I realize that each man that I "fell in love with" was someone that I felt I had to constantly try to please. Looking back I realize that they were very narcissistic and would qualify using Dr. Hare's checklist. I was set up for this pattern because my mother was narcissistic. She was a wounded soul, I am sure, but my sympathy for her has stood in the way of my healing. For most of my remembered childhood, I wanted to make my mom happy and tried to something that would help her to feel happy with me. This did not work. In my relationships with men ( and often with women) I would fall into a passive role and try to be helpful, wise and kind. Of course, I could not keep this up and realized that I was carrying the load in these relationships.
It is hard to explain. Often the person was charismatic, very intelligent, controlling and bossy. I was a good "right hand man" or power behind the thrown. This left me feeling frustrated and depressed.
My first marriage was at age 19. My husband and I went to live on a remote island where we worked on a tug, logsalvaging. He was very charismatic and verbally quite brilliant. People would say," Oh, he is the most christlike person I have ever met", or " He is the most laudable man I have ever known". These guys weren't living with him as his wife. At home, he was sneering, sarcastic and cruel. He often hit me and would come home drunk. He would leave for weeks at a time while I stayed behind in a little house with no electricity or running water. The perfect set up for isolation and dominance. I was dependent on him to run the boat and chop the wood and for bottomline survival.
We later got a fishboat and that was better because I got to interact with other people( mostly other fishermen but they were kind to me and felt respected for the first time in a long time.)
Basically, I felt like a slave and I was treated like one. It got worse and worse. Always, I thought that if I tried harder it would get better. Unfortuneately, my husband started to drink heavily and got into using cocaine. This developed into dealing cocaine. I had no idea and no frame of reference to compare my life to. At that time and in that culture, cocaine was a groovy recreational drug and people who did not use it were considered the deviant ones. My husband was involved with lots of women on the island and this was a nightmare.
This legend of him being such a great man continued. He is a very good sea captain, good problem solver, does not react to stress by overreacting. This is true. I admired that side of him too. However, he had no empathy for my little girl or me. I was stuck with him for life due to his being my daughter's father and the fortune he made doing illegal things. Because he bought houses for relatives and did other magnamous things he continued to be put on a pedastal. This really sounds irrational but it is very true.
He paid for our daughter's wedding and it was huge. I have little money. I was like Banquo's ghost at the wedding and was not included in anything.
I have very bitter memories of my time with him. For instance, he knocked me out cold when I went to breastfeed the baby while we were on the fishboat. The contrast between who he was in public and who he was as a husband was very confusing and aweful for me. I shrank away to almost nothing.
The hoops for pleasing him were beyond my reach. I worked on the boat, was a gourmet cook, He never washed a dish, we had a pretty great sex life,I was a good mom. I do remember the neverending denigration and contempt. I realize now that he had no empathy and he had the cool, unflappable , steely calm of a psychopath. He could charm people with this act of brilliance and humility that was saved for the unintiated. Along the way, friends who worked with him or got involved in the abuse of drugs fell by the wayside. Some went to prison and some commited suicide. This did not faze him.
When I left him I was lucky to get away. I just had enough of a sense of self to know that something was terrible wrong. That night he had been out with someones wife. He came home and told me something really obscene and I left. He probably did not remember the next day. He had a couple of women lined up and soon went off with one of his best friends wife.
This last relationship lasted seven years. I had that same exhillerated feeling of having met my soul mate and transcending to a place of love and ecstacy. ( This must be a warning sign). Looking back, he was meeting my needs and intuiting just what I wanted. I knew his past. He had two ex-wives and an ex mistress that was involved with him for many years. However, I thought this was just because he had not found the right one ( Another warning sign). He was a very adept liar. His mother warned me that everything that came out of his mouth was a lie. I thought she was beastly. ( another sign). Turns out she was right. So was his ex wife. But there was no way I was going to believe them. My hormones and every part of me wanted him. Even desperately wanted him.
maybe it will help to write this. I will write more later