The Narcissists We All Love

Reading  about all these allegations about Bill Cosby has gotten me thinking about how we can choose to ignore  another one’s “shortcomings” if the rest of the person is appealing to us.

Who did not like Dr. Huxtable? On TV he portrayed such a great dad and husband. Sometimes we confuse the public persona as the real person. It is so easy to believe what we want to see. I understand that these stories are only allegations of rape, but for me there are too many.

And these stories about the drug that these women were given hits too close to home. The same thing happened to me back in the 1970’s. I know most of the doubters say why did it take so long for them to come forward? And why did they not tell anyone or do anything?

I can only tell you of my own personal experience.

First of all it started out pretty innocent. A friend and I were invited to visit the quarters of Captain of the ship that we were traveling on. We were offered a cocktail and that is the last thing I remembered. When I woke up in the early hours of the morning, I was laying on the couch. I just got up and went back to my cabin and I went to sleep with my clothes on too tired to change. My friend that I had gone to the Captains quarters with was already there asleep in her bed. I was still too out of it to think anything had happened. I somehow was not thinking about anything but lying down.

When I woke up, my friend had asked me what had happened the night before.  I told her I did not remember anything but I woke up on the couch in the Captains quarters. She told me that while sitting there talking to the Captain that she was feeling strange and just got up and left. A steward found her wandering the deck and escorted her back to our cabin.

When I got up to go to the bathroom that morning, I noticed that the crotch of my baggy silk pants that I was wearing was completely torn. It was like it had been ripped open on the seams. That was the only indication that I knew something had happened. It still haunts me today.

We disembarked the ship that afternoon. And outside of my friend knowing about what may have happened, I have never really talked about it. I only admitted it to one other person. The reason I told that person was because he was doubting a story that his girlfriend had told him about a similar experience of being drugged.

It really does happen and so many of us just try to move on. It is almost like we justify ignoring it because we barely remember or like me don’t remember it all.

Some may say, why did we go to his quarters?  Everyone did, he entertained a lot of the passengers in his quarters. He was not some slimy character. He looked like someone’s dad.

Narcissists hide amongst us all and I believe that it is so hard to tell. I believe we can be some of their biggest fans, unbeknownst to us.

I feel that so many of our politicians get away with so much, especially, if he is one of your guys. It is so easy to overlook one’s shortcomings when the narcissist is on your side fighting your fight.

Think about our sport heroes and everyone else in the entertainment industry.

One of the persons that shocked me the most was Steve Jobs. Who is more loved and revered than him? My favorite is his 2005 Commencement Speech at Stanford. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” You got to love it.

I was so shocked when I read some of the excerpts from the expose from Chrisann Brennan, the mother of his first child. It took him decades before he would even acknowledge his daughter. While making millions and maybe billions, he kept his daughter and her mom on welfare, not even keeping up with support. Even after a paternity test proved he was the father, he dismissed it and said that 28% of the population could be the father (this was in the olden days before accurate DNA tests).

Yes he was a visionary and contributed a lot. But do we overlook this trait? Do we let it slide? His daughter eventually did.

It is amazing how a whole lot of money, power, good looks, charisma etc. can help us overlook those pesky little misdeeds. The excuses that they make somehow are much more acceptable than the ones the others make that have none of those characteristics.

We humans are so multidimensional. We all carry some good and some bad. But some of us can hide our darkness so well or obscure it in plain sight.

The best Narcissists are those that can generate a group of admirers.  As an observer, those are the ones we are easiest fooled by, especially if that persona is reinforced by the media or even a large group. Those people can even help the Narcissist to evoke our sympathy and support.  They even have the power to convince us that it is the victims who are at fault with their diabolical intentions.

The constant reinforcement of the media or the group helps us to keep seeing what we want to see. It helps us to maintain that narrative that we love and desire to perpetuate about them.  We like to protect those Narcissists that we all love.

Silence is Not Always Golden.

I have sources that I am not willing to divulge now regarding some of the things that my X is doing. The reason that I cannot just “move on” regarding his life is because I am always looking for information to dispute the many lies that my X is attempting regarding our divorce.

One of the things that I have been hearing from one of my sources about is that my X has been disparaging the new girlfriend behind her back for a while now. They only moved in together the beginning of this year, at least, that is when they made it official.

Not soon after that, his complaints had already started.

I actually do feel kind of sorry for her, because I also know from other sources that she is completely oblivious to it. I feel that he makes sure of that by still playing the romantic game to her.

She moved to Hawaii in the beginning of October.  She is apparently under the impression that she is setting up the nest for the someday pending divorce.  I had gotten word through my attorney that my X wanted to settle quickly in September but neither my attorney nor I have heard anything since.

