When our relationship ended I asked A what on earth it had all meant to him, his reply was; "We haven't been able to dominate each other, you don't fit my blueprint, I saw you as a convenience, it's time to move on". I asked him if he understood the essence of a relationship because it seemed to me he was much more concerned with 'form'. He said to me: "Everything in life is about form and appearance". I realized I was engaged and almost married to someone who defines himself by appearance and perceived me as an object, dispensable and interchangeable.
 
A mastered the art of shifting the blame on me and he deliberately pushed my buttons to twist the knife into my vulnerabilities. This was, of course, only after we had been together for a longer period of time. He made me feel guilty and I questioned myself many times on various things and events.
 
He gauged reality wrongly thinking I made him look like a fool, whereas HE was the one who was insulting my friends and humiliating me in public. His thinking was inconsistent and impaired to an extend that it DID make him look like a fool, but it was impossible to reason with him. His beliefs, attitudes and behaviours contradict each other which leads him to self-blindness.
 
In his opinion "I dragged him down", whereas I was the one who ended up with heart arrhythmias, I had lost 6 kilos in weight, I had moved for him (just like his ex, she moved twice for him) and in the end found myself struggling hard to get my life back in my home town.

His father

A grew up in a very traditional family featuring 'strict father morality'. His father still sets overall family policy. He taught A and his brother right from wrong with strict rules for their behaviour and enforced them through punishment sometimes administered with a stick. His father is a hypochondriac who displays his knowledge about everything and anything in such a way that you feel ill at ease in his presence. He made sure to influence (in an all pervasive way) every major decision A had to make; what to study, which houses to buy, his professional career etc. His father is a frustrated school principal who laughs at the 'hormonal weakness' of women and takes mean-spirited pleasure in degrading the feminine especially in front of women. From the stories A told me about his family, I understand that his father absolutely hated his mother (A's grandmother).
 
[The child becomes a reflection of the parent, a conduit through which the parent experiences and realises himself for better (hopes, aspirations, ambition, life goals) and for worse (weaknesses, "undesirable" emotions, "negative" traits). He internalises his father's voices in the form of a sadistic, ideal, immature Superego and spends his life trying to be perfect, omnipotent, omniscient and to be judged "a success" by these parent-images and their later representations and substitutes (authority figures).]

Homosexuals, Social Standards, Army

A still believes homosexuals have chosen to be homosexuals, he thinks 'they read it in a magazine' and if they really wanted to they could become heterosexual. The evidence of any biological determination (genes, prenatal environment) simply bounces off his hardened position. You might as well talk to a brick wall. When I asked him what he would do if we ever had a child who turned out to be homosexual, he said that I had probably encouraged it. When I got upset he laughed and said that he just liked to throw oil on my fire. A does not approve of gay marriage nor should they be allowed to have/adopt children.
 
He was taken to court for beating up a guy who defended a homosexual (n.b. the displacement). This was highly inconvenient because he had applied to become an army officer. His father at that point displayed his "Daddy knows best" attitude and took care of the situation; A was not made to take responsibility for what he did. Instead his lesson was; 'If you can pay for the best attorney, you can decide yourself which laws apply to you and which do not'. He won and a couple of months later he joined the army. Talk about 'self-righteousness'...
 
[In order not to be immersed in his dad's narcissistic net he buried himself in a group that operates like a narcissistic family and requires identity with members' goals and ethos. It is a style of life that reinforces personal non-being.]

Domination

This however wasn't the first time he beat someone up and it sure wouldn't be the last. About a year ago he started a fight with one of his colleague-officers. I think because he depends so much on his in-group to support his beliefs, he places a high premium on group loyalty and cohesiveness. A therefore thought it was necessary to teach this particular disloyal colleague a lesson because… he dared to flirt with a woman during their 'guys-night-out'. Yes, for flirting with a woman he beat the guy up (again: n.b. the displacement).
 
[The question is whether his aggression mainly serves a desire to dominate, or if the domination serves a desire to hurt others.]

Impaired thinking, shifting the blame

A tries to convince everybody that divorce doesn't exist in Northern Ireland. In a sharp debate with friends of mine (who obviously couldn't believe him) he got me involved and said "Give us one example of someone you know in Northern Ireland who got divorced". When I immediately replied with "The sister of your neighbour C., and the mother of your best mate P." (he must be joking, right?), he dismissed me with a wave of the hand and continued the discussion. The next morning he blamed ME for making him look like a fool.
 
