Dating can sometimes be hard. Especially when you realize you're in a relationship with a narcissist. These people on Reddit share the worst thing their narcissistic partner ever did to them that made finally end it. Content has been edited for clarity.
Blocked
“He was relentless in his comments about me, all of which were lies. I was shocked and saddened. I always felt something was off. We did not live together but had an emotional (or so I thought) and physical relationship for more than a year. We spoke every day sometimes all day. When we were together we had fun for the most part, unless I said or did something to make him angry and then watch out!
I received a voicemail late one evening that was incredibly rude, mean, and threatening from a woman and I heard him in the background. I called him immediately but he did not pick up. I then sent an e-mail to which she responded the next day. I finally spoke to her when I had the time. I am not into hurting people or rubbing salt in wounds. I answered her questions honestly but did not offer any information. He swore to me she was not his girlfriend, that she was delusional and he did not want to be with her because all they did was fight.
He said, ‘I don’t want her.’
Anyway, I blocked him from phone calls and texts but I did not know I could block e-mail. One afternoon, out of the blue, I received an email from him saying all kinds of really disturbing lies and very hurtful comments about how he felt about me. I felt like he was putting on a show for someone else. I shouldn’t have responded but I did. He was relentless. I did not know he had it in him.
My last response was, ‘NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER classic case. Next step restraining order.’
I had not heard a peep since. I had also blocked his e-mail.
He lied about everything! The things I told him in confidence he used to hurt and destroy me. As far as I know, I have never met anyone like this.”
The Constant Sorries
“He said to me, ‘Why are you never there for me?’
Mind you at this point, he was living at my house, I was feeding him, and putting him through school. This lovely comment came four days after my service dog died. I was actually for once focusing on myself and trying to live through the pain when I refused to go watch a surf competition with him. Truth be told, I only wanted to stay in bed and grieve. I knew if we headed to the beach everybody would ask why my dog wasn’t with me. But he did his little narcissistic tantrum to which I eventually gave him what he wanted.
After suffering for a good three hours by trying to answer people’s concerns about my lack of service dog without falling apart, I finally found refuge at my friend’s spot on the beach. I was able to hide away, only to have him rant at me in the evening that I didn’t care about him. He started asking why I was not actively watching the surfers and why did I not care about what he liked. Then he went off, telling me the reason he wasn’t part of the competition was because of me. Apparently, I learned that night that I never let him practice. so now he wasn’t good enough.
I remember listening to all this, trying to reassure him that no I loved him and I was trying to be there for him.
I told him, ‘I was sorry.’ I couldn’t even remember the number of times I said I was sorry to him. Too many times that it made me sick.
This reminded me of another incident. He made me apologize for looking at his phone and finding out he was cheating on me. He somehow managed to make me beg for forgiveness even though I had just found out he was cheating on me. It made me sad to think of the emotional state I was in.
That I couldn’t even think of standing up for myself and saying, ‘Get lost, bozo! Get out of my house.'”
He Left Her With An Ultimatum
“I moved from Canada back to the United States to be with my high school sweetheart 20 plus years later. He wanted me to have plastic surgery. I was happy with my body and didn’t want it. We argued for six months about it. I cried and told him why I didn’t want it.
Finally, as I was leaving for Las Vegas for my family reunion after I told him I no longer wanted him to go with me because I wanted a break from the arguing, he told me to enjoy the time with my family and to think about our conversations about having the procedure. If the answer was yes, then we would schedule the consultation when I got back from my reunion. If the answer was no then I needed to pack my bags.
I asked him, ‘Where would I go?’
He said, ‘I don’t care where you go but you can’t stay here.’
I spent most of my reunion crying and not knowing what to do. I wish I could say that I told him ‘forget you’ and never looked back. But I had nowhere to go and no money since he didn’t want me to have a job. I went ahead with the procedure and have hated him and myself ever since. I will never be the same person physically and emotionally.
Needless to say, our ‘relationship’ was an abysmal failure.”