I have also heard that he is celebrating that the girlfriend is gone and his expression is “good riddance”.

But who knows how that will pan out. I know my X likes to keep all of his options open.

I was a very difficult and demanding girlfriend in the start. I did this on purpose. My intent was to show my worst. I even refused to move to Hawaii with him. Everybody thought I was crazy to miss out on such an exotic opportunity.  Lucky for me that I was not interested back then. I cannot even imagine how much more isolated I would have felt being on an island!  Somehow not conceding to his wishes seemed to keep our relationship running better than when I let all my defenses down and started to be nice and considerate.

So some people’s first impression of me was that I was the “undeserving girlfriend”

Our courtship lasted for a few years. It was first a long distance relationship and eventually we moved in together. Back then he was still on his very best behavior.

He always acted as though he was so proud of me and who I was. He would brag to anyone who would listen to him about me. I cannot tell you how many times his proud words about me came back to me.

Everyone who met him said that he could not stop talking about me. They all loved him and they thought I was so lucky to find someone who appreciated me so much.

Things did not start to change until after we were married and it was gradual. We had a few decent years in the beginning. Who knows how decent they actually were? After all, emotional abuse was a more familiar feeling to me than it was to most people. It was how I grew up. The basic red flags for a normal person would be considered normal behavior to me.

There were still lots of gifts, lots of time together going out, trips, flowers, romantic letters and gestures of love and passion. So it all looked good on the outside. Everyone was amazed at what a thoughtful and loving husband I had.

I was definitely swept up in the romance and trying to maintain that “special bond”.  At least that was what everyone was telling me that I had.  Now I understand that I have an abnormally high tolerance to chaotic relationships and I had very little sense of my own self.

Everybody thought he was such a great guy. What would I know? I was the person that could not even get along with my own mother.  So many years I endured the acceptance that I was the difficult person. That is what I was taught growing up.

My X was the talkative charismatic type and I was the quiet reserved type. I was never a believer of airing my dirty laundry to other people. I felt that it was something that I needed to deal with my husband.

My silence worked against me, because I thought I was keeping our matters private. I did not think it was right to disparage my husband to others. I realize now that my X thought otherwise and aired his version of our “dirty laundry” to anyone that listened. He was the victim that was being taken horrible advantage of. I was the nasty, undeserving, “never happy” wife.

I remembered that I had always felt that friends and acquaintances looked at me with suspicion. There was always a feeling gnawing in my gut that something was askew, but that feeling was always over-ridden by my feelings that I was “less than”.

I believed that I was unable to get along with anyone.  The only time that I remember when I was happy was when I lived on my own.

My self- image and propensity to keep to myself was the perfect storm for my X to play the victim to our mutual friends and family. I see now that my X probably garnered lots of sympathy from mutual friends and family that I was a difficult wife. So many people were more drawn to him.

I had always felt a distance to most of our mutual friends. But feeling distant to people was not an unfamiliar feeling to me. I still thought it was just me, I was different. Now I think I realize why many of those treated me with suspicion.

God only knows when his stories started. I look back now and I feel that this may have been going on for most of our relationship. I have come to this conclusion now, especially since I hear how he is treating the new girlfriend.

He always loved looking like the hero/ martyr.

Maybe this explains the indifference that I felt from many of our mutual friends. Some of them were outwardly cruel to me. There were times that some of their treatment of me brought me to tears. I was bullied.

I was also bullied as a child. I remember attempting to go to my mother for comfort. In her anger she had told me it was my fault.  She told me that I deserved it because of the kind of person I was and what I looked like. My mother was embarrassed of me and the negative attention that I garnered.

I had no one to turn to.

So during my entire childhood, I endured all the tauntings and bullying  on my own, in silence. I was too ashamed to tell anyone.  Eventually the bullying stopped and I started to make friends as I grew older. Looking back, I seem to remember that time that the bullying subsided, correlated with my rebellion against my mother.  Coincidence? IDK

So when the adult bullying came, I just thought that I deserved it. When I confided in my X about how hurt I was about specific incidences that occurred, he defended his friends instead of me. It was a familiar response to things that only hurt me. I just kept the pain to myself.

I am even crying now at this pain. At least now I am getting it out.

I am no longer silent.

Becoming a Mom

I never wanted to become a mom, nor a wife for that matter. I thought I was going to end up being that old scary woman who lived down the street in the run down house with about 20 cats. And I was ok with that.

Well I am old now and my house is pretty run down. I don’t have any cats though. There are too many coyotes here who love to munch on cats and I think it is cruel to keep cats indoors only. That is just me. Instead my son and I live together in this house that is quickly getting run down as the years pass and no money to pay for the maintenance.

