My Story
TLDR: This is a personal story describing how a narcissist inflicts emotional and financial damage upon their victim. I, the victim, was involved with the narcissist (the N) for 5 years, 3 of which being married to him, when he left me. After he was done with using me to help him get through his Physician Assistant school, he discarded me and threatened to take everything that I had. Having no morals, he committed bigamy while trying to strong-arm me into giving him a sustainable amount of money to divorce him. Fortunately, after a 2-year-long tumultuous divorce, I was able to restore my peace and my freedom and get away from him. I’m hoping that by sharing my story, I can help shed a light on narcissism and help other victims cope if they find themselves in similar situations.
The whole ordeal started on a chilly afternoon in the winter of 2012 when I took my adopted mom to her ophthalmologist’s office. It seemed to be just a normal, typical day, but little did I know that day would change my life forever. That was the day that I met him. He was working there in that office as a Medical Assistant.
The Golden Period
I thought I found the love of my life. Everything seemed to be great and perfect. He was charming and attentive. His family was loving and kind. I left my home country when I was a teenager to have a better life for myself, so I was hungry for love. At 26, I fell into his arms hard and fast, with not much reservation. There were red flags, of course, but I was so blindly in love that I ignored every single one of them.
I got married to him in 2015. Right after that, he started attending his Physician Assistant school in Mississippi. I already had my Master degree and a stable job, so naturally I took on the responsibilities of paying for all the bills, honeymoons, exotic vacations, putting down payment on a house, etc. We were building a life together, or so I thought.
The Devaluation and Discard
Immediately right after the N graduated and landed a well-paying job through my own professional connections, his real colors came through. He didn’t need me any more to pay his bills. He was also getting frustrated with me because I started asking him to contribute to the households, you know, be a team player of the marriage, bear his own weight. To my dismay, he proceeded to discard me in the most inhumane way possible, with almost no warnings. I was treated like a piece of garbage that needed to be thrown out. The mask failed, he’s done with pretending and he is now showing his true colors.
When I was in shock trying to figure out what happened, I saw a smirk of satisfaction flashed across his face. I also saw a dead, cold stare from the eyes of a calculating creature who claimed to be my husband but evidently was just using me as an object, no more, no less. I found out later that those signs, with other red flags that I would explain, were the tell-tales of a narcissist. I realized that whatever he did, it was always because what he could get something out of it, be it attention, money, or advancement in life. With a distinct lack of emotional empathy, once he finishes putting on a show and getting what he wants, he’s done and simply does not care.
The Half-Truths
In July 2018, the N told me he had an 8-years-old child in Cambodia who was out of wed-lock that he needed to tend to. He told me that before he met me, he was in Cambodia and had a girlfriend there but they broke up. His ex-girlfriend after all these years just happened to contact him right after he finished with PA school, a month to be exact, and told him about their child that he didn’t know he had. This same ex-girlfriend evidently told him about this child a few years before but he didn’t get any confirmation that a child actually existed then, but somehow he was convinced that the child existed now. Oddly, I was also told that the same ex-girlfriend was married now and living with her husband in California, so the N needed to go to California to talk to them to figure things out about “his daughter”. This couple in California was supposed to be “very rich”, in the N’s own words. They had multiple houses in the Bay Area, and “money is not a problem” with them. He was saying that this couple did not mind giving him money and access to one of their houses in California for “taking care of his daughter”.
At this point I had so many questions that needed to be answered. Was there a child? Was this child really his daughter? Why did the child’s mom decide to contact him out of the blue and at the perfect time when the N wasn’t occupied with school anymore? What did this couple in California want? Of course the N didn’t seem to care about providing the answers to these questions to me. He already made up his mind and tell me that he would go to California and live with his daughter, despite the aforementioned uncertainties. But what about me, his supposedly wife? Why didn’t he think much about me when he planned on moving to California?
As for my part, I wanted to go with him to California because I would like to know about what would happen to this child and what my role would be. Of course, he refused for me to even be involved in any way, shape or form. He told me I wasn’t supposed to be a part of this. Then, out of no where on top of this bizarre story, in the same conversation, he told me I would be a bad mother?! (I don’t have any children yet myself), and he needed a break from me. Somehow his problem with having an out-of-wed-lock child turned into my problem of being a bad mother in his mind.
I never saw him again until a few months later after this horrible conversation and the discard that revealed how he was totally devoid of empathy. The best decision that I did after he left me was putting myself into therapy. After I figured out that he was a narcissist with my therapist’s help, I filed for divorce almost intermediately. He kept on with lying and twisting the story by withholding certain details so that he could manipulate the situation and the people involved in it. Little did he know that I was determined to find the whole truth.
The Truth
It turned out that he had had an affair all this time without me knowing. He actually had established a double life, with me as the wife in one state, and her, the ex-girlfriend becoming the current girlfriend, living in an apartment together in another state, Oklahoma, right next to his work. Contrary to the lies that the N told me, the other woman had a husband that was not around, so these two were freely living with each other in secret and destroying my life and her husband’s life. And of course, despite my concerns, the N sworn up and down with crocodile tears that he had been faithful to me. Denial, blame shifting and gas-lighting are the names of his games.
