Hi vegan49…thank you for reading and I’m always happy to help! Recovery has to be a team effort!

By reading all these articles id have to say how dumb i feel because to my regret i have not dated 1 but 3 N girls after each other but the last one was the most ruthless. After nearly 2 years i got the feeling she was cheating but i did not ask her about it as she was going to lie anyway because she lied just about over everything.

So i was busy at home oneday when it just popped into my head i must go to her right now tonights the night iam going to catch her. I left home and as i got there i saw her walking with another guy in the road not wanting to assume anything i got out my car and walked to her giving her a hug and a kiss and she refused to hug me or kiss me and that told me everything i needed to know i was so hurt i turned around and walked to my car got in but in that very instant all the love i felt for her turned into anger i cant explain what i felt but it was like huge bump forming in my throat and i couldnt even cry.

I then got back out my car walked over to her and please believe me iam not a woman abuser but i cannot explain what came over me but i smacked her and i was about to carry on when i stopped and asked myself am i mad i then left. Being confused and a emotional wreck i wanted answers non the less i was going to get them just not exactly in the nicest of manners as she had now gotten her parents involved and lied to them saying but we were broken up which was never true without giving me a chance to say anything the father her current bf the mother and the uncle started attacking me.

Things spiraled out of control really fast as i was expecting them to attack me when they arrived already i had to protect myself because both the father and the bf drew knives out and i had no choice but to use my firearm as i was already getting attacked and seeing the knives really made me panic and i shot the father and the bf where the rest got such a freight they ran away. Long story short i did not shoot to kill them but only to hurt them so they were unable to move. We then appeared in court where everything came out she blamed me for cheating on her cause i working to much which is a lie she also said i made her feel worthless and like nothing which is also a lie i done everything for her i even ran her bath water for her each time she stayed here by me at some point during the questioning she had a entire breakdown.

Where she said shes sorry for the first time ever in her life and that she doesnt know what love is cause she cant feel anything but there was something about me that just kept drawing her into me and that she never meant to cheat on me but she doesnt know why shes doing it she hurts everyone she gets in contact with and she has a problem looking for attention all the time and she goes to any extend to get that attention.

Sorry for the language but i quote her exact words “i am a fuck up i know it but i dont know why” thats when it struck me shes a N.we only recently broke up not even 2months ago. Her parents wants to send her to get help but all of a sudden shes refusing to go saying theres nothing wrong with her. Why would she admit to her problem oneday and the next day not? Unfortenately i still do have contact with her which iam trying to break but its really hard cause i love her so much. My main reason for keeping contact with her is to try and persue her into getting help i do manage to get he to agree to go sometimes but as soon as the time arrives she refuses.

Iam not a weak person by personality or allow her to play phycology games with me i can honestly say that since we broke up i have not at any stage touched her again or even hugged her when i do go visit i do it in the presence of her parents we have a good relationship now aswell as they withdrew the charges against me. I wont lie its really hard and all i want to do is hug her and take her back and it hurts so much and i do cry sometimes when iam alone but ill never show emotions infront of her that is exactly what she wants all i want is for her to go get help.

Leroy is very sexual, and like the rest of you, sex was the only real connection we had. I remember thinking and even asking him about it early into our 11 month fiasco. I somehow recognized that sex was his way of connecting with me. The reason that I figured it was for my benefit only is because the sex was marathon sex but he never climaxed. To me that was almost an insult and it made me question what was wrong with me as a woman.

However, Leroy wasn’t a normal person when I met him. He’s an ex con, heroin addict, and a bully who has friends that are probably wanted by the FBI or something. He was molested when he was little and has an extremely toxic relationship with every single member of his family. He pulled me into this fucked up world with his sad stories. I felt bad for him and I wanted for him to experience real love and I was bound and determined to be the one to show him.

Leroy was with his main chick for 19 years but he married me barely 6 months into our afair. Literally the day after we eloped, everything began to fall apart. I divorced him after only 3 months. However, he still managed to hook me back only weeks later.