During my free spirited single days, I avoided getting pregnant like the plague. I remember when friends would have babies and I had to go to the socially mandatory baby showers and “viewings”. I would watch all the women gather round the new baby or the pregnant mom and get all clucky. I would just sit in the background and smile silently. I felt absolutely vacant inside. I did not get it.

When I got pregnant with my son, I was terrified. I thought that I had nothing to offer a child, let alone provide for it. I also was terrified that I would become the same mother as my mother was to me.

In high school, I had been traumatized by something my sociology teacher said. After all of these years, I still can remember him saying that we end up pretty much parenting the same way our parents did. I carried that information with me until I got pregnant. It is amazing how much a piece of such insignificant information can have so much impact on some one’s life, but it did. I was horrified that I would verbally beat my child down the same way that it happened to me.

With the option of easily disposing of this “problem”, I would be a liar to say that I did not consider it. I was that scared and it would have been such an easy and quick solution to avoid that unknown road ahead.

I kept asking myself as to why I was so terrified? Women have been doing this since the beginning of time.  And why would I think that I am any less than all of those that went before me? Some women take pregnancy so casually and yet I was so serious and so scared.

There was no reason for my fears. I had a new husband, (he seemed like he liked children at least other people’s children) and a new home. I had finally gotten my B.A. (way too many years of intermittent school). Most of all, my biological clock was about to stop ticking, I was 41 years old.

If I could have postponed another 10 or 20 years, I may have. But probably not, and that is because I had already made that choice before.  I still silently mourn that. It is an ache in me that has never gone away.  Even now I am too ashamed to admit to the choice that I made (except for blogging here anonymously). Nobody ever warns you about it when you make that “right to choose”.

After giving birth to my son, I had the biggest epiphany of my entire life. So much love, that I never knew I had in me, gushed forth. I realized that I had discovered something so profound in my life that not even once had I considered that it ever existed. I finally got it. My life had taken on a whole new meaning. It was as though I had found the “missing link” in my life.

I found something that I did not even know I was looking for.

Those little arms reaching out to me completely changed how I saw life. I may have not felt worthy of this new found love, but I knew then, I would fight to my death to protect my child who had already given me so much.

I still feel the same.

If Only I Could Find A Job…

For the last few weeks, I feel like I have been drowning. It is as though I am barely treading water and I am continually sinking into the abyss exhausted from the struggle. Only occasionally, can I muster the strength to pull myself up to gasp for air.

I hate admitting to being so weak; I wanted this blog to be a story of survival and not of being a victim. Yet, here I wallow in my anxiety and despair.

November has become a difficult month since that is when the nightmare of my marriage escalated into the financial and emotional upheaval in 2011. This was when MSTBX had decided that he was no longer obligated to provide for his family. It had already started many months, (years even) of him withholding money but now he blatantly started to completely cut us off. Now his stark resentment about paying for the household expenses in the home that he was still living in became glaringly apparent.

I am now embarking on my 3 rd year into this mess. I am fighting a foreclosure on the house that my son and I reside in, we have nowhere to go and for whatever reason, I cannot seem to find a job.

My life is a big mess, and financial instability is at its peak. When MSTBX moved out in March 2012, he closed all bank accounts and left my son and I on our own. At first, I did not believe that he was really doing that and then I thought that this would all be settled in the courts soon. Wrong on both counts.

We BOTH started the business about 20 years ago and it was his and my only source of income and employment for the last 19 years, yet he reaps all of the benefits and hides his income through the veil of the corporation.

His tactic in the courts is that he pleads poverty and he knows he can get away with this because I have no money to prove otherwise. His other tactic is to drag this out in hopes that my attorney will eventually leave because he knows I have no source of income to pay her. Luckily, I have been blessed with an attorney that is an advocate and has still defended me in spite of the fact that she has not received any payment since January 2012. But even she has to pay her electric bill, and I have no idea how long this will last.

After MSTBX left, I borrowed money from my mother (she also loaned me the $5,000.00 retainer fee for the attorney) and from my brother just to survive. I naively thought that it would all be over in a few months and I would be on my feet again.

Herein lies the problem; it is now this long and I am still not on my feet. I have gone through county aid, food stamps, welfare to work program, WIA funded 6 month re-education and upgrade my skills program and I have written more that 60 cover letters since July applying for work. I cannot find a job.

I know it is a bad economy, and just turning 60 years old (I had my son when I was 42) and having no discernable work record for the last 20 years does not help. And really can I let them contact my former employer??? I have been doing some volunteer jobs just to get references.

I did find a job at the local department store for Christmas help, but even they are only scheduling me for only 8 hours a week.

