Once upon a time I met a man named Lee. I work in the beauty industry and was having a particularly good day. As I finished with my client, a gentleman approached me and for some reason I liked him immediately. He was polite, charming and his eyes seemed to captivate me.
He left his number with my coworker as if he were too shy to give it to me himself and I found it kind of sweet. It surprised me how he peaked my interest, so quickly and easily. To be honest, he wasn't my type of guy at all. I prefer big, tall muscle bound men. He was short, bald and had a good sized spare tire around his middle.
Nevertheless, I held onto his number for a few days and finally decided, why not? I sent him a message and reminded him who I was. He seemed very happy to hear from me and told me how hard it was to date and meet good people as a single father who worked all the time. From our message exchange, I found out he was a Christian (check), worked in law enforcement (check), had the same political values as me (check), and loved volunteering with kids (hook, line, and sinker).
The first date was perfect. Lee was an absolute gentleman. He was respectful, interested in my life, didn't flinch when I told him about my children and seemed very excited to meet me. At the end, he walked me to my door and without warning walked up and gave me a sweet peck right square on the mouth. Then apologized for being so forward and said that he just couldn't help it.
After that first date, Lee and I were inseparable. He would text me sweet messages, telling me how excited he was to be with me, asked me to be exclusive within a week of our first date and started hinting around at how he wanted a future. My kids also fell for him immediately. Though part of me was screaming slow down, I was on cloud nine.
A few more weeks went by and Lee was making firm future plans. Lee would let little things slip just at the right moment. One morning, I invited him for breakfast. He complemented my cooking, helped with the cleanup and then mentioned how we wouldn't need anything to start a house. As we cuddled on the couch watching a movie, he asked if I would like to spend the rest of my life waking up cuddled beside him. Then, just before I left him dozing, and was headed off to work, he sleepily and quietly said those three little words. My heart sang for joy because I was feeling the same, but was afraid to tell him so soon.
This man was head over heels for me, he called and texted all day long, couldn't be away from me for more than a few hours and just a kiss from him and my knees would buckle beneath me. His kids loved me, and I loved his kids. He loved mine and they loved him. Our houses were kept the same, and we both had an OCD way of folding laundry. We even had the same bedroom furniture with a slight difference in color. We would meet up for a date and without fail our clothes would match.
People who didn't know us thought we were married because they could see how comfortable we were with one another, as if we had always been together. We were the love story of love stories. We gave the whole town hope that it could happen for them. We were soul mates.
I was so entangled in these feelings rushing through me that I didn't realize that I was falling into a trap. Like a wind that suddenly changed directions, so did Lee. The man who couldn't get enough of me or my time vanished into thin air. If I called, he was busy. If we planned dates, he would stand me up with a feeble but believable excuse. He wouldn't return calls until hours later and became calloused. The only time I heard from him or he showed any interest in me was after midnight, when he wanted to schedule a rendezvous.
The standard in our relationship was that he would show up at my work and home uninvited and I could drop by his place anytime, also. That was no longer acceptable and he would act annoyed if I dropped by unexpectedly. He still kept me dangling for several more weeks though, but I started getting wise to the situation.
First, he told me how great a friendship he had established with his ex-wife. Then after she called one day he hung up the phone and called her every obscene name in the book. Imagine my shock, since he was supposed to be a Christian. Then, his beloved mother called and he did the same after she hung up. He mentioned that he was actually quite new to his church and had left his previous church because the pastor there wasn't honest. He explained that his neighbor had lost her kids and when I inquired about how that had happened he condescendingly said that she was a whore.
Lee was also blatantly racist, but not to any ones face. He would smile and have a conversation with a black person and in the next breath, make a joke about how a group of black people were having a tribal meeting. On one occasion, he showered a lady with compliments about her toddler, and then as she sat back down at her table her toddler raced across the room. His response was that the tot was practicing running from the cops. Little remarks like this would always eat at me, but I thought I could show him a different way.
