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Percy2010:
Hi, glad I found this place.  Here's my story - sorry it's long (is it ever a short story with someone with PD?)  I'm convinced my ex has either NPD or BPD or both...
 
I was introduced to him via a mutual friend in the autumn of 2006.  I was single and had been in the dating scene for a while and wasn’t happy about my prospects and had decided to take the winter off from all of that.  When our friend asked me if I wanted to meet him, I agreed reluctantly, but figured if I wasn’t into it that it wouldn’t be a big deal.  I wasn’t really LOOKING for anything at the time.  We met, and hit it off.  He was so charming.  After spending all evening together listening to the band we had all met to see, he called me first thing the next morning to set up another date.  I was so very flattered.  I hadn’t had this kind of attention before.  We got along very well and he was so attentive and kind… dare I say chivalrous?  He would hold doors open, hold my chair for me at restaurants, etc.  I was quickly becoming smitten.  As the early weeks rolled on, we became inseparable.  He became my world and I enjoyed it.   We began to share our stories… he had been married before and had two young children.  He told of how his ex wife leaving him destroyed him – that he knew they were having “problems” but they had agreed to work on them and she up and left with no warning.  I believed him.  I didn’t have any reason to think he was lying.
 
The weeks and months wore on.  I met his family.   A fairly big family that held the big holiday get togethers.  Something my own small family didn’t have.  I met his children and became a part of their lives on the weekends when they were visiting him.  Little by little though, I was becoming uneasy.  Things that he said, things that he did… I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I made excuses for him.  I explained it away in my own head and didn’t trust my gut.  I should have heeded those red flags, but by that time, I was so deep into it all… and he said he LOVED me.  Oh and the sex… the sex was AH-MAZE-ING.  The BEST.  We had such a “connection”.  It was SO intense!  Certainly, that had to count for something , right?  Sometimes it would seem like he showed that he loved me, but then sometimes it just seemed like he was cruel.  We started fighting periodically, like any couple does.  It had been almost a year then and the blush had worn off the rose.  I had other relationships prior to him.  I knew that it happens and that’s when the REAL work in a relationship starts.  I was ready to put the work in to iron out our differences and strengthen our bond.  We loved each other, right?  That’s what loving partners do.  Only… any time I brought up an issue with something that happened or I expressed needs of my own, it turned into a huge argument.  WAY out of proportion with what it should have been.  And somehow, it was always turned around on me.  I was too sensitive, making mountains out of molehills.  I was “putting words into his mouth”, I was not remembering situations or things he said correctly.  In effect, I was crazy.   So I tried harder.
 
I went to therapists.  WE went to therapy.  I tried different approaches on how to communicate with him.  I believed it was MY problem.  He made good arguments as to why it was MY problem and not his.   I kept trying.  I wanted to be a good partner.  I wanted us to be happy.  I wanted us to have the dreams that we discussed that we shared.  And so began several years of us being blissfully happy for a while and then it all deteriorating into a huge mess.  A mess of me not feeling valued or cared for.  Not having my needs met much less heard.  He always claimed I was crazy.  That I would “flip out” for no reason… that he didn’t see or have any problems.  That he thought we were “happy”.   We would yell.  He would blame it all on me.  Berate me.  Belittle me.  I would leave, having had enough.  I would always come back.  His berating and belittling words would haunt me and I would start believing them again.  I would return with my tail between my legs and beg forgiveness.  Profess my love.  Promise to be better.  And I would try again.  I tried SO HARD – but it didn’t matter what I did.  It was never enough.  I, mistakenly, thought I was in a relationship based on trust and equality.  I wasn’t, but it took me several more years to see that.
 
During one of our honeymoon periods in 2008, he proposed the idea of having a child.  I was shocked.  He had told me previously that he didn’t want anymore and I had accepted the fact that I wouldn’t be a mother.  I was 35 at the time.  Though we weren’t married or even engaged, I agreed.   We began trying and in May of 2009, he proposed and I accepted.  In early June, I discovered I was pregnant.  I was overjoyed and terrified.  I had miscarried a few months before.  His treatment of me during this time escalated – a time that I was trying to REALLY take care of myself first so that I wouldn’t lose another child.  I was so confused and hurt.  I didn’t understand how he could treat me – someone who was carrying his child – so BADLY.  I tried to involve him in things having to do with the new arrival – picking out names, choosing supplies and nursery furniture.  He didn’t care.  He would approach it like a joke.  I tried to take it in stride, but it continued to hurt.  Only a few months into the pregnancy, as I was trying to budget and save for baby items, he announces he has bought himself expensive things and then doesn’t understand why I was angry and hurt.  This type of financial abuse was also a common theme with him – his money is his money and my money was his money too.  I left him again when I was 8 months pregnant.  Returned the engagement ring.  I knew I had to make a choice between putting HIM first and putting myself and my unborn child first.  As my due date approached, after not hearing from him at all – not even to ask how our unborn baby was – I contacted him to ask if he wanted to be at our son’s birth.  And that little foot in the door was all it took for him to slither back in and work his spell again and I agreed to “try” again.
 