I feel like such a loser because I cannot financially sustain myself. I do get on occasion some court ordered spousal support, but that is not enough to sustain my son and me.  I could not manage the mortgage and expenses on that alone. In addition, even in spite of the fact that the support is court ordered, he ignores the order and payments are only sporadic.  There is lots of back child support owed and Child Support Services is a joke. CSS is only functional for the easy targets and not for those like MSTBX because he hides the money.

If only I could find a job and show income then I have a shot at keeping the house. There is money in an escrow account from a property that we sold. I could pay back the money that is owed for the mortgage and be reinstated. Yet again, another court appearance is required to get a hold of that money. Some of that money is even my personal money. I generated a paper trail to prove that it was mine before the marriage.

If only I could find a job, then I would not have to frantically run to the mailbox daily to see if there is a check in there.

If only I could find a job, then I could put all of this divorce stuff on the back-burner and just move on with my life.

And most of all, if only I could find a job then I could inspire my son to go forth and leave his room. He stays up all night. I hear his friends dropping by in the early hours of the morning. I know they are smoking pot. I gave up that fight a year ago, yelling and “boundaries” never helped. I know it is a self-medication thing, but as I keep telling him: it is time to end the pity party. I have been trying to be strong for the both of us, but now, it is becoming more obvious that my strength is failing. He spends his days sleeping while I try to spend my days at home working on the computer searching for jobs. My days are filled with filing out paperwork for the IRS (more stuff to deal with and too much to write about now) retrieving paperwork for the attorney, and so many other things that I have to deal with due to the problems that destitution incurs. The only thing my son sees is his mom just spending endless hours in front of the computer.

I am at a complete loss at where to turn. I only have a few friends and they are far away. I had few local ones. Many have lost interest because my situation is so perpetually bleak and has been for so long. I still get comments like; You still haven’t pulled it together yet? Why isn’t your divorce over yet? I can only shrug my shoulders and I can feel their frustration that my situation is still not resolved. So I just avoid them now. If I do run into them by chance, I just camouflage my despair and angst with optimism and strength. Besides, I really never could afford the cost of those coffees anyway.

I joined a weekly meditation group. Their basic philosophy is that we attract the good and bad in our life. So my joke is that I must be a masochist. I have not gone any further in describing the sordid details of my life. It is supposed to be a positive outlet. The only thing that I know is that when the lights go down for the meditation is that I burst into uncontrollable tears. I quietly cry through the entire meditation. I have started bringing a hidden hanky to wipe the tears. It is literally soaked by the time the meditation is over. I do not think anyone has noticed it, because I do this quietly and I am much too embarrassed to let anyone know. What is weird is that this is the only place that I cry. I have felt like crying for the last 2 years, but I never did. When I started with this group, just a few months ago, it just happened when the lights were dimmed. I do not understand it, but I do find some relief in it.

And, as for my mother and brother, still no contact. It is a can of worms that I am not ready to open. Yet I struggle with the no contact because I have a son. I cannot and would not deny him access to his father. And I cannot deny him access to his grandmother or uncle either. I can only be there to talk to him about their transgressions after he has personally experienced them. For me, I think I can still just roll with the punches except when they target my son. Then I go nuts. The holidays are coming and I do not want this to end up lasting 20 years like what happened to my other brother. He has since passed away and that is another long story. I understand my vulnerabilities, but in my heart, I cannot do “no contact”. I still cannot ignore the fact that both my mother and brother financially provided for me during the first year of this mess. It is all so complicated and I am still so confused.

If only I could find a job….

Lost & Alone

My apologies for not posting sooner.

I had this blog all planned out and I even started a different post Family Secrets #2. But as life goes, my blog is also taking slight detour.

The last few weeks have been overwhelming with money issues, paperwork issues, and mostly family issues. And, sometimes when I get on overload the best way I know how to deal with it all is to just sit and stare out the window.  Not effective or efficient, but at times, can be my way.

In the last 2 weeks I have been scrambling for money just to survive, keep the lights on and put food on the table. My son just turned 18 so no child support. But I only have gotten a total of $1,000.00 for Child Support since MSTBX left in February 2011.

When MSTBX left, he left my son and I destitute. We both operated a business for the last 20 years and that was his and my only source of income. Somehow, MSTBX got away with taking all of the income of the business or at least temporarily (2 years temporarily) able to do so. All of that is still being fought out in the courts and who knows when that will end.

It has been interesting surviving since he left, but that is another long story. Luckily, I have always been a resourceful person.

My most devastating blows from the last few weeks came from my immediate family of narcissists. It is almost karmic that it happened

After posting Family Secrets 1, I felt so guilty even mentioning some of the few transgressions that I wrote regarding my immediate family.  I cannot understand why I would be so protective of those that perpetrated on me. I felt as though I was whining about nothing. As I have done for my entire life, I tried to reject my feelings for “the greater good” of protecting the family ways.