On the rare occasions that I did get a date, Lee would spend the entire date texting on his phone or talking to other people in the restaurant as if I didn't exist. His phone was a top secret device in his mind. I finally scheduled a meeting with him and expressed my concerns about how or relationship had changed. He sat across the table from me and acted disinterested as tears streamed down my face in pursuit of answers. His only response was that he was too old to be fighting all the time, and that he just didn't want to rush things. Then he gave me one of those knee buckling kisses. Up until that point, we had never had a fight or argument, and didn't then, but somehow I walked away feeling like the guilty party for expecting his respect.
My sister asked me where he lived one day, so I drove her by his house where he was supposed to be sleeping. Imagine my surprise when he walked out with a blond who obviously wasn't wearing a bra. I stopped and he raced to the car to tell me that the woman was married, but that her (married) boyfriend had been arrested and she stopped by for advice. Another time he was supposed to be asleep, I was going to leave some fresh fruit hanging on his door as a surprise and he wasn't home. This time his mother had supposedly roused him and asked him to go to another town to pay a bill for her.
He also fell asleep one day and his phone had been steadily going off for 30 minutes. I picked it up to give it to him and there were messages from two different women wishing him sweet dreams and a missed call from another woman altogether who had a very sleazy picture next to her number. I quietly left without a word and within half an hour, he called me concerned. I told him what I saw and his response was that one girl was his cousin. Another was a graphic designer from three states away who was married to his friend and the sleazy looking girl in the photo was a girl that he had been on a date with prior to us. He told her he wasn't interested but she wouldn't get lost and had mental problems, so he saved her number and photo so he would know not to answer.
Then a girl came to my work to warn me about Lee saying that she thought that he was supposed to be dating her best friend. When I questioned him about it, he said that the girl was crazy and they had never dated, but that he felt sorry for her and tried to be her friend. I could go on and on, but to make a long story short, I finally decided that I'd had enough and I dumped him.
Lee was in disbelief the day I dumped him. His immediate response was to call my coworkers before I made it into work and tell them that he had dumped me. Then, he started secretly contacting people at our church and telling them that I was crazy and pushing him too quickly into something that he didn't want. He had suffered a narcissistic injury and was on a rampage.
Over the next week, I met four other girls that he had been spinning lies to and sleeping with during our relationship. Then I found out that Lee left his previous church because he had been caught carrying on sexual relationships with several women there and all while he was married to his previous wife and the preacher kicked him out. Interestingly enough, he told me that her infidelity was the cause of the divorce. Another friend told me that his first marriage ended because he went crazy and to keep that ex quiet, his mother moved her and his children into her home, but he still had to pay her a ton of child support.
Lee had no idea that I had acquired any of that information and a week or so later at church, he suddenly had the overwhelming urge to reconcile our relationship. He approached me and then sent me several messages wanting to meet up and work things out. I finally agreed to meet him and give him a chance to explain, even though I had no intentions of dating him again. To my surprise, he didn't call at the appointed time and then one of my coworkers contacted me and said that she was at a restaurant with her mother and he and a girl that she new were there making out at a table in plain sight. She snapped a few photos of the make out session and I messaged him and told him that I had just seen photos of his exchange with the girl and that I would appreciate it if he wouldn't contact me period. I also found out that he had been seeing this girl for quite some time and that she worked across the street from where I worked.
The request for no contact and the fact that he had just been dumped by six girls in the same week sent him spiralling out of control. He tore through the town trying to demolish my reputation. Then at Church he would feign concern about me and pump people for information about my life. There he was the perfect Christian remorseful that we had broken up on bad terms and I apparently needed saving. He continued contacting one of my coworkers and fed her constant lies.
I finally decided that enough was enough and left my job and the church. That was when my sisters close friend suddenly wanted to get really close to me. She was suddenly very interested in my life and anything that had to do with him and our relationship. Then she mentioned that he had developed an interest in taking her daughter to Church. As it turns out he was sleeping with her to get information about me. I finally had to sever contact with her and everyone else in my life.
At that point, I was completely isolated and felt like I was losing my mind. I cried all day, every day. I prayed obsessively about the situation and asked God to help me forgive him, somehow and help me move on with my life. On the one hand I was so angry that this had happened, and on the other hand I wanted to believe that all of it would just go away. At times, I missed the man or more appropriately the lie and illusion to the point that I could breath, but then I had to remind myself that it was just that...a lie. This went on for months.
