In The Narc Dark

OK, I said we kissed on the first date but I also was there for three hours and it was mind-blowing, you can guess what happened. As we lay after, something I can’t describe was the feeling of Wow. It was like “something incredibly special has just happened” and the reciprocated glances and smiles meant she felt that too. (Hindsight clearly tells me now it was just an act though). For the purposes of the story lets just call the first date Day 1.

I left T’s house and instantly felt butterflies. I didn’t give a single thought to my wife and family because already, this really felt like the thing that I’d yearned for. We messaged long into the night professing just how mind blowing it had been. We also spoke on the phone that night and amongst other things was the first mention I had of her ex. He had dumped her 6 weeks previously after an 18 month relationship that had her walk out of her own 22 year marriage. Let’s call him C.

The back story to the break up of T’s marriage was that she had a husband who always revelled in her successful career. She earned in the top 5% of salaries (as I do so this wasn’t my attraction to T at all) and with every new job brought new spending opportunities for her husband. T said that she had been prone to affairs and one night stands throughout her marriage and that she had came close to leaving a number of times but didn’t go through with it. When C came onto the scene, he was high profile and in the public eye in an arena that interested her. In fact, she stated a number of times she herself wanted to pursue a career in this line. When he first left the family home, she moved in with C for a number of weeks before getting her own place. This clearly brought tension with her friends and family; particularly her children. T stated that she got off on C’s intellect and it was fine for a time, they bought a house together after a year but that only lasted six months.

She said that C had difficulty in accepting her kids and he was a person that was better off living on his own. In the six to eight weeks that she had been single, she said that they had remained friends and that she had offered him a friend with benefits type scenario but she didn’t say if he took that up or not. She did say that he would come round and they would watch TV and cuddle.

On day two, more messaging and phone calls, she was everything that I wanted in a person, smart, incredibly sultry and oozed sex appeal. She didn’t really get my humour and saw me as quite serious, something that none of my friends would say. This wasn’t a problem though as things grew.

On day three, I visited her house and on the pretence of being away on business to my wife, I stayed over. We basically went to bed and made love time and time again. When we weren’t making love we were entwined in embrace and chatting. We quite literally got no sleep and as the sun came up we were still making love, cuddling and chatting. I cannot begin to describe the inner peace of a woman that was so into me and me her. It was quite literally my happy place. As she was off work at the time recovering from surgery, I spent time on the morning of day three with her before heading to the office. I had missed a meeting and calls were unanswered. I didn’t care.

More messaging that day uncovered more mutual interest, it just seemed to be whatever I was into, she was. She would say things like “I can’t believe you like dance music, its my favourite”. Once again in hindsight, I saw little evidence in the mutual interest as time went on but at the time I was convinced. We literally were sharing 1000 messages a day by that point and as you can imagine I became more disengaged and distant at home. Our next meeting was on day five and we went for dinner followed by a bottle of wine and then bed. More love making, entwinement and pillow talk. We managed a couple of hours sleep that night but again in the morning, I spent more time there and missed more work.

Day six was a biggy. It was a Saturday night I will never forget and basically this is what happened.

I told T I had my kids which was partially true but mostly it was because during the week I could excuse absence in the house with work but not at the weekend. We messaged during the day as usual, she was out for lunch with friends and I received pictures of her and the friends she had told me about. It was good to hear that she was introducing me into conversation (maybe wasn’t of course) and that I was starting to become part of her story.

The problem on that Saturday came at night. I wasn’t aware she was meeting a friend for dinner that evening although it wasn’t a problem. Im a trusting person and it;s important to me that I don’t feel that Im stifling someone, they’re free to meet who they want when they want. Inwardly I felt a little uneasy though and in one of my messages, I purposefully made a reference to hoping she had a good time with “her”. Almost in an instant a message came back. “Her? You sure she’s a she honey?” This stopped me in my tracks.

I became quite crest fallen that T had in my eyes, purposely created doubt in my mind. My texts back became quite short and I wished her a good night. An hour or so later she messaged back sensing something was up with me and she took great pleasure in my mind to explain that the person she was out for dinner with was C, her ex. She also revealed he came back to hers for coffee because he had 10 minutes to kill before going to pick up his son at 9.30 pm. Later when I looked back the texts the times didn’t add up and my stomach felt like it was lined in lead. Significantly, (for a reason I will go into in a later post) she wanted to talk and was able to message so was quite clearly alone. I reflected on the turn of events and became incredibly guilty that I had let someone who was quite clearly either a master manipulator or had a very different perception to me of what we had (I was later to learn it was both) make me act in the way I had. My wife was enormously loyal and a great mother who had never created doubt in my mind like that in 20 years let alone a week. I decided I had had enough and said to T that I was not going to be put in a position like that and we were over, I felt something of a relief that I had managed to get away without exposing my wife or kids to the hurt. I’d had my head turned and I only had my own guilt to deal with. I would redouble my effort at home and make my marriage work.

