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Chapter 2

Seeing the Forest

Now that we have examined some of the characteristics of narcissistic men and women in chapter one, I hope you gained some understanding about NPD and insight into the possibility that you may have been “narcissized.” Sometimes statistics and psychological terminology can get in the way of a clear understanding. That is why we want to share this personality study with you:

Linda’s divorce had been final for three weeks and she was starting to breathe a sigh of relief. Eric, her ex-husband, had played every game in the book to make the divorce a nightmare for her. She couldn’t understand why he tried to make things so difficult when he had been the one to walk away.

The first few months after their separation, Linda, who had custody of their eleven-year-old daughter, had been a wreck. Even songs on the radio seemed to taunt her. “All That’s Left is a Band of Gold” seemed to target her own situation as she nervously tried to change the radio station. Looking back over her twelve-year marriage, she tried to imagine what she could have done differently. She was aware that no marriage is perfect and couples have to work hard to stay together. Knowing she hadn’t been the “perfect wife,” she was willing to see a marriage counselor in order to work on their problems. Eric hadn’t.

After going through all the stages of loss from denial to anger, Linda began to accept her new life as a single mother and decided she could make it on her own without a man. Almost at the moment of her acceptance of this new decision, in walked Robert. She saw him as her reward for having been such a trooper during her separation and divorce process. Robert seemed to be everything Eric was not. Amazingly, Linda had many things in common with Robert…right down to favorite snack foods. She felt that fate had brought the two of them together, because Robert had just gotten out of a terrible relationship with a clingy, insecure woman who had been stalking him and sending him threatening letters; Linda was such an amazing contrast to her.

In the beginning of their relationship, Linda felt as if Robert’s search for a perfect mate was over. According to him, she possessed every quality he had been looking for in a woman and he treated her little daughter very well. He said Linda was the exact opposite of his last partner and he almost immediately made himself at home with her and her daughter. Not even three months into the relationship Robert professed his love, and while it seemed a bit premature to Linda for “I love you’s,” she felt, based on the uncanny coincidences and remarkable amount of things they had in common, the emotion was well founded.

However, the honeymoon stage of their relationship quickly began to dissipate. One lazy afternoon, as Linda and Robert were lounging around her house watching movies, he made a seemingly fond comment about an old girlfriend. Linda felt the hair on her body bristle, because it came across almost as a comparison and Linda was not the one coming out on top. She decided to let the comment slide in case she had been overly sensitive about it but a few days later, a similar incident occurred. Robert had always bragged about Linda being very neat and organized, but one day he mentioned, in a sarcastic tone, that she needed to be less “anal retentive” about things. She asked herself how he could insult her about the very things to which he had once felt attracted.

As time went on, Linda noticed that Robert frequently commented on qualities she had that seemed to displease him. She found herself “jumping through hoops” trying to right all her “wrongs” and make him as happy as he had seemed in the beginning of their relationship. Nothing seemed to work. She began to feel insecure. Robert, at this point, seemed to be spending a lot of his leisure time on the computer rather than with her and didn’t want to be disturbed. She did not like the way the relationship made her feel. Now she felt as if she were in competition with his past loves, loves he had complained about in the beginning of their relationship. She began wondering why Robert would ever break up with such “wonderful” women. Even women who were mere acquaintances of Robert seemed to hold some magical position of honor for him. As each new day passed, Robert became more critical and Linda felt herself falling further and further from his grace and yet, at times, they recaptured the old magic at least in her eyes.

What bothered her most was that whenever he snapped at her for what she viewed as “no particular reason,” he seemed to find a way to blame it on her. There were times when she felt as if she HAD provoked him in some way. This just added to her confusion, because when she tried to respond in an opposite way, he still found fault with her. Robert seemed to expect Linda to deal with his mood swings, yet he never tolerated her moodiness.

Finally, Robert told her he was no longer happy and was ready to end the relationship. Linda was devastated. She had spent so much time trying to recapture the role she had played for Robert during the first few months of their relationship that she hadn’t noticed he had given her signals that he wanted to leave. She felt she must have done something to make him feel dissatisfied, but she was-n’t sure exactly what that could have been. Blaming herself, she felt if she could only figure out what she had done to change his attitude toward her, she could make things right again. She told Robert they needed to try to make things work, because their relationship was special and worth fighting for, but Robert was ready to go. He seemed disgusted with Linda’s display of clingy insecurity.

After Robert left, Linda felt as if she were in some sort of emotional limbo. She spent days trying to figure out what had happened. She thought back to the early days of their relationship when she felt like a hero who had rescued Robert from his lonely quest for ideal love. Now she sat, dumbfounded and heart broken, wondering how it had all gone so wrong.

Robert didn’t appear to be outwardly unhappy. In fact, there were moments just before he announced that he was leaving when he had actually seemed elated about their relationship. It didn’t make any sense to her. She tried to recall any specifics that might shed some light on her dark confusion. She remembered all the time Robert had been spending on the Internet. When she would walk into the room he would minimize the screen he had been on and seem irritated that she had disturbed him. She remembered how he began taking his cell phone with him while taking out the trash and spent longer and longer amounts of time outside. If Linda questioned him about it, he became angry. Later, he always seemed apologetic and almost his old self. She had just assumed that his work was stressing him and that it was nothing personal. As soon as things settled down at work, she felt he would be the sweet man he had been when she first met him.

