Erin Riley, the author of A Dark Force 20 Years with a Covert Narcissist, takes us through her journey from having a successful and vibrant professional in the music and entertainment industry to being entrapped in the shadows of a covert narcissist. She unfolds the realities of narcissistic abuse, revealing how she fell into the love bombing scheme and how she struggled to understand the complex dynamics of her relationship.
You can connect with Erin here: https://www.erinriley.com/
Website: Emotional Abuse Coach
Instagram: @emotionalabusecoach
Email: jessica@jessicaknightcoaching.com
{Course} Identify Signs of Abuse and Begin to Heal
{Free Resource} Canned Responses for Engaging with an Abusive Partner
Erin Riley, the author of A Dark Force 20 Years with a Covert Narcissist, takes us through her journey from having a successful and vibrant professional in the music and entertainment industry to being entrapped in the shadows of a covert narcissist. She unfolds the realities of narcissistic abuse, revealing how she fell into the love bombing scheme and how she struggled to understand the complex dynamics of her relationship.
You can connect with Erin here: https://www.erinriley.com/
Website: Emotional Abuse Coach
Instagram: @emotionalabusecoach
Email: jessica@jessicaknightcoaching.com
{Course} Identify Signs of Abuse and Begin to Heal
{Free Resource} Canned Responses for Engaging with an Abusive Partner
Welcome to the Relationship Recovery Podcast hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes in narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others, and heal the relationship with yourself so you can learn to love in a healthy way.
Speaker 2:Hello and thank you for being here Today. I'm interviewing Erin Riley, who's the author of A Dark Force 20 years with a covert narcissist. Erin has a very deep story in history of narcissistic abuse that she talks through in this podcast and how she began to notice it and heal. She was a successful professional working in the music industry and entertainment industry in New York and surrounding cities and then found herself in a narcissistic relationship that led her into another country and had severe financial abuse. I really think that you will enjoy this episode and it will be eye-opening to hear her story and connect the dots in how it connects to your story. As always, you can find me at EmotionalAbuseCoachcom, you can email me at Jessica at JessicaNightCoachingcom, and you can follow me on Instagram at EmotionalAbuseCoach. Here's Erin. Hi Erin, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you for having me today, Jessica. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
Speaker 3:Sure, my name is Erin Riley. I am 64 years old and I've worked in the music business since I was about 19 years old In a lot of different positions. I started out in radio as a rock and roll radio DJ. I started out in Los Angeles I'm actually from New York in the East Coast, but there's a little story about how I kind of ran away as a teenager and get away from my dysfunctional family and landed in radio and LA in a big market. I had a great career, came back to the East Coast and got a wonderful job in Philadelphia as a music director of a big major market radio station, met a lot of rock stars, traveled a lot, really had a wonderful, wonderful time in my 20s and gratefully escaped my dysfunctional childhood and was really feeling like I was on top of the world.
Speaker 3:I married my first husband at 30 and he turned out to be an alcoholic. But it's pretty clear to be able to see that People are drinking and you're like, okay, that's a real problem. I was only with him about five and a half years or so, but I did have a son with him. So he's 31 years old. I continue to work in the music business. I worked for the Grammys. I was an executive director for the Grammy Awards. I've managed recording studios and a number of different things, so radio record companies and promotion and concert promotion and a number of different positions in the music industry had a lot of really great times. I continued that through until I was about 40 years old when I met my second husband my second husband, I call him. I wrote a book we'll talk about later. I call him Fabio.
Speaker 3:I call him Fabio in the book and that is of course not his name, but he was kind of quiet and unassuming and different than anyone I'd ever met before Somewhat shy, not really talkative, very agreeable and helpful. I thought I've met all these really sort of charming guys in the music industry real charming and confident and players and whatnot. This guy seems really different, really nice, really helpful, really safe.
