13 Flags

What happens when a narcissist and a co-dependent form a relationship? Fireworks in the beginning and heartache in the end. It’s a match made in hell that should never have the chance to flourish.

Regret forms the basis of my story, or self-imposed hibernation on love, that began in 2015. I saw his picture on a dating site and it drew me in like a magnet. No matter how many other profiles that I looked at, I kept returning to his. I had to get to know this man. I messaged him several times over several months before he ever responded to me. We hit it off immediately and talked for hours. Come to find out, he even lived a few houses up from the one that I had shared with my ex-husband. He actually lived in his parents’ basement. Blind eye turned to red flag number 1.

We swapped pictures and numbers and stories and made plans to meet that weekend. He was different than anyone I had ever met. We were attracted to each other instantly and it was like we had known each other always. Kind of like soulmates if you believe in that kind of thing.

He was an over-the-road truck driver and stayed gone for weeks at a time. This was not conducive to a steady exclusive attachment for the first year or more that we knew each other. Yet we talked regularly and always sought each other out when he was home on weekends. No matter what other man I may have met or tried to talk to, they just didn’t appeal to me in the way that he did. He was handsome, charming, and enigmatic. Not to mention an alcoholic. The kind that only drinks in the evening before bedtime. Blind eye turned to red flag number 2.

In 2017, I finally met his family and supported him through his brother’s liver transplant. I brought my son over a few times. They seemed to get along; although, he had never really been around kids as he had three children by three different women who all still lived back in Kentucky where he was originally from. He had never been in their lives. Red flag number 3 ignored. He even owed thousands of dollars in back child support on them and had been imprisoned two decades before for non-payment. Red flag number 4 ignored.

We lived these first couple of years, months on and months off, as he could never fully commit to me. He would always push me away when things would start to get more intimate and comfortable between us. Red flag number 5. By 2018, we began an actual exclusive relationship. I even started staying over every Saturday night. His parents and I really liked each other. He still had never been to my house or met my family after three years. He was like a mythical figure that I spoke of and visited. Red flag number 6. Not to mention that we always just hung out at his house and never went anywhere. Ever. Only to Walmart, Ingles, or the liquor store. Now, 5 ½ years later, we still have never gone on an actual “date” out to eat or to the movies or anywhere for that matter. Big red flag number 7.

Throughout these years, I always told him that I loved him. I found him so sexy and manly and we had amazing chemistry in bed. I bought him a lot of gifts for holidays or no reason at all. I enjoyed treating “my man”. Anything that I ever knew that he wanted or needed, I was sure to get for him. I spoiled him rotten. To this day, he has never bought me anything. Sad red flag number 8.

During the summer of 2018, he decided that he was miserable after 18 years of trucking and wanted to pursue his dream of being a chef. He had grown up in the family bakery business and cooking was in his genes. I encouraged and supported this endeavor and helped him enroll in school. He was accepted but needed a personal vehicle to drive back and forth to school. Helpful me promptly secured a $3000 loan and enable him to buy a car that two months later had mechanical problems. He had to temporarily withdraw from school and go back out on the road. He sold the car for just a little more than half the loan but, instead of using the money to put down on another vehicle or give back to me for the loan, he bought himself a new grill and AR-15. Major red flag number 9. I never said anything like an idiot and still stood by “my man”.

Eventually, throughout 2018 and 2019, he had began telling me that he loved me back and that he missed me too when we were apart. I was under the guise that we were a legit happy couple. We were locktight. By now, I knew his mannerisms in and out. I thought that he hung the moon. During this time, I had grown close with his mother and she had confided in me that he had never actually been in the Marines like he tells everyone. (He has Marine tattooed across his back and USMC tattooed on one of his wrists.) That he had been kicked out during basic. I keep that secret (lie) to this day. Red flag number 10.

Fall of 2019 saw him attending school again (his parents bought him another vehicle) and I even “helped” him to find a job as an assistant chef in a local assisted living facility. He needed the experience after all. By Thanksgiving, he had decided that our relationship “wasn’t going anywhere” and we broke up. By January, he had quit work and was seeing someone else that he had met there. By February, he was talking to me again. In April, he went back to her. In June, we got back together until September. He couldn’t seem decide if he wanted to be with me or her. Super major red flag number 11. During the times that we were together and, since he wasn’t working, I paid for his weekly alcohol, dip, vape juice and coils, and occasional gas. After all, I was “helping and supporting him” while he went to school. I have also always made sure that he had his stomach medicine, vitamin, and milk thistle for his liver. I was taking care of him.