I try to dismiss their behavior to me because after all, compared to MSTBX, they are relatively harmless. At least that is what I try to tell myself, they are harmless.

Judgment is an odd thing. We should not judge because we may not understand, but then if we do not judge then bad behavior can proliferate without the restraints of judgment.

Then, I get even more confused. How do you judge bad behavior when it is compared to even worse behavior? After all nobody in my family is as bad as MSTBX, and he is not as bad as a serial killer. So are they all not that bad???

I sincerely struggle through this mess of narcissism and it’s effects on my son and me.

The solution that I have got from most books on Narcissism is to have “no contact”. That is easy if it is an X spouse or X relationship. Those ties are easier to sever.  If it is in your immediate family, what do you do? The interconnectivity of the blood and marriages of the entire family is so complex. Do you just walk away from everyone? And my son, what about him? Do I deny him access to the entire family because of the dysfunction of a few?

This new mess all started when my son returned from a 2 week vacation with his dad in Hawaii (probably why there was no $$$ for spousal support???). The suggestion of a vacation in itself was unbelievable since it was from a father who ignored his son for the last 2 years. Less than 10 days before they left for Hawaii, my son’s father called him and told him that he was taking him to Hawaii for 2 weeks. What 18 year old would not be excited?

I never got too many details about the trip, except that my son was ignored. My son is reluctant to share too much what goes on with his dad. I know he is trying to still figure it all out and he loves his dad. I try to keep him out of this mess as much as possible. My son still had a good time even though he was mostly on his own while dad golfed everyday. In spite of all the relatives that MSTBX has on the islands, they did not visit any. One can only speculate why.

After my son returned, it was about a week before he could no longer hold it in. Everything came out in a big screaming match between my son and I. He finally blurted out that his dad told him that it was my son’s fault as to why the marriage ended. MSTBX told my son that I had paid too much attention to my son and not enough to him!!!  I could feel all of the hurt and anguish coming from my son. I tried to alleviate it by telling him that his dad was married 2 times before and what his excuse for that??? I also mentioned that dad left because he thought he had something better. I may have eased some of the anguish but I knew he was still scarred.

I wish I could say that it ended there…

My son wanted to go visit his Grandma and an older cousin that lives near her. It is about a 7 hour car drive. That is an intentional geographic distance from her that I chose many years ago. I know some of you are wondering how I could send the lamb to the wolf in sheep’s clothing? Again my confusion as to where the boundaries of family need to be limited. My mother (Grandma) never played her manipulations on my son. I know she chooses her victims and I never thought he too would become one.

While visiting his Grandma, my son had to endure constant interrogation regarding his trip to Hawaii. Eventually my son confided in his Grandmother about how his dad said that he was responsible for the demise of the marriage. Can you imagine the devastation that my son felt when his own Grandmother, MY MOTHER, agreed with MSTBX that my son was responsible!!!!! This destroyed him and he was so broken about this when he came home and confided in me. How can I convince him now??? The wound just got deeper.

This whole divorce has really affected my son. This all started in Thanksgiving 2010, he was just starting his Junior year in High School. After his dad left, he went from a normal household to a welfare household in just a matter of 1 month.

My son lost all interest in attending school and he stayed home so much that he had to transfer to another school for a semester to catch up and then he could return to graduate with his class. That never happened. He even lost interest in the other school and just stayed home in his room and that is where he has spent 90% percent of his time for the last 2 years. Luckily he did sit for his GED and passed.

I was glad for him to at least go to Hawaii and I had hoped that it would help get him out of his room for a change. It did start to work and so I was glad he was going to see Grandma.

So it was 2 steps forward and then 3 steps back. My biggest motivation of getting through this mess is my son. That is the most difficult and devastating part of this journey. He is going through such a difficult time and I am the only one to guide him. No one else cares and he knows it. I want so much to protect him from the pain but I can’t.

My only hope is that this will make him stronger and he will learn from this horrible nightmare that we are living. He has watched all of his friends leave and go away to college and trade schools and he is so lost. I am lost too.

To complicate the issue further, I confided the incident about my mother to my sister-in-law. My sister-in-law one of the few voices of reason in the family, but she is married to my brother. My sister-in-law told the story to my brother and he decided to confront my mother.

Of course my mother denied everything and deflected everything on my son. She complained that my son slept in too late and she had to cook all the time for him (she told me she was worried about my son because he did not eat enough!).  .

