(Part 1) I became an addict – What it was like to love a narcissist

2 years ago, I fell in love. Falling is the perfect term to describe my situation because I fell in my worst nightmare, I fell into what I thought was love but what actually happened to be the beginning of my mental destruction. I thought it was love, until I realised it was actually an addiction. An addiction to the person I thought I loved, an addiction that he created, an addiction to a trap that I fell into day after day, making me feel as if I would never manage to get out. So here is my story.

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It was during summer, I was working, and my colleagues were so nice, we had a great group. He arrived two months after all of us. He knew one guy there and it turned out that this guy was my closest friend. I didn’t really notice him at first because I was supposed to leave two weeks later to go to Asia. However, my exchange got cancelled due to the pandemic, so I stayed, and I started getting to know him. He wasn’t my type, I thought he was kind of superficial and not very interesting but he was funny, and my friend told me that he was a great guy so we started spending a lot of time together with the group. I thought we could be good friends. But then something happened, I can’t really explain it but, we started talking a lot, there was this chemistry that I couldn’t explain since we had nothing in common, we were very different people. He asked me out on a date, I think it was the best date I’ve ever had and ironically enough it still is today. The kind of date where you just start talking, 6 hours go by, and you don’t even notice it. I thought: “wow, I think I misjudged him, he’s actually very interesting, very smart and funny”. And here it all began… We started spending a lot of time together, spending almost every night talking until 3 or 4 in the morning, going out on weekends, enjoying summer together, visiting the region, partying, having fun… With him, my heart was filled with joy. I felt happy, the kind of happiness you rarely feel, the kind that takes over your whole body.

Step 1 - Love bombing

At first, I was with the perfect man. He would surprise me, he would tell me all the time that I was pretty, that he’s never felt that way before with anyone else, that I’m the woman of his dreams and that he’s always been looking for a girl like me… Wow, perfect right? It did scare me though, I thought that it was going too fast, I didn’t really know whether I should believe what he was saying or whether I should be careful. It felt a bit too much but, it did feel special with him, so I kept going… Everything was perfect, every behaviour, every sentence, every moment, I felt like the time had stopped and as if we were the only two left on this planet. He was everything I looked for, I did believe that he genuinely was a good person.

And here come the red flags… (little tip: never ever ignore them)

We spent all summer together, but at the end of summer I had to go back to the North of the country, where I was studying. He always knew it; I’ve never hid it from him. At some point I wanted to talk about it, to be open about the situation but he refused. So, I waited, and waited, and waited. Until I confronted him one day because it was time to have this conversation. First red flag: he avoids important conversations.

I went back to where I was studying and here is when it all started… He broke up with me two weeks after my departure telling me that it can’t work out between us, that it was too easy with me and that I gave him everything too fast… Second red flag: blames me for the situation instead of admitting he’s scared. It was a very painful moment for me, but his words were unacceptable, so I blocked him and told myself that if only after two weeks he’s capable of that, I had nothing to do with him. I was still myself; I was still rationale and I regret every day that I did not stick to that particular moment. For four days he tried to contact me and to explain himself, he apologised, said that he missed me a lot and that he panicked because I was being too negative by saying that it’ll never work out. Third red flag: apologises but blames me for his mistakes. I told him that this wasn’t acceptable, so for two weeks he kept apologising and trying to make it up to me, until I took the train back home, saw him, and fell in his arms again… That night I was still distant, and he told me he didn’t like it, that it was not normal to have no chemistry and I tried to explain that it was because I was still hurt by his behaviour, but he wouldn’t understand. Fourth red flag: does not let me take the time to process things, and that I must forgive directly, or he’ll leave me. Then, he realised he was being an idiot, so he apologised and became the perfect man I had met once again. We spent the most perfect week together. I was sure I loved him, so I thought okay he made a mistake, he got scared, his life is difficult right now on a professional level, so okay, I understand, he won’t do it again. Note to myself: already finding him excuses.

Step 2 – Destroying your confidence to control you

I went back to university; he became distant and broke up with me once again. And this is the summary of all our relationship… Whenever I left (or did something for myself), he would break up, and tell me that I was too far, that it was too difficult, that when I leave, he doesn’t love me anymore and that this is not how he sees a relationship. For 6 months he was unemployed and yet he only came twice to see me and kept complaining about long distance and blaming me for it. So, now we’re past the red flags. Due to the huge toxicity concentrated in this one human being, I have decided to portray this in the form of a list (non-exhaustive unfortunately) of his most toxic remarks/behaviours, in order to display the scheme that a narcissist usually uses to entrap his victims. Of course, the many abandonments every time I left, as well as the disregards should be taken into account.

