For 18 months Narc and me went on occasional dates and afterwards made love. We grew increasingly emotionally close and on Valentine’s Day 2010 he surprised me by turning up unannounced with a bouquet of flowers. He’d shown his true feelings and I realised that I, too, had similar feelings for him.
We deepened and cemented the relationship by going on a foreign holiday: being together 24/7 changed everything. He behaved exactly as a man does when he is falling in love. He was so romantic, so attentive, so emotionally engaged with me, caring deeply to make me happy in every way he could. He gazed into my eyes lovingly. We bared our souls. It was VERY intense, powerful, emotionally arousing, very exciting to feel us falling in love.
After the holiday, I told him I loved him. He said he still wasn’t quite recovered from the trauma of his last LT relationship. He wasn’t ready to get too committed. He respected, admired, and liked me. He was in for the long haul with me. So I stuck by him, waiting for him to catch up with where I was.
I was patient, undemanding, just loved him – that is the only way to induce a man to love you, isn’t it? Says so in all those How-To-Win-Him e-books!
I felt secure when he booked another holiday, six months in advance, and twice as long as the first. Apart from his not saying “I love you”, we became like any other LT couple and he opened up and shared everything with me, involved me in his projects, shared all his troubles and thoughts with me. We’d see each other twice a week, exchanged over 1, 000 emails and chatted on the phone. He was always nice, kind, reliable, punctual, polite.
What made me unhappy was that he wanted to have sex with other women.
I’ve had dozens of lovers but, although 50, he’d had few. He'd just escaped from an unhappy, 20-year relationship and said he needed to experience sex with a few more women just to “get it out of his system” before committing himself 100% to someone again. I desperately wanted to be that “someone”.
The idea made me feel sick with jealously, but I loved him so much, if this is what it took to win his love, trust, gratitude and his long term commitment to me, then I would have to go along with it. This was the man with whom I expected to spend the rest of my life. If he needed to get this silly thing out of his system then so be it, I would show myself to be reasonable, compassionate, and totally committed to sticking by him till he was ready to make the total commitment that I felt sure was on the horizon.
We agreed a set of rules: if he did ever get the opportunity to bed a woman, he must not lie to her, nor to me, and he must tell her in advance that it can only be a one-night stand because he had a long term girlfriend. He readily agreed to these rules.
Then one day it slipped out that he was seeing another woman twice a week! I was distraught with shock and jealousy and we had an emotionally-fraught discussion. The friendship had started a few months back, before our relationship was this deep, and we were just casually dating, so I had to forgive him because he didn't know at the time how things were going to pan out with me. He wasn't in love with her, in fact she told him she was advertising on internet dating sites to find a boyfriend, and had a date coming up that week.
Of course my kneejerk reaction was to demand he stop seeing her, but he gave me a very long and persuasive explanation. She was a former battered wife, she was ugly, fat, unintelligent, unemployed, hopeless, clumsy, talentless, weak, dependent and penniless. She'd had a terrible, hard life and he felt desperately sorry for her. He did odd DIY jobs for her because she was so helpless and hopeless, and in return she'd cook him a meal. The only reason he had sex with her was that SHE wanted and needed it to bolster her self esteem. He didn't enjoy it, she was dull and he wasn't that attracted to her. But it would be a devastating blow to her self confidence if he were to withdraw the physical closeness now, she'd feel even more unattractive and depressed. He engaged my pity circuits just as he had when he wanted my pity for his own hard life. He pointed out that I had every advantage in life that she did not have: looks, education, a career, money, my own home, confidence, capability, independence. He finished his impassioned speech by assuring me that as soon as she found a proper boyfriend, he’d stop having sex with her, and that would not be long because on internet dating there are 100 men for every woman.
He repeatedly emphasised that seeing her made no difference to our relationship. It did not take time away from us, and it did not diminish what he felt for me. It was no threat to us whatsoever. There was no way he was ever going to leave me for her, so what was my problem? It was hard to find an answer to this, just saying "Well I am jealous" sounded rather pathetic in the face of the mountain of reasons and justifications he brought forth to support his continuing relationship with her, most of which were concern for her welfare. He also invoked some emotional blackmail (though I did not recognise it as such at the time) by asking me whether, as a feminist, I really wanted him to inflict pain and hurt on the Other Woman, when I had every advantage in life and she had none. He made me feel selfish, spoiled and almost guilty for everything I have that she lacks, both materially and personally.
I loved him so very much, if this it what it took to keep him, I’d just have to tolerate it. I backed down rather than lose him, and besides which, it really was only a temporary situation. We came to an agreement: no more lies, no more secrets. I would tolerate his seeing her, so long as he did not take this to mean that he had free licence to start up with other women. Don''t be ridiculous, he said, and asked rhetorically - where would I find the time or energy to carry on with three women, anyway? He then reminded me of the list of unfinished tasks that he had stacked up, and how very busy and tiring his life was already and was almost laughing at me for suggesting that he could attempt to shoe-horn yet another woman into it.
About two weeks after we made that agreement, he started seeing another woman in secret. By the time I found out they’d been emailing daily for weeks and had met six times, and he had repeatedly lied to both of us. He told her he was unattached. After making love to me one afternoon, he had even told me a downright pre-planned bare-faced lie in order to get me out of his house quickly because he had invited her round for dinner (and, he hoped, sex). Yes, sex: he tried to seduce her not three hours after he'd been making love with me in that same place.
By the time I found out, she was already hooked on him and on the brink of falling in love. He had made persistent sexual advances to her, but they had not yet had sex was because she demanded both long term commitment and absolute fidelity.