Even though Robert had hurt her many times, Linda had told herself it was nothing personal. He ensured her how special she was to him and that she was the woman of his dreams and everything he had ever wanted in a woman. What were a few misunderstandings or mood swings compared to that? She found herself missing his touch. Their physical relationship had been so special…a “perfect fit.”

One rainy afternoon, Linda’s cell phone rang and she was surprised to hear Robert’s voice on the other end. He wanted to meet her to discuss some things that had been on his mind. Linda had not really moved on since Robert had broken up with her, but she was starting to awaken in the mornings without that gnawing pain in her gut.

During their meeting, Robert confessed that leaving Linda was a mistake and that the past five months had been miserable for him. He said he believed their relationship was worth fighting for. As a matter-of-fact, he used the exact words Linda had used when she tried to save the relationship before he left her. He told her that the woman he had been dating was such a nag and didn’t seem to understand him. He said no one understood him the way Linda did. He told her he hadn’t been able to get her off his mind and wanted a chance to make things right. If she would take him back he promised that he would spend the rest of his life making everything up to her. Linda was ecstatic. Robert had practically read her mind. Never before had anyone understood or had as much in common with her. Who could blame Robert for needing some space to clear his head? Things were too “perfect” for him with such a compatible partner. He had never met anyone like Linda before and the idea of commitment scared him into the arms of another woman, a very incompatible woman. Now he knew Linda was the perfect mate for him!

Linda took him back, yet within weeks after Robert’s return, she was dealing with the familiar pangs of insults and comparisons to his past partners. Even the woman he had left to come back to Linda seemed to hold a certain amount of importance when he wasn’t cutting her down for being such a nag. Things were very confusing to Linda. She did not like the person she was becoming when she was with Robert. Once again, nothing she did seemed to satisfy him. She began to feel tired just trying to “meet his standards.” When her friends asked her how things were going, she lied and said they were wonderful. She didn’t want anyone to know the truth. Besides, he would start treating her with more respect as soon as his job stress lessened and as soon as his ex-girlfriend refrained from calling and harassing him.

The second time Robert left, Linda didn’t feel as confused as she had the prior time, although she still loved him and it hurt her to see the relationship end. The first time Robert left, Linda tried to convince him to stay. She didn’t want him to walk away from what he described as his “perfect relationship” and she felt he would regret overreacting and losing her. She had begged him not to leave. Looking back on that experience, she felt ashamed, because it made her feel desperate and clingy. This time she simply let him go. There was a numbness that prevented her from reacting. As days passed, it occurred to her that Robert must have been communicating with new women before their relationship had officially ended. That explained all his time on the Internet and all of the strange calls he received on his cell phone. Remaining in emotional limbo during round two, Linda realized she had been played. She felt angry and did not want to accept that. Only stupid people got played. She had two college degrees and ran her own business. She should have seen a player coming a mile away. Maybe he was just confused or maybe the stories he told her about his childhood prevented him from having a normal relationship. There had to be some kind of explanation. She considered herself to be relatively attractive and most men seemed only interested in her looks. But Robert initially told her she wasn’t really his “type” from the beginning. She loved the fact that he had fallen in love with her in spite of not being attracted to her; it appeared to her as “real love.” Could that have been part of his plan? Could he have somehow known that she wouldn’t fall for the same compliments and praise that she received from other men? Had he purposely worked another angle—one that would have been more believable to her?

Six months later, Linda realized Robert was still with the woman he had met on an Internet dating site a couple of weeks before they had broken up the second time. She felt a sting of insecurity as she wondered if this time he had actually found what he had been searching for…if this woman was the answer to his prayers for an ideal relationship. The possibility that it wasn’t Robert or his childhood hang-ups that caused their relationship to end was too much for Linda. She had been secretly spying on Robert for the past six months by reading his Internet dating profiles and calling his office from pay phones just to hear his voice. She just knew he wasn’t able to hang onto a woman and that his latest partner would soon be tossed to the wayside, just as she had been. However, six months had passed and all her sources informed her that Robert seemed to have finally found “the one.” Linda couldn’t imagine what this new woman had that was so much more appealing than what she possessed. There were times that Linda actually considered being Robert’s friend just to keep him in her life in some capacity. She saw how Robert had held his “friends” in such high esteem. She imagined being the “friend” Robert sneaked off to call while taking out the trash. A part of her wanted to be the “special” one in his life while his new partner was the one doubting and questioning in a clingy way. After being the partner, however, Linda didn’t wish that same pain on anyone else…even his new girlfriend. So she kept quiet and tried to stifle her humiliation, finding relief in the fact that she was better off without a boyfriend who made her feel insecure and full of doubt. Her friends kept telling her to “get over it” and move along, but she knew there was more to the situation than met the eye. Things were simply not adding up.