I’ve posted before but I wanted to post the updated version for some full context of the whole story and what has happened since my original post.
Is my husband a narcissist?
So I met my husband 11 years ago. He was the brother of my best friend and we met at a family event. He had left his wife 4 months before and they had 2 children together (they had only been married for a year but together for 6).
He basically hounded me for my number so I gave it to him. At the time I was a single mum to a 2 year old and 24 years old.
The relationship moved very fast. Within a month he was crying saying how much he loved me, telling me he loved me more than he ever loved his wife and that he’s never felt this way before. He would buy me presents, sent me flowers and would send me long long messages every morning about how much he loved me. Within 2 months he was living with me.
He didn’t see his other children much as his ex was crazy and I saw that first hand. She slashed his tyres, tried to get him fired at work the lot. Not seeing his kids never seemed to bother him much at all though.
After a year together he proposed on our anniversary and a week later I found out I was pregnant. The first issue I remember was about 6 weeks after he proposed, I called him out on something and he threatened to end the relationship. We had literally just got engaged.
I remember him threatening to leave me again when I was 6 months pregnant when I called him out on something.
Everything seemed fine for years although our relationship was very volatile after we had a drink. He would instigate arguments and then blame it on me and on a couple of occasions was physically abusive (pinned me up against the way, pushed me into a door frame and tried to punch me in the back as I walked out of the room).
There were some other weird instances with him such as once I saw emails on his phone for meet for sex apps which were set up when he was on a work Christmas night out. They used his password he used for everything and one of them was for women and the other for gay men. I confronted him about this and he said it was someone at work messing around and even got someone from work to call me saying it was a joke but the fact it was his password never sat well with me.
I also caught him sat watching porn a couple of times at 6am whilst eating his breakfast - strange behaviour.
Other than when having a drink our relationship seemed healthy. We got on so well, laughed all the time and I believed he was my soul mate. I truly believed he loved me more than anything.
Roll onto 2021 and after 8 years together we got married. On the day he made grown men cry with his speech about how much he loved me and I felt like the luckiest woman in the world.
7 months after we got married he went to America on a work trip for 5 weeks. During this time he called me daily and said he was struggling to sleep etc. 2 days before he came home I didn’t hear from him for 24 hours. When I eventually did it was the morning he was coming home and he messaged me as normal saying there was no wifi at the hotel that’s why he couldn’t contact me. I messaged back saying that wasn’t true as I was so worried about him that I messaged his work friend on Facebook and that went through fine. His reply was then that we needed to talk. Turns out he has slept with 3 other women on this work trip and continued to call me in between like nothing had happened telling me he loved me etc. The last woman he slept with he actually met up with twice and during the 24 hours I didn’t hear from him he invited her to the hotel in front of all of his work friends who knew he was married. When he got back he said the most horrible things to me about how it was the best sex he ever had and how he thought he had feelings for this woman he had met twice.
He moved out of the family home and was signed off work with burnout. He was a mess when he got back. His mental health went down hill rapidly and I couldn’t understand what had happened as I believed I was his world. I convinced myself he must have lost the plot whilst over there and that that’s why he cheated and the state of him made me believe that more.
During the time he moved out I went on holiday and he went into the house and did up the garden whilst I was away then turned up on the holiday unannounced halfway through. At one point I went on a night out and moved the camera from by the front door and he messaged me saying that if I did anything on that night out it was done for good (baring in mind he was the one who cheated on me). I booked him a doctors appointment trying to help him with his mental health and he walked out of the doctors blaming me. Eventually he did get help and seemed to become himself again.
Stupidly I took him back and we swept it all under the carpet. I wasn’t allowed to talk about it because it made him feel bad and he wanted to ‘move on’.
In the years after then I never fully trusted him. When he went on nights away he would promise to message me but never did and would then come home and guilt trip me saying ‘I won’t go again then’ rather than taking responsibility. I would spend them nights in tears worried what he was up to but he didn’t seem to care that his previous behaviour had made me that way.
