Spare yourself and leave a narc ASAP

by Domo
(Davenport, FL, USA)

My story starts like this...

I have known this incredibly beautiful woman from work for about 8 years, a few years ago she told me about discovering her husband having a second life with a mistress...

I gave her sound advice about couple therapy and to save her marriage of 22+ years; she said it wasn't worth it and gave me her number so we can talk about it sometime but I did not take the bait since I was in a relationship.

Two years go by and she started to pursue me again out of the blue, I asked her about her situation and she told me that even giving 110% things didn't work out. Since I was single now we had one lunch during work and talked - this is where the red flags started but I did not even see it coming:

Red Flag #1 - She was still married but "separated" for 3 years and had an ex boyfriend of 2.5 years (guess that's giving 110% as she said before?).

Red Flag #2 - Her husband was physically abusive, her ex BF was verbally abusive and she was always the victim. Even though she claimed not to be an angel she never admitted to any wrong doing of her own.

Red Flag #3 - She told me she stayed with her ex BF even when he was abusive because he was "convenient" and loved sex, but she caught him cheating so she left him for good.

After that lunch she invited herself to my place 2 days after, at home she put on a summer dress with nothing underneath because she wanted to show me what I was missing (her words), we ended up in bed that day and the relationship turned into a sex marathon for weeks... we never dated, just her coming over on her or my days off.

During those weeks she met my friends and close family that lived nearby. On the 3rd week she professed her love for me, on the 4th she said she was in love, on the 5th she told me that I should find someone else and I deserved better... hmm so obviously I asked her to talk to me about why, she told me her husband would beat her whenever he would argue with his mistress and she couldn't take it anymore and was going to leave everything, leave the state since she had nowhere else to go.

I have always been very empathetic since childhood, I always want to fix everything and even though everything in me told me there is something "off" about this I still offered my home and 2nd car and 2 days later she moved in with her daughter.

This is the time my gut feeling went haywire, that short time she lived with me I admit it felt amazing having this bombshell living with me and I also became very attached to her daughter. She cooked, she cleaned, she did everything for me and the sex was every single day and on every chance we had.

Why the gut feeling? Well because she never cut contact with her ex BF (they texted each other every day) and later I found out she was still seeing her husband (non-daughter related). She would always complain about how awful her BF and husband were and how bad she had it before - this happened every day so I started to feel like a rebound.

One day she called me as I was away buying a few things, she was frantic and could barely speak because she was just threatened by her BF that he would send revealing pics of their affair to her husband because she has been spreading the word on how good I was in bed to mutual friends (triangulation tactics).

I confronted her BF and after us arguing like little kids we finally started talking and then I knew how she left him 2 weeks before she started to see me, how she confessed to him that she still slept with her husband while she was seeing him the entire time (he even asked me if I noticed marks on her body which I did, this is how he found out about her having sex with her husband) and how he was played the entire time and this wasn't his first time someone called out of the blue, she had a 7 year affair before him!

I couldn't deal with the drama, I asked her to leave. She assured me that she wanted to stay together and understood things moved too fast but then her mask came right off. I only saw her some Fridays... she would disappear almost every weekend night (excuses like had plans with her daughter, falling asleep, accusing me of pushing her away, etc...).

I was done.

I broke it off completely and after a few days she started to hoover me back in and it worked. We would see each other on some Fridays and she would even text me by mistake when it was meant for her husband or "someone else", even sent me a romantic bday card by mistake meant for her husband. I did confront her about it and she blamed me for not telling her sooner how I felt and I should "fight" for her love.

After she secured her new supply she dumped me... afterwards I did some digging and found out she was still seeing her husband, went back to her BF and also met someone new. So you see, my ordeal was about 6 months and my heart goes out to everyone who has spent years in this roller coaster!

I share my story so others can see that it doesn't even take years, it can take weeks or months just to get hooked into these situations.

Please be truthful to yourself and open your eyes if you think you are with a narcissist, everyone has an expiration date with no exception. Work on yourself and absolutely NO CONTACT otherwise you will remain in confusion, regret and despair.

Journal, research about narcissism and about recovery. Use these sites to help you understand, being played makes you feel like you died inside. It's been about 3 months NC for me and I still deal with this every day BUT I am feeling better, save yourself from further pain and move on ASAP. There is no other way, thank you so much for reading my story.