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I can't even start to imagine what it must feel like for those here who have lived with a narcissist.
My relationship lasted eight years and was mainly long distance, but with a period of time where we would spend a few days a month together. I hate to think the emotional damage his wife and children suffered over the 20 years she was with him.
I knew him first when I was 18 then he found me again 30 years later. He was looking for an out from his marriage, I had been widowed 18 months previously, I was lonely and I felt safe with him. I allowed things to progress, correction, after a short time of dwelling on the immorality of having an affair, I soon abandoned myself to the situation and became hooked to the constant high I felt after our first tryst. I'm not a bad woman, I don't make a habit of taking other women's husbands. He painted a picture he knew I would fall for, after all he knew me of old, ironically we first met shortly after the death of my father when I was 17. I guess the hooks had already been set back then.
Happily I know what it is to be loved and cherished, by my husband, we had nearly 20 years together and a son who is now 26, before he died back in 2002.
This other person cropped up out of the blue through a site to find old school friends. I'd forgotten all about him, although he had left an impression when I first knew him. I received a few emails, catching up after nearly 3 decades, I told him of my husbands health problems, a couple of old friends catching up. We'd never been an item back in the 70s, a couple of raunchy weekends over a couple of years doesn't constitute a big romance, but we used to write to each other, sharing poetry, me being me the open book which he found endearing, but he did warn me that my openness maybe a cause for me being hurt at some point. Prescient or what!
Zapping forwards 30 years, after we had our first fling, tryst rather over romanticises it ( but that's what it felt like ) things went into top gear with dozens of emails flying between us, analysing the situation, his situation. I've been watching Richard's videos and reading lots of different material and I'm recognising now what was happening but back then I was been completely drawn into this other world he had created for us.
I wrote this four years ago, a few days after we had spent the last 5 days together unravelling what we had created. I was the one to close the door on the relationship. It was only after when I read things about sociopaths that alarm bells started to ring. Talk about intuition, my gut feelings had already started to kick in a couple of years before this;
7th March 2012
Line in the sand or if you will a signing off...
P*****, it seems that you are not the man I thought you once were;
Last weekend you were almost a stranger to me, although over the passing of the last few years the distance between us was becoming more perceptible, moving from arms length to back burner to what I finally experienced as being put in permanent cold storage. At least you were generous enough to admit that you had been taking me for granted for some time, it hadn’t gone without note.
With the lovemaking, or maybe I should refer to the act as pure and simple lust and sex, of late, I had noticed a sameness that usually takes hold between a couple where one or both are no longer connected. As per usual I made allowances, taking into account your operation which I grant would well be problematical. You rarely engaged me with your eyes as you used to hence me asking to please look at me. At least at the hotel you were honest enough in your request to “molest me”, although I guessed there was meant to be humour but again badly placed.
I suspect you have for sometime being waiting for an exit, an out to a situation you could no longer tolerate but could not face to follow through. So I initiated the one thing that I least wanted. The truth of the matter our future was always in your hands, but this closure was one thing that I wanted to drive, call it pride, protection of self dignity.
I guess a relationship that is dependent on duplicity for its existence is at risk of festering over time. I’m wondering if by calling what we had, a relationship, is giving what we shared a little too much dignity, although I must be honest and still believe that in the early years we shared much more than the clichéd sexual romps of an adulterous affair. In reflection I find it ironic that since you broke out and were less constrained by marital loyalties, what we had was more like the latter.
I suspect that without my support, you would have not found the courage to plough on with your plans of breaking out and moving on. I have felt over time that the relationship was less about me but more about an aspiration of what you would like it to be. As it transpired it became more evident to you that I wasn’t going to fit the mould you had already thrown. If it had in the slightest way been personal, and I mean a deep feeling of affection that could only lead to enduring love, you wouldn’t have found it so easy to throw in the towel. If you had wanted to be with me at all, and that is very much in question now that you ever did, we would have found a way. In the end it all seems so shallow.
I suspect that I will not be able to make sense of the last eight years.
He's back in my radar. I live in France and previously he was in the UK, we talked of setting up a life and business together, that's what he was after. A strong woman who could lead him and not be a follower, he'd been a project manager for over thirty years, and he told me he'd had enough of taking the lead all the time. So once he decided, after three years, he was going to set up with me, he gave me five years to set things in motion. He told me he wanted to stay with his kids till they reached university age. I went along with it I wanted to prove to myself I could do it, but thinking that it would be something that would be very much a joint project. I was wrong.
Anyway I've been getting on with my life only to discover a couple of years ago, that he has continued with the idea of moving to the area I live in, set up in business with a woman he met on the internet months after him leaving his wife and divorcing her and walking away from our relationship. He's been here for nearly three years now. I've been dreading bumping into him. Up until the last month I thought I'd got away with out seeing him, but I've had the displeasure of seeing him twice in the last few weeks. Today completely threw me as he turned up at an event not too far from my home, he lives a little over 20 miles away, an event I would have least expected him to make the effort of coming over for. Of course his new woman friend was with him. I'm sure it would have been a case of revisiting the past, it's his speciality. It brought to mind the last paragraph of the Narcissists Love Letter - John Howell
...When I say I’m in love with you, I mean I love the story I can tell to my next lover, about my ex-lover, about how beautiful things were, how intense, how storybook, what a couple we were, and how you gradually, inexplicably, painfully, bit by bit, disappeared.
As I said I can't even begin to imagine the pain and hurt that those of you who have lived with a narcissist must be feeling. I believe I have had a lucky escape but feel that I have a lot of work to do on my self to regain my emotional balance, on setting my boundaries and starting to close the pages of the book that I've left exposed for most of my adult life. I'm 60 and consider myself still young enough to learn how to trust and love again.