T had different ideas. She absolutely refused to let me go saying that she didn’t see she had done anything wrong but she said we had something she’d never experienced. She’d found her soul mate and it wasn’t to be discarded. She accused me of leading her up the garden path with my affection, flowers, chocolates etc when I didn’t mean the things I said. The conversation ended with me in my eyes reluctantly agreeing to see how it went but the alarms were ringing. All on day 6! It was interesting though that I emerged from the exchange thinking that I had been the unreasonable one.

A few more shared nights and some acts that stood out. At the time, I had a blocked tear duct and my eye was swollen. When I saw here she told me she had been to the pharmacy and sought advice for my eye. There was no ointment but I had to regularly massage the lower lid. Something she would do for me regularly with great care and tenderness. My wife would never in a million years do that and it was again something that stopped me in my tracks.

On day 11 there was flowers from C which he had dropped off on his way past her house. It was a slight annoyance but they were played off as something that was wishing her well in her recovery. When I left T that day though, all of this was building up and Id made up my mind that despite the wonderful nature of the last week and a half there was a nagging doubt about her willingness to be so close to a man that was a “pig” to one of her children and a real mysoginist. T had previously mentioned that in her mid-forties she still wanted more children and I didn’t. An example there were compatibility cracks appearing and none more so than I had a wife and children at home who were being betrayed by my cheating and selfishness. Despite the feeling of closeness and comfort with T, I was hating myself for not being true to those who really depended on me. What ensued that day was another conversation where I tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from the situation.

In the next couple of days the love-bombing that followed had me bring my world down.

My day 11 attempt to get away and repair my bad behaviour and guilt was unsuccessful as T appealed for my patience to allow her to become a better person. She of course fell short of an apology for her behaviour and looked at me like I was being unreasonable, but she explained she had fallen for me that much that she wanted to make it work and would do anything to keep things where they were. I was really unsure but didn’t see the harm in keeping the relationship going, I was in a gorgeous fantasy bubble with this woman and I wasn’t quite ready to give it up.

I didn’t recognise it at the time but it was at this point I was drawn in past my depth.

In 2015 I was diagnosed with Adult ADD. After years of being told I was depressed, I still felt there was something that didn’t quite connect and by chance my epiphany was watching a comedy set where I recognised problems and behaviours. I’ve dealt with this really successfully in my opinion and have been able to harness the positive traits whist minimising the negatives. I’m open with my diagnosis, as I believe that we all have an obligation to open the dialogue and remove stigma. T herself admitted that she had been diagnosed with depression in the past and it was something that raised its head.

Over the next couple of days I began to recognise that T too perhaps had ADD and not depression so I encouraged her to take an online assessment which showed strongly that she should seek a professional opinion. I gave her the name of my physician and she said she would make an appointment. I began to explain how I combatted some of the things that she was going through and it was as if I was her saviour. My wife had never took the time to understand my ADD but here was someone that knew what could happen and we could be helpful to one another. This brought us much closer together and it made me lean towards her even more. All the while, the sex was getting better and at that point we exchanged the declaration we were in love.

I can’t begin to describe the feeling of love I felt for T. It was damaged by her exchanges with C but it felt real and was mesmerising. Despite the feeling of deep relaxation I felt with T there was the nagging doubt about my wife and children and at around Day 15 I snapped.

I was at home one evening and things had become unbearable due to what I realise now was my disengagement whilst there. Fresh in my mind was how understanding T was to my ADD and how my wife had always promised she would look into it but didn’t. That made her a distant second best to T in my damaged eyes. At the end of the night I didn’t put a glass away and was called lazy by my wife. As someone who has never played on mental illness I was enraged by this and it all came out. I didn’t love my wife any more and I couldn’t be happy with her because she didn’t care and was damaging. That night I left the family home and I felt free, because I could now give myself unconditionally to my T.

