My Experience with a Narcissist
It’s been five years since the narcissist entered my orbit and eighteen months since his impact ended in the ultimate tragedy.
A lot of healing has happened along the way, but justice remains elusive.
This experience has taught me that narcissistic abuse is not a rare occurrence. Those who suffer at the hands of a narcissist often feel alone because the lengths a narcissist will go to coerce, control, and dominate are so outlandish, that even most Hollywood screenwriters would find it “unbelievable.”
Today, I tell my story.
I’ll break this into two posts:
- The Story of the Narcissist.
- The Healing.
The Story of the Narcissist
Let me start with a definition. The narcissist I refer to in this story is not just someone who thinks highly of himself, nor is he just a selfish person.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a diagnosable mental health condition. Its main features are an inflated sense of self-importance and an excessive need for the attention and admiration by others. Narcissists are addicted to feeling special and they will lie, connive, cheat, steal, manipulate, and obfuscate to experience and maintain the sensation of superiority. They will destroy and even kill to get their way.
I’m changing the names in this story because the case remains unresolved. So I’m protecting myself and all those close to the case.
In 2015 I met Shelly in a bar in San Francisco on a quiet weeknight. She was out with some friends and I was only a few blocks from my house meeting a friend of mine.
It didn’t take long for us to start talking, and lo and behold, I was in one of most engaging conversations with a woman I’d had in forever. She was kind, gentile, vulnerable, but also strong, resilient and incredibly thoughtful in her words and expression. We had so much in common. She was a dream come true. I actually remember pinching myself to see if I’d wake up from meeting her.
The next 3 months were really amazing. We went on road trips, outdoor adventures, concerts and she connected deeply with my community of friends. It was a soul connection in the making.
That summer, my mom got very sick and was admitted to the ICU. During the recovery, Shelly was on the floor of the hospital painting my mom’s toe nails to make her feel special again.
Shelly was always thinking of others, always looking for ways to serve and make people feel like they were the only ones in the room.
We had such open communication about everything. I learned about her abusive upbringing and the challenges in her family. She was sexually abused, emotionally neglected and found herself in foster care. I also learned how intentional her love for kids was, and that she was determined to break the cycle of abuse in her family.
Shelly opened up to her kids about her relationship with me and we all became very close. I only met two of her friends though, and would soon learn why.
After we bonded, she revealed the darkest shadow in her past to me.
She told me about Aaron, her previous boyfriend. She had lived with him. He was a wealthy man. She was going back to school, so he had been supporting her financially. In the event of a break up, he promised to take care of her through school knowing she gave up all the child support she had to move to his location 500 miles from her kids. Her family didn’t have money.
Their relationship was toxic from the get go. She never had any money. He saw a beautiful, but vulnerable woman who would do anything to provide for her kids. He routinely abused her financially and emotionally. It ended with her friends that I met, driving 500 miles to pick her up. He had literally tossed all of her belongings in the front yard. It would be the first of many outbursts, which we all thought were so bad that they would be the last straw.
Fast forward to three months later: Aaron found out about us dating. He became enraged. He drained her bank account, which he had control of, down to $1. She had rent due and three kids to take care of. To Shelly’s credit, she was completely open about this with me. She showed me the texts, emails and I even listened to the voice mails. I did my best to hold space for her in those moments, telling her I was there to support her as she got on the other side of her entanglement with Aaron. But I was completely shocked about how evil and vindictive someone could be.
Aaron was a master manipulator. He refused to honor his end of the bargain, which was to take care of her financially until she finished school. Since they weren’t married, he wasn’t under any legal obligation to do so.
In fact, he entangled her in something that she unwillingly didn’t know was illegal until they broke up. He was paying her through his business as an employee, even though she didn’t work there. He was able to take the write-offs though his business. He had all of her taxes prepared by a willing CPA, who was filing his taxes illegally, and Shelly was now complicit in defrauding the IRS.
She was stuck. I spent an entire Saturday sitting down with her to put together a sum total of everything that was agreed upon while they were dating, in the event they broke up. We tried to see if he would just pay her off in one lump sum. She flew down to meet him, and presented him with this exit strategy in public. He considered it, but wouldn’t give her a definitive answer.
