Editor’s note: A Lovefraud reader who calls himself “Fly” posted the following comment on August 7, 2015. It is a great description of dysfunctional behavior in a woman, so it is reproduced here in order to help others.
Fly received responses responses to his email from the woman, which are reproduced below. He read the emails but did not respond
I am a 60 year old male who was living with a 50 year old female for three years. I had known her for two years before. I wrote a letter to my Ex-girlfriend a few days after I left. I had said to myself enough is enough after one of her quick insulting outbursts. I packed my belongings, threw them in the car and just walked out of the house never to return. The whole process took about 20 minutes and she just sat at her computer never saying a word as I vacated.
I started doing research online regarding anti-social personality disorders. I wanted to know what had happened to me. I was searching for things to read because I was hurting. I found this website (and I am glad I did) and reading so many posts about recovery from abuse put me in the right direction for healing and recovery. Even though I did not know at the time the exact label to place on her activity I knew in my gut that things were not normal. She was not normal. Our relationship was not normal and getting worse.
I have since learned that I was being abused by a Female Narcissistic Sociopath. I also learned that I should have no contact and keep no contact. This also has helped me with my healing.
Below is the letter I sent to her before I knew who or what I was dealing with
Her Name:
It is probably a good thing that I am going away at this time as things are not working out for you and I. Hopefully, with this absence, we can get a sense of direction. This is very difficult for me because I realize I care too much. I love you too much. Can you believe “care “and “love” can be too much?
I have been living under the impression that we were in a relationship that thrived on open and honest disclosures. This is something that I told you in the very beginning was so refreshing, rewarding, uplifting and beneficial to me. I found peace in being able to talk with you about anything in my life and past.
However, unlike a healthy intimate relationship, you have used my deepest confidences and thoughts against me. Things I have confided in you are thrown in my face when you have an outburst. I have found that I cannot trust you with my heart, so I keep my mouth shut.
It pains me to say, accept, digest and admit that I have come to the realization that I am in an emotionally abusive relationship. I need to be honest with you and myself so I can regain power over my own life, stop the abuse, and begin to heal.
To be frank, I quite often didn’t see your mistreatment of me as abusive. I assumed and believed it was all growing pains of us getting to know each other and learning each other. I have come to realized that I had started developing coping mechanisms of denial and minimizing in order to deal with the stress. The effects of this emotional abuse over time have caused me emotional trauma, including depression and anxiety.
There have been many moments of joy and pleasure in our relationship. I figured, go ahead and enjoy the sex, enjoy the compliments, enjoy the affection and attention. But I found that I had to leave the joy in the moment. I could not assume that because you smiled a minute ago that the smile would be there when I looked again. I need happiness and joy in my life, so I grabbed all I could in the moment. I find myself doing things I don’t wish to do because of your behavior to me if I don’t.
At times I feel guilty and like I have to walk on eggshells just to keep less stress in my life. You have been telling me weekly “this is my house.” “This is my room.” “I need to rent someplace where you won’tdisturb me.” “You talk too loud on thephone.” “The TV is too loud.” “What? Are you bringing clothes into my house?” My presence use to be appreciated now it appears I am an annoyance.
When we started our relationship you were concerned the children wouldn’t care for me. That they would reject me and you did have a desire for us to blend and bond. You have seen the children respect me, carefor me, bond with me, trust me, love me and even stand up to you for your rude behavior to me. You got what you wanted but your jealousy consumes you.
I have been living of late knowing and feeling that most everything I do and say will be wrong. If I am right today, I will most likely be wrong tomorrow. It doesn’t matter what I do, the ridicule will continue.
You “say” how much you love me and care for me and how glad you are that I am there, but it is all just words. Your walk does not match your talk. Such a simple thing as having a clean home for you and your children doesn’t matter to you. You don’t care. You haven’t cared enough to clean things up. You don’t care enough to make adifference for them or me.
I realize that my “Healing” is a process. To that end I have listed and identified the behaviors that I find abusive and are no longer OK with me.