In September he told me he was going to get the car checked and didn’t come home. He text me at 5pm saying he was on the beer and wouldn’t be back then turned his phone off. For the next 3 days I hardly heard from him and had no contact at all in the evenings. On the 4th day he came home and said he was depressed and needed to sort his head out and was sorry. I told him I was considering packing his stuff for him and he got angry saying I was ‘quick enough to sack him off’.
For the few days after that I was really angry at him and distant. On the Thursday night we checked in for our holiday online and he was talking about going to view venues for my mums birthday. On the Friday morning he messaged me from working saying ‘hey beautiful how’s your day’ as he always did.
He then came home at 12.30 and said we needed to talk. He sat down and said he doesn’t love me anymore and hasn’t for a year. He said he was saying what he thought he had to and was a better actor than he thought (3 weeks before this he was crying on our wedding anniversary telling me how much he loved me). I asked him if he cheated again and he said no but couldn’t say he never would as he doesn’t love me. He said when he looked at me all he saw was the mother of his children. There was zero emotion at all and he was completely detached. We walked out of the house and said hi to our neighbour like nothing happened whilst I was in pieces. He text our eldest daughter asking her to get her sister from school as he couldn’t, just like he would be late from home work or something.
The next day he came to pick some stuff up and was smirking at me saying ‘at least I’m not a hinderance to you anymore’.
I had hardly any contact from him even though I was begging him to speak to me because I was so confused and blind sided about it all. He took our daughter to the football a week after leaving and was sat in front of her messaging another woman love heart emojis.
2 weeks after he left he messaged me claiming that he rented a room from a woman at work that he saw on the online notice board. Apparently they had ‘gotten close’ during that time and slept together.
For 3 months he made no effort with the children at all, he didn’t even send our daughter a birthday card or present. He basically cut me off completely and the odd message I did get from him was very cold and detached. He kept blaming it all on America and just repeatedly kept telling me he doesn’t love me. He kept telling me how happy he is and that our children should be happy because he is.
I was in a mess. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, was off sick from work and was verging on suicidal and all he kept doing was telling me he was so happy in this new life.
At the start of December he remembered he had 2 children and wanted to see them. They at 14 (stepdaughter) and 9 both said they didn’t want to see him and of course he blamed that on me. I was called manipulative and told I would mess them up etc etc.
He went on holiday with this woman to Egypt just before Christmas and I did not hear from him for 9 days. I then woke up to an email from him at 2am Christmas Day morning saying he was sorry he let me down. He knew full well that would be the first thing I would see. He then continued to message me throughout the day saying how upset he was like he expected me to feel sorry for him.
A few days later out of the blue he started messaging me saying he needs help, his head is a mess and he’s messed up. He was saying he loves me and needs me and wants to sort it out and was moving out of this woman’s house the next day. It took him 4 days to move out.
He then spent 4 days begging me to sort it out saying he wanted to go to the doctors for depression, get counselling and would never let me down again. He was staying at his mums but put pressure on me to let him move back in saying he would have to go back to that woman’s if he couldn’t. He was crying saying he wanted his wife back and didn’t want to get divorced. Stupidly I let him get back into my head.
On the 5th day I had booked him a doctors appointment. I didn’t hear from him all day until the evening when he messaged me saying he had gone back to this woman’s house as that’s apparently where his heart is. He didn’t even speak to me first or anything.
The stress of it all took its toll on me and I ended up fainting twice a couple of days later and had to go to a&e as I smashed my head off the concrete and split my ear open. I told him what had happened as I wasn’t sure if I could find someone to have the kids whilst I waited to be seen and he literally didn’t care. He didn’t ask how I was and I didn’t hear from him after that for 3 weeks.
When I did next hear from him he sent me the most horrible emails (because I’m blocked on everything) saying that he had been forcing his feelings for 2 years since America. He said he wouldn’t have a fake relationship with me and that he didn’t love me and that ‘it didn’t work between us, move on’.
He changed his profile photo on Facebook to him and this woman kissing and all of his friends and family started liking it so I’m not sure what story he has told them. I told him I thought that was disrespectful and his response was ‘don’t look at it then’.
