Anonymous: Her Narcissistic Husband Almost Destroyed Her Life

I would like to tell my story.  I have been victim shamed by my ex husband’s mistress because she is too ignorant to understand there is far more to our story than the little bit she is fed by the narcissist.  I am not a victim, I am a survivor.  And one day her time will come to be discarded for the next best thing.  And only then will she believe or understand what I have gone through or what he is capable of.

I came from a physically abusive first marriage.  My husband drank excessively.  Spent all of our money on drugs and alcohol.  I was constantly battling to make ends meet and maintain a somewhat healthy household for our 2 children.  Finally I couldn’t hold it together any more and I began not caring as much and accepting the situation for what it was and gave up on my marriage.  We should have never married to begin with.  During this time, I had met a new guy at work.  Funny, witty, responsible, determined, self disciplined….everything my current husband was not.  I found myself instantly drawn to him.  He was everything I had ever wanted.  Same interests as me, made me laugh, put me up on this pedestal and made me feel like a princess.  I had found the one.

I had to end my first marriage that was dead.  I did just that.  But he wasn’t going to go quietly.  I finally kicked him out.  He would drive by my home.  Show up drunk.  Trying to search the house, tipping over couches on me, searching for the new man in my life.  It came to a head when I has asked him to leave one evening, and he did.  But then while drunk, parked his truck down the street, walked through the woods, and was peering in my back door one night.  I had to call the police and file for an  emergency restraining order just to rid myself of the toxicity of him and the relationship.

My new man and I fell hard and fast.  It wasn’t long until he moved in with my 2 children and myself.  (Which looking back now, I realize was a terrible mistake and not fair to my children at all.  They had no time to process all that had happened and that was happening and for that I will forever hold that burden.)  Soon after moving in together, he took it upon himself to find a home for us.  He purchased a duplex, and presented it to me like a prize.  Like he had provided the greatest gift to me. 

Once we all moved in under “his” roof, things quickly changed.  Over the course of time, we had to pickup my daughters during a visit with their father because he was drunk and beating up his current girlfriend while my children hid in terror in the bathroom.  A physical altercation between my ex and current guy took place outside while I was inside getting my children.  My current guy ended up needing ACL repair surgery following the incident.  The bad blood between them would forever flow after that.  My children were no longer allowed to speak their father’s name, bring any gifts or toys home from their fathers house, etc.  He wanted my children’s father to not exist.  This was the beginning of the many rifts that arose between he and I 

While we lived together in “his” house (he made sure to constantly remind us, like we were a charity case), I worked full time and paid half the expenses of the home.  He would go through obsessive phases of things that interested him.  He would try to force me to obsess or comply with his demands to be interested in the same things.  He started training for MMA.  I smoked at the time, so did he.  He quit when he started training.  Insisted that I should do the same.  When I resisted because I wasn’t interested in MMA or quitting smoking at the time, I was met with insults of how gross I was and how disgusted I made him and how he could break up with me over this. Then we found out we were pregnant with our first child together.  We were now outgrowing “his” home and we needed to look for a new home. 

We did end up finding a fixer upper one street over from where we were currently living.  We had explored day care options for our soon to be daughter and had agreed on a provider for her care.  I worked up until the week of my daughter’s birth.  After her birth, we got married on the front porch of our new home in front of friends and family. As the time grew closer for me to return to work, he became uneasy, encouraging me to ask for more time off, and delay my return.  Which I complied.  Until finally I put it off so much I was ultimately terminated. I was now a stay at home mother, completely dependent on him.  Exactly where he wanted me.  He controlled all the finances.  I needed to ask permission for anything.  He wanted to pay the bills and the rest was all on me.

This man who used to make me smile and feel like I was on top of the world had dismantled me into an empty shell, with little heart left.  Still, I tried to gain his approval and appreciation.  He was overly strict and hard on my older children.  To the point that my oldest daughter moved in with her alcoholic father at 14 years old.  I had her father and step mother working the parent alienation angle from their side, and a narcissistic monster pushing her out on my side.  He treated them based on where they came from, not who they were.  They didn’t fit into his profile of perfection.  This caused many many rifts and arguments between us. 

