Hi Maria,

I got involved with a man that I now recognize to be a textbook narcissist.  Very charming exterior but there were many red flags I chose to ignore.  We did not have an exclusive relationship.  It was very casual but there was a condition that I had which was that I did not want to see him if he was taking other women out on dates.  He initially had taken me out but that faded and his excuse was his hectic schedule.  He told me repeatedly that he did “not date.” In fact, it is my impression he has not had an exclusive relationship since his short-lived marriage 20 years ago.

Anyway, I began to sense I was being repeatedly lied to and it was driving me crazy as I had no proof.  I thought maybe I was being paranoid but my gut instinct said otherwise.  A few weeks ago he was at my house and used my computer to check his email.  He forgot to log off, which I discovered after he left.  I debated on whether to look and my curiosity got the best of me. 

I found an email which seemed to confirm my suspicions, actually a few emails.  In my disbelief, I made a stupid mistake.  I cut and pasted an email and sent it to him with a note that I could not believe he lied to me to that degree.  Hindsight! On the surface, he comes across as a very affable man who is successful and has lots of admirers. Well, to say that he went into a rage is an understatement.  Threatening to send the Secret Service to my house to take all my electronics.  Screaming and calling me numerous names.  

I was shocked.  I know what I did was wrong but his response seemed to be a tremendous overreaction. He refused to talk about the lie and repeatedly told me what a bad, miserable, etc etc person I was and he would never speak to me again.   He also made a weird comment about how he purposely left his email up to see if I would look.  Weird.  After about a week, I felt really bad and guilty and sent a heartfelt apology as I had no right to invade his privacy.  No response. I have since sent several apologies and he has not responded.

After reading a bit about the narcissist, including your site, I am a bit freaked out that he may be plotting some weird revenge.  I guess my question is.  Can a narcissist forgive? Is the ‘radio silence,’ some form of punishment.  I just want this guy to not have any angry feelings towards me as  I would lose any kind of “he said, she said” battle with him.  Any advice?

Thanks.

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The goal of this website is to give support to people who are facing problems in their relationship related to cheating, abuse and narcissism. I am living in Europe and English is not my native language, I wish you will excuse me if I make some grammatical errors. I have a background in neuroscience and behavioral sciences and I am currently doing brain research related to these topics in university in my home country. I decided to write in English because I wish to reach as many people as I can around the world. If you wish to read more about me, please visit page Site Overview.

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Dear Friend,

Thank you for your message. I understand your situation very well. Please do not blame yourself for looking into your boyfriend's email (let me call him "boyfriend" for now even tho you said you had a casual thing going). Most people in your situation would have done the same. This does not mean I am saying it was right to look into his email. You also said yourself you know it was wrong. What I am saying is that under those circumstances you would have had to be some kind of a superhuman to resist the temptation to check the email, especially after having doubts about your boyfriend's honesty (you suspected your boyfriend was cheating on you and lying to you... Even thought you were in a casual relationship, he had agreed to your condition of not dating others when he was dating you. If he would break that promise, it would count as cheating).

We can all make mistakes. Reading other person's email is after all a quite small "sin", it is not like you killed somebody. I believe most people who are visiting my site have checked the email of their partner if they are suspecting cheating or an affair and if they have not, they wish they could get the password and have a secret access to the mailbox. You have no reason to blame yourself too much for checking your boyfriend's email. Please let go of your guilt regarding that matter.

The first thing you now must do is to get rid of the mental pain related to the dishonest and rude behavior of your boyfriend. It is possible to learn to control the negative emotions related to tragedies such as cheating or betrayal instead of letting the emotions control you. Human brain is truly an amazing device. It is possible to teach the brain and the mind to deal with the tragedies in life such as lying, an affair and living with a narcissist. Many of my readers have sent me email telling they have found the mind control methods described on this site to be helpful. You can read more about this topic from page Recovery After Cheating and Narcissism.

About you sending your boyfriend an email where you told you looked into his mailbox. I understand that when looking back today, you feel sorry you sent that email to him. But when you did that, you were extremely angry and upset. You suspected your boyfriend was lying to you and cheating on you, your emotions got the best of you and you acted before you could think. On the other hand, what if you would not have sent that email to your boyfriend? I personally believe that would have been a lot worse option. If you did not do it you would only have been dwelling on doubts about what was going on and whether he was cheating on you or not.

You could not have asked your boyfriend about the matter without revealing to him that you had checked his email. The only thing you could have done would have been to follow the situation and see if you can get additional proof of cheating and dishonesty. But since I assume you did not have a password to your boyfriends email, you could not have kept on monitoring his interaction with other women via regularly checking his email. You only had that one shut to ask him directly whether he was cheating on you and lying to you, and you used it. I think you did the right thing. If you did not do that, your negative thoughts regarding those emails would have tormented you for weeks, perhaps months. You might have become seriously depressed due to the uncertain situation with your boyfriend and the scent of lies, cheating and dishonesty in the air.