[People with narcissistic tendencies have errors in thinking which prevents them from seeing things how they are from both sides of the picture. Not wanting to feel bad inside, they build defences such as denial, repression and a strong need to be right.]

Atheism, brutal honesty and hypocrisy

Another example: I asked him why we had to make our vows in a church even though he defends evolution and the non-existence of God in a very harsh way. A is an atheist and was capable of making one of his colleagues in a discussion on that matter actually BURST INTO TEARS (!!).

 

 

He told me the reason for getting married in a church was "Because it's what my mother would want me to do and because it's traditional, why no one knows". Then something incredibly ironic happened; when he told his mom we were going to get married in a church, it turned out she never had any expectation of this kind considering my 'background'. He told her off; "Now don't you start too!".
 
[Narcissists, in accordance with their Machiavellian mind frame, will often (want to) appear religious, especially if they are leaders.]

About marriage

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate traditions and I respect differences in cultures, backgrounds and upbringing. I myself am from a liberal and tolerant society. Many of my friends have been together for a long time, they have children but are not married. I therefore think marriage is not indispensable. But marriage according to A was absolutely necessary if we wanted to have children and be 'formally' acknowledged as a couple by his family and the army. 

Manipulation

There was however another, with hindsight, quite manipulative reason he had given (earlier on) for marriage; it was to make sure he wouldn't sleep around in 5 years (I had to look at it from a 'bloke's perspective'). We had a discussion about it ("lots of married people still cheat on each other!") but I didn't pay much attention to it until I remembered what he had said about the mother of a friend who, according to A, stayed in an adulterous relationship only for 'quality of life' reasons (i.e. for the money). So I told him that I was never going stay in an unhappy marriage, that I would never stay for economical reasons and that I would pack my bags and leave on the first train or plane back to my hometown.
 
A ordered brochures from a famous Scottish wedding location and he showed me pictures of the army houses for married couples and I warmed up to the idea of getting married. Furthermore I was going to move, leave my hometown to finally live with him, I looked into doing a master at the university close to the place we were going live and I really wanted to have a family, after all I had turned 30 (soon to be 31), time wasn't always going to be on my side (my general practitioner had pointed this out to me as well). What a lucky girl I was to have met this wonderful guy.
 
[Narcissists dance the relationship dance with you which has all the appearance of being motivated with the same motives you have. They mouth words of love and fidelity which confirm to you that you both are on the same page. Meanwhile, they feel complete aversion to real intimacy. They are not truly connecting with you on an emotional level. You are not aware of this distance. Not yet. No, they are after something very different than what you're after.]

True Colours

My expectations were slowly but surely shattered and his 'true colours' started to appear during the following year, which was truly a hell for me.
 
When I told him I had discussed our wedding plans with one of my best friends, he all of sudden thought it wasn't a good idea to get married yet. It all went too fast and he had second doubts... Because I wasn't the one warming him up to the idea of getting married (it was the other way around), I could understand his doubts and possible fear, so I blamed it on 'cold feet'. I decided to wait for the possibility to discuss things until his walls were down. Unfortunately there was never any possibility to discuss anything.
 
[When connected to a narcissist you don't know what to expect. He may tell you one thing and then do another. Something you discussed and agreed on two hours ago will be dismissed. It's as if you never had the conversation. The idea he had yesterday has changed in preference of something else today. What he agreed to do for you he won't even admit to discussing. He offers to be reliable one minute and totally lets you down the next.]
 
After two months I told him that I felt he was controlling the situation and deciding for us both what was happening when and how without offering alternatives whereas two months ago we were discussing marriage and having a family… and that I just couldn't understand. His reply was that he wanted us both to decide but it had to based on 'knowing each other as well as we can' (n.b. we had been together for almost 2 years).

 

He said he wasn't sure if I wanted to have children with HIM or just because I had turned 30... He thought if we had children that I probably wanted to be close to my family and that it therefore wasn't a good idea to have children in my home country because then it was legally easier for me to take them with me if I was ever going to leave him, and that he now was not sure that I was never going to leave him because of what I had said to him about not staying for economical reasons... And of course, I had always said I didn't want to get married, so he wasn't going to ask me if he was going to be rejected.

 

[This is how he reverses truths, how he spins reality, how his tactics make me feel guilty, using me as a bin to drop all HIS insecurities in.  Paranoia is used by the narcissist to ward off or reverse intimacy. The paranoid narrative legitimizes intimacy repelling behaviours such as keeping one's distance, aloofness, reclusion, aggression, lying, desultoriness and unpredictability. Narcissists can't or won't trust, so they will test your total devotion.]
 
