit, finally removing the evidence of my recent illness.  I went to the gym and did a half-hearted workout.  I had my recurring daydream about training you, but this time with the bitter realization that it would never come to be.  God it hurts to think of all the things you said you wanted to do with me but never did.  You talked about making meals, getting drunk together at a party, going to a music festival, going to see The Hobbit.  Every time, I believed you had some intent of following through but whenever I pursued it, you were unavailable.

     Today is the first day it has truly sunk in exactly how unavailable you are to me.  You probably always will be.  Now that I’m so deeply associated with the break-up with your ex, seeing me will forever conjure those memories.

     I’ve been reading this blog today dealing with the subject of dating emotionally unavailable men.  It was already starting to dawn on me how little my needs have been considered this whole time when I found out about your other girls.  This blog has further opened my eyes to how I’m doing the exact same thing I was doing with my ex.  I’m carving out large chunks of myself in the hopes of being more satisfactory to you.  I’m stamping down my needs into silence to avoid rocking the boat.  I am abusing myself.  I’ve come to realize that I’ve sacrificed too much and I cannot stay.  I don’t need to see you one last time.  Our last night together was the most beautiful I could imagine.  That night it finally felt like you were there, in the present with me, and happy.  You approved of me and appreciated my art, my body, my presence.  It was what I had wanted these last nine months.  It was too much to bear to feel you pull back away after that level of intensity.  I can’t keep up with the hot/cold yo-yo game.  I feel pulled too thin.

***

     It took Natalie Lue’s blog Baggage Reclaim to show me how much I had been stifling myself to be with M.  With my ex-fiance, I was fully conscious of the sensation of walking on eggshells.  My ex would have a rage reaction to things that upset him, so I very intentionally tried to change my behaviors in order to limit those rages.  With M, the dynamic was much different.  With him, I was not afraid of rage, but rather of judgement and abandonment.  He had made it all too clear that jealousy and clinginess were unacceptable and he had proven to me by his first abandonment that he was not afraid to throw away what he had if I over-stepped my bounds.  For whatever reason, this did not feel like abuse at the time.  I saw it as a man expressing his needs to me.  He claimed to be in pain from his last relationship and in need of space to heal.  I saw his condemnation of jealousy to be a sign of his spiritual enlightenment.  He did not see people as possessions and felt everyone should be free to act according to their own will.  I now understand these to be tools of abuse designed to control his victims.  By creating feelings of fear and guilt, he was able to keep me quiet, so I would not express my discomfort with how he was treating me, lest I be branded as “jealous” or “needy” and suffer the consequential abandonment.  It worked like a charm.  My fear kept me so quiet that most of our phone conversations were me listening to him go on about whatever was on his mind and affirming every word out of his mouth so he would feel safe and accepted. 

     Lue’s blog and her book Mr. Unavailable and the Fallback Girl taught me about blowing hot and cold (acting in love one minute, and completely distant the next), future faking (making up stories about all the things we would do together in the future so that I would be emotionally reeled in without him ever intending to follow through), and the fallback girl (keeping me on the backburner so that if things went awry with his primary relationship, I’d still be on the sidelines to swoop in when he needed me).  It was the first step in seeing abuse in M’s pattern of behavior. 

     At this point, I still believed the root cause of M’s abuse was his break-up with his ex.  I was seeing him as a wounded, but emotionally unavailable man that had trouble with commitment.  I believed that once he finished grieving his last relationship, he would be capable of being with someone in a meaningful way.  I realized I had compromised myself and I needed to get out so I could begin respecting myself again, but I still had NO idea of how deep his pathology runs.  At the very least, Lue’s book had opened the door to realizing that I myself was not to blame for his poor behavior.  I was simply with the wrong guy at the wrong time and I needed to get out. 

Denial and the Other Woman

December 17, 2012

Dear M,

     A million thoughts have been swirling around in my head for days.  So far, a few things have become clear.  I don’t want you to leave me.  The last time almost broke me and I’m not sure that I’m prepared for such a test of strength.

     That being said, I have been a wreck this past week as I try to make sense of what I have learned.  I feel embarrassed.  It’s like we both caught me making up some cute little fantasy about how you and I had some sacred bond.  I believed I was enough.  I thought I was giving you the space you needed to grow and flourish as an individual, to pursue your hobbies and to succeed at work, but now I see that when you say you are busy and don’t have time, it’s not that you don’t have time for socializing and relaxation, it’s that you don’t have time for me.

     I used to believe you when you told me what was keeping you so busy but now I find myself wondering if one of those times “eating dinner with my folks” wasn’t the truth.  With your rigidly busy schedule, how on Earth could you find the time to pursue intimate relationships with numerous women?

     I also feel a bit compromised.  When I invite you to release semen inside my body, it’s based on the knowledge you have provided me with about your sexual history.  By keeping the complete picture from me, I feel that my right to make informed decisions about my health and my body was compromised by someone who claims to care about my well-being.  This I feel is unfair.

     My emotions have also been compromised.  With my limited view of the playing field, this situation with you looked a lot different than it turned out to be.  I allowed myself to believe in a dream where you and I were able to make each other happy with our infrequent trysts.  I thought what we had was special, that you had made an exception for me to be in your life when other women were not open-minded enough to respect your need for space.

     Now it looks to me as if I have been one tier in a redundant system of lovers, a system designed so that you are never left completely alone.  But here I am, alone, while you are at a party you would never invite me to, forced to view your life from the very distant sideline but never really allowed in.

