Dealing with a covert narcissist is not for the faint of heart. I had no idea of what I had gotten myself into. Everything seemed normal for years then I guess he got tired of pretending to be who he was not. He made one mistake though. He had not a clue of how strong I was.
I met him online. I was a member of a group 40 plus and people from all over the world in their 40’s would talk about anything and everything. The girls and I would talk mostly about engines, working outdoors….not much about being girly. That is where he found me.
One morning as I went to check my email there was an email from a kojak@zednet. Thinking it was someone from the newsgroup, I laughed and thought of Telly Savalas saying, “Who loves you baby.” I opened the email and the person was only asking me what my signature of “This is not a dress rehearsal” meant. I could not believe anyone did not know what it meant. When I told him, he said it made him sit back and realize much.
Days went by and I received another email from this person. He, across the puddle, was amazed by what the women here knew about working on vehicles, etc.. He asked if he could stay in contact with me and I agreed. Months went by and things were normal. A year went by and I saw nothing that should have warned me. We talked a lot of family because my roots are from over there. He knew a bit about the Isle of Guernsey. I wanted to go over there to do some family history on my dad’s side. I decided to fly over.
I landed in Manchester. He picked me up. I met Brian the head librarian. He was married to an American. There was so much information. I looked around the city I was in. It was so European like one sees in the movies. I especially loved the open markets. Fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers every day. That was my kind of heaven. I did not care for the way foods were cooked. Everything was cooked in animal lard. I mostly stuck to healthy sandwiches and even those, the bread was slathered in butter. I loved the bistros.
He and I did not do much of anything. I was engrossed in what I had learned at the library and would pour over the paperwork into the wee hours of the morning. Other times we would walk the different cities. I stayed at the Stafford Arms. It was like going back in time. I did love the Turkish baths. The meals I had there were different than I was used to. I do not think he understood how I was, how different we were from each other. I was very direct and he seemed to want to hold back or would say what he thought I wanted to hear.
He said he had grocery shopping to do and would I like to come. We went to a store called Morrisons. I was looking around the deli when he came up to me and said, “You should try this, you will like it.” They had a person handing out samples of something. I put some in my mouth and tried to figure out whether I liked it or not. I then heard a woman say, “It’s brains.” I spit it out on the floor. I could tell he was mortified. He was looking around to see if anyone saw me do it. I didn’t care. I was not eating brains and walked off. Long story short, the company that made the haggis was called Brains. My bad. It gave him a taste of how I was. I cannot tell if he overlooked it or if he was praying I would not do anything like that again.
Another day while walking in Hanley. I was getting tired of all the walking. He asked me if I would like an ice cream. I asked him if they had chocolate. He said we would have to see. He grabbed my hand and directed me across the street. At the stand, I asked the man if he had chocolate ice cream. He said he did. He had a vanilla ice cream and upon passing his ice cream to him, the man said, “You are a very nice man taking your granddaughter out for an ice cream.” The look on his face was priceless. I only laughed.
It was time for me to go back home. I took back a ton of paperwork with me. I thought about him and how he was such a perfect gentleman. I missed the service I got at the Stafford Arms. And the soaker tub. It seems to take less time going home than it did going over. I remember closing my eyes on the way to the UK and when I opened them I swore I saw a mansion. It was true what my dad told me years ago. When it was cloudy I would always complain to my dad that I wanted more sunshine. He would tell me that the sun was always shining but the clouds hid it. I thought he was full of crap but after flying, I remembered thinking of my dad and telling him he was right. How did he know? He had never flown. I am so glad I took in everything my dad taught me. I missed him.
I started this post in February. I had to stop writing because of myself dealing with the issues that I have lived through with this man. I think I will be a work in progress for a while, however I will get there.
I went back a year later. That was when he told me he loved me. We had been talking via email and even over the telephone. I admit I still saw no signs of anything amiss. Down the road we married. He asked me if I would be willing to give the UK a try. I agreed but found out I could not work for 6 months. I noticed he would tell me what I should and should not do. He told me it was his way of protecting me when he was not with me. I did not see anything wrong with it at that time. His family readily accepted me but found out after a while that when they knew I was there to stay, they changed their minds. He used to have his family hit him up for money and they figured that with me there, that would stop.
My first job was at a school. It was being a dinner lady. 2 hours a day. When the school found out that I had been a teachers aide back home I was also called in to be a sub when a teacher was out. I was good with more hours. That is where I met one of my friends, Nicole. We are still in touch to this day. She is my sister from another mother.