April 7th, 2019
“My ex-boyfriend was blackmailing me with some pictures he took off of my Facebook messenger from when we were split up. When I was out of town, my ex-boyfriend had gotten on my Facebook and started looking through my all messages, which he eventually came across a few pictures between my first fiance and I had exchanged. He supposedly sent a copy to a couple of his homegirls so that even if I got onto his phone and deleted them, he still had backup pictures to use. He used it to make me stay with him even longer.
However, just a couple of days ago, on 4/7/2019, he tried to pull those shenanigans again, because he wanted me to send him new pictures of my chest.
I told him, ‘No.’
So he was trying to use that as leverage, telling me to not start playing games, and just give him what he asked for, or else. But I stood up to him and told him that I didn’t care because he couldn’t get them on my Facebook because I have to approve anything anyone tries to post or tag me in.”
She Ruined Him
“My ex-wife kidnapped and then alienated my children. She lied on public television about the incredible music career and international achievements that I created for her. Then duped me into paying for her to have an affair. She destroyed my life, my work, my reputation and had me arrested, without cause.
Then she said, ‘I’m sick of making allowances for you.’
I was so traumatized by all the things that she did to me that it totally changed my personality. I no longer can work with narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths. Instead, I devoted my life to kindness and calmness to cope with the loss of my children. It broke me.”
A 15-Year Nightmare
“My boyfriend was about to deploy for six months. After dating for a few months, this man popped the question.
I thought, ‘Heck! We only live once. Why not?’
We were supposed to get married a week before he deployed. I even took private pictures of myself for him to take. The day we were supposed to get married, he was nowhere to be found and wouldn’t return my calls. After the third day of no response from him, I left him a message requesting the return of my stuff. He returned my call, yelling, and name-calling.
He said, ‘I am about to go to war, and you are thinking about yourself. You are crazy! We are done! I will file harassment charges if you call me again. You are not going to get your things back!’
Then I heard a female laughing in the background. I was freaking livid!
I got our commands involved. He lied to them and claimed he would give me my stuff back once he got back from deployment. He painted me to be a crazy ex-girlfriend. Then as soon as he left, his supposed best friend called me. My ex-boyfriend gave him those private pictures of me because he was mad at me. He also confirmed the rumor of him picking some chick up at the airport. I was so ticked off. I wanted to hurt him as he had hurt me, so I slept with the best friend in my ex-boyfriend’s house.
After that, I tried to move on with my life, but out of the blue, he called me. He gave me the most heartfelt apology and declared the sweetest love I have ever heard. We both ended up crying. But, he came back from deployment six months later, remarried his ex-wife, but relentlessly pursued me.
His wife found out he was cheating on her. AGAIN! She left his rear end after only a month. They divorced for the second time and we got married a few months after. But my little secret was eating at me. About six months into the marriage, I came clean about sleeping with his best friend. I expected him to come clean too with his, but nope. Things got heated from there.
That sweet guy persona came off and his true colors came out. Every holiday was horrible because he expected me to apologize to him. Then he was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and a severe drinking addiction topped with crazy.
About four years into the marriage, my husband kept disappearing for a few hours every day. One day, a woman approached me at my job and wanted to see who I was. She said that she knew my husband. We briefly talked. But, before she left, she told me that she thought I was a very nice person and not some crazy lady that he made me to be. Then four years after that, he started sleeping with his boss in our house. He told me that it was payback since I did it to him years before with his best friend. What? I never cheated on him, but this was his story that he told countless times for sympathy.
In 2016, he found a chick who wanted to fight me for him. She assumed that she was his last stop. I tried to warn her, but she got snared into his web of lies. He did not like me talking to her so he would create havoc between us. This man was trying to convince the woman to come to our house and beat me up. Crazy right?
I didn’t know if his girlfriend needed my warnings but, she did. She started watching him and even got a hold of his cell phone. Boy, did she get an eyeful! She found out that he was cheating on a side piece (her) with another side piece and the wife (me)!