1. You humiliate me and put me down, or make fun of you in front of the children.
2. You regularly demean and disregard my opinions, ideas, suggestions, and needs.
3. You accuse me of being “too sensitive” in order to deflect the abusive remarks.
4. You try to control me and treat me like a child.
5. You correct or chastise me for my behaviour
6. I feel like I need permission to make decisions.
7. I cannot change anything in the house or bring in new things (i.e. furniture, my clothes).
8. You belittle and trivialize me and my accomplishments, likes, hopes and dreams.
9. You try to make me feel as though you are always right, and I am wrong.
10. You regularly give me disapproving or contemptuous looks or body language.
11. You regularly point out my flaws, mistakes, or shortcomings.
12. You accuse and blame me for things you know aren’t true.
13. You are intolerant of any seeming lack of respect.
14. You make excuses for your behaviour, try to blame others, and have difficulty apologizing especially in a timely manner.
15. You blame me for your problems, life difficulties and unhappiness.
16. You give me unpleasant labels and make cutting remark.
17. You get emotionally distant and emotionally unavailable a lot of the time.
18. You disengage and use neglect and abandonment to punish me (like sleeping on the couch or the kids rooms).
19. You don’t seem to notice or care about my feelings.
20. You view me as an extension of your ex-husband, rather than as me the individual.
21. You withhold sex as a way to manipulate, punish and control.
22. You deny your emotionally abusive behaviour when I have brought it to your attention.
23. You use a very unpleasant tone of voice.
24. You are unreasonably jealous.
25. You withdraw your affection and attention to punish me.
26. You make everything my fault.
You have been minimizing, denying, and hiding the abuse. I wish you would own up fully to what you have done and stop making excuses and blaming others. Make amends. Accept responsibility and recognize that your abusive behavior is a choice. Accept the consequences of your actions and behaviors.
You may no longer lash out at me and be rude to me. I will not tolerate it any longer. Life is too short and precious for me to spend it with a person who chooses to hurt me. I am lovable. I deserve respect.
I have noticed a change in my demeanour, appearance, and self-esteem as a result of being in our relationship. I feel as though I cannot do anything right for you. I am finding I no longer do things for myself. It seems I am always doing things for you just to keep things happy and at peace. I feel trapped in the situation. I have told you this before, but it has fallen on deaf ears. I feel disrespected, demeaned and unappreciated.
The bottom line is that I am being treated very poorly now and with each passing day. It is clear this will only continue and it is getting more intense and more frequent. I hate to admit it but I don’t see it getting better I don’t see a future with you.
I am wasting so much of my valuable life with someone who does not respect or cherish me. Love is never supposed to be abusive. Love is not supposed to be hurtful. Love is never controlling. I also realize I cannot change you. I can only change myself. That is what I must do.
It was obvious that you wanted me out of your house because you didn’t want any more of my clothes there. Well, you wanted your house back and my clothes out of your closet. You got it.
It is apparent you do not appreciate my presence. Perhaps you will appreciate my absence.
Here is her first reply
Thank you for writing me and letting me know your feelings. I appreciate you taking the time to let me know the things that have been making you uncomfortable. I will review things more later, but I want you to know that I care about you and love you very much. I am sorry you are hurting. You are lovable and you do deserve respect. You are missed.
I will miss you when you’re gone. I hope we’re able to talk and work through things.
All my love,
Her name
Here is the second reply
Sweetheart,
It was difficult to read some of the things that you wrote in your e-mail to me, but I can accept that you feel that way.
I feel that sometimes you and I have different expectations of what we want from a relationship and that is a source of friction for us.
I love you very much and want to continue to be in your life and have you in my life, but I feel like we don’t know how to do that without hurting each other sometimes.
I don’t want to take a break from you but I do think that this is something that we will need to discuss in order to be able to move forward.
I hope you feel that you can find peace and heal.
You are missed very much.
Love,
Her Name
Here is her third email to me from one week ago
My Name:
This is not what I want.
I do not know why you thought that we had broken up, but evidently that is what you wanted.
I will honor your wishes, though I do wish for us to be friends. I care about you deeply as a person and hope to continue to enjoy your company.