Speaker 2:Sounds like the beginning of a narcissistic relationship. Bingo.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was such a surprise to me. I was like this is the kind of person I should marry. Obviously, like I said, I came from dysfunctional families so I didn't really have any modeling for a healthy love, relationship or marriage. I really had no idea how to choose an appropriate partner. This guy seemed to hang on my every word and, at the same time, seemed low-key, helpful, supportive and super tuned in to me, just interested in everything I had to say.
Speaker 3:Honestly, I was devoid of attention. I was looking for attention. I was ignored by my parents. I was very much a neglected child. My parents were very preoccupied, my father alcoholic and my mother quite narcissistic as well. I was left to raise myself and to have this guy see me. That's what I was looking for. I was looking to feel seen. I wasn't looking for a big, rich guy with a big boat or a big house. I was looking for somebody that made me feel seen and that he did. You know that story. They're absolutely studying you as they're getting to know you, to learn all of your little idiosyncrasies and your weak spots and whatnot. They're collecting information we had talked about. I had a big life, a lot of big job, and I had money and I owned a house outright. That makes you very attractive to a narcissist.
Speaker 2:Can you touch on a little bit of that beginning of that relationship and when you reflect back how you were love bombs? I think a lot of women, especially ones that they feel like they have full lives, they have a lot, they have all the pieces put together and then they get into a relationship like this and they start to feel like this person is giving me what I wanted, and you said it so well. He gave you the gift of being seen. He showed up in that way. What was that beginning stage like that really hooked you.
Speaker 3:I guess I was a DJ. I like to talk when you're talking to another DJ. Everybody's competing for airspace here and with him he was listening. He's listening and hanging on my every word and I thought God, he's just fascinated by me. I felt very special. Let me say I met him online. I met him on matchcom and this is 25 years ago when it very first started. I wasn't even really looking to date anybody. One of my friends was looking to find a new boyfriend. I said why don't we try that online thing? We did it together and she didn't meet anybody, but I did.
Speaker 3:We went out to lunch, our very first lunch, and I'll just be real honest with you. There were two or three very weird things that happened on that first date that didn't sit well with me. I felt lied to. I felt like he wasn't being forthcoming with things, but I was enjoying the attention so much I allowed my cognitive dissonance to just tell me oh, he's just listening, he's polite. I would never think somebody was collecting information, but I definitely felt like things were weird.
Speaker 3:I will give you an example. One of the things that happened was we went out for sushi and I ordered all my favorite little sushi treats, and he ordered three orders of fatty tuna just same thing. And he never touched it, not for an hour and a half. He never even touched it. And I said oh my God, aren't you going to eat your lunch? And he said, oh, I had a big breakfast. And immediately I thought well, why would you have a big breakfast if you're coming out to lunch on a date? And then, if you weren't hungry, why did you order something? Either way, it didn't seem right and so, but I glossed right over it, because your brain is built for survival. Your brain is there to help you survive all kinds of traumas, and so my brain is very strong and will tell me exactly what I need to do to keep going forward into a fire or whatever.
Speaker 3:And then there was another thing, happened that, toward the end of the date, I brought him to where I worked, my workplace, and they needed my attention, there was an emergency and they're like oh, erin, erin, we need you. And I realized, oh, I got to cut the date short and I turned around to tell him I'm so sorry, but I have to go back to work. And he was gone. He literally just disappeared, didn't tap me on the shoulder no goodbye, no, nothing, all right. And I remember thinking that was weird, just weird, like I'd never had anybody act that way. But you know, there was something about that that became interesting to me, like who was this very unique and different person? Like maybe he's somebody I should get to know? But that figured, maybe didn't like me. Anyway, I came home there was a message on my machine I really enjoyed our date. I'm sorry I took off like that, you seem busy, I'd love to see you again. And then, once again, you know my brain goes oh, he does like you. And then I felt better. So I like that feeling.