As time went on I found him to be a “show” person. For Christmas one year he took me to a huge department store, walked in and said “I’ll take that in small and that in a small”. He was buying me clothes without even asking me if I liked them. He did ask me if I wanted something frilly. I went into the lingerie section and found a white lacy teddie. After putting it on, I pushed open the curtain, posed sexually and asked him if he liked it. He looked at me briefly, then looked around to see if anyone else had seen me. He was more concerned about that instead of telling me how I looked to him. If we were walking down a street in town and I looked in a shop window and said something was pretty, I owned it. I learned quickly to say nothing. The years went by and I would notice a few oddities. We had flown to the states for 2 weeks. I showed him the park where I used to swim in the pool and in the ocean. As my luck would happen he saw my initials dug into a post along with someone else’s. I lied and told him they had to be someone else’s initials. I think he bought it. I showed him all the places where I used to live. He fell in love with the cemetery where my dad and family were buried. He said when his time came, that is where he wanted to have his ashes spread. The 2 weeks went fast and we went back home.
He kept asking me about those initials. I guess I was a lousy liar. I ended up telling him whose initials were carved into that post with mine and that he was my first love and that I was just a child. I mean what was he going to do now. We were thousands of miles from Bobby. It really infuriated him. I found a full time job working at Partners. I didn’t tell him I was working full time because he never wanted me working full time. His reasoning? I may find someone new that would treat me better and he did not want another man looking at me.
One day I was walking to work. I was running late because the dog would not come in so I had to go outdoors to haul her in. She was covered in dirt and then I was so I had to quickly change. I missed the bus so walked rather quickly to town. I had to pee so thought I would stop at the public toilets. I almost got there and a guy jumped out from behind a huge tree. He stood right in front of me. He ripped my headphones off my head and asked me who I was listening to. I told him Bryan Adams. He said he liked him. I only stared at this person that I knew. I was just waiting for him to take the first punch but he didn’t. I did however rip my headphones off of his head and dropped him to his knees on the sidewalk. I told him if I pissed myself, I was coming back to kill him. It was my brother in law, William a woman beater.
I got to work, late. Told my boss what happened. When he got home that night, I told him what had happened that morning. He told me I was lying for William would not do that. Now that pissed me off. That was also about the time that he never believed anything I told him. He was right and I was wrong. That was when I started asking questions without seeming to be nosy.
The people that had known him all his life were somewhat close-lipped. They were all afraid of him. I did talk to some of the boys that he worked with. Billy told me that “No one pisses off the Melv”. I asked him why and he replied that payback was a bitch. My only reply was, “Oh really.” It seemed that he liked to fight. Verbally and physically. From talking to a few more men at his work, he was quick to anger and he always had to be right. He could also dish things out but could not take it. It was also then when I found out just how much he hated his mother. It was then when I also knew he had had a shit life so that was a lot of his problem. I gave him some leeway. For now.
I kept track of all the info I could grab onto. I never let on I knew things. I just watched him. Learning all along. I got so I knew him better than he knew himself. And when he would start barking orders, I would just give him a look and he backed off. There were days when he would come home and anyone could tell he was looking for a fight. A few times he would get down in my face and start his ranting and raving and I would only tell him that if he was looking for a fight, to take it out on the street. He would calm down then. He liked it when others would fight back at him. I wasn’t doing it. It was a stupid thing to do. I also think that is when he started realizing I knew more than he thought I did. Was he worried? I remember one time he said he wanted a divorce. He also told me that one has to wait for a year before the courts would even hear a divorce case and within that year he would make my life a living hell.
I had decided I was going back home. He said he wanted to move back there also. To start fresh. He applied for his visa. It took over a year. Every stinking day all I heard was his moaning. That is when he told me that he had stolen a car when he was a lad. Perhaps that would stop him from moving to the states. I also found out he was into porn. I told him if he thought he was going to be the way he was there, he should cancel his visa app. He said he would not. It was September 10th when we flew to the states for good. The airport had lost our dog. Long story short, we drove through Manhatten while 9/11 was happening. Finally reaching our destination I found a hotel that would take us along with our dog. I stayed there for a week. Within that week I found a vehicle and a house to rent until we bought it. I also found a job. Him not so much.
He did not work for years after we landed. Said his back was bad. I walked to work while he said he would take the car to look for jobs. He did not realize I knew some people here. I found out what he was doing. He was driving around the streets checking out the men and women. With the men, he wanted to know how they acted, how they dressed. The women was another story. So here I was working, doing stuff at home and paying the bills all on my income. He did sell the house in UK but didn’t get much for it because he never did anything to keep it up to code. It did afford us beds and a couch and chair. In 2003 I got sick of his excuses and found him a job. He didn’t know I sent his resume in until a call came for him at the house. He took the job which surprised me. I was the only person who he said no to so I knew he would accept the job if it was offered to him.
I will fast forward a lot. I found him all of the jobs he had here. He quit one. Said the boss hit him with a stick. I went over to where he worked and Todd said that he had a melt down and said how he wasn’t going to work and he just up and quit. The lies were starting in all over again. He started in chatting up women on FB. What he failed to see was that the women he chatted up were my friends. They sent to me what he had sent to them. And yes I let him know. He got off of FB for a few years. I told him I didn’t have a problem with him being on it but he did not need to chat women up. Right.