I wasn’t due to see T until two days later, Day 17. Bear in mind she didn’t know anything about my wife but she had hinted a couple of times that “I was too good to be true” and that at some point I would tell her something that would burst her bubble. I felt incredibly relaxed on my way over to see T that night and was really looking forward to telling her which was the final stage in me going back to living a truthful life.

We went for dinner that night and were going to go for a drink but I told T I wanted to talk. She was slightly concerned but I sat her down and told her exactly the story. I was apologising to her for living a lie?!?!

She wasn’t happy of course but didn’t get upset. We discussed the ins and outs for an hour and then went to bed. For the first time, she wore pyjamas to bed and I kept my distance to let things blow over but she initiated contact and then it was the usual sex through the night.

The following day, (18) I said to her that I would understand if she was angry with me and would expect her hurt to manifest itself in a number of different ways but my deception deserved that and I would allow her hurt to take its course. She did bring things up often but looking back it wasn’t even a blip in our closeness.

The following week was all about her coaching me in how I stayed strong in my resolve not to go back to my wife as she said I would have doubts. During this phase I actually had none as I felt free and full of optimism for the future. Things were great between us and I stayed with her when she didn’t have her children and travelled on business when she did. I was very open with her regarding texts I was receiving from my wife who was incredibly hurt by my leaving. I couldn’t have cared less and had a steely resolve to ensure I proved my loyalty and transparency to T.

There was a slight blip when she mentioned that she’d been contacted by a footballer that she’d been in contact with for a number of years. She’d admitted to having had “phone sex” with him when she’d been with C and  he was back to see if she was still willing to keep contact. I asked why she thought it was ok to think contact was appropriate and she thanked me for calling her out on it saying she would delete his details. She later revelled that she found him unattractive, “all athletic with a 6 pack” this was clearly a jibe at my Dad bod! She countered this by saying that she had told C about me and he reacted in a toxic way sending a very spiteful email. This made me feel good that he seemed finally to be out of the way.

The following weekend (Day 22/23) was a bank holiday in the UK and we spent a wonderful few nights looking after her friends pets in the heart of the nearest city. Fantastic nightlife was a feature and we spent the most perfect evening having fun, laughing and being close. The following day her friend returned and we had a night with her in a pub. T was in flirt overload with every guy that past but it was fun and jocular, not making me at all uncomfortable.

We went house hunting for me on Day 24 and I moved in on 26, not before we went to all the usual haunts to get supplies and hardware. On 27 we spent a night together at mine for the first time and we made love less than usual as I was dealing with messages from my children who were hurting so I was concerned for them and was distant. In the morning I was rebuked for not cuddling T during the night, despite the fact I was awake with worry for my children. By this point I was disappointed at myself for making her feel unloved.

On day 29, everything changed and my devalue phase began.

I hadn’t seen T for 2 days and we were having a normal conversation on the phone about not very much, when I made the mistake of asking if she’d heard from C. She said that she had heard from him but she was going to tell him about me. Clearly she had already said she had told him and that he acted in a toxic way. What followed was lies covering up more lies and with every one I saw her beauty becoming a facade that was quickly falling away. With every question I asked, her answer didn’t add up and she attempted to cover it with more lies. She admitted eventually that he had been at her house because he was angry to have seen her tagged on Facebook with me and her friend the previous weekend. She then said that when he confronted her she “smiled at him and said I was single so could see who I please”. In my mind she wasn’t single and the smile at him was a challenge to get a reaction. I finished it at that point and then she created another lie that she had told her father, a big influence in her life about me. I knew this wasn’t the case and called her out, she eventually admitted it wasn’t true.

She maintained that night that there was nothing going on with C and I asked her to send a screen shot of her messages with him. When it came through everything clearly had been deleted and all that was left was contact I knew about.

Realising that this pretty, smart, sassy lady who was quite literally all I wanted or needed in life was a fraud, devastated me to my very core.

Things would only get much worse.

I felt I was left with nothing. I should have thought about the karma dealt to me for my stupidity but all I felt was that I had lost someone perfect for me. The way she viewed her behaviour confused me. She started to talk about “little white lies” and that she had panicked because of my questioning. I didn’t feel I had done that, the stories were unravelling bit by bit as she spoke.

I tried to see the best in her and rationalise what she had done and I started to think that this was symptomatic of what I thought was her undiagnosed ADD and I made allowances.