At that time I didn't realise this yet, I only knew I was very upset and told him we were obviously on totally different wave lengths (I was right). I didn't get any reply (typical!) but two days later I received an enormous bunch of flowers for Valentine's Day, and... guess what happened? I felt guilty for having been hard on him, and I started doubt myself; "Maybe I did make him think all that, I hadn't been clear on what I felt for him, or maybe he's just insecure, maybe my expectations were unrealistic etc etc".
 
[Cycles of idealisation followed by devaluation characterise many personality disorders. They reflect the need to be protected against the whims, needs, and choices of others, shielded from the hurt that they can inflict on the narcissist.]
 
So time went on and for two months things were more or less ok, but we somehow weren't able to discuss our 'future agenda' again. Then he told me that when he was to start his new post, he wanted to get settled in his new place on his own first and that if we were going to move in with each other we should better buy a house together. He knew that this was something I did not want to do; we were only staying for 2 years in this new place (his next post was going to be in the UK again) and it didn't make sense to me to buy a house especially if we were provided one by the army (remember; HE showed me the brochures).
 
[If you actually want to do what a narcissist wants you to do, that would be too much like sharing, so he will not want it anymore. By withholding whatever they know you want, narcissists make themselves feel important.]
 
Then he asked me to explain why I wanted to do the master and if I thought it was going to be of 'financial benefit' to us? I was shocked that I had to explain this but still tried to 'make sense' out of it and I explained to him that an English master was surely going to benefit us if I was to move with him to the UK. I also explained that I was in a professional field in which I was never going to make a lot of money and that studying was purely out of an interest to learn things... he somehow managed to make me feel (again) guilty about it. He told me I needed to get balanced in what I wanted.
 
One evening however I couldn't ignore my 'gut-feeling' anymore and I phoned him up very angry and upset asking him to be clear on where we stood. He didn't say anything and hung up the phone to never answer again.
 
[The silent treatment (feigned apathy; cold-shoulder, silence, distance and ignoring you) is a punishment used by abusers to make you feel unimportant, not valued, not cared about and completely absent from the abuser's thoughts. The silent treatment is CONTROL and a safe means for them to avoid any 'uncomfortable' topics, issues in the relationship, or issues within himself.]
 
In an extremely angry email I wrote him that I was fed up with him and the army, fed up with him hanging up the phone on me and I told him to go f**k himself. A week later he wrote me an e-mail saying "he had been on an emotional rollercoaster but that he was not angry and totally understood my 'worries and concerns' (n.b. how it now had officially become MY problem) about life with him and that he wasn't sure enough about what life had to offer me outside my hometown to convince or persuade me that everything would be great". To 'reassure' me he said he wasn't looking for other women but he just needed to clear his head... (n.b. the manipulation again!!)
 
He ceased all communication and ignored me for another two weeks. I wrote him a card saying I was sorry for the things I said and wished him good luck for the marathon he was going to run the following weekend. He phoned me up just after he finished the marathon and I - relieved we were on speaking terms again - congratulated him on his accomplishment. He told me his parents did not come to watch him and that he didn't know anymore what he had to do to impress them (kinda weird: an adult army officer still wanting approval… but then again; his parents didn't blink an eye, that's strange too..).
 
[Mirroring is a theory developed by Heinz Kohut whereby children have their talk and accomplishments acknowledged, accepted and praised by others, e.g. parents. It is important for a child's legitimate feelings of grandiosity to be mirrored by its parents. Children who do not get enough mirroring (admiration, attention etc.) are considered by many psychologists to be at risk of developing a narcissistic personality later in life.
 
If the child does not feel his parents love him for himself, apart from accomplishments, he will develop what object relations theorists call the "false self," the self that is fabricated in order to get the approval of his parents, based on the ability to achieve good grades, a good job, a good mate, etc.]
 
A week later he asked me if I still wanted to come to England, he was doing a course there and we had already booked this flight a couple of months ago. I told him I did, thinking this was finally going to solve things. When I was there we discussed a couple of issues and he literally said I needed to know that if I wanted to be with an army officer, the relationship was only going to work if I was willing to sacrifice. This should have been (again) a major red flag for me... but no, I really thought that this was realistic and said that I knew how important his work was for him and that I would never expect him to leave the army for me (his ex made him choose between her and the army). That I was happy to take on army-life and that I understood what it implied (thinking this would then finally convince him that I was committed and serious).
 