Speaker 3:Anyway, continued to date him for a while. Super helpful, he would fix every little broken thing in my house, right. So he made himself useful Very and he was very handy, you know very handy at home and so you know he would fix things. He was good with computers. He was good with all kinds of different things. He was a good writer. His father had been a federal judge so he could even help me with legal things and child support court and whatnot with my first husband. Like he was just about the most useful person you could ever meet and, like I said, didn't take up a lot of space and you know, maybe I felt like I needed more attention or something. I thought, well, you know what, this is probably a better choice for me than what I've done in the past. Clearly, you don't know what you're doing, erin, so why don't you pick this guy? He's completely different than anyone. He gave me flowers every date, of course, showed up with flowers every date until I told him that wasn't necessary and then he stopped. So then he showed up with a Tiffany bracelet, like probably $700 or $800, on a date like not Valentine's Day, a date Right and then he took me to Hawaii, all right. So so there's your love bombing, and yeah.
Speaker 3:So about a year and a half into our dating and he was very reliable as a boyfriend that came over after his long commute to work every night and you know, he was just, really, it was very reliable and I thought I could trust him because he showed up when he said he would show up, which is something I was always used to, you know and so he did seem like a really good choice After about a year and a half of dating, he convinced me to sell my home and I own my home outright. Like I said, I was already 40 years old when I met him, so I'm about 42 now and I was fairly accomplished, you know, in my career. And then I had some possessions and whatnot. So he convinced me to sell my home. He didn't have any money to put down on a house, but he wanted us to move in together to a bigger house and he had a nice job, good salary. So I put $100,000 down on the house and sold my house.
Speaker 3:And we had an agreement between the two of us that if we ever split up or we sold the house, that I would get the first $100,000. And then we would split the rest $50,50. And the reason why I went for that was I felt like my $100,000 was protected, but I wouldn't have been able to afford a bigger house because my job didn't pay as much as him. So I felt like, okay, this is a fair partnership, but I have an agreement to protect me. Well, you know, I don't know if we need to fast forward to the end, but you can imagine what happened to that $100,000 agreement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the end.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's kind of what happened. You know, I moved in with him. We bought a beautiful house. He fixed it up for me. He did everything. He did all the snow blowing, the leaf raking, you know. He built me a kitchen in the bathrooms and everyone on the outside is like, oh my God, your husband's incredible. You're so lucky. My husband just watches football day and drinks beer and yours is amazing, you know.
Speaker 2:I wish I was happening on the inside during all this time.
Speaker 3:I would say the biggest thing that was happening was triangulation with his preteen daughter. That would be the first sign of something really dysfunctional between us. So I had a son that, when we moved in together, was seven years old and his daughter was probably about 12 or 13 by then, all right, and she was very quiet and shy and he would tell me that her mother was going to poison her against us and that I had to go slow with her and be very careful because I was so overbearing and aggressive and intimidating, right, that I should be more, you know, softer with her, because her mother would be telling her your father's going to abandon you, like he abandoned me, and she's going to take your daddy away from you.
Speaker 2:So that feels like there was a big like, a big threat around you having to be like perfect in a lot of various ways.
Speaker 3:And I had to leave them alone together a lot. They needed their alone time because, you know, she wanted to still have her daddy. And I will just say, between the two marriages he had a 13 year marriage and a daughter, and then, after we had a 20 year marriage, but he had three years, we both had three years in between our two relationships and during that period of time I'll have to make an assumption, but the daughter was probably the main supply for him, right? So she had hero worship of him and I think that he wanted to keep that. So anyway.
Speaker 3:So that was the first problem. We fought all the time about that. I would say you know, why are you locked in a room with her? Or why, when I come home from work, are you spooning on the couch with her, or why is she sitting in her lap? She's like 14. That's like you need to set some boundaries with her. So that's what we fought about.