My mother threw the bait for my brother and he took it. He called me and started to scold me about my son being so thoughtless. I was so shocked by his reaction that I did not tell him about the text I got from our nephew complementing my son on how attentive he was to his grandmother.

My brother also tried to tell me about how he was such a better person when he was my son’s age. At this point the only thing I could do was scream profanities on the phone to him. So many more family secrets about him, but as always, I just watched through the years and never uttered a word. It is as if he is oblivious to his own transgressions.

Right now, I feel so alone and I do not know where to turn. I only want to do right by my son. I chose to protect him from all of this. He does not know anything about his uncle. How could I ever tell him? How could I explain my brother, his uncle, to my son?

I know that things will get better, they always do. I just hope it happens soon.

Family Secrets 1

This one is difficult for me to write. I believe that we all have our family secrets. Nevertheless, I cannot say for sure if everybody has them, because they are after all secrets.

The stigma of mental illness within a family is so shameful that it is more than what most are comfortable to admit. After all if it runs in the family…

I was in my mid 30’s when I found out that my grandfather committed suicide. It took that long for my mother to admit to that. He had apparently hung himself when my mother was an infant. All my life, I had just accepted that I did not have a grandfather and that he died way back when. It was in the “olden” days, and, people just died.

By nature, I just try to get along and not enter into too much conflict. Therefore, in my life, I observed and stayed silent. The roles in family are so complicated. I see it like a choreographed dance that we all move to our routine and try to stay in step. We try not to mess up so we don’t throw off everyone else’s beat.

To complicate the issue further, the narcissist in the family is so skilled in concealing his/her darkness. Other family members and friends may only see whoever the narcissist may purport to be. It is always a risk to confront the narcissist or to warn the family and friends. The risk is that you could be the one that will end up looking like the paranoid sociopath contriving stories to gain undeserved attention or sympathy. Then the narcissist deftly ends up looking like the victim.

I know this to be true from my own personal experience. For so many years, I have stayed quiet. In spite of my dilemmas in writing about my family secrets, I know I need to. I have many stories to share.

It was an evening in February of this year; I got a call from my mother. It was already a year into the divorce. My life was, as it still is now, a nightmare of survival. I kept my mother up on most of the sordid events of the divorce. I held back some because of her advanced age (she is 94 years old) and she never had any type of coping skills for any type of dissension.

The phone conversation opens with my mother saying to me, “I know why your marriage ended.” I was thinking well, yes, she was witness to a lot of the deceit, horrendous financial abuses and incriminating behaviors. So why is she saying this? She proceeded to tell me why my husband left me. She told me how I paid too much attention to my son and not enough to my husband.  She kept going on and on about my failures as a wife and as a mom. My mind was reeling because I could not understand where she was getting this. Then she finally told me that she just picked up an email from my Someday To Be X.

Yes, he sent her an email, he had always found a sympathetic ear in her when he wanted to complain about me all of those years. My mother and I never got along when I was growing up. Now with him on her side, she could validate that it was really my fault that I could not get along with her.

I was so devastated that she would even acknowledge anything he said; after all, she knew what I had to endure the last year.

How could she say this? And that is exactly what I asked her. She knew I was upset and she did as she always does, she started back peddling. The damage had been done and I was distraught. She treated me like I was blowing everything she said out of proportion. This was one of her many tactics that she would use to try and diffuse what she had done. We ended the conversation with her inferring that I was some kind of crazed woman overreacting to her innocent conversation.

In my sorrow that night I think I googled “mean mothers” and somehow I happened upon Narcissistic Mothers. I found the title of Dr. Karyl McBride’s book “Will I Ever Be Good Enough?”.  Luckily, it was at the library and I checked it out the next day. It did not take me more than 2 days to read the entire book

Finally, after all these years I got a spark of complete clarity. All of all those questions about myself that have haunted me all of my life were being answered.

I finally understood that it really wasn’t me. I have stayed silent all of my life because if I dared talk to someone about it, I sounded like some ungrateful brat.

As a child, I was showered with clothes and all the accoutrements that many a young girl would envy. It was just never anything I wanted.  My desires and needs were completely ignored and I only got what she wanted me to have.  Most people loved my mom and thought I was so lucky to get what I got.

Her favorite expression to this day is “I always wanted a daughter”. I know this to be untrue because I WAS her daughter and I was never right with her. I know that she really never  “always wanted a daughter”, she always wanted a clone!

Growing up, I was constantly reminded that I was unattractive and overweight. When I look at pictures of me from back then, I really was not even that big or horrible looking. Still, I will never forget the feeling of how ENOURMOUS and UGLY I felt. Back then, my appearance humiliated my mother and it was a huge source of her anger and frustration towards me.