The night before Thanksgiving 2020, he actually came and stayed with me at my home. Thus commenced two months of him coming and staying with me and my son every weekend. I was tickled that he was making an effort and coming to me now. But I saw different sides of him. One was a sweet, romantic, affectionate side that I had never seen before. I really liked it. For example, we took baths together and he bathed me. No one had ever done that for me before! One was the spoiled baby that came out when he didn’t get his way. That kind of annoyed me. And another was the drunk that said and couldn’t remember things and couldn’t perform sexually and blamed everything on me. This pissed me off. Red flag number 12.

We are now into February 2021. Its income tax return time. What do I do but “help” to buy the last few books that he needs for school this semester and a chef’s backpack along with two plating sets. I also paid for his culinary association membership and his honor society dues. Not to mention the regular weeklies and his new monthly child support payments that began in January. It has currently been over a year since he as worked a job and paid for anything. I honestly don’t think that he plans on working so long as he is in school although he likes to say so.

 School is in full swing and I have “helped” with some school work and even wrote his first speech for Communications class. February has found him loaded down with so much homework that he is unable to come over for a whole month until weekend before last. Red flag number 13.

I was so excited to get to see him and spend time with him again. We spent most of Saturday buying shopping in town. I bought him some scotch and a cigar, we picked out a wood pellet grill for my deck in anticipation of the upcoming summer season, and we bought food for him to prepare me my favorite meal that night. It was a nice day until night came. After the food had been cleared away and I had taken my bath, he decided that he was hungry and didn’t want to eat what he had made for me. Since he had not mentioned anything earlier in the day about not wanting barbecue chicken and cheese grits, there was nothing else to eat so he became angry and left. The next day he asked about coming over to cook on the grill again but it was already after 2:00 pm and I wasn’t feeling well. He decided not to come over and then later was mad because he said that I had promised to help him with his homework and then had left it all on him to do that evening. Excuse me, but I was not the one that left in the middle of the night!

After 5 ½ years, I had finally come to the point of realizing that I was only a pawn to him. Someone that he used. He is a narcissist and I am a codependent. Our relationship was undoubtedly toxic. I recently read an article on GoodTherapy that stated “The codependent person has found a partner they can pour their self into, and the narcissistic person has found someone who puts their needs first.” Agreed. I have probably spent $6,000 on him over the course of our relationship and he to this day has never spent money on me other than a few fast food meals. I spent weekend after weekend staying with him instead of my son. I defended him to my family and friends because he never made any effort until these last few months to meet anyone. And he still wasn’t telling me that he loved me back these past few months. I am the most EPIC fool in love that ever walked this earth!!! I know you are all completely dumbfounded.

Now here is the clincher…..He messaged me this past weekend being bitter over me still going our beach vacation that we had planned together this Summer. Except he had told me to cancel him out of it when we broke up so I moved it from Ft Pierce to Navarre and enlisted my mother to go with me instead. He told me five times that he hoped that I had a “great time” with my mom when I could have had a man going with me. And then he proceeded to tell me that he had still talked to the ex-girlfriend from last year the entire time that we had been together and that he had slept with her and that he loved her. He said that he had never loved me and that’s why he couldn’t say it back to me this time. And then he stated that he had never had any intentions of going with me and my son to the beach this summer. I still cannot decide if he was being a jerk and making up stuff to intentionally hurt me or if he was telling the truth.

I know what you all are thinking. How on earth can I be so dumb and forgiving??!! I have asked myself a million times but the heart wants what it wants. He does have some good qualities and we did get along very well. We understood each other on a different level and had good times together. He is just quite simply an asshole. And a narcissist.

So you see, I have been in hibernation for several years. Hibernation from love. Hibernation from myself and family and friends. I sacrificed time and money and my heart for something that, in the end, only broke my heart and wasted my time and made me look stupid. Now I am having a fresh outlook on my life. I am taking an interest in my health again. I am thinking about going back to school. I am setting a goal to buy my son and I a home. I am trying to look at my future in a positive light. Do I miss him? Yes. Am I lonely? Yes. But is it worth going back to him for the hundredth time for more of the same? Knowing that it may be all hearts and stars in the beginning for it to only return to more of the same. Probably not. And I hope that I can have enough self-constraint and self-love to refrain if the opportunity presents itself again.

Right now, for the moment, I have come out of my cave and I am stretching and checking out my surroundings. I am hungry and ready to eat.