I found out I was pregnant with our son a few days before Thanksgiving 2015.  In January 2016 he started having an affair with a waitress at a local bar.  I will forever blame myself for that.  I begged for adult time, outside of the bedroom.  Date night, somewhere where we didn’t have to be mom and dad.  He always preached that family was everything and we didn’t need time for us.  Other than the bedroom.  His idea of romance was “You missed a spot cleaning the bathroom, now take your pants off.”  I felt like an object.  Not loved.  Not like a wife.  Not like anyone appreciated or of any value.  I told him if that’s the case, he should find a prostitute. So I started fading away.  Begging for date night was out of desperation to find a way to once again connect with the stranger in my bed.  Then he met her.  He played me like a fiddle.  Admitting the affair.  Then when I filed for divorce, strung me along, pulled me back in with the tears, the telling me he didn’t want this.  As soon as I was on board to reconcile, out the door he went with her again.  The more this went on, the more emotionally and verbally abusive he became toward me.  Now, I won’t lie, when I first found out he was actually sleeping with her (at ten o’clock one night because his texts started going off because her husband was on his way to our house because he also found out about the affair), I slapped his face numerous times.  Out of anger, out of betrayal, out of hurt.  I should not have done that, and I do regret it.  I lived a year and a half under his roof in hell in a home that was supposed to be ours. He would eat my home cooked meal, play house in front of the kids, and then run out the door to meet her once his kids were in bed.  Things became heated between my second oldest daughter when she tried to talk to him about what was going on at the age of 11.  He told her he didn’t need the fucking opinion of an 11 year old and shut her down.  Their arguing continued and during another heated exchange, he told my daughter to fuck off.  For these reasons, I will never forgive him.

Every time I tried to take a step forward with the divorce I was met with his resistance.  I had to fight to return to work.  He was resistant and difficult about agreeing to the children going to day care.  I have thousands upon thousands of pages of text messages on my phone just ripping every part of me apart.  I'm a shitty wife, his mistress fucks better than our mediocre sex, she wants to do Spartan races with him, she will shoot guns with him.  She will basically do whatever he wants her to do.  And because I wouldn’t I am a worthless piece of shit.  His harassment got so bad it was affecting my every day activities, including work. I was so desperate to make it stop I ended up visiting a local domestic violence advocate center to receive emergency therapy on how to handle a narcissist.  He’s nothing more than a bully who believes that he is God like and everyone should bow down to him. I learned the coping skill of no contact.  I ONLY engaged in a conversation with him if it was directly relevant to our children.  Other than that, I ignored him.  He didn’t like that.  Nobody ignores him.  After our divorce was final, he almost immediately dragged me back into court, for control issues.  Trying to tell me who I can and can’t bring my children around, and to try and take the kids away from me.  He had no grounds for anything he was demanding.  My attorney could see right through him that this was all an attempt to make me interact with him since I had been so successful in the no contact.  She presented the courts with the last 75 pages of abusive texts from him.  He got nothing of what he was asking for, and the courts made it perfectly clear to him that I am not to be treated that way.

Now my second oldest child has anger issues toward me because of going through 2 divorces.  She has trust and abandonment issues from dad and step dad.  We argue constantly.  And there is a step mom who, any chance she gets, will use the opportunity to befriend my older girls and alienate me.  I am in ongoing therapy with a counselor and psychiatrist.  My daughter is also in counseling.  My younger daughter is now experiencing some social and behavioral and psychological issues which force me to interact with her father.  It is very painful for me.  Because I can see the kind side of him that I once fell in love with and that tears me apart.  But then I will hear him talk about things regarding our daughter and his perception of how everything in his world is perfect, and I am immediately brought back to the reality of who he really is.  He is off again/on again with his mistress, and threw her into our children’s lives a mere 3 days after we explained to our then 4 year old that her mommy and daddy weren’t going to be married or living together anymore.  But because of his Godlike stature, he doesn’t see anything wrong with this.  They have since split up, then get back together, etc.  So this woman is like a yo-yo in my children's lives.  And he doesn’t seem to see an issue with that.  All things I would even discuss with him because knowing the narcissist he is, the effort is futile. 

Over 2 years later, I am finally starting to date again.  Realizing that I have no basis or comparison of what a healthy relationship is supposed to be.  Scared to death of being destroyed again.  But I stand tall.  He may have made sure I was convinced that I wasn’t perfect and that I am a terrible person.  But thanks to Beautiful Disaster, I can proudly advertise just who I am.  I am Perfectly Imperfect.  I am a Beautiful Disaster who is Flawsome.  And the Wounded Hearts to beat the loudest.  We are the strong.  We are the ones with so much love to give.

Thank you.