On the other hand, my brother was good looking and everything that my mother would have wanted in a man. Therefore, he was indulged in what he wanted. I hate even writing this down because I know if he ever read this, he would beg to differ. We do not have the same memories of my mother growing up, even though we grew up in the same house. How could two people grow up in a house with the same mother and see things so differently? Now I understand, that happens it all of the time. I am 60 years old now and it has taken me this long to figure it out.

I left home as soon as I could. In my second year of college, I studied abroad. When the school year ended, I dropped out of college and got a job there. I traded in my return ticket for home and purchased one going the opposite way.

I embarked on a journey around the world. It was my form of no contact. It was the 70’s so no email or cell phones. For many years, the only address that I had was Poste Restante in an exotic far away city. I would maybe make a phone call to home on Christmas day.

It sounds like a great ending to running away from a Narcissist. Unfortunately, the story does not end there, it barely begins.

I have so much more to share, but it is too much to post now, I will continue next week with more about my family secrets.  Until then.

 

In The Beginning…

When I first met my Someday to be X husband, he was vacationing from out of state with his mother and father. Back then; we were both in our late 30’s. I was so impressed with a man in this age bracket to be on a vacation with his parents instead of trolling with a bunch of yahoo guy friends.

I was guilty of consummating this relationship too early. He was leaving on a jet plane and I just chose to seize the moment. In the after glow of our consummation, he broke the news that he was separated from his wife!  I got angry and told him to leave. He begged forgiveness and said that it was only a matter of time before the divorce was final. I calmed down a bit and was angry with myself for being so impulsive. He left that day and I figured that was that. Sometime later, I got a call from him.  He wanted to know if he could write to me. Remember this was back in the days before email and texting.

So we started writing long letters to each other. That is how I thought I was getting to know him. He would sometimes call, but with the time change his working hours and my working hours, it did not happen except on my days off and sometimes then we would talk.

I thought these letters were bringing us closer. In the letters, he admitted to his failures in the marriage and that of course impressed me more. He was smart enough to NOT use the “she never understood me” line. At that time, I had no concept what leaving a marriage meant. I spent my time with single friends and rarely knew anyone in a functioning marriage. I initially never took a romantic tone in those letters, I just kept it friendly. But as the months progressed and we got to know each other more, he somehow knew exactly what I wanted to hear.

He lived in Hawaii and I was planning to move back to Southern California.  I had left there 2 years prior because I walked out of another disastrous relationship. My father had also just died. I decided to get out of town for a while and geographically relocate closer to my mother.

We decided that after my move back to So Cal, I would plan to visit him. So off to Hawaii I went.

I still remember one of the first of many red flags that I chose to ignore (I know the first red flag was that he was married!). It happened on my first visit. He told me we could not go somewhere because he was likely to run into some of his Soon To Be X wife’s friends. I promptly asked why that would be a problem? I thought all of this had been settled in the pending divorce. He tried to convince me that he did not want to go so I told him that I would continue on my vacation on another island without him. He profusely apologized and we went to that spot that night and after that. he took me anywhere I wanted to go on the island.

Back then he was so attentive, I demanded a lot and he indulged my every whim. After the vacation, I returned to So Cal to resume my life there. The letters and phone calls continued and the trips back and forth started.

He ultimately wanted me to move to Hawaii. I refused.  He asked if he could move to the mainland to be with me. I told him not to bother until his divorce was final. He eventually did move in with me in So Cal with his divorce papers in hand.

It wasn’t until now that I am going through all of this that I have contemplated on what his wife at the time was going through. Living on an island is like living in a small town. Everybody knows everything. So, can you imagine what she went through when her still husband at the time was parading his new girlfriend around? I cringe at my clueless insensitive behavior. No it was not intentional, I was so consumed by my own self-gratification that I chose not to pay attention to anything else. Now I wonder how separated were they? Was he maintaining a relationship with her in case things did not pan out with me? Was he even separated or was he still living as married when I first met him? Was I the one who inspired him to leave his marriage? These questions will never be answered. She died somewhere around the time we separated. I found that out when my Someday To Be X husband mentioned it in one of our “marriage counseling” sessions. I do not know the facts of her demise.

Some may say what is happening now to me is just Karma. That may be so. I believe that everything that he is doing to me now, he did to his second wife when he left her. Yes, that’s right I am #3. His excuse for ending the marriage to #1 was that he was just too young. (Yes, I know more red flags!). The big difference with me, #3 and her, #4, is that she knew he was completely married when she chose to be with him. Her best friend and I knew each other through our business.

