Don’t be so hard on yourself. A narcissist is a very skilled manipulator. They check all the boxes – charisma, good looks, intelligence, and anything else they sense you might be looking for in a partner.

For years, I beat myself up with “I should have known better.” This got me nowhere. It wasn’t until I started seeing the carnage my ex left behind after our relationship ended that I finally began to have some compassion for myself. I wanted a partner; a father for my child, these were the very traits that attracted me to him in the very beginning. As time went on though, I saw more problematic traits start showing up – the fragile ego and a search for validation. The reason he had to work so hard on the outside (and nailed it in the beginning) was because he was completely empty on the inside.

He was the flame and I was the moth.

Narcissists master the things others see rather than cultivate a true sense of self. They are charming, have charisma and appear confident, but lack in any sort of empathy or depth. One of the first red flags I noticed was that this person would not talk to me but AT me. He would ignore me and “work the room”, and then weaponize his “brilliant business mind”, explaining how I wouldn’t understand the very complicated things he was discussing. (I later found out that this “MBA” got his designation from a diploma mill and didn’t actually complete high school.)

Yeah, he looked alright.

He wanted to be noticed. I also had to look my best when out with him. I was always a little self-conscious, so the fact he found me attractive only increased the allure. Maybe I really was pretty. Eventually, this turned into checking himself out in every reflection and buying himself clothes for my birthday because ultimately, it was better for me if HE look good.

The greatest showman.

My neighbours often used to ask “wow, does he walk on water?” There was nothing he couldn’t do. He was the head of “a global group of companies” (whatever that meant) but still “down to Earth” enough to do my mom’s landscaping (for only $60/hour, if you could imagine!)

I wanted to believe it so badly. The story was perfect. He’s be the business genius and I’d be the songwriter, never worrying how I was going to pay the bills and take care of our child. He would regularly look at $10M real estate and had me picking out furniture.

When did I become a target?

In reading all the literature, I was textbook. I wouldn’t say my mom was a narcissist, but we weren’t close. In fact, I believed with my entire soul that my mother hated me. I spent my entire adolescence proving myself to her, hoping I could “win” her love.

I had a pattern in attracting the narcs. I wanted so badly to prove my worthiness to someone, that it made me the perfect target. I was forever trying to align myself to my mother’s needs. This is why my relationship with my son’s father felt so “normal” to me. It was the familiarity that I mistook for chemistry.

The very precariousness of the narcissistic relationship, in some way, is what keeps the victims hanging on. Imagine a slot machine in Vegas. You keep dropping coins, becoming poorer and poorer with each rejection, but occasionally, you might hit a jackpot. A slot machine keeps people sitting in front of it, sucking them dry, while they sit there, hoping that the next pull will be their ticket. God forbid they walk away, and the next person who sits down wins the jackpot. I remember thinking vividly, “I’m putting in all this work. Why would I walk away, so that he’ll just marry the next woman who sits down?”

Never enough.

It felt like I was dating a bucket with a hole in the bottom. As much as I gave, it was never enough. Even in the end, he left me because he said I let myself go. He always said he needed more for a wife. I suppose I thought I could become that perfect women he always wanted. Perhaps in a sadistic way, I thought he was helping me become better. I was, as he put it, half of a “power couple.” In the end though, constantly filling the bucket with water left me depleted, exhausted and lacking any self-worth.

Looking back on the experience, I realize that from the inside, none of this was as obvious as it seems now. I had lost faith in my own perceptions, began relying more and more on him and felt as though I had lost my friends along the way. This was the only person on the planet who made me feel special. He was also the father of my son, and I was willing to do anything to save my family. I wasn’t equipped at that point, to survive without him.