Being in love with a narcissist can seriously take you on the ugliest ride of your life. People were always telling me how lucky I was to have such an awesome husband. Little did they know. Charismatic he was. Loving and faithful he was not. It was an endless carousel of humiliation and shame for me. Once I was at a huge business convention, and I was actually trying to figure out how many women were there that he had slept with. I became confused at one point and had to start counting all over again. It might have been easier to count the ones that had not succumbed to his manipulations.
Sex takes the place of the love they are incapable of feeling. Narcissists are usually sex addicts as well. Mine had such an obsession that it became a system of habits that cost us up to $15,000 a month.
I confronted him after finding a haul of seriously gross pornography in our apartment/office that would have turned a normal pervert’s stomach. He glared at me from the bed where he was laying, rose up on one arm, and snarled, “How can you be so SELFISH that you would want to deprive me of something that gives ME so much pleasure? All you think about is yourself!”
His green eyes were filled with contempt for my sinful state. Narcissists twist reality and lie to the point of totally obliterating mental stability. In short, they make us nuts. The movie ‘Gaslight’ depicted the disorder so brilliantly that ‘gaslight’ is a term used to define one of the most destructive tools that a narcissist uses to destroy and control their victims.
But all is not so glum. Narcissism can be amusing as well. I was in the back seat as my husband drove our millionaire boss to his hotel in Cologne during the wee hours of the morning many years ago. I wasn’t asleep. My narcissist had been blaming his lack of performance on everyone but himself. Primarily me. I was a totally lame duck that had disgraced our boss’s trust. I was the real reason his magnificence was being crushed and stunted. He got out to escort our boss to his room and didn’t bother to address me at all.
When he finally got back to the car, he either forgot I was in the back seat or thought I was asleep when he decided to use his magical powers to pick up a late night date.
It was pain brushed with a fascination for me as I observed his hunting skills. He found a blond driving in the same direction and exhibited what he must have felt was a powerful “she’s gonna want me now” look. A silky half-smile and a meaningful pucker of the lips highlighted his lizard-like pose. His eyes were dilated and moist with desire and anticipation. Initially, she returned the flirt but then became frightened. She sped up. He sped up. She slowed down. He slowed down. He was dazzled by her resistance to his obvious masculine supremacy and wanted her even more. He played the game for several blocks in an attempt to wear her down. He was so caught up in the hunt that he didn’t realize she could see my pinched, curious little face leaning against the back window, and she was terrified. She literally looked like she could puke out of sheer terror.
A more savvy woman might have noticed his heart was not in his chest way earlier in our relationship. Like…when he told me he wanted to kiss every freckle on my body, and I have no freckles. That should have been a wakeup call. But no, I believed in the dream.