- First, he would always compare me to his ex:

“I hope you are not too nice, because she was too nice, she would let me do everything and I treated her very badly, but she would never say anything to me”. “I think you’re too nice and it scares me, I don’t want you to sacrifice your whole life for me” (foreshadowing), “it’s weird sometimes we don’t have any chemistry, it reminds me of my ex when she wasn’t able to tell me things and I don’t want to be in that kind of relationship again”, “sometimes you’re very shy around people, it’s what my ex used to do I don’t like this”, “stop making stupid voices and acting like a kid, it reminds me of my ex and you shouldn’t be acting like that with your boyfriend.”

- The physical criticisms:

“I don’t like your curly hair; you look much better with straight hair”. He would always compliment me when I had straight hair and never when I had curly hair. He hated the way I dressed “oh I hate your clothes, you could be so much prettier if you wore tighter clothes, why do you keep wearing these large jeans that don’t bring out your pretty body”. He always made fun of me when I wore something he didn’t like and the only time he would compliment me was when I wore very tight clothes and when my hair was straight… And finally close to the end of the relationship (when clearly, I was depressed) he would tell me “I’m not attracted to you anymore… You don’t take care of yourself, you’re always wearing pyjamas and always locked up in the apartment, in a relationship there should always be attraction it’s not normal…” I was depressed, stuck in a city where I didn’t know anyone, just to be with him and I would be at home every day, crying, waiting for him to come back and doing nothing apart from cleaning his apartment, cooking and sleeping. When he told me that he wasn’t attracted to me anymore, I felt so low, so belittled, I felt guilty for being so sad all the time…

- Then, the mental criticisms:

“You are too negative”, “you are overacting”, “you are too dramatic”, “your studies are too difficult”, “you overthink and over-interpret everything”, “I don’t want to be with someone who works in such a serious field, I don’t want to have those kinds of conversations everyday”, “the problem is not that I’m not thoughtful enough, it’s that you are too thoughtful so it makes you have higher expectations”, “you love me too much that’s the real problem”, “you’re putting me at the centre of your life, I don’t like that, I want to be with an independent woman who has her own life”, “you’re too shy, I don’t help shy people. If you think that I’m the type of guy who is going to hold your hand in society I’m not, you have to learn by yourself”, “you’re too independent it scares me, I’m afraid that one day you’ll realise you want something else and just leave”, “you already know how to do everything what am I going to teach you?”, “I’m not sure you’re worth fighting for”, “I don’t love you, I hate you because you’re too far from me”, “I’m tired of hearing that you are unhappy, all you do is complain all the time.”, “stop telling me you’re unhappy it makes me unhappy”, “my friend told me that people who come from poor families tend to have mental issues and become manipulators - maybe that explains your behaviour”, “you have been abandoned by the people who are supposed to love you the most, so you have a fear of abandonment - I’m not the problem, your past is.”

- Finally (and maybe the worst): the financial and sexual toxicity

To keep it simple: I am very poor, he is very rich, but I never expected him to pay more than I did. However, with time, I started paying way more than he did every week, especially when I crossed the country to see him because otherwise, he would break up with me. Whenever I talked to him about it and told him that it was a lot for me to pay for the train, for the groceries and the restaurants, he would say “you can’t blame me for your own choices, you either act because you want it or you don’t” and “every time you do something for me you blame me for it so just stop.”

And now the touchy part: sex

He did two things that were particularly awful. First, when I started taking the pill after being with him for about 6 months, I asked him to make some tests to make sure that he didn’t have any problems (I did them too). He said okay, but ended up taking months to do them and whenever I would ask him, he would either say “I’ll do it”, or get angry at me because I was “pressuring him too much”. Then, throughout the months I started having many urinary infections (TMI, I know sorry…) and I realised one day, because of an awful smell coming from his private parts, that he didn’t wash himself often or at least not very well. I quickly made the link with all the problems I had… So, I explicitly asked him to be more careful, because I was having issues. But he didn’t, he would still have sex with me knowing that he didn’t wash himself. Even worse, sometimes he felt that something was itching him or that it hurt but he still had sex with me without ever thinking about my well-being and how this would affect me. So, after many many infections I started checking and asking him whether he washed himself or not and if he didn’t, I would ask him to, but he refused and blamed me for “killing the mood”. I told him it wasn’t fair, and I was very angry, and I told him that he didn’t think about me and what do you think he said? “You’re once again being too dramatic, you always overreact”. I told him “yeah, it’s like the tests, you took so long to make them” and his response was “I’ve never forced you to have sex with me, you knew I didn’t do the tests so it’s your fault, you can’t blame me for this you simply should have said no”. The worst was that sometimes he apologised after a fight, we would have sex and once he was done, he’d leave without talking to me and when I asked him what happened he’d say, “I just apologised to calm you down but in reality, I don’t think that I did anything wrong”. I think this was the worst feeling of my life… I felt used sexually by the person I loved the most, I felt like I meant nothing, like I was an object and when I shared with him this feeling, he told me that it was my fault, that if I was less hysterical and crazy he wouldn’t have to apologise for something he didn’t do… And I would say okay I’m sorry…

(end of part 1)