Since I now have the power of having hindsight, I’ve pieced together a lot of the behaviors that the Narcissist (the N) had just right before he left me. All of these behaviors that didn’t make sense then, make total sense now when they’re combined together. The repetitive nature of these behaviors during my relationship with him also leads me to believe that the N was cheating on me the whole time he was involved with me. The last affair that I found out about might not have been the first.

• He hyper-focused on working out and losing weight. He bought new gym equipment and got on a diet.
• He constantly stared at himself in the mirror and took an interest in personal man grooming. He also didn’t let me see him naked like usual.
• He went missing overnight with different excuses. One time he said he wanted to spend a night with his guy friend. Before he left that night, he used an excessive amount of cologne; I could smell it even after he left. I didn’t think this guy friend cared to smell the cologne, but then now it was pretty clear that the guy friend is not really a “guy friend”. Right before the discard, he sent me his work schedule that showed he was pretty much not at home for the whole month. I figured out later that he fabricated this work schedule and fooled me into believing he was working everyday, but in fact he wasn’t. He would show up at home on the days that his work schedule said “working”.
• He avoided me, stopped talking to me and made up excuses to accuse me of not paying attention to him. He would come home and not saying hi to me like he usually did. I couldn’t hear him from my office so I was surprised to see him lay in my bed when I came to my bedroom later. He then complained that I was so terrible for not saying hi to him. How could I when I didn’t know he was home?
• He stopped answering to my texts and ignored my question about anything and everything. He used to answer to all of my texts, but right before the discard, he left me on “read” numerous times.
• He got pretty defensive when I asked to use his laptop. This was during a family vacation in Colorado that I had with him, his sister and his parents. I needed to sign a pdf document for my work, so I asked to borrow his laptop. After much reservation, he let me use it, but before he handed it to me, he logged into the laptop under the guest account. I didn’t intend to look at any of his stuff but I felt off when I found myself in guest mode. Of course later on I found out on this very vacation, he was booking accommodations to see the other married woman. His credit card statement that he sent during divorce proceedings didn’t lie like he did.
• He decided he couldn’t wear his wedding ring because his ring finger “shrunk”, but other times he would wear it just fine.
• He had erectile dysfunction that got really bad before the discard.
• He became more entitled. I didn’t send him the “perfect” clinical tool that he needed to use at his work. My work schedule all of a sudden became a problem while him being gone all the time wasn’t. He wanted me to pay all of the bills, including his personal bills, while he focused only on his student loans and not being home 90% of the time.
• Last of all, I felt it in my guts that something just wasn’t right. The channel of communication between me and him was cut off with no apparent explanation then. Of course when there were 3 persons in a marriage it would be a little too crowded to communicate well, esp with narcissism in the background.