I finally began feeling strong again and started letting people back into my life. Word came to me that Lee had left the church after another scandal and also that he had been diagnosed with cancer. For some reason, I felt guilt over both and felt sorry for him. As if somehow I could have handled things differently and he would have been ok. Its strange how you have a love/ hate relationship with a narcissist like that. Instead of being able to make a clear distinction that he is a bad person, you want to believe that the lie you knew was true and if you had just done something, anything different, somehow things would have been alright when the truth is you are not responsible for any of it.
Later, I decided that it was possible after all the other lies that he might not have cancer at all. Then I felt guilt for thinking that. Either way, I was still busy rebuilding and repairing the damage done by my narcissist. The road to recovery has been long and hard. Every time I begin to feel good about my life and the fact that I'm finally getting over it, he reappears.
He began stalking me a few months back. Every time I left my house, he would be where I was giving me these sad pitiful looks as if I had done something wrong. I would spend hours trying to interpret these looks, thinking to myself...maybe he's changed, maybe he's remorseful, and then settling on maybe he's crazy. With that I finally contacted the police when the stalking became a nuisance, my tire was flattened, my car was broken into, and I couldn't leave home at all (ever) without seeing him.
Since then, Lee dropped off the radar again. I've seen him a total of twice in the past two months. Once at a red light, he gave me "the look" again and I was surprised at my lack of emotion at the time. By night fall I spiralled into a major bout of depression that lasted about a week as all the raw emotion came flooding back. Then, I regained my strength and there were no sightings for a few weeks and as normalcy returned to my life, I ran into him at a fun center and because I was chaperoning children I couldn't leave, but thankfully he did.
Once again, I was proud of how well I handled my emotions, but when the night was over the depression set in again and I dropped my kids off with my mother at home. I drove around in the dark crying and screaming for hours. Partly because I knew the girl he was with. She had a reputation in three counties for being easy and was also one of the girls I found out he was cheating with. For a while, I couldn't understand why he was chasing this girl with no morals when he had a good woman who deep down only wanted to love him and for him to love her back. Then I reminded myself that I broke off the relationship and rejected him, not the other way around.
This time the depression lasted several weeks and every minute I had to remind myself that he wasn't a real person and that he was with that girl because she was easy. I was too much of a challenge because I knew what he was and I didn't want Lee back in my life anyway. I've seriously thought about moving from this town, just to escape the memories of the love that never existed, the humiliation that he put me through, the pain that I suffer in secret and his stalking and any and all sightings of him. Then again, if I do that he wins.
A week or two ago, I decided to try dating again. I had never tried online dating, so I went on Match and set up a profile. The site came back with a 100% match for me and wouldn't you know it out of all the people in the world, it was Lee. Not only was he my 100% match, but he had a second profile that was my 98% match, so I deleted my account and scratched that idea, altogether.
The road to recovery is long and painful and definitely much longer than the actual relationship, itself. I keep telling myself that this pain will end and that I am not responsible for Lee's conning ways. Then I relapse and fantasize that he will show up on my doorstep one day repentant of all his sins. In this fantasy, he apologizes and declares that I am the only girl that he wants and we live happily ever after. After awhile reality sets in and the thought of him makes me sick all over again, but either way he is still in my thoughts, everyday. It's a never ending cycle and enough to make a person crazy.
There is never any closure with a narcissist and I think that is half my problem. Breaking up with one is like being a fox in caught in a trap. You feel like you've had to gnaw of a foot to get free. You long for that lost part of yourself. The appendage you've left behind in the trap just to ensure your own survival and then you just limp through life never quite the same. Sometimes its as if that part of yourself is still there, the illusive ghost pains of the lost limb, but then the reality is that its gone.
I trudge forward, dancing around like a puppet for the benefit my children, family friends and other loved ones. Partly because they need me to be strong and partly because I know that they are tired of hearing about it. If I bring it up I see the look that crosses their faces as if I should have forgotten it long ago. They are right, I should have, but its not that easy. I'd give anything to just close the door and never look back, never think or Lee and to regain what he took from me. And I'll keep trying and telling myself that I'm strong until I do reach that victorious day when the nightmare ends and I wake up and once again a whole person.