When I found out, on my insistence, he finally told her about me. He played down our relationship and told her another pack of lies. He said that he only saw me once a month or less. In fact in the four weeks leading up to his first date with her we had met 17 times, sent over 100 emails, spoken on the phone and had sex at least ten times. He also told her that his understanding was that it was an open relationship in which he was free to see other women - the exact opposite of the agreement he and I had reached. He also told her that I was "overemotional" (meaning that I was in love with him) and "too demanding".
That last phrase was blatantly contradictory. How can a woman who doesn't mind her fella sleeping around with other women be described as "too demanding"? It was also ironic because the only woman who was making demands on him was this new one, by demanding that he promise her absolute faithfulness and fidelity before she would even sleep with him.
Her reaction to hearing he had a girlfriend (he only told her about me) was to dump him. Then a day later she relented and said that she would date him again but only once he had broken up with me. She would wait for him for six months. He then told me that he was going to dump me in six months time in order to be with her on her terms - i.e. no messing with other women.
The most painful part of this entire story is that, having refused categorically to be faithful to me, he agreed to be faithful to her. After refusing to stop seeing the Other Woman just to please me, he decided to end it with me just to please this new girlfriend. And most insulting of all, he decided to dump me in order to be faithful to her before he had even slept with her. I said, but what if things don't work out with her, you will have lost me for nothing, He just shrugged and said that is a risk he was happy to take. I felt this insult like a punch to the stomach. After I had given him all my love, offered him my very life, shown so much understanding, compassion, been so generous letting him carry on with other women, he repaid me by making it perfectly clear that he had no feelings for me whatever and that if he lost me forever he literally could not care less.
As if all this isn't bad enough, he repeatedly told me that what he really liked about her was that she was so "undemanding" and "easy going", which I ought to be because I am so "demanding" and "overemotional." This is of course crazy-making talk because in reality it was the other way round: SHE was the one who demanded fidelity, not me. She was the one who would not have sex with him for several months until he gave her a long term love commitment. To any sane person, she was the demanding one and I was the one who was so easy-going that he treated me like a doormat. And I let him. I might as well have had the words "Wipe Feet Here" tattooed on my forehead.
This sequence of events still pains me to my very core. I can never, ever forget what he did, or forgive him for being so blatantly cruel to me.
How and why I tolerated this series of insults, for that is what they were, I simply do not know. All I can say is, I was hopelessly, passionately and maybe even obsessively in love with him, and it has been seen time and again that a woman that deeply in love will often put up with physical, emotional and psychological abuse and even though she hates it, she feels unable to walk away. That is a failing in feminine psychology, this deep attachment that makes some of us sometimes feel we will die if we don't have this man in our lives.
Instead of telling him to sling his hook, I was so pathetically grateful for having a six-month "stay of execution" that I agreed to carry on providing sex, love, adoration, help, support, until he was ready to dump me for her. That was the most painful six months of my life. At first I was relieved, half a year more of him seemed wonderful compared with losing him immediately, which may well have happened. But, as the weeks passed and that six months turned into four, then three, then two, I slipped imperceptibly into a nervous breakdown. By the fifth month I could bear it no longer. I was a nervous wreck, I was so clinically depressed my doctor put me on medication. I was sobbing convulsively every day, overeating, unable to work, unable to think, and phoning the Samaritans daily. And yet as soon as I hung up after the allotted hour, I had to ring back again because my heart was still full to the brim of utter misery and despair. I used to phone a different branch each time because I was so ashamed of my neediness and taking up more than my fair share of their precious resources. I also phoned my best friend sometimes for three or four hours at a time. I was a burden on everyone and was sinking so much chocolate that I was gaining weight by the week. I suffered the most heart-wrenching turmoil, swinging wildly between feeling that I wanted to hold on to him till the bitter end and, conversely, wanting to pre-empt the inevitable and gaining a bit of my own life back by telling him it was over.
And all through this all he did was talk incessantly about himself and how hard-done-by he was by the entire world, how he did not get enough attention, recognition, praise or encouragement; how his employer treated him as though he were the same as anyone else when, clearly, he was Special. His friends were all stupid and unhelpful and unsupportive; he had too much to do and nobody to help him. The grass needed cutting, the water bill had come in... he subjected me to this "Poor Me Monologue" every time we met. My job was to sit and play Nodding Dog and the only sounds he wanted out of me were "Poor you, oh that must be awful for you" and "oh you are so wonderful, so talented, so handsome, so brilliant' repeated ad infinitum. And yet all the time knowing that he considered me too demanding, too emotional, and of less importance than a pair of worn-out slippers he would be discarding in the bin as soon as the new pair arrived.
How I tolerated being humiliated in this way, I just dont know. In the end I did end it, five months into the six. But even then I lied because I still could not tell him to his face that he had done anything wrong or how much he was hurting me. I told him we should split up because when he presented himself to her at the end of six months, she would not take him seriously if, when asked, he told her he'd only finished with me the day before. She'd need it to be at least a month, I said.
Even after all he'd done to hurt, insult, exploit and abuse me, I was still utterly devastated by the relationship ending. I could barely function. I lay in bed sobbing all morning, utterly distraught. Again I was on the phone to friends, to the Samaritans, to anyone who would listen. They all thought I was well shot of a man who was clearly a selfish, narcissistic woman-abuser. How could I, as a feminist, for goodness sake, be in love with such a man? I felt SO ashamed, so bitterly ashamed. I could not think, could not work, could not function properly. I did not want to do Christmas at all, I could not be bothered with presents or cards. By the end of December I began to feel suicidal.
