Narcissists, Sex, & the No-Preference World

I absolutely love this especially your words of encouragement at the end.

My experience with, we’ll call him Leroy, is spot on with most of what you’ve said but there are a few differences. In my mind, I get how these differences fit in but I’m curious if it’s at all common with these fake people.

Leroy is very sexual, and like the rest of you, sex was the only real connection we had. I remember thinking and even asking him about it early into our 11 month fiasco. I somehow recognized that sex was his way of connecting with me. The reason that I figured it was for my benefit only is because the sex was marathon sex but he never climaxed. To me that was almost an insult and it made me question what was wrong with me as a woman.

However, Leroy wasn’t a normal person when I met him. He’s an ex con, heroin addict, and a bully who has friends that are probably wanted by the FBI or something. He was molested when he was little and has an extremely toxic relationship with every single member of his family. He pulled me into this fucked up world with his sad stories. I felt bad for him and I wanted for him to experience real love and I was bound and determined to be the one to show him.

Leroy was with his main chick for 19 years but he married me barely 6 months into our afair. Literally the day after we eloped, everything began to fall apart. I divorced him after only 3 months. However, he still managed to hook me back only weeks later.

Leroy is also abusive physically. There is little worse than having the man you adore cough up a lougie and spit in your face all the while teling you the horrible things that your gut already knew, only to go home and look at yourself in the mirror and try to understand how you can continue to allow it to happen? Like it’s just a normal thing someone who loves you does to you. I’m still struggling to look myself and others in the eyes because of my choices.

I have spent the entire day reading through your blog just soaking up all the information that is offered. For the first time in forever I can honestly say that I know it’s not entirely my fault. The guilt I’ve been carrying around because of that single thought has weakened me almost as much as Leroy did. Thankfully I am free of those feelings at last and because of that freedom I’m finally starting to put my life back together.

Knowledge is absolutely power! Knowing the truth but never being proven wrong or right is a mindfuck in itself. The strength I’ve drawn from yours and other women’s experiences is empowering and I want to do what I can to keep anyone else from experiencing this life altering heartache, upset, and fear.

So I’m putting on my big girl panties and I’m going to get my life back. I will take all the lessons I can from this experience and do whatever I possibly can to help someone else avoid that hurt.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I know you have helped many people come to grips with their situation and shown them it is capable of escaping the life of loving a narcissist. I would totally take your counciling but Leroy left me broke and scrambling to get things back in order. At least I’m armed with the information that I learned today and I’m confident with my No Contact plan. So thank you abd God bless…

Boy…..where to start? I just finished “When Love is a Lie” which brought me to this website. I am a 57 yr old woman, married 19 yrs to a sociopath. I have two boys. I got married later in life, at age 37, you think I would know better? But you just don’t know evil no matter how old you are. So many red flags, so many life issues kept the playing field uneven. I was constantly coming “up for air” only to have him drag me back under.

Very long sad story short? I just thought he was an immature spoiled brat in an adults body. I kept making excuses, enabling him because I didn’t hold him accountable for his actions. His mother died when he was 11 yrs old. Dad and mom were both alcoholics. His dad had a nervous breakdown after she died and he moved from neighbor to neighbor. His sad sob story I bought hook line and sinker. They prey on sympathetic individuals. Turns out he became an alcoholic too. I went to AA meetings, Al-anon meetings, got a sponsor, found the group Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families….searching for answers to all his “issues”. I was doing all the work, expending all the energy…. Never in my wildest dreams would I have come up with him being a sociopath. I didn’t even know what that was. I was nothing but parenting a grown man. Our marriage ceased to be anything but functioning day to day as sad as that sounds.

Only after finally breaking through his dysfunction and addressing the possibility that he was having affairs and homosexual ones at that…did I finally see the man hind the mask. After I accused him of being gay, he started crying and said “I didn’t ask to be this way”. You can imagine my reaction. Completely dumbfounded. All the years of lies, staying out all night, last minute business trips, emotional abuse, physically and emotionally not being available to me and the kids….my world cracked. After this big reveal? He acted like nothing transpired. Like I would just “get over it” like he told me millions of times before. I told him I was going to divorce him. He coldly replied, “you aren’t going anywhere…I need you and you need me.” He seriously expected us to live together as if nothing had changed. I had been living in the guest bedroom for two years already….and he was just fine with that.

A few days later I was folding the laundry on my son’s bedroom floor. I was sobbing in pain at the prospect that quite possibly he never loved ME. He walked by the doorway and stopped and looked at me crying. I looked up at him and with tears streaming down my face, I asked him “Did you ever even love me?” His reply gave me the creeps….he looked down on me then crouched down to look in my eyes and said, “I have never been more attracted to you then I am right now.” I was literally broken in half and he showed me no compassion. No love. Just a very cold statement that allowed me to see how indifferent he was to my pain.
That night I googled someone without a conscience. All my questions over the years were answered that night.

I filed for divorce in September of 2014. The day after our 17th wedding anniversary. The divorce wasn’t final until August 2016. I lived with him through the divorce. Unbeknownst to me, he had a tracker on my car, the housephone and my cell phone were being tapped and he had hidden cameras in the house. He was covertly trying to stay ahead of my every move. Upon him revealing conversations he knew about that he shouldn’t know, and dropping hints that he knew my actions solidified the very evil entity that he had become.

I moved out of the house I made a home for 17 years, with my two boys! I am the winner because he has no idea the value of our two beautiful and wonderful boys. We have joint custody, but I am the primary custodial parent. I thank God every day for sparing my boys. I found 2 bedroom condo on the fourth floor of a secured four story building. I highly suggest if you are able, to get yourself somewhere safe where going no contact is vital. He can’t just show up at my door. I feel very safe, very content and I sleep like a baby!