On Day 31 I went to see T with the absolute intention of ensuring that our relationship was over. I started to make her feel very uncomfortable with my opinion on the cause of her behaviour. She was very stand offish and aloof. She made mention that she thought perhaps we just had a sexual thing. This hurt me as my feelings for her were real and I still thought hers were too. I was reeling that she could feel like this and she off-handedly suggested we have sex. I obliged and we had something that for me was devoid of the intense feeling it once had and for her, something she described at the best ever. Instead of the usual embrace afterwards, we both just stared at the ceiling and she quite literally lost the plot. She screamed that I had used her and that I was a bully who was an abuser. Later, she would say that I should have taken being called a bully quite so literally!

Looking back I recognise now that the irrational way that she saw things was beginning to make sense. Her hold over me was that strong that the utter nonsense she spoke, I could find a rationale for. It was bizarre.

At this point I started to look at myself from a perspective of my marriage and in a way the relationship with this narcissist helped. I saw the effort I was making in the relationship with T and I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t make as much effort in my marriage. Clearly during the love-bombing, it’s fair to say that T put in way more effort than my wife ever did but that’s because the relationship with my wife evolved in time and naturally. Not in the distorted way of a love-bomb. I apologised to my wife and acknowledged that I had been all to keen to blame. Facing up to my responsibilities made me feel a little better in my treatment of my family. I didn’t want to reconcile at that point as I still had T on a pedestal.

Things over the next few days took the form of me staying in contact with T but telling her that the trust had gone and I therefore couldn’t have a relationship. She made more of the “little white lies” and said that they had been a defence mechanism for her for years.

I was in a real quandary because I was very much in love and lust with this woman but even though I knew how damaging she was I couldn’t help myself.

Around Day 36, I was building up communication with my wife and I am ashamed to say that I was using this as a fall back position because I knew that if somehow I could fix T’s behaviours she would be loving and perfect for me. I told T that we had moved too fast and that I thought we should give ourselves a chance to build a sustainable relationship. I told her that I was in contact with my wife and I was sitting on the fence with her.

During the course of the next week we saw each other regularly and there was no drama, things were back to how they were at the beginning. I didn’t make the mistake of asking about C because I didn’t want any more lies. T offered to show me her phone but I refused, citing that trust should be in place without measures.

This (most likely) one-sided happiness lasted 10 days.

On day 46 I was driving away from T’s in the morning having spent the night. I decided to call her to give her some reassurance that despite me “sitting on the fence” I felt things were going really well and the trust was building rapidly. By the time I had reached my office an hour later T had got to the point where she was going to let me go because she felt guilty that she was in the way of my wife and I reconciling.

I didn’t fight back much and was somewhat relieved that she had come to that decision because as much as I loved her she was damaging me. I saw this as a good way out.

During that day however, I became very anxious about the thought of not being with her and I decided to look at my unhappiness before deciding it was the small flat I lived in. To that end, I looked for another place despite the fact I was less than a month into a 6 month minimum lease and signed up for a house with a garden.

That evening, I was excited to tell T my news that I was no longer “on the fence” and I was ready to fully commit to her. She didn’t even acknowledge my news and continued with how hard it was to be breaking up like this. I didn’t want to make a scene and show weakness by pleading for her to reconsider. I thought she would realise later what I had done and things would be fine.

We kept contact and on day 38 she messaged me in the evening to say she was out with her friend in the same pub all three of us had a night out four weeks earlier. As I stated previously, T was very flirty with guys that night but would come back to me giving me tactile reassurance. The thought of her being out with her friend and flirting like she did really bothered me and I was very jealous and lonely although, I didn’t react.

I was in a mood the following day when we messaged. It felt that we were on a temporary break rather than being split up and my messages were suggestive as to the fact that she would have met someone on that night out and I hoped it made her happy. She denied of course meeting anyone saying all the while she missed me. I thought reconciliation was inevitable.

Day 39 was the worst of the relationship.

The great weekend we had was a bank holiday in May, there are two in the UK and the other was four weeks later. We had previously spoken about another night out on the Sunday evening as there was no work the next day and T had mentioned that she had her son during the day for his birthday but he was heading home that night to his Dad. The story changed on the day that her son wasn’t seeing his Dad at all on his birthday. This rang alarm bells.

More messages that day saying how much she missed me but in the evening they dried up. This had never been the case previously we would always return messages almost as soon as they were received. That evening there were messages two hours apart but when they came they were what I wanted to hear. She couldn’t stop thinking about me, she was so in love with me etc. I got one from her later to say she was really tired and that she was going to bed. Usually she would message from bed until one of us fell asleep.

I knew she wasn’t alone.