Ever since then I’ve had nothing but cold indifference on the odd occasion I have heard from him. He is blaming me for the kids not wanting to see him and seems completely incapable of taking any responsibility for it at all.
I’ve found it so hard to come to terms with as he has destroyed me. I’ve been having therapy and realised that he’s been emotionally manipulating me for so many years. He would go from lovebombing me, leaving me notes downstairs telling me he loved me, buying me flowers and telling me if it’s not me it’s no one to threatening to leave me if I ever called him out or being verbally abusive if he didn’t like something.
Some examples, on my birthday he walked off and left me on my own in town because I said I didn’t want to go home yet as we had only been out for 2 hours.
He came home from a night out telling me I’m a bad wife because I don’t go down on him out of the blue like his football mates girlfriends do.
He would call me a dickhead, a twat, a c**t etc if we ever had a disagreement.
On our anniversary night out he was sat on his phone for ages so I asked him to get off it. Cue 20 minutes of verbal abuse and me going off to the toilet crying. He took the mick out of me pretending to take a photo for instagram and when I tried to ask him to drop it he just kept telling me to fuck off. In the end I went outside for fresh air and came back to a glass of wine and ice cream and him acting like nothing had happened (this switch was common for him). Whenever he was horrible the next morning he would get up like nothing happened and make me breakfast. It was always very strange.
A week or so before he left in front of our children he told me to ‘get back in my box as I keep coming out of it too often’.
Whenever I tried to speak to him about our marriage he would shut me down or just fall asleep. He would say I ruined his day, was getting him down or was always on at him. I got to a point where I was worried to say anything as he might leave.
Counselling is helping me realise that he had been living in my thoughts 24/7 for years. I’ve constantly tried to make him as happy as possible because when he is he is so loving and affectionate and it was similar to how he was in the first year. When he was horrible I allowed him to sweep in under the carpet because I just wanted the love bombing again. I was obsessed with him loving me and my whole world revolved around him.
Even after the way he has treated me and my children I am still obsessed with him and I’m starting to think it might be a trauma bond. I feel completely lost without him even though logically I know I deserve better and I couldn’t be happy with him again. It’s been 5 months and I feel no further forward in my recovery. I struggle to get out of bed or do anything other than what I absolutely have to for my children. I have days where I feel like I can’t do it anymore and that everything seems pointless. I crave contact with him constantly and can’t help myself but reach out to him which is pathetic. I feel like an addict.
I still struggle to accept how he’s behaved because my view of him from the first year is so cemented into my brain that I am trying to make excuses for his behaviour. I still see him as this sweet, loving and caring man who loved me so much which is ridiculous after the way he has treated me.
All the while though he is off in his new life without giving me and the kids a second thought.
Some other key points that I didn’t know where to fit in:
- His children from his previous marriage went into foster care 5 years ago and it never really bothered him. He hasn’t seen them for 6 years at all.
- He was always either absolutely obsessed with me or treating me like shit. The verbal abuse was probably only every 3 weeks or so but the emotional manipulation was much more frequent
- When he was horrible to me I could be crying in front of him asking him to speak to me and he would just go to sleep
- If I ever called him out on anything dodgy he would refuse to come home until I apologised and basically begged him to
- I used to be such a strong, independent woman and now I’m just a mess
- I found out since he left that he had a Snapchat account in a fake name
- He will die on the hill that nothing was going on with this woman before. She is older than him (she’s 51, he’s 40 and I’m 36) and is the opposite of me and his type
- All of my family absolutely loved him and thought he was completely obsessed with me - they too can’t believe the complete change in him
- He never wanted to spend time with my family and would always go home early or go to bed if they were round for the evening
- Our 9 year old is autistic and he never understood her or had patience with her. He used to make her more frustrated and overwhelmed constantly
- He waited on me hand and foot when he wasn’t be horrible and I think that was because he needed to feel like the perfect husband and I genuinely believed he was despite the times he definitely was not
That’s all I can think of right now but there will be more.
sorry for the long post but I’m just trying to get an idea of whether I’m putting 2 and 2 together and making 5 or whether he is an actual narcissist.