I think in a long run sending him the email was the best way to go. You forced your boyfriend to show his cards, which he has now done. Now let me say couple things about your boyfriend getting angry like that to you when you accused him of lying and cheating. What you are dealing with is a self-defense mechanism of a narcissist. When a narcissist knows he or she has done something wrong (like cheating or lying), he or she may enter the state called narcissistic rage. Narcissistic rage is exactly what it sounds like: It includes uncontrollable shouting, raging, accusing and (often verbal) attacking. The aim of this fierce attack is to direct the attention away from the main focus (the mistakes made by a narcissist).

Your boyfriend is refusing to talk about the fact that he lied to you, instead he is raging about how horrible person you are. That is his way to avoid taking the responsibility of his actions (in this case lying). Of course it is clear that anybody would get upset if somebody checks their email. Just imagine if someone looked into your personal mailbox. However, most people would not go as crazy over it as you are describing your boyfriend did. Most people would simply be very disappointed if their lover did that, some might even end a relationship due to that. Some people are more understanding than others when it comes to matters such as secretly reading the email of one's girlfriend or boyfriend.

The main point here is that this incident caused a big problem in your relationship with your boyfriend. Normally when people face problems in a relationship, they talk about the problems and try to solve them. Your boyfriend is not able to discuss about the problem. Instead he is accusing you and targeting his narcissistic rage attacks on you. As I said, it sounds like that is your boyfriend's way to avoid taking the responsibility of his own actions (his lies).

If your boyfriend had some level of empathy, he would understand the reasons why you checked his email, even tho of course it was not an acceptable act from your part. Yes, he might be horribly upset at first, but usually people calm down and after that they can talk about the problem and solve it. Just put yourself into your boyfriend's position. How would you behave, if things were other way around? Compare your (hypothetical) behavior to the current behavior of your boyfriend. Could you ever behave like that towards someone you care about?

About the radio silence. Yes, it is a form of "punishment" that narcissist often use. Discarding and total ignorance are the worst things that could happen to a narcissist. So naturally narcissists assume that it is the same thing in case of everyone else (narcissists believe discarding is one of the worst punishments there is so they exercise that on those who they feel have done them "wrong"). Every time when your boyfriend receives an email from you he is feeling very good, because he knows he is in total control. Your boyfriend knows you are suffering and missing him. Your suffering and your "desperate love" towards your boyfriend serves as his narcissistic supply. He gets enjoyment when he is punishing you by discarding you and rejecting you. When your boyfriend sees you are totally heart broken over him, it boosts his ego.

The best thing you can do right now is not to send him more emails. Even if you feel like it, please try your best not to do it. Do not provide him with more narcissistic supply (more opportunities to discard you and "punish" you). You have apologized your boyfriend for reading his email. That was the right thing to do. Now you have done everything you "had" to do, and you can feel good about yourself. You do not owe your boyfriend anything anymore. You have taken the responsibility of your actions (checking your boyfriend's email) by apologizing and saying you know you did the wrong thing. You have admitted your mistake and said you are sorry. You do not have to think about it anymore. You can now leave it behind, let it go like the water under the bridge.

I understand you are feeling pain and you would want things to be the way they were. The best thing you can do right now is to try to concentrate on something totally different. Try actively to avoid thinking of your boyfriend. To read more about how you can block the thoughts related to him from your mind and start your recovery process, visit page Recovery After Cheating and Narcissism.

You asked whether a narcissist can forgive. That is a complicated question. A narcissist can forgive, if forgiving makes a narcissist to appear "merciful" in his own eyes and also in the eyes of others. To be merciful is generally considered to be an admirable trait in a person and so a narcissist will gladly appear like that. If your boyfriend considers you as an important narcissistic supply, he might at some point stop punishing you and contact you, telling he has "mercifully" forgiven you.

I do not believe your boyfriend is going to do anything to "revenge" you. He put up this whole act so that he could take the attention away from the fact that he was being dishonest. This is his strategy to maintain his face. It can even be that your boyfriend really believes his own words and feels you are the only "bad" person in this picture and that he has every right to rage at you and accuse you. This is another self-protection mechanism: If your boyfriend is a narcissist, by raging at you he is protecting the integrity of his own mind, which would be threatened if he would have to admit to himself that he has done something wrong (lied to you). Dear Friend, you are not to blame here. Yes, you did "morally wrong" when you read your boyfriend's email, but you have already corrected that mistake by apologizing him. Now it is out of your hands, you have done everything you can and everything you should. You have done well.   

I do not think you should waste your precious life and your precious time waiting for your boyfriend to stop discarding and punishing you. The best strategy for you is to live your life thinking he is now out of it for good. If you were right about your boyfriend and he has been cheating on you, lying to you and has been keeping company with other women behind your back, then he will only end up hurting you more in the future if you get back together with him. If your boyfriend lied to you and cheated on you now, it will be very difficult for you to trust him in the future. It sounds like your boyfriend is not capable of being loyal and faithful to only one woman. Please do not waste your time on a person like that. If you leave him, you have a chance to find a honest man who can truly make you happy and who deserves your love.

I know it is hard not to write emails or otherwise contact this man. If you feel you want to contact him, please write to me instead. I wish to support you during this difficult time. Do not give in to temptation to write to him again. Stay strong! I recommend you to read this article of Controlling Your Emotions. You do not have to give in to your urge to write to him, you can learn to control your emotions instead of letting your emotions control you! 

Warm thoughts,

- Maria

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