Speaker 3:We didn't really fight about other things, but over the years, of course, it progressed to a stonewalling became, I think, the next big thing. He would wait at least 30 seconds or longer to answer any question I asked him, even if it was, what would you like for dinner. It's like a big, long pregnant pause and that's mind control and stonewalling. And I would say why aren't you answering me? And his answer would be well, I just want to give you a thoughtful response, but you and I know that thoughtful response is what is the most calculated response that's going to get him the outcome that he's looking for, right. So? But I wanted to believe everything because, you know, I just didn't believe that people were like that, that they were transactional and opportunistic like that. So, but every discussion was excruciatingly painful and because I speak quickly, I'm from Manhattan and worked in, you know radio.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what he would realize Like, oh, she wants an answer. So the longer I take to answer her, the more frustrated she'll be and the more fun that'll be for me to watch her spin around like a top and get angry Like how powerful am I? But you know, I was never really hip to any of it. I couldn't really tell what was going on. So those were our primary things. The triangulation with the daughter, which was very, very bizarre and so unfortunate for everybody, you know, because that little daughter and I probably would have had a great relationship. Yeah, it was a great girl, great girl. And then the stonewalling was really bad and then, of course, toward the end, then it was insane. You know insanity, eye rolling and you know just all kinds of hostility, but it was a slow progression. We were together for 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you and I talked before this. Obviously, and we talked about that this was a covert narcissistic relationship, and the difference being that it wasn't over in your face all the time, because under the surface happening and I think that you did touch on this a few times with, like the stonewalling, with the triangulation, I could tell that it's also on the outside. It might be like, oh my God, he's fixing all these things, he's doing all this work, but I also know that that can typically come back to be like look at all the stuff I did for you that you didn't ask for. You know that you don't appreciate, and I'm sure there were some other threads in there, and I have to imagine that while you were going through this, you did not know it was covert narcissism. You remember what you thought it was.
Speaker 3:Yes, I absolutely do. First of all, I'll be honest with you, my mom became a psychologist at some point and so you would think I knew that narcissism existed. I really didn't. I'll be honest with you. I had no idea that narcissism was a real disorder. I thought that narcissists was maybe what you call your micromanaging boss, like, oh, she's such a narcissist, she always has to have it her way. Or certainly a grandiose or overt narcissist, easy to spot. I'm like, oh, that person's got so narcissistic. I really had no idea there was anything like covert narcissism. So what I thought it was was I thought he had anxious or attachment issues.
Speaker 3:I thought that he was now I'm forgetting all the anxious avoidant, that's it. I thought he was avoidant, you know, because he would avoid answering and he would avoid responding and he would avoid answering questions and he would run away in an argument like slam the door and leave for a couple of days or whatever hours. So avoidant was the word that came to mind and I started researching avoidant online just to see if there was like some more information that I could figure out was happening in my relationship, and I came up with, like said, these attachment disorders. You know people that maybe had inconsistent caregiving as a child, developed different levels and styles of attachment. You know, if you have good, secure attachment to your caregiver, your mom, dad or a grandmom or nanny or whoever is feeding you and diapering you and taking care of you, then you're going to have secure attachment and feel good about your connections to other people. And if you have intermittent or unreliable connections to your caregivers when you're baby, you might find other, more coercive ways of getting your needs met. Yeah, so avoidant is what I started research and it took a long time to get to the rest of it.
Speaker 3:But it was a coach on YouTube named Lisa Aromano and I remember seeing one of her videos where she said some of the different characteristics and qualities. She said you know, I used to think my husband was avoidant and arrogant and dismissive and she just kept coming up with these little adjectives and I was like, yeah, mine's that and that and that and she goes. And that's covert narcissism. When you put it all together the intention, the motivation behind the actions, the behaviors that's when it came clear to me and I was 17 years into the relationship before that happened. Yeah, it's a long time, it's a long time.