A couple of weeks later he paid me a surprise visit during a weekend in my hometown and of course we had a wonderful time (it always was, the peaks were high) but something happened at the end of that lovely weekend. He flew back to UK and on his way back home in the car I phoned him. He said he had been talking to his brother about the issues his brother and his girlfriend had at the time. He finished the story by saying; "But hey... my brother's just like me, in the end he always gets what he wants"…
 
[A true narcissist is almost totally wrapped up in themselves, and the entire world revolves around their needs and desires. The shameless sense of entitlement with which persons suffering from narcissism can impose themselves and their personal agenda on others, can be a very baffling experience to be exposed to.]
 
To cut a long story (I did have doubts about the relationship but he always lured me back in) short; he finished his course in England, I got my nursing degree (he didn't attend my graduation), he moved back to my home country and he proposed to me a couple of months later on a ski-trip. I left my hometown, moved in with him and in the end it was me who organized the wedding; designed the different evening/day, invitations, made appointments for the church and other locations, looked up information on prenuptial agreements/pensions, made a list of hotels and B&B's, put together a wedding list at a warehouse, and at the same time I had just started a new job, I attended a methodology and statistics class once a week (still attempting to do that master) and was trying very, very hard to make it all work.
 
My heart at this point had started to 'arrhythmically' signal me; "maybe I was overdoing things here", but I didn't listen. And yes; A still wanted to buy a house because his best mate P. had wound him up about his new 5 bedroom house with a swimming pool in the garden. So I checked three different independent sources of info on tax, mortgages, locations etc. and I still didn't think it was a good idea but A just simply ignored me (again!) and I found myself looking at houses with him the following weeks. Having a child at this point was of course a ridiculous idea, even I had to admit that and I had put it out of my head. Guess what happened? He strangely all of a sudden talked to me more and more about having a family, after all we were soon to be married and he could now imagine himself as "the daddy" of the family.

Insulting friends

In the meantime, just before A was sent to Afghanistan again, we were invited one weekend to spend time with my best friends S and K. This was supposed to be a nice relaxing break but it turned into a nightmare. There were 8 other people and the first evening everyone got very drunk and K had hit a nerve with A by saying that he had done a great job in getting me to marry him because I would be the last person anyone would ever expect to get married... This lead into a discussion; another friend explained to A that even though he wanted to get married to his girlfriend, his girlfriend did not (because she had been married before) and he said that his relationship with her was far more important than 'getting married'. A got up, pointed at him and said: "This means that I WON and YOU LOST and that YOUR CHILD IS A BASTARD".
 
[Narcissists are individuals who lack empathy for others, are self serving, and engage in competitive conflict with others. Competitive conflict is a form of conflict resolution in which individuals perceive other's progress as interfering with their own.]
 
He later on said 'sorry' to me (he had no recollection of anything that happened that night) but when I suggested not to apologise to me but to P. he claimed: "Why would I, the Dutch always brag about freedom of speech, but when you tell someone the truth they are offended".
 
[Narcissistically impelled people are incapable of genuine expressions of remorse, because inherent in an apology is the admission that one is not needless and faultless. Narcissists cannot see how their behaviour looks to others, and if confronted by their own behaviour in another, refuse to accept it.]
 
This should have done it for me, right? I mean my heart was signalling me, he was insulting my friends but when I talked to my (non-N) friends about it and asked for their opinion (again major red flags all over the place) they said to me; "We all know the context in which he said things, and we all know he's just a very traditional guy" (and the wedding invitations had already been sent..).
 
I will discuss the events that finally led to our break-up in a minute, but first a couple of more personality traits:

Cynicism

During A's first post in my home country (this is when we met) a sergeant major (B., nice guy!) helped him with everything; getting installed in his new place, at work, being invited out in the town etc. I thought they had developed a real friendship until A said something very condescending about him.
 
B. was divorced, he had not been in a relationship for a long time but he recently met a woman through handball (he's a coach). They had been together for 3 months when she found out she was pregnant. B. wanted to talk to A about it, or at least share his story. His girlfriend wanted an abortion but B. wasn't sure. A listened, wished him good luck and when he left I said to A that I could see that B. was in despair. He looked at me and cynically said: "Don't be so naive, B. is only interested and keen because she's pregnant and that makes him feel good about himself. As soon as she has the abortion, he will leave her."... (Just for the record: B is still with his girlfriend).
 