There is just too much to reveal, but most importantly, I have gotten my boys to a really good place physically and emotionally, and I am slowly getting “me” back. Do not underestimate “post traumatic stress disorder”. It is very real. It is very frightening. But you must take the time to nurture yourself after being emotionally traumatized. I fortunately was able to take time off and get myself to a much better place. I am glad. I am happier than I have been in a very long time. I am smiling more. I have found joy in the little day to day things again.

Please know it DOES get better. Time does heal all things. I found it easy to visualize cutting an emotional umbilical cord to my ex. I visualized him drifting away from me after I cut it. For the first time I felt like I could breathe again. As horrible as this sounds, his alcoholism has gotten worse. I wouldn’t wish ill on anyone in this world except him. When the devil comes to get him I will feel vindicated.

Hi everyone. I have only just come across this website and what I’ve been reading about narcissistic personality disorder has made my jaw drop in recognition. I wish I had understood this ‘condition’ before as I’ve always questioned MYSELF for the problems in my relationship with my ex partner and have lost a lot of self esteem from what I’ve gone through over the last 2 years.

I discovered that he was cheating on me just 3 weeks ago with an ex of his (from 3 years ago). We’d just had a fabulous, relaxed weekend together where he was being very affectionate towards me, holding my hand, etc, and lots of physical closeness and fantastic sex. Then 3 days later, he invites this woman to his place for sex. I’ve suspected for quite a while that he has been playing the field, but this was the first real proof that I had. I drove over to his place unannounced and was listening at his door and heard everything (including their long sex session)! I’m not proud of doing that but this is what they drive you to do with their constant deceit. I’m glad that I did because now I know for sure exactly what he is capable of. No doubt there have been many others before this one. I felt absolutely gutted as you can imagine and also quite disgusted that she would sleep with him, knowing that he was in a relationship with me. Though I imagine he was very persuasive and told her otherwise. Narcissists lie about almost EVERYTHING! I also believe that he is probably capable of doing this with men too.

The thing is that they make you question yourself – ‘Why wasn’t I good enough?’, ‘Why would he do that when we just spent a fantastic weekend together?’, ‘What did I do wrong?’- it almost drives you crazy trying to figure it out. But it’s not about YOU, it’s about THEM and their constant need for approval and feeling desired by as many people as possible. They will take it from wherever they can get it. Narcissists are takers not givers and it’s impossible to change them because they are ‘happy’ as they are.

It’s so true that narcissists are charming and the highs with them (and the sex!) can be the best you’ve ever experienced. But, in the end, it’s all about them and manipulating you for their own needs. My ex will never realize that his behaviour is unacceptable because narcissists have absolutely zero empathy. Yes, they can feign empathy but it’s only to get what they want from you. They tend to be very intelligent and manipulative and know how to play on your weaknesses.

Another thing to watch out for is, because of their addictive personalities, they tend to overuse social media a lot! My ex was never off Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc, and I knew he was being secretive because he was always checking his mobile phone, putting it on silent when he was with me and sending sneaky messages early of a morning and late at night – clearly not something he would be doing with his male friends. He would carry his phone everywhere with him, even into the bathroom, and it was placed face down at all times. Of course, if I ever asked him who he was messaging at such times (which I rarely did) he would react very angrily and make out that I was being too ‘needy’. When you get attacked verbally like that, you stop asking questions. That’s why they turn it round on you. Social media has made it so easy for people to cheat these days and you can be sure that a narcissist will take full advantage of this! He would even sit across the table from me at breakfast looking at semi-pornographic photos of women on Instagram and would often make sexual comments about other women or flirt with them while we were out together. This is done to undermine your self confidence and exercise control over you. Quite sad really! I also saw in his internet history that he had been on a dating site and when I asked him about it, he first denied it and then when I pursued it he said it was just out of ‘curiosity’. Haha, yeh right! He also used to masturbate (a lot!) Sometimes so much that he had nothing left when he was with me. There’s no greater love than a narcissist’s love for themself!

Like so many people who have commented here, I thought that if I made fewer ‘demands’ of him and sacrificed my own needs, that he would somehow realize the error of his ways and start appreciating what he had with our relationship. Of course, I now know that will never happen. When I confronted him about having sex with that woman, he never said a single word to me for 3 weeks (quite heartbreaking after being together for 2 years). He then sent me an email saying that he ‘missed me’ and when I said that I knew exactly what he had done, he denied it completely and said that I had ‘issues’. How low can you go! So, I know he has no feelings of guilt or wrong-doing and will have already moved on with this woman – his next ‘victim’. At least I can feel slightly comforted that he will eventually do the same to her and it was nothing that I did wrong. I have a chance to get better and live a great life, when he will always have to scheme and lie to get his next fix.

I’ve now gone completely No Contact with him as I can’t put myself through the pain anymore of being picked up and then dropped suddenly by him for no apparent reason (he’s split up with me, completely out of the blue, at least 6 times in the last 2 years). I’m emotionally exhausted and feel like I have completely lost myself! It won’t be easy, because I loved him dearly and gave him absolutely everything I could. But, clearly, it wasn’t enough and never would be! Narcissists get bored very easily and constantly need excitement in their life. The pursuit of other women is one of the easiest ways to get this stimulation that they crave. He is completely incapable of being faithful to anyone.

Despite everything, I haven’t given up hope and in time will feel ready for a relationship with someone who treats me with love, honesty, kindness and respect. We all deserve that, don’t we…

Thank you so much Zari for this wonderful website which has been an incredible source of support for me during a really low time. Also to everyone who has been so frank and shared their experiences on here. These narcissists create so much sadness and hurt with everyone they touch. It’s terrible and tragic.