Speaker 2:It's a long time and you know you touch on Lisa Romano, which is a name that is one of the first names that I actually came into. My actually was through Facebook. I found her from my ex-boyfriend's mom, who he definitely was. I would constantly tell her that he was emotionally abusive and she would tell me that he's not, but yet again she's sending me Lisa Romano. I'd be like this doesn't make sense. But I think that Lisa Romano was like she can be a gateway for a lot of us into this world and I think that once we start to see the signs, it's so hard to unsee them. And now you're in this relationship at 17 years in, and you probably had that moment of looking back and seeing it. It was always here, you just didn't see it.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's absolutely correct. And then so just to get to sort of the end of the marriage, for the last eight years of the 20 years we were together, my husband kept saying wanted to move out of the country. He thought that America was going down, he didn't like the politics, he didn't like what was going on with guns or whatever gun laws, and he kept saying I want to live in a different country. So he was looking at different areas. He traveled a lot for his job and he kept telling me I think he'd really love Panama. It's beautiful. Panama City is like Miami and I know you're from a city, so I think you would like that we could go to a big city and see a concert and buildings and museums and things like that, and it's cheap and he's fluent in Spanish and we could get a beautiful, beautiful property and live out our lives happily, peacefully. And then he would tell me I'm under so much pressure at work. He had a pretty heavy duty job for a big pharmaceutical company and I owned a children's music school and he was helping me with that. So we're both working 100 hours a week and it made sense to me and I wanted to believe so much that you know I hadn't married this monster, so I just kept moving forward.
Speaker 3:You know, I just kept moving forward with this plan to move to Panama. We built a house overlooking the Caribbean. It was just beautiful, out of indigenous hardwoods and hand carved things and just stunning. So I shipped everything I owned down there with the highest hopes that he would be what he promised he would be. But I asked him if we'd go to one last marriage counselor before we went away, just to make sure that we'd really just we were ready to move forward, you know, and turn over a new leaf. Not that I didn't realize that wasn't possible at the time.
Speaker 3:But we went to a counselor and I chose somebody that was older, that it was a male therapist and also was a PhD. You know he was a pretty high level guy and all of his sessions were two hours long. So I thought you know, maybe you could just get into something with this guy. So on our second session he said you know, something doesn't add up here. You guys both seem like really intelligent, nice people. Let's do psychological testing.
Speaker 3:And that's when I got my real answer. I honestly had to see it on paper in front of me to say my husband is frightening, you know, like the way he thinks and what's going on behind the scenes is terrifying, like I don't even know you at all, and the psychiatrist sort of warned me not to go. He said really something bad could happen to you. And then I started really all put it all together, that maybe even the plan to move to Panama was a part of the isolation plan and that once we got down there it might have been 100 times worse. You know, because where I am here outside of Philadelphia, I had millions of friends in my family because, like I said, I've been living here for almost 40 years myself.
Speaker 2:So when the psychiatrist showed you that red flag, did you believe it at the time? Did it sink in? Did it feel more like word? It did Okay. So you were ready to hear, right in front of me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was ready to hear it. I was on paper and there were descriptive paragraphs, just unbelievable things like saying that this person has no capacity for love or tender feelings and actually derives a great sense of pleasure from seeing others suffering and downtrodden, like those are words that are written in the narrative portion, and then very high scores in borderline and anxiety and narcissism and things like that. You know, on a bar chart it's staring me right in the face, you know, at that point you can't deny it. So I let him go down to Panama first and he was going to finish tiling the kitchen or, you know, do something to help the house get ready for me to move down. And I was going to go down there maybe about six months later and I was going to see if he maybe did change his behavior. And I was still very hopeful. It was a lot to lose and I really just it didn't. It was terrifying.
Speaker 3:So we ended up having some kind of a little separation agreement that he said would protect me in case something happened to him while we were apart. You know what if he had a heart attack? So he said you know, separation agreement, what if we have a heart attack. You don't get along with my daughter. You guys don't get along. Whatever house we have here in Philadelphia is going to go into probate and you guys are going to be in a war in court. And let's just make sure we have everything set so if something happens. Well, I just foolishly signed that thing and then he filed for divorce and at this point everything's already in Panama. The worldly possessions are in Panama, the house, the cash, and then boom, boom, boom. Credit cards go get closed, costco account closed, tv channels, you know, all of the passwords are changed. Boom, boom, boom, boom boom.
