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Dear Maria,
After reading some of the horrific stories of abuse i felt i wanted to tell my own story of emotional abuse. I was with my ex for 20 years, 17 of those i was married to him. I have now been on my own for 4 years, not really sure if i can trust my own judgment and scared i will fall for someone else just as bad. I have deliberately avoided any meaningful relationships as i know the chances of finding the same kind of man are high in the first few years and i needed time to heal.
My ex was charming (as i've seen others say) he acted as if he would pull the stars out of the sky for me and in the beginning could not do enough to please me my family and it seemed his friends too. Of course i had some warning signs, he'd got a woman pregnant before me and just abandoned her, making up all sorts of reasons about her being a fling that went wrong etc, and that he had slept with many different women previously, but of course i was different. He told me every day he loved me sometimes to the point where it was getting too much. He acted (and it was an act) as if he was my soul mate, agreeing with things i said and being supportive.
The problems started just before we got married, he and my friend at the time were openly flirting and he was offering to drive her to the airport the next day, also intimating that they were going to have sex, he was always very subtle using innuendo rhymes songs or stories to tell me what he was doing and yes to drive me mad. This also gave him the escape clause that he was only singing etc and yes i was paranoid to think it meant anything....
Hence I told the friend that was going to be my bridesmaid that i didnt want her to be. Then when i was pregnant with my first child 12 months later (he had a child from a previous marriage) he disappeared with a friends wife at an open air show for an hour and everyone was asking where they both were. I was oblivious to the fact at the time that they were sleeping together.
As the years went by all sorts of people (some i didnt even know) were intimating he was no good sleeping around and lying to me. At home he was loving and always seeking my admiration for his good looks and making statements that i was lucky that he still found me attractive, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me etc. He slowly over the years gave all the bills to me including the mortgage.
 He changed his job frequently that was when he could be bothered to go, finding all sorts of excuses that he wasnt well, or wanted to be there to pick our daughter up from school. He'd tell me all sorts of horrific stories about other people's marriages and i see now that was to make himself look better.
He started to put me down and treat both myself and our daughter badly, playing mind games, never sticking up for either of us and ignoring or trivializing anything we were upset about. Then he started to empower our daughter against me, apparently introducing her to one of his girlfriends and a baby he had had with her. My daughter was starting to call me names and belittle me, actually attacking me one day and telling her dad i had attacked her.
She was 14 years old. When we went out, which wasnt very often (because this was the only time he paid) he took both myself and our daughter to places where he'd obviously been taking other women as waiters kept coming back and asking if i was his wife, incredulously......
If i ever confronted him about any of this he would become aggressive and tell me i was mad or just disappear. If i did anything wrong he would make such a big thing of it telling everyone, if he did anything wrong he'd try desperately to cover it up. He lied to all our friends about me to the point where i felt paranoid going to their houses, because there was always an atmosphere and i felt very uncomfortable. I rarely took any of my friends to our house as i was never sure that he wouldnt try to sleep with them. So most of the friends we had were really his friends, initially. His behaviour escalated when i told a female friend about my suspicions and it was repeated back to him. I was emotionally drained and exhausted when i left i felt like there wasnt anyone i could trust, not even my own daughter.
He got a kick out of me being upset ,reading text messages out loud that said someone was sending their love to him, when confronted he'd just say it was from a male friend, but would never show me. Then he was hiding his phone, telling me i was nosey if i wanted to see any text messages and always saying it was a male friend. Then to confuse things even more he would get me to answer his phone, but only i suppose when he was sure it wasnt a woman phoning him, and to prove his innocence. All under his control.
He'd spend money on the most expensive items getting into heavy debt and not worrying that would have to pay it back or that he couldnt pay it back. He sat in the pub displaying his fantastic new £400 watch, when we barely could afford to eat. I found out this watch was a present from one of his female friends.
He started to tell me certain women were nice and yes when i came to leave i found out these were the women hed slept with including his friends wives and his daughters head mistress who was actually bullying our daughter at the time. Over the years i had four flat tyres on my car, unexplained scratches and he changed our home phone number several times giving all sorts of excuses. He could never take responsibility for anything, always saying women are much stronger....
 He introduced me to the staff at a nursing home where he was working as a handy man, this was obviously to humiliate me as they all looked shocked that he was married and later i found out a woman he'd got pregnant worked there and they all knew it was his baby, probably congratulating the happy couple cos he wasnt telling them he was married.
He started to tell me he didnt care about me, wasnt going to listen to me any more and was just disappearing on a daily basis. He showed me a sick note he had from our gps for a week and would then start asking me if child labour was painful for the woman and what to expect. Presumably this was when this woman (who was 20 yrs old, he was 49) was having his baby!