Being devoid of any remorse or conscience, the N told me if I wanted to divorce him, I needed to give him a sizable sum of money in cash, gave back my wedding ring and furniture that his family gave to him and me. He didn’t care that I had been paying for all the bills, for his food, for his room and board, for his vacations, for the house by myself all these years that he was in school without a complaint. I told him I would not give him another penny. He then decided that if that was the case, I would need to move out of my house and he would help me with his credit to buy another house. That idea might sound good on paper and make him look good. He just conveniently forgot that I bought my house with my own money, my own credit, my own name, all alone without anyone’s help, including his. So, really, I didn’t need his “credit” to buy a house whatsoever. His grandiosity struck me as bizarre. He was really believing he was the “good guy” by helping me buy a new house with his credit, never mind of the fact that it was him who tried to forced me out of my current house in the first place, never mind the fact that it was him who decided to “find happiness” with another married woman. This is how twisted a narcissistic mind can be.
He also didn’t care the emotional toll that it took on me when I was discarded and forgotten in just a blink of an eye. For the first few weeks after he left me that day in July 2018, I was in shock and couldn’t eat. I lost 20 lbs, possibly more if I didn’t force myself to drink Ensure to be able to function. Being taught by my parents to never succumb to bullies, I put up a good fight. I made myself get up and out of bed to go to work everyday, even though inside my heart was shattered. I assembled a team of professionals to stand behind my back. My therapist helped me tremendously when I was looking for strategies to counter his cunning ways. My doctors were making sure that I would not have any medical issues stemmed from his reckless behaviors. My lawyer was a key player in helping me protect my interests and making the N follow the laws. The N attempted many, many ways to obscure and hide his financial information during the divorce so that he could have a favorable unequal division of community property. He even had the nerves to turn in financial documents that he purposely altered in an attempt to lie to the court. These acts backfired on the N when I figured it out and told my lawyer where to look.
As time went on, it turned out that the whole story about the 8-years-old daughter in Cambodia was a total lie. He and the other woman didn’t have any 8-years-old girl together. The story was used as an excuse for his affair, for his 2-month long rendezvous in Cambodia. The other woman’s husband wasn’t around, so the whole time when the N said he was in California and Cambodia “looking for my 8-years-old daughter”, he was all alone with the other woman, enjoying her and her husband’s wealth without her husband knowing about it. The N and the other woman went to Hawaii together, charged the resort fees of around ten thousands dollars on her husband’s account. I only knew this because her husband sent me a detailed letter, accompanied by pictures, explaining to me what he knew about this disastrous pair.
As fate would have it, the other woman became pregnant with the N’s child, a boy, during this affair. So no 8-years-old girl, but a baby boy. The other woman’s husband also appeared to have cut off his financial support for her after he found out about the affair, so now the N is responsible for her and for their boy financially (or does he?). The N’s get-rich-quick schemes have collapsed on him. No more Northern California houses for him to get to. No more lavish vacations paid for with her husband’s bank account. And of course, no more support from me.
The N did not know that I knew about the affair through the other woman’s husband, so for months he continued on lying and trying to get me to give him a pile of cash to get a divorce from him. You would think the craziness would stop soon at this point, but no, it didn’t. When I tried to offer him the options for a quick divorce with what I thought a fair split, he continued to lie and obstruct, hoping that the more and the longer he fought, the more money he would get from me. Even as their child, his son, was born, I still wasn’t done with the divorce because of his greediness and lunacy. Then one day, I received evidence showing that the N and the other woman got married in Cambodia, while he was still married to me and she was still married to her husband stateside. The double adultery has turned into a double bigamy. I showed their wedding pictures to the lawyers during my divorce mediation. Being a narcissist, the N truly thinks that he is above the law, and that he can get away with doing bad things because he’s smarter than everyone else. In the state where I live, bigamists can be charged with a felony offense, but of course, the N didn’t care. He was too busy blaming others for his own actions. To this day, he truly believed his actions were justified, and whatever he did, it was because someone else made him do it. That’s the pathology of his personality disorder.
Thankfully, with the evidence that I had of his bigamy, I was able to get a fair divorce from the N and was able to protect my interests and resources, but not without long sleepless nights full of sweats, tears and heartbreak. I thought my world has ended that day he left me. I didn’t know at the time, but it actually was a blessing in disguise, a beginning of a new start.
A few months after my divorce is done, I found out that the N had got yet another woman pregnant in the US while his Cambodian “wife” and son were still in Cambodia. As for me, I will keep moving on with my life; I have got all the information that I need to escape from narcissism and I believe the truth will prevail.
This is my story, and I will continue to tell my story as long as I believe it benefits someone else out there. My heart goes out to other victims who might not be as fortunate as I am. I would like to use this platform to be to share my insights and experience to help other narcissistic abuse victims survive and thrive despite all the odds going against them.
11/11/2020