Speaker 2:It sounds like he didn't. So he like everything happened so quickly, like it, just like it was almost as if this plan that he had was premeditated it was completely premeditated, almost.
Speaker 3:Jessica. I found out after the fact and I wrote about it in my book that when he set up the Panama property eight years prior, he gave himself a majority interest in the property. And I didn't know that because one, I'm not an attorney and number two was in Spanish, so I didn't read it. I trusted him. We're married. It should have been a 50 50 ownership. We both put in 50 50 cash to build the house, so of our own incomes. But he gave himself a majority interest so he would always have the deck stacked in his favor.
Speaker 3:So that happened eight years beforehand and I'm going to guess the entire 20 years I was married to him, he was doing things like that putting the phones in his name, putting the credit cards in his name. He's like I'm just going to take care of everything for you and I just felt cared for. I felt like, oh God, somebody's going to take care of me. I'm so, I've been so independent and so self reliant. You know, I moved out of my house at 17 and I moved across the country at 19. I had no family, or felt like I had no family, and so this felt like what I was looking to feel like I felt seen, I felt cared for, like you're looking out for me, making my life easier. So that's so. He would have complete control over everything and if he then needed to pull the plug, he could do it as quickly as he did, and that he did.
Speaker 3:It's only took him a couple of months to unravel 20 years of marriage together and he had another girl living down there in the house in Panama within a couple of months. So how long she was around. Yeah, so all the standard stuff. You know, these stories are common. The one thing that I love about learning about narcissism like I'm tired of learning about narcissism, I'm sure you are too but the one thing I love to learn and communicate to other people is that they say the same things, they exhibit the same behaviors, they have the mindset, same mindset. So once you get it, you can learn to recognize these signs. So I think that's both of our goals is to help other people recognize the things they say and the things they do and the way they make you feel, so that you are, you're aware and you can make decisions in your own best interests.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you don't know what you're dealing with, that's when all those justifications come in, internally and externally, but why we need to stay, or how we are the crazy ones. But it sounds like you started to see the signs and then, when it ended, even though you weren't necessarily prepared for what happened there, you were mentally prepared to be done with this person, which is a place that I think a lot of us get stuck in Now. I'm sure a lot of people are wondering at this point how the divorce went since he filed and since he coerced you into signing that other separation agreement. How did all that go for you?
Speaker 3:Well, it obviously was extremely painful and I was taken by surprise. Like I said, I had already shipped all of my belongings down there. It was devastating. It was like the whole rug of my life was pulled out from underneath me. My adult son said to me Jesus Mom, he didn't just steal everything you ever owned, he stole your entire life. Well, that was what he tried to do. Fortunately, I am me. I have a soul, I have a brain, I have recovered. Gratefully, neuroplasticity is real. If you can calm yourself and educate yourself and do good self-care, you can recover from these kinds of relationships and live your best life. I'm certainly living a better life than I was before because I was below the radar. That's something that Lisa Aramano always says. I was unaware that I was unaware.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I want to make sure we touch on something that you and I talked about before we started recording, and that's about the intention. I think that's something that women can look out for, especially if they're in these longer relationships. You were in this marriage for 20 years. When we're in relationships, especially that long, we start to normalize that reality. I normalize things in a relationship after a year. I can't imagine what it's like 20 years down the road. The way that we were talking about it was about the intention. Is the intention behind the actions? The intention in this example is not to keep you safe and to prevent you from a legal battle. The intention is to have control over you. I'm wondering if you could touch on that and what you learned over time around the intention that a covert narcissist has and how that begins to show up, especially if we're paying attention to the trends.
Speaker 3:Well, let me do my best. I would say that what I have learned one of my biggest takeaways from learning about narcissism and some codependent behaviors that I've exhibited. I never felt codependent because I have a good sense of self-esteem, but I definitely feel like I'm a helper. I always think I'm stronger than other people. I can help people. I can take more abuse. I was trained to take it. I was trained to be ignored by my mom, so I'm like I don't need to be answered. I'm fine, you don't want to answer me, that's your problem. But I wasn't really aware that people didn't have your best interests in mind not all, but some people and some people have the evil intent right as they approach you. What can I get out of this person? So that's different.