We are currently going through a divorce and to top all this mess off, he wants me to pay him alimony, spousal support, and half of everything I have. To include taking half of his debt. This is just a fraction of my 15-year nightmare. I was no saint before we got married, but this guy made me look like an angel. This guy cheated on me with over 70 women and I still stayed. Don’t judge me or feel sorry for me. I was hoping that I can help him and get the man I fell in love with back. No such luck! The struggle is real, being married to a narcissist/sociopath.”
“Empathy Is Stupid”
“We were going to a marriage counselor (ironically at her insistence) and on the way, I asked her what it was she hope we would get solved.
She replied, ‘We are going so the counselor can tell you how wrong you are. He will tell you that what you think is wrong.’
I was taken aback by her response.
I knew she never believed I would open up. Like (as I now realize) most victims, I was a quiet person. I was not comfortable with confrontation so I would let things go.
But, I thought we are here to solve problems and that can’t happen if everything isn’t on the table. So I opened up and laid out how I felt and where I thought things were wrong.
She spent that time ‘playing the poor little me’ and said nothing.
The counselor acknowledging something I said, turned and asked her how she thought I felt when she would say what she did.
Her reply: ‘How would I know? No one knows how someone else thinks. Empathy is stupid. It doesn’t exist. No one knows how someone else feels. I have no idea how Wayne feels.’
I could see it in the eyes of the counselor that he knew there were bigger problems than he was equipped to deal with.
It was her line that I used to research what was going on with her. I googled ‘lack of empathy’ and Narcissistic Personality Disorder came up. It was not until I found out about a covert narcissist that I realized she could be the poster girl.
Bad Dad?
“I have three children with a Narcissistic ex-husband. We were together for about eight years before we got divorced.
Recently, maybe about two weeks ago, I offered to help pay with extracurricular activities for the children. He was all for it until I asked him for a copy of receipts for my own record. This set him off. He went off on me, saying that I don’t get a receipt. He declared he made 140,000 bucks a year, and he didn’t need my help essentially. Clearly, he was not keeping my children’s best interest at heart by letting me be involved in the ways I could afford.
He proceeded to end the conversation by saying, ‘Stop looking for reasons to text me.’
What?! Like our three kids wasn’t a good reason? Trust me, I would want NOTHING to do with his royal butt if otherwise.
Then today, I got a message from him. He was asking for money to help pay for one of our kid’s medical bills. Mind you, this guy is wealthy. He has a new Harley Davidson motorcycle, a new truck, a boat, and of course his 140,000 bucks a year salary. I barely get to see my kids. But he still said he was gonna take me to court to pay.
I make maybe 12,000 to 15,000 bucks a year. I left that marriage with nothing but a bed and my vehicle. Not even my soul was with me by the end of the divorce.
Three years later, I’m still trying to get on my feet. I am still trying to find a steady job and whatnot. I sacrificed everything for him. I’m thankful for my kids but I made a huge mistake thinking he was a nice person. It’s sad because even my own kids just told me today that they wished their dad was nicer. This left me puzzled about what to tell them. He is sick and sad inside, and needs some help, but deep down he is a good man. He is charming, handsome, and has an amazing capability to get people on his side. I am still trying to see the good. A few times he had told me that I could be dead in a ditch somewhere, and he wouldn’t give a darn. I don’t care, I just feel bad for my kids.”
Game Over
“The day he said he wanted a divorce, he was playing Xbox with his friends and had his headset on. He did not mute it or stop playing but proceeded to tell me he didn’t want to be with me because the marriage made him depressed and he did not know who he was if he was with me.
He told me it was my fault that the only thing he wanted to do other than drinking, was playing video games. He said being with me, he felt trapped and didn’t know who he was. He told me I should feel lucky because he was gonna let me have the house and live in a nice space while he went to a ‘dirty room.’
And then he pushed ‘our’ dog off the couch and told me, ‘Take YOUR dog away from me.’
I started crying. He told me to get the heck out of his face and go cry somewhere else because he was trying to play with his friends and I was bothering him. Four hours before all this he told me he loved me and I was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Things like that can really destroy you. Stay away from these types of people. Don’t wait for them to kill a part of you. Because they will.”