Shelly flew home with a couple hundred dollars he gave her. She told me she had finally “got through to him” and “it was great to see him being the person I met originally.”
Three days later, he agreed to about 1/10 of what they originally discussed.
Aaron made her swap out her car for another lease, of which he would pay. In order to her to get all of these things, she’d need to fly down on weekends to “work for him.”
Each time Shelly went down, the fights and the abuse got worse. She told Aaron that she was together with me and that she didn’t want to be with him romantically anymore. She’d come home and look like she’d been awake for 3 days straight. She’d show me the threatening text messages from Aaron and said he was unbearable. But in order to get her rent, food, car and bills paid, in her mind, she “had to just take it.”
Months of this went by and week after week of this, our relationship started to fray. She knew the abuse was getting bad and she started hiding it. We went to my parents house for Thanksgiving and on the last night, he kept her on the phone for six hours.
Shelly felt embarrassed, so she sat outside in the 38 degree night air trying to appease him.
Aaron upped the ante, proposing to her and saying he’d only continue supporting her if she married him. If she refused, he would cut her off entirely.
On the fourteen hour drive home. Shelly finally opened up about it. I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to hurt this guy. I could understand if she was honest and having mixed feelings because she truly had feelings for him, but that wasn’t the case at all. She was terrified.
She told me she had no way to take care of her kids without his support. She refused any help from me, as she didn’t want this to be the dynamic in our loving relationship. My heart broke for her, but I still had no idea how to help out.
Although Shelly refused to marry him, his escalation and demands continued and got more restrictive.
At Christmas he held one of his quarterly company retreats in Hawaii. In order to get her money for the month, he said she had to “come work” at this event with him. This was a boundary I wasn’t not willing to cross. I knew what was happening and I told her I’d had enough. We separated for a couple of weeks, but then she came back and said she had a plan to deal with it once and for all; that she truly loved me, and that she just needed a two month runway and she’d be done with Aaron for good.
I reluctantly agreed.
Shelly went off to Hawaii for Christmas and her birthday.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
I texted her on her birthday, and he saw the text message. He had a key to her hotel room (because he paid for them), took all of her things and threw them into the hallway. After cleaning it up, she called me from inside the bathroom trembling and scared. I tried to see if she needed to get a flight home, but she balked and said she could handle it. For the next two days, Aaron just gave her the silent treatment.
They flew home without a word spoken between them.
At his home airport, she caught a connecting flight home to us. I was supposed to pick her up. I got another frantic phone call. When they got to baggage claim, he grabbed her suitcase. In the middle of the airport, they were tugging and pulling it. She was 5'2" 110 lbs, and he was almost a foot taller. The tussle was so bad, airport security came over to break it up.
He ended up ripping the suitcase away from her and it would result in her tearing the ligaments in her elbow.
She missed the last flight home, hopped in an Uber and drove to a random hotel. She was terrified.
Once again, she said, “This is the last time. I can’t do this anymore.”
I thought, “Finally, this is going to be over.”
Over the course of the next two months, she started developing some intense auto-immune disorders. Her skin would swell up and peel. Her asthma was so bad, it would wake her up in the middle of the night choking. She would have a migraine once a week. She could hardly keep food down without getting the runs. She had no way of paying for healthcare. She became more dependent on him and he was even more determined to get her back permanently.
I stepped in and said I was going to support her on her healing path. I got Shelly into one of the best functional medicine docs in the world. Her body was shutting down. This doc worked with her, understood the psychological impact on her body and developed a wonderful plan.
But, behind my back, Shelly and Aaron were talking again. He, again, was using financial coercion to regain control. She knew the long road her health required and, in her mind, Aaron was the only one who could provide it.
She had surgery on her elbow and I took her to the hospital but he paid for it. On the ride over, she said it was no big deal and that Aaron “didn’t mean to hurt me, it was an accident.”
I took care of her 24 hrs a day for 3 days straight. I had to go back to work on the fourth day, post surgery. After coming home, she didn’t answer any phone calls or texts for 24 hours. Then I got a long email from her saying that she flew down to Aaron’s house and that she was going to continue recovering from there indefinitely.