Leroy is also abusive physically. There is little worse than having the man you adore cough up a lougie and spit in your face all the while teling you the horrible things that your gut already knew, only to go home and look at yourself in the mirror and try to understand how you can continue to allow it to happen? Like it’s just a normal thing someone who loves you does to you. I’m still struggling to look myself and others in the eyes because of my choices.

I have spent the entire day reading through your blog just soaking up all the information that is offered. For the first time in forever I can honestly say that I know it’s not entirely my fault. The guilt I’ve been carrying around because of that single thought has weakened me almost as much as Leroy did. Thankfully I am free of those feelings at last and because of that freedom I’m finally starting to put my life back together.

Knowledge is absolutely power! Knowing the truth but never being proven wrong or right is a mindfuck in itself. The strength I’ve drawn from yours and other women’s experiences is empowering and I want to do what I can to keep anyone else from experiencing this life altering heartache, upset, and fear.

So I’m putting on my big girl panties and I’m going to get my life back. I will take all the lessons I can from this experience and do whatever I possibly can to help someone else avoid that hurt.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I know you have helped many people come to grips with their situation and shown them it is capable of escaping the life of loving a narcissist. I would totally take your counciling but Leroy left me broke and scrambling to get things back in order. At least I’m armed with the information that I learned today and I’m confident with my No Contact plan. So thank you abd God bless…

Very long sad story short? I just thought he was an immature spoiled brat in an adults body. I kept making excuses, enabling him because I didn’t hold him accountable for his actions. His mother died when he was 11 yrs old. Dad and mom were both alcoholics. His dad had a nervous breakdown after she died and he moved from neighbor to neighbor. His sad sob story I bought hook line and sinker. They prey on sympathetic individuals. Turns out he became an alcoholic too. I went to AA meetings, Al-anon meetings, got a sponsor, found the group Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families….searching for answers to all his “issues”. I was doing all the work, expending all the energy…. Never in my wildest dreams would I have come up with him being a sociopath. I didn’t even know what that was. I was nothing but parenting a grown man. Our marriage ceased to be anything but functioning day to day as sad as that sounds.

Only after finally breaking through his dysfunction and addressing the possibility that he was having affairs and homosexual ones at that…did I finally see the man hind the mask. After I accused him of being gay, he started crying and said “I didn’t ask to be this way”. You can imagine my reaction. Completely dumbfounded. All the years of lies, staying out all night, last minute business trips, emotional abuse, physically and emotionally not being available to me and the kids….my world cracked. After this big reveal? He acted like nothing transpired. Like I would just “get over it” like he told me millions of times before. I told him I was going to divorce him. He coldly replied, “you aren’t going anywhere…I need you and you need me.” He seriously expected us to live together as if nothing had changed. I had been living in the guest bedroom for two years already….and he was just fine with that.

A few days later I was folding the laundry on my son’s bedroom floor. I was sobbing in pain at the prospect that quite possibly he never loved ME. He walked by the doorway and stopped and looked at me crying. I looked up at him and with tears streaming down my face, I asked him “Did you ever even love me?” His reply gave me the creeps….he looked down on me then crouched down to look in my eyes and said, “I have never been more attracted to you then I am right now.” I was literally broken in half and he showed me no compassion. No love. Just a very cold statement that allowed me to see how indifferent he was to my pain.
That night I googled someone without a conscience. All my questions over the years were answered that night.

I filed for divorce in September of 2014. The day after our 17th wedding anniversary. The divorce wasn’t final until August 2016. I lived with him through the divorce. Unbeknownst to me, he had a tracker on my car, the housephone and my cell phone were being tapped and he had hidden cameras in the house. He was covertly trying to stay ahead of my every move. Upon him revealing conversations he knew about that he shouldn’t know, and dropping hints that he knew my actions solidified the very evil entity that he had become.

I moved out of the house I made a home for 17 years, with my two boys! I am the winner because he has no idea the value of our two beautiful and wonderful boys. We have joint custody, but I am the primary custodial parent. I thank God every day for sparing my boys. I found 2 bedroom condo on the fourth floor of a secured four story building. I highly suggest if you are able, to get yourself somewhere safe where going no contact is vital. He can’t just show up at my door. I feel very safe, very content and I sleep like a baby!

