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First Love

''I suppose I must have been about 16 or 17 when I first met the Narc in my life. Obviously, I had no idea what he was, he was just the very charming older brother of a new friend I´d just made at 6th form college.

 

He had a car and as far as we could tell a very flexible and affluent lifestyle. He loved to come and pick us up in his car after school and sometimes meet us for lunch at a little café near school. There were three of us girls who were very close friends; my best friend Gem who I´d known since I was 11, the new friend (Narc´s sister) and me. 

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He was about 5 years older than us and as mentioned was charm personified. He loved to spoil us and take us out. It suited his image to have 3 young girls with him everywhere. He played golf to quite a high level and was always taking us to golf club dinners and events. He still lived at home and his job in insurance paid him a decent salary with no outgoings he seemed very well off.

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A bit of background on me. I was raised in a (sort of) devout Catholic household. Devout as in we went to church on Sundays and attended Catholic schools, but not the sort of devout, evangelical, 'be Catholic or die' sort of devout. However, it leaves its mark. You are brainwashed from childhood to believe that you are fundamentally a flawed and sinful person who needs to seek constant forgiveness from the Priest/Church/God. You are raised to believe that your elders are your betters, to do as you are told, to always put others first, and to not expect much in life unless you work hard, and even then, you only get the good things in life if you toe the line and if God decides you are deserving. When I look back now, from the point of view of a 50-year-old mother of two living in a different country, I can see just how insidious it all was and how it practically grooms people to fall prey to narcissists. 

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My saving grace was that I was never very good at being Catholic. I was a disappointment to my teachers and priests. Being (unknown at the time) dyslexic and easily distracted, I wasn't a very diligent student and, as schoolwork was hard, I just did the bare minimum and enough to get by as anything else was too difficult. As someone of mixed-race parents, I was also bullied a lot at primary school and all I really wanted from life was to fit in and have a group of close friends. I found this when I was 11 and was adopted by my bestie Gem. She had a similar upbringing but was popular and good at sports and clever (all the things I wasn’t) and we were inseparable. 

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We started sneak drinking at weekends when we were 14 and by the age of 16/17 when we met the Narc, we were already pretty used to alcohol and pulling the wool over our parents' eyes about what we got up to at weekends and where we were. Because my parents trusted me, I was given a ridiculous amount of freedom, which only increased when I got my driving licence and access to a car. Suddenly I was all grown up, and all I then really wanted was a steady boyfriend. 

 

Boys had been irksome as a young teen. The ones I liked didn't reciprocate, and vice versa. So, enter the Narc: utterly charming, funny, attentive, not ugly, older and affluent. It was a heady cocktail and at aged 18 I started dating him.  I was a gift.

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I wasn't in love. I knew that, but as I had no reference, I just sort of went along with it. I suppose alarm bells did sound when he had a jealous rage over some boys Gem and I had met on our first grown up, without parents, holiday in Spain when we were 18. Narc and I had only tentatively dated a couple of times before that holiday and in my innocence, I was very open about the fact that we'd hung out with loads of girls and boys while on that holiday and there was a picture with a group of us and one of the lads had an arm round my shoulder. Hence the jealous rage. He drove me out to a country lane and made me burn the picture. I was thrown. It was a bit odd. I'd never had anyone behave like this before. However, he explained that he loved me so much that he couldn't stand the thought that anyone else had even thought about me. I suppose a part of me felt flattered that someone cared that deeply, so I became his girlfriend.

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Another weird episode was when I found a diamond engagement ring by accident in his glove box one day when I was waiting for him in the car. I was waiting for my A Level results as I had applied to university. I didn’t mention the ring, neither did he, it just disappeared around the time my results came back poorer than expected and I decided to do more courses for another year to get them up.

 

I became an appendage. I wasn't really ever alone out after that, he was with me/us everywhere. I didn't find it odd or suffocating as I'd never had a boyfriend before, I just assumed that this was what it was like. Gem was always with us anyway and when she started dating too, it was the four of us doing everything together. 

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Gem had started working following A Levels and as she got busy and began to live her own life, I became more and more dependent on Narc. I didn't have any other friends for that year, I simply went everywhere with him and did everything he wanted. I was the model of narcissistic supply.

 

Then, the same thing happened. One year later, I did get a place at Liverpool university and he asked me to marry him. I said yes because I didn't imagine there was an alternative. My mother cried when I told her and I distinctly remember saying to her, “Not to worry, it doesn´t mean I am going to marry him. He just wants to be engaged while I am away from him at university.”

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Thinking back on that now, there was soooooo much wrong with that statement. A part of me knew the only way for me to get away was to pretend to be engaged. Even though I wore the ring and told people I was engaged, I believed time and distance would resolve the situation.