I could read T like a book. Her Pinnochio like fantasy could be spotted a mile off and wouldn’t be any more obvious supposing her nose grew like the puppet. I was sick and tired of being lied to and I wasn’t going to be fobbed off any more. At around 1am, I was still awake so I got dressed and jumped in my car. I had to see for myself that she had someone else there so I knew once and for all to get away from the madness. I drove the 45 minutes to T’s house convinced that I was going to see another car in her drive. Her house was off a lane so I left my car at the bottom of it and walked up. My heart was absolutely pounding and I felt sick.

Whenever I was at T’s she parked on the left of her drive and I parked on her cars right. When I reached her drive I found what I knew I would, a car parked in the space I always occupied. I felt empty.

I took a picture of the car so she couldn’t deny that it was there of course and I got back in mine. I didn’t once consider confronting her or causing I scene. I saw what I needed to and left. On the way home I called her phone in tears around 15 times but she didn’t pick up. I asked in the morning of we could speak and she said we could as she was driving across to see her daughter at her Dad’s. She clearly forgot about the story her son was in the house or we wouldn’t have been able to speak in the car.

I was quite calm when we spoke, she started to say what a lovely evening she had in cuddled up with her son. I told her I drove past hers from the main road and I could have sworn I saw a car on her drive. She said that her son had a friend over at night and that was his Dad’s. I asked if his Dad was over too, she said no. I asked then if he just sat in his car on her drive and waited. She got very flustered as her lies took over. I told her that it was 1.30am that the car was there because I took a picture, she went silent. She knew that the game was up and I could almost hear her searching for that one last lie to save the day, it didn’t come.

I very calmly asked her who the guy was, presumably it was someone she’d hooked up with on the night out and he’s come back for round 2.

No, she said. It was C.

 

I didn’t expect that the car I found would be C’s but in an odd way it felt better. Immediately I started to make excuses for her.

“It was my fence sitting that caused uncertainty”

“I’ve just not been fair”.

We spoke later that day and I said I was glad that we had finally got to this point because we could build from here. Her tone had changed though and she was lashing out at me. How could I come to her house to see what was going on? How dare I do that! I explained that it was the only way that I could see for myself where things were at and I hadn’t caused a scene when I got there. Regardless, this was a heinous act of distrust in her eyes.

She went on to say that although C had stayed the night he had slept in one of the kids beds as she said to him her surgery pains were bothering her. She couldn’t bear the thought of betraying me that was the real reason. Yeah right!

She gave the impression that we could talk and get things back on but she couldnt do it that night as she was visiting her Mum and then staying over. By now, I could tell when she was lying, (it was pretty much whenever words came out) and I knew that she was ensuring that I didn’t come to hers because C would be there. I decided that I would love-bomb her (even although I didn’t recognise that as a phrase at that point) till she came to her sense so I wrote her a poem and penned an email explaining how wrong C was for her. The responses I was getting by this point were getting shorter and cooler and I was panicking because I was losing her.

By this point all my time was spent sending a WhatsApp message and then every few minutes checking my phone to see if the double tick had turned blue. When they did a reply wouldn’t be forthcoming till I bombed her with more messages and the answer was an exasperated one.

Two days after the C revelation, she took a trip to the US with her daughter. I said I would leave her alone to get her head straight but I followed the progress of her flight on an app over the Atlantic. I was truly lost. Half way through the week I sent her a message to say I hoped she was having a nice time and I got a polite one in return with a brief couple of lines as to what they were up to. The last message was mine and there was more forlorn hope of a reply over the next few days. By this time I wasn’t going to work, all I did was check my phone and see if there was anything I could piece together.

After her week away, we did catch up when she was in the airport and things were getting back to the flirty laughs we were used to. This all changed however when I brought up C or what I had discovered the week previously. This chat was off limits, it was pretty clear.

I was driven on by the fact that we’d had at least some positivity in the contact and I began to structure my contact around when I knew she had her kids as the times she didn’t she was unavailable and most likely seeing C. Her answers were becoming cold not just cool and I could tell that I was annoying her. Things got to a point over the next couple of days that she wasn’t open to discussing anything about C or her situation.  It got to the ridiculous place where I had to give her a multiple choice on what she wanted to do with me. There could be several choices in this answer like “I’m with C” or “I’m single” and one of them was to go for a coffee. She chose that. No other options were answered.

We never made the coffee. She called off because her son was ill and she was cuddled up with him. I got the irony in that but I don’t think she did….