There is just too much to reveal, but most importantly, I have gotten my boys to a really good place physically and emotionally, and I am slowly getting “me” back. Do not underestimate “post traumatic stress disorder”. It is very real. It is very frightening. But you must take the time to nurture yourself after being emotionally traumatized. I fortunately was able to take time off and get myself to a much better place. I am glad. I am happier than I have been in a very long time. I am smiling more. I have found joy in the little day to day things again.

Please know it DOES get better. Time does heal all things. I found it easy to visualize cutting an emotional umbilical cord to my ex. I visualized him drifting away from me after I cut it. For the first time I felt like I could breathe again. As horrible as this sounds, his alcoholism has gotten worse. I wouldn’t wish ill on anyone in this world except him. When the devil comes to get him I will feel vindicated.

Sarah I cannot believe your story!! Your story is my story and it pretty much freaks me out. You will get through this. Just keep no contact. I have been no contact for over a year now. Where I failed in the past is because I wanted to hear why… why could he do this to US… we were so happy, or so I thought. BUT if he doesn’t get it he can ask someone else as I am not going to explain it. The devastation the affairs and the ex-girl friend had on me was horrendous, BUT IT GETS BETTER. It is not that I don’t think about it or that I am not sad. Its just I am over the Sherlock Holmes detective work and you know what you know. They will lie about it no matter what.

Stay Strong and come here often as it helps to read other stories. Your story has helped me and I appreciate that. I know its hard to write it, even though it feels good to write it.

I discovered that he was cheating on me just 3 weeks ago with an ex of his (from 3 years ago). We’d just had a fabulous, relaxed weekend together where he was being very affectionate towards me, holding my hand, etc, and lots of physical closeness and fantastic sex. Then 3 days later, he invites this woman to his place for sex. I’ve suspected for quite a while that he has been playing the field, but this was the first real proof that I had. I drove over to his place unannounced and was listening at his door and heard everything (including their long sex session)! I’m not proud of doing that but this is what they drive you to do with their constant deceit. I’m glad that I did because now I know for sure exactly what he is capable of. No doubt there have been many others before this one. I felt absolutely gutted as you can imagine and also quite disgusted that she would sleep with him, knowing that he was in a relationship with me. Though I imagine he was very persuasive and told her otherwise. Narcissists lie about almost EVERYTHING! I also believe that he is probably capable of doing this with men too.

The thing is that they make you question yourself – ‘Why wasn’t I good enough?’, ‘Why would he do that when we just spent a fantastic weekend together?’, ‘What did I do wrong?’- it almost drives you crazy trying to figure it out. But it’s not about YOU, it’s about THEM and their constant need for approval and feeling desired by as many people as possible. They will take it from wherever they can get it. Narcissists are takers not givers and it’s impossible to change them because they are ‘happy’ as they are.

It’s so true that narcissists are charming and the highs with them (and the sex!) can be the best you’ve ever experienced. But, in the end, it’s all about them and manipulating you for their own needs. My ex will never realize that his behaviour is unacceptable because narcissists have absolutely zero empathy. Yes, they can feign empathy but it’s only to get what they want from you. They tend to be very intelligent and manipulative and know how to play on your weaknesses.

Another thing to watch out for is, because of their addictive personalities, they tend to overuse social media a lot! My ex was never off Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc, and I knew he was being secretive because he was always checking his mobile phone, putting it on silent when he was with me and sending sneaky messages early of a morning and late at night – clearly not something he would be doing with his male friends. He would carry his phone everywhere with him, even into the bathroom, and it was placed face down at all times. Of course, if I ever asked him who he was messaging at such times (which I rarely did) he would react very angrily and make out that I was being too ‘needy’. When you get attacked verbally like that, you stop asking questions. That’s why they turn it round on you. Social media has made it so easy for people to cheat these days and you can be sure that a narcissist will take full advantage of this! He would even sit across the table from me at breakfast looking at semi-pornographic photos of women on Instagram and would often make sexual comments about other women or flirt with them while we were out together. This is done to undermine your self confidence and exercise control over you. Quite sad really! I also saw in his internet history that he had been on a dating site and when I asked him about it, he first denied it and then when I pursued it he said it was just out of ‘curiosity’. Haha, yeh right! He also used to masturbate (a lot!) Sometimes so much that he had nothing left when he was with me. There’s no greater love than a narcissist’s love for themself!