I do hope that we will continue to talk on the phone and keep up with each other. I hope that when you are back in OUR CITY I can have you over for dinner when I have the kids. They also enjoy your company and would like to see you again.
Best regards,
Her Name
Fly – thank you so much for sharing your story. I am so glad that you escaped the woman.
Yes
you lived with a female version of my narc! he cudnt STAND havin my stuff in “his” house. and i paid him a great deal for the privilege of being a bother in “his” house.
it stressed him out to no end to have me there.
poor thing.
the exact sameness of your hellish woman and my hellish man is astounding.
Proof once more that they all have the exact same personality.
BEING TRUTHFUL WITH MYSELF ABOUT MYSELF AND WHAT WAS DONE TO ME, IS MY VICTORY TODAY
I have been in a state of denial, disbelief, shock and confusion regarding my Ex Narcissistic Sociopath (female) partner. I have lied to myself, failed to face reality and have not fully disclosed on this site or accepted the TRUTHS that I had discovered about the mess I was in. I was in deep denial and afraid to face the fact that I was living in a lie and being used.
It is time for me to shake the dust off of my feet and maintain and keep forward looking and thinking. I realize and I have been told that my leaving before the “Discard” can cause doubts and questions regarding my action. However, the bottom line truth was I CARED! I LOVED! And all the while my partner and her expressions of caring and love were all just a BIG LIE.
I am sure many of you have received the spam emails about find out if your partner is cheating, what dating sites they are on etc. After leaving I engaged these services, in reality to see if I had made a mistake. I was only to be further shocked and surprised of what a deceiving, fucking liar I had been living with. I found out that she had a paid membership to a dating site and was using Craigslist. She had sent me two emails stating “ I am sorry you are hurting. You are lovable and you do deserve respect. You are missed. I do not know why you thought we had broken up.” Both of these emails sent to me while she was actively pursuing her next victim/source of supply.
How two faced!! What a Liar!! Searching on the keyboard for her next victim with the left hand and sounding so sorry and innocent to me with the right.
So as part of my healing and moving forward I felt it best to disclose these truths. I had been denying these truths to myself. I have broken free and laid much crap to rest. I am writing and sharing now with the hopes that this may help someone in a similar situation and give them the strength required to move on and heal.
Hi,Fly. Your situation mirrors my own. Stay vigilant and maintain a strict NO CONTACT policy. You’re not out of the woods yet. Hopefully she will find a new source of supply, if she hasn’t already done so, and will fade from your life in time, when she sees that she cant get what she needs from you any longer. Be careful who you talk to about this, she may have poisoned friends who may think its you that’s mad. Keep posting and learn as much as you can about her condition. Separate in your mind the person you thought she was from the person you now see she really is, and deal only with the real personality. Assess EVERYTHING she says or does as untrue until you can prove otherwise. And believe yourself,not the man she tried to make you. Good luck and stay strong.
I need to ask some questions to help me determine my role, the errors I might have made, how I might have misstepped in my most recent relationship. Among other things,
My soon-to-be-ex lied, repeatedly – about his abuse of his son (and even continued these lies when they resulted in my arrest)
About women and his involvement with them (and has done so in his previous relationships as well)
He has lied to his family regarding me as well as about the things he has done, so that it appears that I am the one who caused all of the damage
He has emotionally abused me with his words, telling me repeatedly how I was such a bad wife and bad friend.
Because truth is so important to me – and because the whole time with him has been so very crazy-making:
I have a very hard time allowing these lies to go unaddressed. Before we separated, I did call his attention to his lies, letting him know I had proof (texts and emails forwarded to me by the other women, etc).
I did tell him about how the lies have damaged me… and, he would promise to not lie again. He would then do so, and I would say how this didn’t work for me.
Yet, when I read the above list of wrongs this writer’s ex did against him, I see that pointing out the shortcomings of another are indicative of her being narcissistic. Likewise, her withdrawal from the relationship is her acting in a narcissistic way…. and, when I was so hurting in my relationship, I too withdrew. The lies hurt, I didn’t feel safe, and I was afraid of contracting an STD.