     So now it’s time to make a decision.  I am an addict.  Do I keep using the moments you are willing to grant me as a way to get a fix, always tortured and longing for the next hit?  Or do I buckle down and try to quit cold turkey, fearing I may not make it out the other side?  Do I try to find the equivalent of a methadone clinic, in the form of another lover or in booze or weed?  Which pain is the worst, the slow torture of being kept low on your priority list and never hearing those words which I so long to hear escape your lips or the pain of walking away and turning my back on someone that I love with my entire being?  I don’t honestly know and I fear either may kill me.

***

      It’s still difficult for me to read these words that I wrote a year ago.  I can still feel the pain of my discovery slowly sinking in as I start to realize how much I had been lying to myself.  This letter was written before I knew the depth of his relationship with A, and none of the anger I came to experience in later days had presented itself yet.  I was still trying to rationalize a way to stay with him, knowing he had other women, because I had already experienced the alternative and it had nearly killed me.  I did not want to go back to not eating and feeling suicidal on a daily basis.  The only thing that had saved me last time was him coming back into my life.  Would I be able to make a clean break this time without sacrificing myself? 

     At this point, I knew M had been hiding some things from me, but I still had no idea how narrow my knowledge of him as a person was.  I had believed that I knew what he was doing with about 90% of his time, he was often at work, spending time with his family, or practicing with one of the three bands he was involved in.  I’ve come to realize I only knew about 20% of what he was up to.  I knew what he was doing when he was with me (sometimes…I think even then things were going on right in front of my eyes that I was not aware of, such as texting his other women) and I’m fairly certain he was at his job Monday through Friday from 7am-3pm, but once I realized he was somehow hiding these other women right in front of my eyes, I knew some of these other things must have been cover ups for his true activities.  I had been texting him every day.  He had always told me what he was up to, or so I had believed.  I started to understand that our text-centric communication style was only playing into his agenda, allowing him to lie to me as much as needed. 

     A large part of a relationship with a Narcissist is rewiring one’s brain to accept all the bullshit that he/she is putting you through.  One must really turn a blind eye to their bad behavior for the relationship to persist for any duration.  Once a Narcissist has you hooked, their behavior becomes abysmal.  They know exactly how much you are willing to put up with and they will take this to the limit. 

***

     An aside: This post has been difficult for me to finish.  I started writing it almost a month ago, but the memories it dredged up, along with it being the one year anniversary of me finding out about M’s true story was overwhelming.  I had to put everything aside for a few weeks and once again began trying to drown my pain in alcohol.  I knew it had to be a temporary solution just to get me through the holidays, but the pain had become so overbearing that I found it too difficult to remain sober.  Since the first of the year (my last big trigger date), my anxiety and the accompanying intrusive thoughts have been dying down, and I’ve been able to step away from the alcohol again. 

     A HUGE part of this journey has been finally reaching the place where my pain was too great to be numbed by alcohol.  Something had happened to me that was so devastating that attempting to add alcohol to the mix was taking me to a very dangerous place.  No longer was my addiction a safe escape from the everyday pain of life.  It became a scary place that I was no longer able to control.  I was afraid I’d get attacked or harassed while walking home from the bar, blacking out in the wee hours of the morning, drunk beyond comprehension.  I was afraid I’d get pregnant, or that I’d do something to hurt myself while in a drunken depressive fit.  I was afraid I’d call M. and harass him (which he was telling me A. was doing after she found out what he was up to).  I was afraid that I’d continue to cry in social situations, with the alcohol acting as an emotional lubricant.  I had to stop going out with my girlfriends on Thursday nights because I’d cry every time a man approached me to chat. 

     By giving up alcohol, I’ve slowly been able to learn healthier coping mechanisms that do not leave me in a worse emotional state than before.  The constant cycle of drinking/poor sleep/hangover was not allowing me to heal or to have many good days.  Since removing the alcohol from the equation, my emotions have become a lot more stable and easier to predict.  I know I tend to get hyper-emotional when I’m tired or hungry, so I can do what I can to prevent those things by eating and sleeping well. 

     I have also had to give up sex…completely.  I have found that the act of being intimate with another person, even as a fling is WAY too triggering to be worth it.  As a textbook Scorpio, this has been a difficult adjustment because my sexuality is very tied up in my personality.  By giving up sex, I no longer feel like myself.  That being said, I now have the room to heal, that I was not allowing myself before.  I was thinking I was ready to move on, so I joined some online dating sites and set to work.  I found myself meeting more Narcissists, liars, users, domestic abusers and even one of M's COWORKERS and after crying through many first dates, I came to the conclusion that I was not so ready to move on after all.  These people did indeed provide a distraction, but no healing work was being done, and with every successive jerk-off that I met, the wounds were just being cut deeper. 

     In essence, I gave up M cold turkey.  One by one, I cut ties with all my usual coping mechanisms until I was left with nothing but myself.  Stripped down, I was in a panic and desperately needed some new coping mechanisms to take the place of the old.  I sought counseling, knowing that for the first time in my life I could not handle this alone.  I took up yoga.  The violence in my brain was constant and I was desperate to find a way to quiet the turmoil for a moment.  Yoga provided me with almost a solid hour of distraction from my mind.  In the initial stages of breaking the addiction to M, this hour was a godsend.  It was the only hour out of my day I could chase him out of my head.  Now I can go about most of my day without thinking of him very often, sometimes I think I go a few days in a row without him crossing my mind.  The progress has been slow, and not all that steady, but compared to where I was this time last year, I really can’t complain.  Last January was spent drinking my face off and going for 3 hour long, rage-filled beach walks that still couldn’t calm me down.  I’m still angry, but no longer am I on the verge of destroying myself with my rage.

     I’m skipping a little bit ahead of myself in the story here.  Most of this rage and breakdown did not happen as of the writing of the above letter.  It came about 3 weeks later.  I included it here as it seemed relevant to my lapse in posting for the past few weeks.  So here I am, back on the wagon, and ready to finish up the rest of this story.