[Narcissists are generally contemptuous of others. This seems to spring, at base, from their general lack of empathy, and it comes out as (at best) a dismissive attitude towards other people's feelings, wishes, needs, concerns, standards, work, etc.]
 
Another cynical worldview: According to A the looting of the blacks in New Orleans during the hurricane Katrina, just showed their 'bad immoral mentality' compared to the virtuous people from California who were willing to help each other in putting out the fires around their villas. A had difficulty to understand my explanation that a 'nothing to lose' situation sometimes brings out the worst in people.
 
[People with narcissistic tendencies have errors in thinking which prevents them from seeing things how they are from both sides of the picture.]

Break-up / Narcissistic rage

One evening I came back from work and I was tired, A asked me to go out and have an aperitif with some colonel. I told him I was not in the mood, I could see this annoyed him, he didn't ask me why but just asked me to make food for when he returned. While walking on egg-shells again, I told him I could make dinner for more colleagues if he wanted to invite them over. 

 

He came back 4 hours later with two female officers and they were all drunk. One officer left quite early, the other one, K., stayed on for a bit. They were talking about a discussion she had that afternoon with a corporal. From the discussion A concluded that they addressed each other familiarly (i.e. they called each other by their first names). He said that no corporal fucknuts was ever to call him by his first name. This hit a nerve with me and I told him that I thought it was rather disrespectful to call a corporal a fucknuts because in the end he's the frontline soldier who actually gets killed in a war. He looked at me (his eyes became black, I'm not exaggerating) and said: "If you think doctors speak differently about nurses, you're ignorant. In their eyes you're a NURSE FUCKNUTS too".

 

[Narcissistic rage is a reaction to narcissistic injury (when the narcissist feels degraded by another person). When the narcissist's grandiose sense of self worth is perceivably being attacked by another person, the narcissist's natural reaction is to rage and pull-down the self worth of others (to make the narcissist feel superior to others).]
 
Voilà… that was the proverbial last straw that broke my back; if this was the man I was going to marry, I'd rather DIE. I slammed a kitchen cupboard door (3 glasses fell out) and asked K. to leave. I went nuts and screamed at him that this was the last time he was ever going to insult me or my friends again and that I was now leaving.
 
As I started to pack my bags he entered the bedroom and screamed at me; "Are you leaving ME? That's NOT going to happen. Here, I will help you pack your bags" and he started to pack all my bags for me… When he finished he went out to get more drunk. When he came back completely wasted on alcohol he continued to rage at me and said that I dragged him down, that he was more intelligent than me and that he just wasn't able to tell me in a 'normal way' that he saw no future for us.
 
[To be in control – this unconquerable drive – is the direct result of being deserted, neglected, avoided, or abused at an early stage in life. "Never again" – vows the narcissist – "If anyone will do the leaving, it will be me." He is liberated and unshackled by his own self-initiated abandonment, he insists. He never really wanted this commitment and anyhow, the relationship was doomed from the beginning by the egregious excesses and exploits of his wife or partner.
 
If he does not get attached – he cannot be hurt. If not intimate – he cannot be emotionally blackmailed. If he does not persevere – he has nothing to lose. If he does not stay put – he cannot be expelled. If he rejects or abandons – he cannot be rejected or abandoned.]
 
A few days later we canceled the wedding and of course he had to explain to his parents the cause of the break-up. Guess what he told them? That we had a row because I didn't want to buy a house with him and that I slammed kitchen cupboard doors! His mother said that putting up with that sort of behaviour couldn't be good and that is was alright for him to reconsider marriage...
 
[The narcissist will either insinuate or will tell you outright that you're unstable, oversensitive and hysterical. Once he's constructed these fantasies of your emotional pathologies, he'll tell others about them, as always, presenting his smears as expressions of concern and declaring his own helpless victim hood.
 
He didn't do anything. He has no idea why you're so irrationally angry with him. While absolving himself of any responsibility for your obvious antipathy towards him, implying that there's something fundamentally wrong with you that makes you angry with him, he's undermined your credibility with his listeners.]
 
He partially paid for my lawyers costs (I had legal troubles to get my place back in my hometown), and in return he asked me to give him back the emerald stones (which he bought for the engagement ring) because they reminded him of the time he was in Afghanistan. No emotional attachment to nothing… it was just ANOTHER slap in my face…

__________

 

If you wish to submit your own story and get feedback and support for your situation or if you wish to contact me for any other reason, click This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   

 

Write comment

Your Contact Details:

Name:

Email: do not notifynotify

Comment:

Title:

Message:

Security

Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.