@theworldie Wow, what a story. Thanks so much for sharing it. Yes, they are basically con artists and they have to be brilliant at it (at first) or else they wouldn’t ensnare the people they want: caring, empathetic people who believe in love and forgiveness, honesty and personal growth. The altruism is a powerful tool to fool others but it is all done to enhance the facade and draw you in, and also to get praise and admiration.
Later I discovered that, like yours did to his wife, he was smearing me to all and sundry as damaged, toxic, bullying etc, while at home I was weeping mess of desperate neediness, begging for love, ground down by his treatment over the years. I have also realised that begging for this love was basically a helpful way of telling him how to treat other women to get them to love him. He went off and did all the things to other women, while telling me he didn’t know what I was talking about, or that he was already doing all those things but I couldn’t see it.
The love bombing is powerful and acts as a kind numbing drug, or hallucinogen. I look back now to how innocent I was, truly believing that he wanted the same things as I did: intimacy, connection, trust… He actually wanted none of these things. I can see now that there was projection on both sides… later he projected his dreadful qualities onto me (accusing me of being controlling, being a black & white thinker, idealising him and demanding perfection, and later accusing me of worse including lying - all his MO), but at first he projected an ideal fantasy onto me, and I projected my core values onto him. I simply couldn’t believe he wasn’t the kind, good natured, sweet man I had married. To be fair, when you get together with a narcissist, they do everything they can to make you believe in their facade and you’d have to be very experienced or intuitive to spot it so early. So you join together to invent a shared fantasy of projection. As they deviate from this fantasy (not of perfection, but of having those basic values), you become confused and bewildered, and then even more confused by their response to being confronted with either their actions or your feelings: zero remorse, lies, denial, defensiveness, blameshifting, projection, fury, tantrums, stonewalling, withdrawal and all the other delightful tools in the narcissist box. They will always demean and devalue you, as soon as you deviate from their fantasy and stop being perfect, as soon as you begin to see through the facade, as soon as you make unreasonable demands for truth and intimacy and respect, and because this is how every relationship that they have must go. But they will be nice again from time to time, to keep you addicted to them and to reinforce the trauma bond.
I was highly addicted to the ‘good times’ and the affection. The hugs and sex acted like a tranquilliser and of course once you have built a life together and have children, it is hard to go. And instinctively, you sense that getting out is going to be hell, as indeed it is. Which might be your narc’s wife puts up with it. Possibly he keeps her under control with sex and pity play like his claims of having no friends. He might threaten self harm and suicide, as mine did. That all works well for obvious reasons.
We had lots of counsellors. The first (a man, that’s important - only the men could seem to see through him) saw me on my own and told me gently that my ex had complex psycho-sexual problems and it would take intense therapy until he was in his 50s or 60s to heal him. Did I have time for that? I can now see that he was restricted in what he could say, and I believe he was saying ‘you do not have time’. But back then, I simply did not believe him. If he had not said ‘sexual’ I might have believed him more, as I felt we had a normal, healthy sex life (although I now see it was not as it was entirely lacking intimacy and was transactional, used as reward and punishment) and if he had added the information that my ex would need to want to get better for it to work, I might have been more concerned. Even then, I knew that he would never consider himself unwell in any way. But I was in my late 30s with 2 small children and I loved him and still believed he was pretty much normal. So I stuck with it.
Even after all the rotten treatment, lies, infidelity (starting off virtual), financial exploitation and incompetence, neglect, laziness and entitlement, I still believed in the facade. It took until I went to a solo counsellor and after about a year of my saying I didn’t understand how someone so kind could be so horrible to me, my counsellor said, ‘You keep saying how kind he is, but the things you’re describing are not kind. Is he kind?” The scales just dropped. A voice in my head said: he is not kind. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Then I started doing serious research (the posts on here helped), and stumbled on narcissism (still didn’t really believe he was one though, of course!) and then found the covert victim narcissist and POW. I had found the instruction manual. He was a perfect example. And actually almost so extreme a CVN, that I honestly think he would be of interest to experts in this area! Shame he can’t be studied..
The strangest thing about covert narcissistic abuse is that for such a long time you’re not aware of it. But once you get given the special specs of insight and knowledge and understanding, it becomes devastatingly clear. Then you can reinterpret everything that happened through those lenses and you can understand the built-in obsolescence of the relationship. The narcissism was always there, and it is there forever. It is not an act. I listened again to the speech he made on our wedding day and it is a masterpiece of narcissistic vanity and unpleasantness, but all disguised as jokes and good humour, except one very nasty joke about me. Not a joke at all, of course, a horrible criticism which I never forgot, but told as a joke and he got a laugh. In the speech he said barely a nice word about me, but told everyone how brilliant and witty he was, and even got the audience to give him a round of applause for looking so great on his wedding day. I didn’t hear this for it was, no one did. (And by the way, the following day we arrived on our honeymoon to find he hadn’t paid for it, so that was my first duty of our married life). Years later, at the only party he ever gave me (a terrible night), he made another speech and made the exact same criticism/joke in that speech too. The wedding day speech was strangely comforting, in a way. It wasn’t personal. I never had a chance. It was a slow motion disaster from day one. They will bring you down one way or another. Other people are objects to them. We supply their fuel but we are interchangeable and easily discarded. They are very, very chilling and I’ve wondered if vampire myths and zombie myths partly spring from these people, who are the closest to the walking dead there is.
I am so glad you got out early and I hope that you keep hold of the lessons… my great fear is getting ensnared again but the only way to be safe it to take it slowly, beware of love bombing, let them show you who they are, and if your instinct warns you that something is amiss, listen to it. It is probably right.