A week later, she finally called me and I told her that I’d had enough. That loving each other needed actions and that I was no longer willing to be in a relationship with someone who was being abused by an ex who clearly wanted to marry her.
So we kinda-sorta split up. Or, we decided to put us on pause while she figured out what to do.
I found out later from her kids that after that moment, she got sicker and sicker. Aaron paid her medical expenses from then on.
Later I found out later that they started seeing a family therapist. He would only pay for what he thought was appropriate therapy or healthcare. Anything that pointed towards him as the source of the problem was immediately cut off.
The therapist formally diagnosed Aaron with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
One night, all hell broke loose again.
Shelly called and left me a message after having another surgery. I left her a voicemail wishing her healing. Aaron snuck into her purse and got her phone. He listened to her voice and text messages from me. He flew into a rage. He butt dialed me in their fight and he threw all of her stuff on the lawn again. Her son was there and he stood in the way of what almost came to blows.
Shelly flew back to me. She told me that this was it.
I was relieved and felt like perhaps this was the time to start picking up the pieces again and moving forward. I told her she could move into my place in the city, which was small, but that we could live together until she could get on her feet again. She was only two days out of surgery when this happened, so she again, packed up all her stuff and moved back.
This once vibrant and beautiful human now embodied all of the abuse — physical and emotional — from Aaron. She was frail, gaunt and empty. She had a black cloud that kind of hovered over her.
Though I was here to help her, Shelly became more distant. I’d later find out that he had drained all her bank accounts again.
About two months later, I came home and Shelly had packed all her things.
She was gone without a word or a trace.
She had left to go live with Aaron.
A week later, I got a phone call from her. What happened next cut me in my soul. I picked up the phone and she was on speaker phone. She sounded like she was reading off a piece of paper that you make a hostage read:
“Hi Doug. I’m with Aaron.”
“Hi Doug,” he said, beaming with pride as if he was being presented with his trophy.
“I’m calling to tell you that Aaron and I are getting married. I will not be contacting you anymore and I ask that you never contact me again.”
I held the phone, totally stunned. They hung up on me. The narcissist wasn’t just looking to “win the girl,” he wanted to stab me in the chest and let me bleed. And he got her to do it for him. I’ve never felt so betrayed, kicked or brutalized.
Months and months went by. I started my healing process (to be described in Part 2). I was free from this toxic relationship, and most importantly, from Aaron himself. They would be married on New Years Day that year.
It was all in my rear-view mirror.
About 6 months later, Shelly reached out to me and really wanted to talk. She did it from a burner phone number that I didn’t recognize. I ignored the texts and emails for a week. I thought it was a trap but she was really in trouble. She offered to meet me for coffee in public and even took a photo to show me that she was in town and alone.
I met her and learned that the abuse was worse than ever. He was always threatened by friendships she made with other people, and he totally isolated her. She didn’t have any friends left.
She barely got to see her kids.
She said she had a plan for getting out and that she had to do it carefully. She and her therapist came up with a plan. Her therapist had told her, “Be really careful, Shelly. He is dangerous.”
I told her directly that there was no getting back together for us. But that I cared for her and would lend her a hand to finally break free from him.
Fast forward a couple of months, she filed for divorce and, knowing that she didn’t have any money for a lawyer, Aaron started to contest the prenup.
For a few months, Shelly and I did a lot of healing. She was breaking free and I was there to support her through it.
I saw how her childhood sexual abuse and drug addict mother was playing out in her relationship with Aaron. She was a middle child who always sacrificed herself to keep the peace. Her body was absolutely poisoned with abuse. But she was working on it. She was gaining strength. She was finding work and she was saving money so she could cut ties for good.
In the meantime, she got Aaron to spring for an in-law unit in my metro area under the guise of being closer to her daughter (which was actually true, just not the whole truth). Our relationship started to rekindle, again. Her illnesses were showing signs of improvement.
As mentioned earlier, Aaron was funneling money through her, so she had to use his CPA to handle taxes.