Like so many people who have commented here, I thought that if I made fewer ‘demands’ of him and sacrificed my own needs, that he would somehow realize the error of his ways and start appreciating what he had with our relationship. Of course, I now know that will never happen. When I confronted him about having sex with that woman, he never said a single word to me for 3 weeks (quite heartbreaking after being together for 2 years). He then sent me an email saying that he ‘missed me’ and when I said that I knew exactly what he had done, he denied it completely and said that I had ‘issues’. How low can you go! So, I know he has no feelings of guilt or wrong-doing and will have already moved on with this woman – his next ‘victim’. At least I can feel slightly comforted that he will eventually do the same to her and it was nothing that I did wrong. I have a chance to get better and live a great life, when he will always have to scheme and lie to get his next fix.

I’ve now gone completely No Contact with him as I can’t put myself through the pain anymore of being picked up and then dropped suddenly by him for no apparent reason (he’s split up with me, completely out of the blue, at least 6 times in the last 2 years). I’m emotionally exhausted and feel like I have completely lost myself! It won’t be easy, because I loved him dearly and gave him absolutely everything I could. But, clearly, it wasn’t enough and never would be! Narcissists get bored very easily and constantly need excitement in their life. The pursuit of other women is one of the easiest ways to get this stimulation that they crave. He is completely incapable of being faithful to anyone.

Despite everything, I haven’t given up hope and in time will feel ready for a relationship with someone who treats me with love, honesty, kindness and respect. We all deserve that, don’t we…

Thank you so much Zari for this wonderful website which has been an incredible source of support for me during a really low time. Also to everyone who has been so frank and shared their experiences on here. These narcissists create so much sadness and hurt with everyone they touch. It’s terrible and tragic.

Right on all counts, Cheryl! Peace and healing to you too!…xo

MomR wrote…My ex narc always referred to himself as a trysexual…he would try anything. HILARIOUS & TOO PERFECT. TRYSEXUAL!!

Okay, MomR, I’m using the term “trysexual” from now on! You made me laugh right out loud. Leave it to a narc to describe himself in such a unique way. It sounds like you know EXACTLY what I mean when I say narcs have no-preference at all. Hope that 6ft. bleach blond toothless Neanderthal works out for him! So glad that you’re free…

“Trysexual” – I love it!!!

Zari xo

Hi Jackie,

Sorry it took me so long to push your post through. I’ve been running behind, girl. I’m grateful that you found the articles helpful. It sounds like you get it…..and yes, these people are sick in the head. It’s a no-preference world to a narcissist and we make no difference to them – no difference at all!

Stay strong!

Zari xo

Wow Marie,

I am so glad you out of that situation but I am sorry that you still have to deal with it in such bizarre ways. You are exactly right WHY he has your parents over…just to prove a point, how tolerant he is and “accepting”…YUCK! Yes, he is a weird man and everything you describe represents, to me, a very deviant sexual side. We probably don’t even want to GUESS at what was really going on behind the scenes during your relationship and marriage.

Thank you for sharing, sister, and I hope you find all the happiness that you so dearly deserve:)

Zari xo

Well I have an example of absolutely no preference and just wanting to have someone for his own benefit, convenience, and pleasure too. This happened when he once slipped during what was I guess supposed to be a compliment. He used this example to emphasize I suppose that I was definitely his type (even though clearly narcs don’t necessarily have one) where he described being in a relationship with a woman who he wasn’t even attracted to. He said she physically was not attractive to him. Her boobs were too large and she had a flat ass. He told me how when they had sex, he’d focus on other things. Like one time an episode of family guy was on and he even told me what episode it was and how he paid attention to that! WOW. No normal person would be with someone that they weren’t interested in or totally attracted to. But narcissistic people don’t care! They’ll go along with and into anything (and anyone) if it benefits them. Sick.