The last job he had he wanted me to have nothing to do with. He didn’t want me knowing his friends. They thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. Of course they would. He would take my stuff and give it to the women there for gifts. He had them believing that I never fed him nor cleaned the house, etc. He told them so many lies that he couldn’t remember what he had told them in the first place. He told them how I didn’t work. He never told them that my doctors had made me go on disability, only that I was only bringing in a pittance as he would so often tell me. There was one woman there who had slept with all the men except him and he would come home ranting and raving about her and what a slut she was, etc.. He was only upset because none of the women paid him any attention. He was not a ladies man. Hell, he wasn’t even a man’s man. None of the guys ever had him come along with the other men to have a drink at a bar. He was never included yet he would use the excuse that I would raise hell if he did. He had not a clue that I was hoping he would find someone else. He would sideswipe a vehicle and get out and yell at the person for hitting him. Really? He insulted the neighbors, fought with a few. If they asked him if he could do something he would rant and rave, go do what they wanted then come home to finish his ranting and raving. I told him he could have said no.
He only cared with how people viewed him. He had one persona at work, another one for out in the public but at home he was the real deal. He swore he was the bees knee. He would tell me how women would look at him. I would only smile and say, “I bet.” He would friend a woman at work and talk her up at home but when she did not agree with him or show him any attention he would tell me she was a bitch. But he was all about show. He was one that needed his ego stroked. I was not about to do it so he sought it outside the home. We had never had what one would call a normal marriage. I gave up long ago and just bulled into my work. It was only when I was made to retire that I started noticing a lot more.
That was when my friend, Joshua, did a complete background check on him. The stuff I found out really knocked me for a loop. I can see why everyone hated him. The boys where he worked in the UK were so happy he was gone. People used to ask me how I could stand to be married to him. I told them I had given up long ago. I just took care of me, my pets, the house and what I had to do for my life. I never paid any attention to what he was doing. I only hoped he would get caught at something and have them beat the shit out of him. He always seemed to get away with everything. We had gone to counciling once here. Again he was told he was a covert narcissist. He asked me what that meant and when I told him his words were, “I fucking arna going back to that place.” He refused to listen to anyone who could prove he was doing something very wrong.
I still chuckle of how we would talk money. I was the saver, he was not. In all the years he worked in UK making good money, he had only saved up 2000.00. He knew I had a private savings. He asked me how much money I had in it. I always told him probably 2000.00. In a few days, he came home and told me his insurance co pay was 2000.00 and he needed the money and did I have it. I told him no. What he didn’t know is that I had already paid his 600.00 deductible. The look on his face was priceless when I showed him his letter from his insurance showing him his deductible had been paid. I only said, “2000.00 eh?” Then he would come up with something else he would need money for. I just ignored him. Another reason to hate me.
One of his bosses had called me one afternoon. She told me how he told her he was so tired all the time because he had to work 40 hours a week then go home to do the housework, laundry, cooking and the outside work and she thought perhaps he was not well. I just laughed when she told me that. I told her who really did all the work which she had already figured out. The stories he would tell all the different places he had worked. Then when they met me they would just walk off from him when he started in again with the stories. He always had to have something on someone so he could use it against them in case they pissed him off. He even did a background check on me so he could have something to throw in my face, but was pissed because there was nothing. I had never done the crap he had. He had started to try to remember where he worked and for how long. He swore up and down he had worked since being here in the states. I saw the paper. It started with that job I found him in 2003. There was no way he could dig himself out from under all the lies he had told which pissed him off even more.
I have to give him his due. He tried everything on me. He even tried gaslighting me. I saw a therapist on and off and told her I wanted to learn to be like him so I would be one step ahead of him, to know his every move. She told me it was dangerous because I could become like him. And a few times I started down the road but I pulled myself back for a while. In the end I got better at it and that was when he knew he could not try anything with me, that I knew what he was doing, and he gave up. I had defeated him. It did not make me feel any better but I had to do it in order to survive. Imagine going to those lengths just to not get taken advantage of. I admit it took a hell of a toll on my mental health. It also physically drained me between the stress and energy it took to keep at it.
I would not advise anyone to do what I did. Yes I could have walked away but this was my house I got on my credit. He could leave but he had no one who would take him in. None of his so called friends or any woman he might have met. I think that was his sole purpose when he moved here, to find another woman he could pull the wool over her eyes so to speak. I never told him the women here aren’t as trusting as they were back there. So we lived separate lives. He knew better than to come home and tell me lies. We got to the point where we really never talked. If someone sent me an email asking me to ask him for something, I would send him an email. I honestly believe he knew then he had been defeated by that strong and independent woman he fell in love with. And we did love each other in the beginning. I remember times of looking at him and wondering how in hell could he do what he did to me if he loved me. He had always been jealous of me, what I did, who I knew. He hated me because of it. He hated me because of who I had for friends, what I had done for work, how I looked, how men would look at me, how I could just let loose and have fun, how I could be with other people besides him. I opened that world up to him but he could not accept it because of worrying more of how he would look. I just remember the words he said about his mother……….”what a waste of life.”
LexiMe - My journey of faith 