Speaker 3:I feel like most of us are walking around as humans, saying let's have empathy for each other and just saying, oh, that's just so awful that that happened to you and what can I do to help and whatnot. You feel the feelings that other people feel. I'm so glad that didn't happen to me, my gosh, that's just an awful thing. And you have those emotions. Well, a narcissist doesn't feel those same emotions. They're either. They have some lack of ability, capacity in their brain or whatever it is that they don't feel the emotions. So they're studying other people to try to mimic their emotions, to appear normal and whatnot.
Speaker 3:But the intention behind every interaction with a narcissist is self-serving. So I don't care if it's just them answering a question or anything that they are doing. They're thinking what am I getting out of it? What am I getting out of this? So that's something I just think people need to accept in life is that not everyone has your best interests in mind from the get-go and people that don't have the ability to feel empathy for other people through however that happens, could be in utero. It could be from early caregiving, neglect or trauma or a psychotic break. You cannot help those people and you cannot change those people. So the fact that it exists was kind of eye-opening to me, and you kind of have to discern people's intentions. So they intend to get the upper hand. That's their intention always, whether it's financially, emotionally. They love to just regulate you because then they feel powerful that they were able to affect your emotions. Look at me. I got her spinning like a top. She's screaming and yelling and running around and I made her crazy. Isn't that entertaining.
Speaker 2:Look at her yeah, haha, and they like a bigger finger point on you to finger point and just say like look at you, you're the crazy one. You can keep your emotions in check when everything that's going on is what's actually making you feel crazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you got it. And toward the end of my husband was so big with the projection I was being accused of cheating. All the time. He's checking my phone all the time. He was accusing me of cheating with different male friends of mine and he certainly separated me from all my better looking male friends over the twenty years, you know, and he would make me believe that they were either not my friends and that wasn't just males. I mean, he certainly started with the male friends but with all of my friends you be like that person's this, or he would just be very subtle about it and I'd be like I. You know, I never really noticed that about my friend, yeah, but now that you mention it, you know he was, he really always had a point. You know, I just was more emotionally forgiving of people like I. You know, people have their quirks and you got to accept that. But the way he would portray people would be like that person doesn't have your best interest in mind when it was actually him. So of course that's the projection he's the one cheating, he's the one with the porn, he's the one stealing, he's the one. But all the things you're being accused of. So that's another side to look out for.
Speaker 3:If your partner is accusing you of things that you are not doing and you know you're not doing them. I'm cheating, I'm not doing that. You know you're not doing they are. Just know that fact. Right, so that was toward the end. There was a lot of that as well too. Yeah, it's an awful experience to have to go through, but you can free yourself right and there is a better life on the other side of it and a lot of knowledge. You know there's a lot of knowledge. Like I said, I didn't know what I didn't know and I've had to forgive myself. That's a big part of this is forgive myself for not seeing it and for trying to help somebody that was not able to be helped.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not only not able to be helped, but like never had your best intentions in mind, and so it was always a losing battle.
Speaker 3:No, he wanted a house, he wanted to get backstage to concerts, he wanted my money. You know I was reasonably attractive enough. You know I made him look good, I made him look normal. Yeah, I got stuff going on, you know. That's why we wanted to talk about being older when this happens to you, because, yeah, a lot of young women that I've spoken to you know they come from they may not always, but may come from a dysfunctional household and they're very susceptible to being snatched up by a narcissist, you know, when they're twenty or twenty one years old, and then they have children with them. So then you are really, really, really trapped.