I look back to the couple love letters he got while with me from long distance people. When I looked these people up, they also weren’t anything like what I’d imagine him with. Well, if I reflect, that’s because he didn’t care! These people were flirting with or emotionally giving him something for his ego and likewise. These women so fondly spoke of him. That “see we were meant to be!”. They adored him and appreciated him and were so happy he felt the same ways, mentioned how they texted and skyped every day and smiled each time their phone lit up with his name, and one went on about how she’d fly across the country for him if he ever needed anything and she knew he’d do the same for her. He had to be speaking in certain ways to these women for them to even feel THAT compelled to pour their guts out. And it’s gross he didn’t actually mean it! These people lived far away. These women probably didn’t even know he was in a relationship with me or that I existed either.

When I found the one love letter to him months after it was written, I enjoy now after the fact how one of his justifications or odd comments was also, “I’m so unhappy, but talking to these women means nothing! I’m staying with you and I’m with you! even though I’m unhappy. I’m really trying here! doesn’t that say a lot?!” Hmmm. Yeah it says you’re selfish, creepy, shady among other things.

I agree…self-respect instead of self-improvement! I “get it” and I think I’ll write an article about that. xoxo

Thanks Suzi! Your comment is really spot on. Instead of self-improvement, we should learn to cultivate self-respect…and know that we’re worth more than the narcissist’s narrow world.

It was awesome, girl! I’m here if you need me and you know that!

Zari xoxox

Zari – it’s me – in LA 🙂 Thanks for the great chat yesterday

It’s insane how true it is, and how mine would try to make me live up to that impossible ideal, yet like you said, I know a pulse and being female would have been enough. It does not help when you already have perfection issues. I wanted to live up to that so badly that it became like a job for me – how to be more more more – but now I am slowly healing and learning that I am enough and it’s ok to be ordinary because I am ALSO extraordinary.. I hate the internet and social media for creating this nightmare too …. now you can see who they like, follow, etc. Mine did that to triangulate me, make me feel insecure so much so that I was convinced that his hollow ass (he literally does have a skinny ass, too), was a player and able to capture these VS types.. meanwhile I was the best he’ll ever get, but he chipped away at my self-esteem with his covert abuse. NEVER AGAIN!! NO way. That life sucked the life out of me. Vampires who are insecure, empty and shallow pretending to be so much more and bringing full of life dynamic people who are sensitive and loving– down….

Brilliant summary. Really important for women to make that mental leap from the torment of aspiration in trying mould and measure ourselves against an impossible fantasy goddess, when in actuality if they are female and have a pulse that will suffice to feed the narcissist’s insatiable needs.

All good and I’m grateful we will get to speak after all! I am looking forward to it!….xo

Just letting you know I have received your email and we’re all good! We’ll talk within the next couple of days. No worries, sister!….xo

Narcissists are hollow deep down inside, with an inability to ever form deeper emotional attachments. So they’re constantly seeking something “new” to try to fill that void inside them. So they’re open to anyone and everyone, without any real “preference”–they have to cast a wide net to constantly have something new. I’m willing to bet the next target was someone my exact opposite–or perhaps even another man (from what I saw and heard from him, I sometimes had a niggling doubt about his sexual orientation and wouldn’t even be surprised if he were ever with another guy. Not necessarily from being attracted to them as a gay man would be, but just for the novelty and switching things up from women).

I’m so thankful to be done with that nonsense, and now married to a good man who leaves me with no doubt as to his devotion to me. A true partner goes out of his way to show loyalty, not cause you to question it. These cretins don’t operate like “normal” people, so stop applying “normal” standards of behavior to them. These creatures may have been in your past, but don’t have to be in your future.