Somehow, the knowledge that I am being punished for my earlier sins makes it easier to accept my struggles now. I get it. I now understand the meaning of marriage and separation. Sometimes in our loneliness, we are so starved for companionship we entitle ourselves to seize what we think we need. Yes, maybe I did her a favor, just as #4 is doing me a favor now. It was wrong then and it is still wrong now. One of those life experiences that I have lived and learned well.

Boiling A Frog

I remember reading once that if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out. On the other hand, if you put a frog in a pot of cool water and very gradually, turn up the heat the frog will not notice and will just stay there and boil to death.

The theory is that a frog will just continually try to acclimatize to the heat. Because it is only a gradual temperature increase, it will not perceive the danger and just allow itself to be cooked death.

I am not here to say that this is factual but I cannot think of a greater metaphor to what happened to me.

When I first met him, he was the sweetest and most sincere (or so he seemed) man you could ever imagine. All my friends loved him. I of course was on my guard. I never trusted men.

I spent my entire 20’s in short-term relationships.  Sometimes, I think that is what my allure was to men. I enjoyed life and saw no reason to pursue anything serious. From my own personal experiences, I never saw marriage and family in a positive light. I felt women never flourished in marriage. I chose to pursue other things in life, like travel, and that I did. However, after a while that got boring too. So somewhere, after I turned 30, I finally got serious. My first serious relationship was a disaster, but after a year of that dysfunction, I had enough sense to pack up and leave.

So when I met him, I was on my guard and boy did I test him. I was demanding and aloof and still he pursued me. The details of our meeting are too complex to go into now. I just want to state, I was not pursuing him. Eventually my barriers were broken down and we got engaged and then married. We lived together in those blissful days of a new relationship.

He always talked about me in such an admiring way. He put me on a pedestal and even my friends joked that he treated me like a goddess. Never in my life, had I been treated so well. He was too good to be true (!).

As our marriage progressed, and I got pregnant, things slowly changed and his attentiveness started to disappear. I kept thinking that I could fix this and I took responsibility for my faults. As the years passed and our son grew, the attentiveness eventually morphed into neglect and emotional abuse.

For whatever reason, I thought it was important to keep the family together. So everyday I just struggled to maintain harmony in our family. That simple feat consumed me so much for so many years that I evolved into a broken spirit. I was boiling to my death. I did not have enough sense or will to jump out of that boiling pot of water.

I never realized how much I missed his tone of admiration for me. That realization came to me when I finally heard him talking that way again. It dug up memories that I had buried so long ago. Only this time he was not using my name, he was using hers.

I knew then in my heart what was going on. But you have to understand that in spite of what I knew in my heart, I was deceived and played to an unconscionable degree by him. It was not until irrefutable proof was literally put before me, I got perfect clarity.

That clarity awoke my spirit and gave me the sense to jump out of that boiling pot of water, stand up, and fight.  I got an attorney.

Since then, it has been a long and arduous struggle. At least I did not die in that pot of water and I am alive now to fight another day.

Running Away From The Narcissist

Actually, I never did run away. There were many times I did try, but always the “I love you” and “We can get through this” lines were what drug me back.  I chose to ignore my personal pain for the “greater good”.  We had a son and I always knew that if I left, my son would never know his father. Most of the time, he was not much of a father, but I could still see the adoration in my son’s eyes for him. And luckily, there were occasions when he actually acted like a father. Now I wonder if I did the right thing, only time will tell.

Just about 6 months short of our 20^th anniversary, my now Someday to be X told me he no longer wanted to be married.

We had a business actually he still has the business, he just kicked me out of it. Anyway, there was a lot of business back East and he traveled there often but eventually, It became glaringly obvious that it was way more often than necessary. He started to leave with golf clubs and nice clothes. We live on the West coast. I had remembered asking him only a few months previously if he was “disrespecting our marriage” (I always watched my language with him to prevent him playing victim to my “accusations”) I thought I was generously giving him an easy way to open the conversation of the obvious demise of our marriage. Of course, at that time, he vehemently denied everything as he always did. In my heart, I already knew, but like a fool, I accepted his words. He proceeded to tell me how much I meant to him, he really needed me in the business and “how could I ever think of something like that?”

I just let it all go. I did not argue. I just accepted what he said.  Besides, for a long time now, in this so-called marriage I was already so numb. The many years of treading on eggshells, emotional/financial abuse and neglect while trying to do the right thing had taken it’s toll on me physically and mentally.

Believe me, I understand that I am lucky he did this. I have even considered that someday I should write the new girlfriend a thank you letter for releasing me from this horrible prison.

I decided to start this blog for my own therapeutic catharsis. I know there are other blogs about divorce and relationships with Narcissists. I have read many of those horror stories too. I thought my story was a little different so I am starting this new one. I don’t know if anyone will ever read this. I just want to put my voice out there, even if it is only for me to hear.