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I met a ton of new people at university and another dear lifelong friend, Floss, and for the first time since school, I began to get a taste of what life might be like outside of my stifling relationship. Bear in mind, my subconscious must have been screaming at me. I knew something was off, I was looking for a way out, but I was so good at not listening to that inner voice, and remember, to me all of the control, endless suspicion, and surveillance and gaslighting was normal. I'd never experienced anything else. 

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I was 19 when I was in my first year at uni and he made that first year hell. He called the halls of residence all the time. There was one phone on each floor that was to be shared between 16 rooms (this was 1989/1990 so no mobiles, thank god!). He would demand that I call him every day, even though that was very difficult, and if I couldn't or didn't call him, he would be beside himself. He hated not knowing where I was, couldn't stand the thought of me being out without him and he called the phone sometimes 2 or 3 times a day to try and check up on me. I did go out with my new friends during the week to events at the student union and the odd student night in the city, but either he came to pick me up every Friday to bring me home or he would come up to stay with me for the weekend. My new friends found it very odd to say the least, and everyone in my halls of residence were sick of him, especially the ones whose rooms were near the phone.

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I got a shared house with four other girls including Floss for my second and third year and I remember telling him when I returned to uni after the summer that I would be spending some weekends in Liverpool and I needed to be able to have those weekends alone, in order to experience some sort of real student life (my girl friends had given me the courage to do this and they were cheering me on). He wasn't happy about it, but as he was still trying to appear to be the charming supportive fiancé to those girls, he had no choice but to accept. So, there was a brief hiatus where I got to spend time with my friends at the weekends, go out and party and generally have a good time without being watched, and it was wonderful.

 

Then my mum died. I was in shock and grief. We had been very, very close. For Narc, it was a gift. My sister was only 13 and my dad was bereft, so my brief bout of freedom was over. I was given a car by my dad and I drove home every weekend and holiday to look after them. 

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From an outsider's perspective, Narc was incredible. He stepped up, sorted out my dad's pension and finances, he was every inch the diligent, caring soon-to-be son in law. What people didn't see was the ramping up of control he began to exert over me. The few months before mum died had obviously scared him. He became even more suspicious and controlling to the point at which my uni friends started to see through his subterfuge. They were less charmed by him. They actively encouraged me to go out during the week and would cover for me if he called when I was out. He hated me being there but couldn't do anything about it. Until he decided we needed to buy a house.

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I received a small amount of money from my mum's estate and he decided we should use it as a deposit for a house he wanted to buy next door to his sister. There was not a bone in my body that wanted to do this. I remember talking to my dad about it. He thought it was a great idea and a wise investment of my money (Narc could do no wrong in his eyes, and especially after he'd saved his pension, he was obviously a financial genius). My friends were appalled and tried to support my tentative rebellion when I said I didn't want to. However, he won. I was grief stricken and not up to the fight. I ended up with my name on a mortgage for a dilapidated house I didn't want. All my equity had gone on the deposit and I had 50% of a financial burden.

 

As soon as I finished uni, I moved home. I tried to delay moving into the house, saying my sister needed me home. I started a new job, and I was trying to think of a way out but somehow it was all too much. I ended up moving in and then my life became totally limited to Narc, again. Gem was dating a much older guy and we fell back into the old pattern of socialising with either just them or Narc´s circle of friends.

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Almost as soon as I started working and earning a wage, Narc quit his job. There were all sorts of reasons and excuses but ultimately, I became solely responsible for paying a mortgage. I had zero excess income, so no financial independence and was pretty much at rock bottom. 

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Then I snapped. It all came down to a set of golf clubs. His sister let it slip that he had bought himself a set of new golf clubs. We had no money, we were in debt, I was the only one working and somehow, he had managed to find the money to buy new golf clubs. 

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We had been having huge fights on and off from when I'd moved into the house. I was feeling more and more trapped and was fighting back but he always made it my fault. The gaslighting and controlling rhetoric had ramped up; I was useless without him, I couldn't cope on my own, the only success I'd ever had was because of his support, I was a pretty lousy person really, I was so cold, a bit thick, I was ungrateful for all his love and attention, I was a flirt, I was a narcissist (oh the irony) and basically unlovable and I should feel endlessly grateful that Narc bothered with me because no one else ever would.

 

From the outside looking in and from my perspective now looking back, it sounds insane that I would fall for it and believe that about myself, but I was 23 years old and I'd known him since I was 16. He had practically raised me and the control he had over me was almost total. But then there were the golf clubs. 

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I was incandescent with rage. I scared myself as I remember the desire to physically hurt him was so great. It frightened me enough that it was the impetus I needed to end it and move out. I went home. Shortly after that, I changed my job and moved to Liverpool. I was still paying my half of the mortgage on the house for about a year. Then I stopped that, and I went and got all my furniture (with the help of a friend and her very burly boyfriend). That was the last time I ever saw Narc.