Her Mask Came Off
“Imagine someone betrayed by a trusted lover. Consider also that, prior to the betrayal, there were deliberate, difficult, and fragile discussions that took place trying to work out some conflicts, doubts, and reservations that I had about their ability to uphold and maintain the peace of an intimate relationship. In trying to work through all that, again prior to the betrayal, I had made the decision to end it and I said the following to her:
Me (emailed): ‘Your biggest mistake was leading me to believe that your mind, heart, and body only desire me. I will not be your source of love and emotional support while you maintain your sources of lust that serve your purposes better when you want that. That’s the ugly truth about this whole situation. I feel you’re using everyone you have at your disposal to fulfill different needs.
You will deny this and blame it on me or say I’m confused but I’ve seen enough of your inexplicable antics, contradictions, and worst of all, your repeated total disregard and purposeful failure to respond to legitimate questions I have posed to you.
I’m not going to continue going back and forth with you anymore. For my own sense of self-preservation, this has to be over. I will always love you regardless of all your games. It just hurts too much. I’m better than that and so are you.’
She responded: ‘I am the kind, caring, and thoughtful woman you love. I beg you! Please don’t walk away from us. I will love you every single day for the rest of my life and I will never give up on us. Ever. I don’t care if it takes years to prove it to you. Even if you walk away, I won’t sleep with anyone else. I will try the rest of my life to have you. Please don’t try to forget me. If you disappear from me, then you must know I’m not playing with you. You are my last love. Please don’t give up on me.’
The problem here was that her words above did not mean what they appeared to mean. It was just another trick.
That was why I ended up with her cheating in the house we got six months after this email. She cheated on the first day after we got a house. I found out about the cheating from surveillance recordings. Neither of us lived in that house at that time. We both lived in homes apart from that house. Up until the point where we planned to actually move into that house, she wanted to use our house as a place to carry on her ongoing affairs and she was royally ticked off when she spotted the surveillance recordings thus making it harder for her. I took away her ability to get her revenge in secret and this enraged her in such a manner that she decided to one-up me and she then deliberately incorporated my surveillance recordings into her revenge plot. The content on those recordings introduced me to the real monster behind all those kind but fake words.
I will never forget her slamming her hands down repeatedly right next to my recording devices for hours straight and then mocking me afterward when I confronted her about it. She claimed she wasn’t there and maybe dope heads broke into our house and had done the deed in it. I will never forget being relentless asking her to explain just how ear-splitting slamming noises, as loud and sometimes louder, than the recorders could record were happening right next to my recording device for literal hours in an empty house.
Her incredulous response, ‘Oh, so you think somebody was doing that next to your recorders on purpose trying to be snide? That’s what you think!?’
What she wanted was for me to know about all of it and to present it all in the most covertly hurtful way she could present it. On top of that, she also wanted to try and force me to accept it by an unspoken and silent demand that I look the other way. I suppose she thought I’d be too humiliated and hurt to confront her. That’s how petty, selfish, and disconnected from reality they actually are to even think that way.
At that point, I finally saw and realized the bigger picture, the cheating and betrayal appeared to be a lesser symptom of a much deeper problem that I never would have anticipated. Enter covert narcissism.”
“He Told Me That I Became Boring”
“After having a nagging feeling that he was cheating on me, we ended up having a big fight. He denied everything until he got fed up with me not leaving him alone, so he finally confessed. That night was the definite and final discard of me.
He told me that I ‘became boring and fat and lazy’ and that I ‘should read more books.’
Of course, I became all that after going through years of heartbreak after heartbreak and a very lonely and stressful pregnancy. Never mind the feeling of being like a single mother for five years of the child’s s life. A single mum, who for some reason was still expected to cook and clean, do the husband’s laundry, and satisfy him in the bedroom on demand. Such a life runs you down and I had no idea why I just became nothing, feeling nothing. I just wished the days to end.
I became boring, so he went and got a new fresh interesting young girl. Sooner or later she will be called boring too. They are having an ‘oopsie baby’ this summer.”