When I was 45 years old and fresh out of a divorce, I started an almost 3-year long distance relationship with a man that is 18 years younger than me. It was supposed to just be fun and it was until it wasn’t.
We met on airplane, both of us going to work. He is an officer on a tugboat and I an administrator of a private independent school. We had 30 days of getting to know each other over text, phone calls and FaceTime while he was on the boat. Once off the boat we decided to meet and we met up every time he got home the entire course of this relationship.
The first year was a situationship. He led me to believe there was no one else, yet we had not defined the relationship. Three months in he told me was “talking” to other women and had been the entire time. Then he started to disappear.
I was in shock because although I tried keeping him at arm’s length, I was believing what he was saying.
Tammy on the phone
We met up and for the first I saw a name on his phone, Tammy, that would continue to haunt me. The messages did not appear to be someone he was in relationship with, however, they text a lot.
We went on a week long trip to Cabo the first summer and discussed him meeting my daughter. The month prior he told me he loved me. Shortly after that trip he disappeared and stated that I couldn’t give him children and that was a deal breaker although before that he said if he chose me he could live without children.
The day after that conversation he went back to the boat and started talking to me again like nothing happened. He told people in front of me that I was his girlfriend although we had not defined the relationship. Then at his house almost one year to the day of meeting the truth came out. I saw a hair tie (on the candle my daughter made) and an earring. I didn’t say a word, but he could sense the change in me.
I was trapped
We got intoxicated that night and when we went to have sex I asked for the lube (which was a birthday gift to me, a bad gift, but a gift nonetheless) and when he brought it out it was almost empty. He knew he was caught.
So he broke up with me and since I wasn’t sober and not in my home town I was trapped.
So I stayed while he confessed and even answered the phone from a girl while I was laying in his bed asking me what he should do. I caught the first flight home. Then we talked and since we did not define the relationship I let it go, even though he said to Tammy on his phone again the next morning, “Good Morning Sunshine, we may be friends, but you cannot ignore me.” I thought it was an odd message and I wanted to ask who she was because this was the third trip where I saw her name come up. I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
We continue to see each other and he promises he is being a “good boy”. I meet the entire family and we become exclusive. He meets my daughter, which is now 15 months after meeting and I don’t see another message from the girl.
Knock at the door
Then 6 months in being boyfriend/girlfriend there is a knock on his door in the middle of the night with 2 girls yelling his name. For some odd reason I wasn’t worried about it. He had relationships with lots of his neighbors and I had seen some strange encounters with one (that’s another story).
I asked who it was. My neighbor and her friend Amy. Never heard of an Amy and he got rid of them quickly. The next day we left for a weeklong vacation.
A few months later we break up. I had not been feeling like things had been right for a very long time. I was always anxious with him and I was never anxious in other relationships.
Even though we break up we continue to talk and see each other, only it gets worse. He accidentally text me instead of that girl. Now is my time to ask who she is. We are not together, but she has come up once again. He explains how she is a woman he met right before me.
Mind you, when I met him, he had just moved into his house days prior. He says she was the woman knocking on his door. That was a revelation because he didn’t tell me Tammy’s name, he said his neighbor, had he that night I would have asked questions.
I start to look up this person and I cannot find out who she is. I didn’t ask anymore questions because we were broken up.
Deal breaker
He continued to remind me that my age was a deal breaker. Things between us continue to get worse and I continue to see him. Days after one of his trips to visit me, his young date was posted on social media them going to the rodeo, which I had gone with him the year before.
And days before our meetup he told me he wasn’t dating. Things got worse between us, but he wanted to make sure I was still around. I started seeing someone else and told him. He started talking to me more. It didn’t work out with the other guy so we had plans to meet again.
Days before he got off the boat he sent me a drunken text meant for Tammy that basically admitting to them having sex over the course of me knowing him for 3 years. Hours before that text, he texted me that he was seeing “zero” women. He had to confess.
Covert narcissist
Everything made sense from that day forward and I discovered he was a covert narcissist. She was 43 and you could see his house from her front yard. I was sick to my stomach. All I was ever told was my age was a deal breaker and yet all he played with was 40 something year old divorced women.
Even after knowing all of that I still met up with him for hate sex because I was broken. Looking back all the signs were there. The trauma bond, love bombing, devaluing and discharge, over and over again.
Learn more: Beyond Betrayal— How to recover from the trauma
10 facts about your romance with a sociopath that you must believe, even though you don’t want to