Thank you for listening.
My relationship lasted eight years and was mainly long distance, but with a period of time where we would spend a few days a month together. I hate to think the emotional damage his wife and children suffered over the 20 years she was with him.
I knew him first when I was 18 then he found me again 30 years later. He was looking for an out from his marriage, I had been widowed 18 months previously, I was lonely and I felt safe with him. I allowed things to progress, correction, after a short time of dwelling on the immorality of having an affair, I soon abandoned myself to the situation and became hooked to the constant high I felt after our first tryst. I'm not a bad woman, I don't make a habit of taking other women's husbands. He painted a picture he knew I would fall for, after all he knew me of old, ironically we first met shortly after the death of my father when I was 17. I guess the hooks had already been set back then.
Happily I know what it is to be loved and cherished, by my husband, we had nearly 20 years together and a son who is now 26, before he died back in 2002.
This other person cropped up out of the blue through a site to find old school friends. I'd forgotten all about him, although he had left an impression when I first knew him. I received a few emails, catching up after nearly 3 decades, I told him of my husbands health problems, a couple of old friends catching up. We'd never been an item back in the 70s, a couple of raunchy weekends over a couple of years doesn't constitute a big romance, but we used to write to each other, sharing poetry, me being me the open book which he found endearing, but he did warn me that my openness maybe a cause for me being hurt at some point. Prescient or what!
Zapping forwards 30 years, after we had our first fling, tryst rather over romanticises it ( but that's what it felt like ) things went into top gear with dozens of emails flying between us, analysing the situation, his situation. I've been watching Richard's videos and reading lots of different material and I'm recognising now what was happening but back then I was been completely drawn into this other world he had created for us.
I wrote this four years ago, a few days after we had spent the last 5 days together unravelling what we had created. I was the one to close the door on the relationship. It was only after when I read things about sociopaths that alarm bells started to ring. Talk about intuition, my gut feelings had already started to kick in a couple of years before this;
7th March 2012
Line in the sand or if you will a signing off...
P*****, it seems that you are not the man I thought you once were;
Last weekend you were almost a stranger to me, although over the passing of the last few years the distance between us was becoming more perceptible, moving from arms length to back burner to what I finally experienced as being put in permanent cold storage. At least you were generous enough to admit that you had been taking me for granted for some time, it hadn’t gone without note.
With the lovemaking, or maybe I should refer to the act as pure and simple lust and sex, of late, I had noticed a sameness that usually takes hold between a couple where one or both are no longer connected. As per usual I made allowances, taking into account your operation which I grant would well be problematical. You rarely engaged me with your eyes as you used to hence me asking to please look at me. At least at the hotel you were honest enough in your request to “molest me”, although I guessed there was meant to be humour but again badly placed.
I suspect you have for sometime being waiting for an exit, an out to a situation you could no longer tolerate but could not face to follow through. So I initiated the one thing that I least wanted. The truth of the matter our future was always in your hands, but this closure was one thing that I wanted to drive, call it pride, protection of self dignity.
I guess a relationship that is dependent on duplicity for its existence is at risk of festering over time. I’m wondering if by calling what we had, a relationship, is giving what we shared a little too much dignity, although I must be honest and still believe that in the early years we shared much more than the clichéd sexual romps of an adulterous affair. In reflection I find it ironic that since you broke out and were less constrained by marital loyalties, what we had was more like the latter.
I suspect that without my support, you would have not found the courage to plough on with your plans of breaking out and moving on. I have felt over time that the relationship was less about me but more about an aspiration of what you would like it to be. As it transpired it became more evident to you that I wasn’t going to fit the mould you had already thrown. If it had in the slightest way been personal, and I mean a deep feeling of affection that could only lead to enduring love, you wouldn’t have found it so easy to throw in the towel. If you had wanted to be with me at all, and that is very much in question now that you ever did, we would have found a way. In the end it all seems so shallow.
I suspect that I will not be able to make sense of the last eight years.
He's back in my radar. I live in France and previously he was in the UK, we talked of setting up a life and business together, that's what he was after. A strong woman who could lead him and not be a follower, he'd been a project manager for over thirty years, and he told me he'd had enough of taking the lead all the time. So once he decided, after three years, he was going to set up with me, he gave me five years to set things in motion. He told me he wanted to stay with his kids till they reached university age. I went along with it I wanted to prove to myself I could do it, but thinking that it would be something that would be very much a joint project. I was wrong.
Anyway I've been getting on with my life only to discover a couple of years ago, that he has continued with the idea of moving to the area I live in, set up in business with a woman he met on the internet months after him leaving his wife and divorcing her and walking away from our relationship. He's been here for nearly three years now. I've been dreading bumping into him. Up until the last month I thought I'd got away with out seeing him, but I've had the displeasure of seeing him twice in the last few weeks. Today completely threw me as he turned up at an event not too far from my home, he lives a little over 20 miles away, an event I would have least expected him to make the effort of coming over for. Of course his new woman friend was with him. I'm sure it would have been a case of revisiting the past, it's his speciality. It brought to mind the last paragraph of the Narcissists Love Letter - John Howell
...When I say I’m in love with you, I mean I love the story I can tell to my next lover, about my ex-lover, about how beautiful things were, how intense, how storybook, what a couple we were, and how you gradually, inexplicably, painfully, bit by bit, disappeared.
As I said I can't even begin to imagine the pain and hurt that those of you who have lived with a narcissist must be feeling. I believe I have had a lucky escape but feel that I have a lot of work to do on my self to regain my emotional balance, on setting my boundaries and starting to close the pages of the book that I've left exposed for most of my adult life. I'm 60 and consider myself still young enough to learn how to trust and love again.
Thank you for listening.