It was no better after the baby.  Worse, if I think about it now.  Our son was born perfect and healthy and pink with ten fingers and toes, but the birth was hard on me.  I hemorrhaged.  I had to have surgery.  I had lost a lot of blood and was very weak.  I had many many stitches for quite some time afterward.  And despite all that trauma, he was relentless about asking for sex.  When I finally agreed, though scared, our newborn son started to cry in the middle of it.  I said no and tried to push him off so that I could go to our child.  He became angry and told me no, to just let him finish.  I laid there and cried silently until he was done and handed me our now screaming newborn to hush so he could roll over and go to sleep.  It was one of the lowest points in my entire life.  I filed for support and custody when our son was 6 months old.  Things had been going badly between him and I for weeks.  We weren’t speaking, and he had made no attempt to visit his son in over six weeks, nor was he providing any kind of support.   And thus began the court battle.  One in which he tried to deny paternity, he tried to drag my family through the mud, he tried to make me out as some kind of whore that used him to have a baby and get his money.
 
But again, after the court papers were finalized last August, he snuck back in again.  I agreed to try ONCE again – mostly for my son this time.  I never wanted him to be a child of a one parent household.  That was never my intent.  My condition was that we HAD to go to couples counseling to help us.  He picked the therapist.  I didn’t especially like him, but I had agreed to try and try I would.  The therapist was poor and didn’t help us.  As the months in therapy wore on, it had devolved into a weekly hour long appointment where he would go in and detail every wrong and hurt I had “done” to him.  I barely had a chance to speak.  The therapist was obviously snowed by his act and at one point told me that I needed to be more vulnerable to him.  I was horrified.  So I started doing research.  I started reading books on relationships, passive-aggressive, verbal abuse, etc. etc.  And the lightbulbs started going on.  The more I researched and dug, the more I discovered and had a name to put to what I had been going through the last six years.
 
I ended therapy at the end of April 2012, though he, for some unknown reason, had ceased to talk to me except to yell in the therapist’s office many weeks before that.  He still blames me for everything since I was the one that ended therapy.  After reading and understanding what I’ve been dealing with the last six years, I know now that I have been trying to make a relationship with someone who is disturbed.  I’m still going through the painful process of getting my heart, which did/does love him, to understand.  I know that I’m not without my own faults in relationships, faults that I am willing to address and work on, but by and large the problems that I faced with him were due not to my faults, but his own inability to love or care or see anyone else as a human being with wants and needs of their own.  Sometimes I miss him because as horrible as it was at times, he was my best friend… my only friend (due to isolation) for a long time.  I’m letting him go from me because I need to.  I no longer wish to engage in his cycles of abuse or feed his narcissistic supply.  I’m still fighting his control issues where it comes to our son and will likely be doing so for many years.

He has recently informed me that he's moving out of state... I'm more than a little concerned about this.... any insight/advice would be really appreciated.   

rosie:
I'm so sorry you had to deal with all of this, especially with a young child. But if you ask about reactions to his moving out of state, my gut reaction is to say, "Good riddance!" You don't need that kind of abuse, and you don't need him to weasel his way back into your life. Even if you never intended for you child to grow up with only one parent around, sometimes that is much better for the child. I grew up with PD parents, and it was no picnic.

You've come a long way, and seen the writing on the wall. Now's the time to take care of yourself. Do you have the possibility of getting therapy with a therapist you like, JUST FOR YOURSELF? Here on the site there is something called the toolbox (in the tabs above) with a lot of helpful tips of how to strengthen yourself. Keep on posting in the Chosen section, and read through what others have experienced - it really does help to give you some perspective. Welcome to OOTF!

Percy2010:
Thanks for the reply Rosie.

I have been working with a therapist at a local domestic violence/abuse center for several months now, so yes, I'm taking care of my end.  I also saw the child psychologist there to get advice on how to help my son deal with the anxiety and stress surrounding his father (he screams and cries when he has to visit - his wants are very clear - "no daddy, stay with mommy!", but there's nothing I can do about that, sadly).

The issue with him moving out of state is that I know he ISN'T going to disappear.  His children are like possesions to him and another way that he can pump himself up and put on the "I'm a good Daddy and my ex's did me SO wrong" face.  The issue is that he has been escalating recently (he refused to return our son this past weekend after visitation in accordance with our court ordered agreement - I had to get the police involved).  I'm afraid of him keeping visitation and taking my son across state lines.  :-/

Moon Shadow:
Hello,
So sorry you are going through this.   It's very painful.   I was interested in your statements about how in the beginning you saw some red flags but chose to ignore them because you were deeply in love. I think we all do this.  And that is why so many of us are heartbroken.  But it is very, very difficult to heed those flags, and even to believe them.

When I married my first husband, his mother said to me, a few months before the wedding -  "I hope he doesn't lie to you.  He lies to me all the time".   She was opposed to our getting married, mostly because I wasn't their religion, and I just figured that she was trying to scare me off.   She wasn't.  He was a liar.  But how can you tease all of that out when sometimes the red flags are being waved by others, while we are deep in love land?    I was crazy about this person for decades.  I realize now that a lot of it was I just couldn't bear to accept that somebody didn't love me, when i loved him so much.  But once I stepped back and really looked at the reality of it, he was long gone, emotionally, before  I had even given birth to our child.  What was the beginning of a little family for me, was the end for him.  And I just never understood.  And still don't. 

You tried and tried and it really doesn't matter, now, what the therapist or your ex, or friends, or anybody thinks.  The fact of the matter is that it isn't working for the two of you. And it's so very hard to accept the end of a broken dream. 

I am wishing you the best and so glad you are here and around others, now, who understand your pain.
Moon Shadow

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