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Sadly, it was not the last time I ever had to deal with him. I lived in Liverpool for about a year and then moved down to Windsor to be near Floss. My name was still on the mortgage of the house. There were huge arrears and debts because Narc had never paid his share and as the only person with a steady income, the bank was reluctant to let me off the mortgage. In the end I had to borrow money off my dad and hire a lawyer to get my name off the mortgage and pay him off (even though it had been my money invested and my money was about all the bank had ever got) but it was worth it to finally be free. 

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I believe the only reason he let me go in the end was that he had found another supply. A French girl who had moved in with him and was paying the mortgage (also why the bank agreed to let me go too). The only method of control he had still held was the financial one and he took that to the bitter end. He made me hire a lawyer (his own was conned into representing him, I believe they never received a penny from him – testimony to the utter charm and self-confidence of a narcissist) and I had to put myself into financial debt again, but I accepted it as the price for my physical, mental and financial freedom. I was 26.

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The three years between me physically leaving the relationship and the final cutting of financial ties had not been plain sailing. I was an emotional wreck of a person. Floss did her best and with the help of her, Gem and other amazing, supportive, brilliant friends, some who had known me back then but most who did not, I managed to get through it. 

 

My flat mate at the time of the last throes of the legal battle used to sit next to me when I was on the phone (land line because I knew not to ever let him have my mobile number) and she would listen to any conversation I was forced to have with him.  When the verbal abuse started, she would be the one to hang up the phone, because I never could. I was conditioned to listening to it as it was all I´d known for years. 

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Relationships had been a disaster. I was so desperate for real love and affection that I was a needy, emotional nightmare. Most blokes I met naturally ran for the hills. I really fell in love for the first time shortly before leaving Liverpool and had the angst of a brief long-distance relationship.  The distance proved too much but it taught me that I had been right all along. I had never loved Narc, not at all. And despite his accusations to the contrary, I was actually capable of the feeling.

 

There were a few flings here and there with wholly unsuitable men until at the age of 27 I met someone very special. Ben was the lovely, intelligent, handsome, confident and funny friend of a friend. I was smitten and he was enamoured and so we became an item. I credit Ben with a lot of my emotional rehab. He was patient with my insecurities, my wobbles and my desperate desire to love and be loved with no agenda. He was a really, really good man. He gave me back my confidence and there was never one iota of emotionally controlling behaviour. He simply loved me.

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Don´t get me wrong, it was not perfect. Nothing ever is. The issues we both had that we couldn´t talk to each other about meant that we were together only 6 years, but he gave me the confidence to be myself in a relationship, to expect and accept respect, love and kindness. There was no emotional or physical abuse of any sort and he left me a much stronger and happier person than he found me.

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However, it has taken me till now to realise that the damage Narc did to me was far more pervasive than just in an emotional relationship. I have consistently allowed employers to take advantage of me and treat me with less of everything (respect, responsibility, financial remuneration) than I deserve. The pattern of submissive, give everything and expect little in return behaviour that I had has meant that I have always felt let down in the end in my various jobs. It was only after a period of insomnia a few years ago that led me down a path of meditation and mindfulness that has ended with the realisation that this too is a legacy of 10 years of my life with Narc. I was still trying to prove my worth and value to others as a way of really trying to prove it to myself, and as my underlying expectation was that I was not really worthy, of course it was a self-fulfilling prophesy.

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I have finally broken the cycle, though. I have a loving relationship to a wonderful, kind and caring man who is my equal in every way and we treat each other with love and respect. I am mother to two wonderful boys and I run my own successful business.

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On balance, I wouldn’t want to change anything in my past because all of the experiences, challenges and decisions I made have all led to me being the person I am here and now and finally that is good. However, I wish I had known what I lived under and with for so long, so that I might have been able to put a name to it and understand all of the things I experienced living with the Narc.

 

Narcissism is something that is beginning to be recognised more and more for what it is and the fact that you are reading this means you are well on your way to finding your way out of the horrible dark shadow narcissism has cast on your life. No matter who is the Narc in your life, they don't own you. They don't even really know you. Not the real you. Only the “you” they have created due to their warped needs. It is not your fault, and it will be OK. You just have to repeat that to yourself until you believe it.

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I only found out about narcissism and recognised Narc for what he was in my mid 30s when trying to help a friend who was struggling to understand the behaviour of someone in her life. When I realised what he was, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and I have been able to slowly work my way forward knowing that there Was Nothing Wrong With ME.

 

It’s been work and taken time, but you can do it, too. Get support, read up on the subject, don´t expect rehab to be quick, but it is possible to have an amazing life and to use the experiences of surviving this sort of abuse for growing. Make no mistake, you have survived abuse. And living a wonderful and beautiful life going forward is the best gift you can give yourself.''

 

It is not your fault, and it will be OK, Theresa.

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