The Narcissist Breakup

I was young, skinny, beautiful, confident, funny and had a great job. I met him in the cafeteria where I worked. He had a contagious smile that when he looked at you, you could not help but smile back. It was very genuine and comforting. He was wearing dark washed jeans with a half zip-up sweater, the kind you see men modeling in pictures at Kohls. The shoes matched the belt, clean cut shave with sharp lines around his go-t and a shiny bald head. When our eyes met it felt like love at first sight. We went out on our first date and it was he and I ever since.

As time went on there were major red flags, but I ignored them as maybe it was a one time situation, he said he was sorry afterwards, he made me feel guilty as it was my fault he acted that way, and the list goes on. I honestly believed that everything he did to me, I deserved. The way he would explain “his side” of the same story I told it was always my fault. Our relationship went like this for 7 years. Every person in my family had seen and heard how he treated me and the nasty words he would say to me. But there I was doubting my ability to leave and even believed, just like he said, I made things out to be worse than what they really were.

On the 8th year I became pregnant. I instantly felt like I wanted to crawl in a hole and never come out, literally. Once I gathered my feelings and wiped my tears, not knowing how he was going to react, I went to tell him the news. After the words came out of my mouth, he acted like he was excited. He even went as far as to cry and even knell down to my stomach to talk to our future baby. Of course I felt relief! It was extremely comforting that he was on board and I felt like we were finally going to be on the same page in our relationship. It was only the very next day and for the course of the next week where I would feel his wrath of piercing words and yelling me to get an abortion. But as always, once that week was over, he was back to being happy and kept telling me, when I would question him, that he didn’t remember saying those things. It made me feel like I was crazy! That I was making all this stuff up. I knew I was not dreaming and so I started to record our conversations.

Our daughter was born and she couldn’t of been more perfect. She was absolutely gorgeous and perfect in every way. For the first year of her life I stayed home with her. He worked at a warehouse for a local grocery chain for which I filled out an application for him and he ended up getting the job. During our daughters first year I was not allowed to stay in the master bedroom where he slept or was. He had told me his sleep was too important for his job and that he didn’t want to be woken up by me getting in and out of bed to care for our daughter in the middle of the night. So, I had to sleep in the nursery on a twin bed mattress. Whenever our daughter would cry, he would scream and yell at me to get her to stop and that it was my job to do so. He made several comments to me that IF my daughter cried at all during the day or night that I was not being a good mother to her, and he would take her from me. It was absolutely degrading and extremely hurtful. I would cry myself to sleep on that twin mattress on the floor almost every single day of that first year.

In one of the cold winter months I decided I was going to visit my parents. It was a huge fight to just be able to go and take my daughter with me, but he finally agreed as he had to work and could not miss.

The drive was 10+ hours but it’s a beautiful drive through the mountains. I drove as fast and safely as possible with no music and used this time to think. Think about how I wanted to live the rest of my life and my daughter. If you ever have one of these therapeutic drives, this is when you finally get true with yourself and when you make decisions that will affect the rest of your forever.