I was so blind but i worked shifts and it seems he took full advantage of that seeing these women always in the daytime, rarely at night. He wanted to hurt me so badly and like other women here have said i never did anything other than to be kind and loving towards him. He was out of anyone's control, telling me he was omnipresent, acting as if nothing could stop or hurt him but he could hurt who he liked.
I was frightened for me and our daughter who he was starting to say some very inappropriate things to. She was however mostly on his side, everyone i asked would not admit to what he was doing fully they were scared of him, hes 6ft 4 and they knew he could be quite menacing. So everyone was playing his game. He would sit and chat to other people as if nothing was happening, and as if i didnt exist.
I managed to get one friend to tell me the truth and i was devastated to learn he had a child with a woman 10 years before and a baby with a woman recently. This 'friend' later phoned me to say he felt bad about betraying my ex and would never admit to telling me anything!
I was taking my daughter to the shops one day and had a woman in her 40s come up to the car pulling faces at my daughter who was laughing as if she knew who this woman was, when i asked her she said she didnt know her. By this time i was frantic because i knew this woman was something to do with my ex. I recognized a young woman in the car she had got out of as being a woman i had given a lift to with my ex to a works xmas do the year before. (Click the link below to read the rest of this story).
>> CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS STORY <<
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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.
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Dear Friend,
Thank you for sharing your story. I am so sorry to hear what you have been going through. I am so glad you are finally free and that your ex husband can no longer hurt you. You have been through so much during your long marriage to this man, more than most people would endure. Dear Friend, please congratulate yourself for coming out of it with your sanity intact. Your story is so touching and well written. Even after everything this man has put you through, I can read through the lines in your story that he has not managed to break your spirit. I am so glad you found my website and shared your story. By doing so you are helping others who are still in the middle of their own storm. Thank you.
 It is absolutely enraging to read how this "friend" first told you about the two children your husband had with other women during your marriage and then calls you to say he "regrets betraying his friends trust and denies of telling you anything". In my opinion that kind of a person is in the same level as your husband (even though I can understand he might have been afraid of your husband's reaction). It is incredible how anyone with any sense of pride could be friends with a person like your husband, knowing the way he is treating you, having not one but two (!!!) children with other women behind your back.
I know it is easy to look at the actions of our friends through our fingers, but even given that I could never imagine being a "friend" with someone who is treating his wife this way. I could never respect such person, I would feel simply disgusted in his presence. And yes, undoubtedly I would tell his wife about the misbehaving. In my opinion the wife has the right to know. If we see someone is being treated badly of being hurt by others it is a natural reaction to try to help that person. There is no excuse for what your husband was doing to you.
It is good that you brought up a very important topic of what is best for the children when one is in a relationship with a narcissist. You wrote: " For anyone reading this who is living with a narcissist, i would say dont stay for the children, LEAVE for the children". That is a very wise sentence and so very true. I wish all those who read this story and who have children with a narcissistic person would recognize this very real danger. Growing up in the presence of a narcissist is very harmful for a child. If you are in a bad relationship and you have children with your partner, you can get the strength to leave by thinking that you are doing a good dead for your children. You are sparing them from mental trauma that might influence their personality as they grow up and hence their whole life.
Dear Friend, I am sure that as your daughter gets older she will see the situation more clearly. It may take some time, she may need to gain more life experience first, but in time she will understand what you have been going through. She sounds like a smart young woman, I am sure she will not be blind to these things for the rest of her life. If she ever has to face similar situation with her boyfriend/husband, she is lucky to have a mother who will understand her, who will not belittle her and tell her to try harder to make the relationship work, that the boyfriend/husband is just being a bit "difficult" etc, instead she will have a mother who knows how to say all the right words and who knows exactly what she is going through. Of course I wish that your daughter never have to go through what you have been going through, but in case it happens, you will be there for her.
No matter what your daughter will think about the situation (even if she is taking the side of your husband) the facts cannot be denied, not even by her. The actions speak. Your husband slept around with numerous women, lied to you, humiliated you in front of people, had two children behind your back and in the end told you cruelly that "he chose you because you were easy to manipulate". That final comment tells it all. This man has no ability to feel any empathy towards others. He is a text book example of a pure-blooded narcissist. (Click the link below to read the rest of this reply).
>> CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS REPLY <<
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Please read this story of a person who read your story and wanted to comment on that by sending her own story. Everything I say to her in my reply to her I wish to say also to you: After Ending a Relationship with a Narcissistic Husband.
To read more about how to get over cheating and narcissism, please visit page Recovery After Cheating and Narcissism. If you wish to read more about what you can do to help your mind to recover faster, visit page Training the Brain.
Thank you again so much for sharing your story.
Warm hug,
Maria
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, send me email to
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Stories - Narcissism 
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Good luck that side - i know what you are going through is crap, han in there