My ex tells me that I am the one who is destructive, that I broke him and that I made him feel like a monster because I was unable to forget the things he had done.
I really want to make sure that whatever errors I made in this relationship do not get perpetuated into the other relationships (whether with my friends, my adult children, or future/after-healing romantic relationships); that I am not inadvertently injuring another; and that I am being honest with myself.
Can someone please give me fedback on the following: Was I narcissistic when I withdrew? When I told him that he did lie? How do we know where the line is, so that we don’t cross it ourselves?
Lying is wrong and destructive. Liars are manipulative. A rule of thumb I’ve heard is one lie could be a mistake, the second could be a misunderstanding, the third lie indicates a pattern of behavior.
Ending a relationship with a liar and abuser is not narcissistic. It is a rational decision to leave a relationship with a person who is harmful to you and to others.
In my experience, telling the spath/liar/abuser the reason for leaving and that the victim is aware of being lied to, is a fair and respectful thing to do. However,the spath doesn’t care how his behavior impacts other people; he just cares about being able to manipulate and exploit others in order to get things he wants.
Consider that the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior is doing what is consistent with our own values and definition of good character, such as honesty, treating others with respect and fairness, taking into account the well being and needs of others as well as ourselves. Spaths are motivated by exploiting others and they don’t care about others’ well being.
Blaming you for his behavior is a typical spath manipulation technique. It sounds like your ex spath did not concern himself with your well being and how his behavior affected you, including possibly exposing you to an STD. When he blamed you for remembering his harmful behaviors, had he made any changes? If he stopped lying and abusing, it probably would have been easier for you to ‘forgive and forget.’ It sounds like he is trying to manipulate you into accepting his unacceptable behaviors and to allow him to continue to harm you.
Leaving a harmful situation is doing a good job of taking care of yourself. It sounds like your ex doesn’t deserve all the good things you have to offer.
I’ve seen it said that being worried about whether you’re a narcissist likely means you aren’t one, because the worry itself means you are concerned about others rather than just yourself.
But of course a socio will turn it around on you. They’ll try to get you to believe that anything you do to take care of yourself is selfish, and get you to ignore that they don’t take that to heart themselves. That you can’t criticize them unless you’re 100% perfect and giving of yourself, but they don’t hold themselves to that standard at all. Because it’s all about them and their needs. Like your ex telling you that the problem is you not giving him a pass for his bad behavior, rather than his bad behavior itself. Wanting the world, and especially you, to completely accommodate him, and blaming it — you — for not doing so.
If you consider Fly’s letter and list, consider also the contrast between what he’s talking about and what he himself did. He pointed out her shortcomings, he left… but that’s not the same sort of thing that he’s talking about her doing. He’s talking about what we’ve all experienced, the criticism and withdrawal to train us into having smaller needs and keep us off-balance. In contrast, what he did and what you did was to withdraw to protect yourselves. Not capriciously or controlling.
It’s not about whether you take care of yourself, it’s about whether you only take care of yourself and don’t allow that others are entitled to take care of themselves too. Someone who turns the former, quite healthy, behavior around on you is manipulating you and exhibiting the latter behavior. I’m glad that you’re getting away from this person.
I am watching a Netflix documentary entitled,(dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lying. I am about half way through. While nothing has been said about spaths yet, there are some interesting insights about how lying helps children to develop parts of their brains, and how when in a ‘creative’ state, people are more likely to lie.
My spath was a yarn teller extraordinaire. I felt really bad for a long time about getting sucked in by her, but I realize that it was one of the most creative interactions I have ever had (as in, she was making it ALL up), and that in this sense it was one of the most satisfying. The positive takeaway is that I must have more relationships with creative people. She caught me when she dangled bait, because I was starving.
onejoy
There are good uses of creativity that don’t involve deception for the purpose of manipulating others. Like every other talent, creativity can be used for good purposes or for evil purposes, to help others or to harm others.
Also makes me think of Scott Peck’s book, People of the Lie. The author describes the use of lies by evil people.
I relate to the unpleasant tone of voice.
Definitely try to control.