She let me know she was going down to Arron with the divorce papers and to handle taxes. It was one last go. She had saved enough money in cash to get away for 6 months.
I got a call from her son on a Saturday night. Shelly was found dead by Aaron in a hotel room they had gotten together because, according to his testimony, they were “out celebrating his birthday.”
Aaron claimed they went to a show, then they started partying and Shelly overdosed.
I knew she had booked the hotel room, because she was afraid of Aaron and didn’t want to be in his house again.
Six months later, the autopsy showed that Shelly had died from a lethal overdose of GHB.
GHB is a natural compound you have in your body. But the substance is synthesized and in small doses can give a euphoric, yet calm feeling. If combined with other depressants, like alcohol, it can be lethal. Her heart stopped.
We have no idea how much she had and the autopsy did not specify.
In the days after Shelly’s death, Aaron would get access to her burner phone, all her email accounts and basically was able to get into every private thing she owned.
I handed over about 5% of the text messages and screenshots to the police, where she feared for her safety.
She had told me that he said if she broke up with him, that he would kill her and himself. She had these notes written to her therapist.
But Aaron got access to everything. I’m sure he spent the following weeks deleting and erasing everything.
This crime took place in Los Angeles County. The case was open under the suspicion of homicide.
Like me, everyone in her family and her kids also think Aaron killed Shelly but the LAPD did nothing.
They called me for a forty five minute chat and they talked about her history of family abuse the whole time. We spent ten minutes chatting about the threats, emails and texts I had. I kept trying to redirect the conversation to show the police the proof that not only was their relationship toxic and abusive, but that he had threatened her life many times in the event she left him. I said that her therapist would have all of this in her records. They never contacted her. The therapist never gave a statement to the police. The detectives just wrote it off as a broken, drug addicted woman who went over the edge.
Big breath, here.
There will be more written about how her family and I have been healing. But, in short, here in the United States, Coercive Control and financial abuse are not crimes. But the last time I checked, murder is still a crime.
We know Shelly knew about GHB and it being dangerous, so we’re almost positive he dosed her drink. But there’s no smoking gun. No fingerprints. No DNA.
Aaron was there but there is no way to prove that he intended to kill Shelly. He definitely had motive and opportunity.
But, it’s not like the LAPD spent six months digging into this case, searching for evidence and came to a conclusion that there wasn’t enough evidence. They didn’t lift their finger to investigate a rich guy who had no previous criminal record. I can just see how it was too tough a case in a county that has plenty of homicides to keep them busy.
In the aftermath, Aaron showed the Will to the family and there was no mention of anything. That was another lie. Before she married Aaron, she had a Will and specified exactly how her kids were to be taken care of. Her kids were left with nothing except her belongings which had no market value. I have no idea what happened to the cash I know she had. Aaron had her keys and access to everything. Her wedding and engagement ring was six figures. He cut Shelly’s children off completely.
On my end, I couldn’t attend the memorial to say good-bye because Aaron threatened me in the week leading up to it.
I didn’t fear for my safety, but I wanted to give her kids peace so they could honor and celebrate their mom. Aaron gave one of the eulogies and he talked about himself the entire time. The only thing he shared about her was about how “hot she was.”
I had a private ceremony in the woods with a friend and we got to celebrate her spirit and her life. It was one of the hardest days of my entire life. My path to healing began earlier and it still continues to this day. I’m excited to share it in Part 2.
This is a cautionary tale.
Someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is one of the most dangerous people you will ever encounter. They are completely incapable of changing. Everything is a competition to them and they’ll destroy you before they’ll lose. They will do absolutely anything to feel like the winner.
They isolate you to make you feel alone and like everything that is happening is your fault.
For everyone going through their own battles with someone with NPD, you are NOT alone.
RUN. Do not walk to the exit. Cut them off and NEVER speak to them again.
Also, for those of us affected by this, I want to come together to make real changes in the United States. The things that a narcissist can do legally in this country to abuse another person is a complete violation of that person’s human rights.
We must fight to make sure that our legal system can start protecting people who are being abused by narcissists.
Coming Soon: Healing from the Narcissist — Part 2