Speaker 3:I was very fortunate to be forty and already have a son and not have a child With my second husband, the nurse, the covert narcissist. So he's gone now and I will never hear from him again. That's another crazy thing. Once you are discard and, believe me, he tried to get me to discard him For sure. Of course he was terrifying. I thought he would kill me. He was terrifying toward the end and I'm sure he wanted to set that up so he could be the victim to the next person. Oh, she cheated on me, she stole from me, she abandoned me, poor me, right, but I guess I'm extremely tough and I wasn't gonna let that happen. I'm like, no, I'm not gonna make it work well, obviously, I'm so grateful in retrospect that he discarded me or whatever they call the reverse discard because couldn't take it anymore. So clearly I'm stronger than the narcissist and he was pretty strong.
Speaker 2:No, I think he did discard. I think that is a discard. I think he just like he wanted the victim story. So I think he did discard you. He tried to make you discard him so he Maintain that story, which is another version of him maintaining that control, and you didn't give it to him.
Speaker 3:No, I wouldn't give it to him and I was even willing to live separately in your sixties. You know, when you're sixty years old and you're facing divorce or separation and starting over, it's extremely difficult. You know where you getting a job, where getting income if your money is gone. You know there's been financial abuse. How are you recovering from this? You know so many people stay because they have either health issues or Financial inability to take care of themselves. At this point I can go get a new career. Anything are not so easily, so definitely. You know it's a really traumatic to have this happen at this age To somebody and also to think you should know something by now. You know I should know better by now, but it is more common than you will ever believe. There are so many people that say these relationships for such a long period of time and by the time they're done with you, you're so weakened you can't even make a decision. You know, been gas lit for twenty or thirty years and you think and it must be me, I'm the problem, I'm the problem, it's me. Just like Taylor Swift says I'm the problem, it's me.
Speaker 3:And another thing about my story that's very unique and I was very fortunate to have. This is after I was discarded and my husband was off to Panama with a new woman. I contacted his first wife and we had a four and a half hour long lunch and compared notes and she said to me I thought I was crazy because you guys stayed together for twenty years and it sure look like your marriage was a good one. And after I went to the hospital I was looking for a brother左右 and he told me the doctor said she wanted to get me married and I said I'm getting my kids a new husband. I said I want to know what my new uncle told me and my brother it seemed like you had a partnership and you know, in the house you started a business and you had the two kids and the puppy and it looked good on the outside and she thought she was the problem because he had convinced her she was the crazy one.
Speaker 3:So he was 13 years with her and 20 years with me. That is, 33 years of abusing women, you know. So lifetime of abuse is awful. Honestly, I still feel bad for him. I still feel bad. He has to live in that skin where he is so frightened that he has to hurt people. It's just terrifying. You know to be a narcissist. I'm glad I'm not one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's very compassionate of you. I don't think a lot of people could feel that, but I totally get what you're saying.
Speaker 3:I still want them to go move to their own planet, though you know like just please leave me alone. Like I understand, it's through no fault of your own, maybe, that you became this way. However, stay away from me and anyone I care about. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I know we talked about this at the beginning and I really would love to have you back after I read your full book and be able to talk about some of those details. I was able to do this with another author and I really enjoyed kind of going on the ins and outs of her story and clearing up areas and parts that were confusing, and so I really enjoyed talking to you today and I love that you gave a voice to women that might be in a relationship for 20 years, how to leave and how to think about that and how to kind of make sense of their own journeys. Well, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yes, my book is called A Dark Force 20 Years with a Covert Narcissist, and I needed to figure out how this happened to me. I really needed to understand. So it's written as a memoir, but its intention is to be sort of like a manual to learn to recognize narcissism. There are definitions of these behaviors that they exhibit, the blame-shifting, triangulation, projection and gaslighting and things like that, and then real life examples. I thought people would be able to see themselves in my story because, as you and I know, they all exhibit the same behaviors. They just maybe manifest themselves in slightly different ways, but they say the same things and they use the same tricks.
Speaker 3:And rather than present it as sort of like a clinical study or a lot of people's stories, I took it all the way back to the day I was born, how I was raised as a child, how that set me up to be susceptible to someone like this and my career, so that older women maybe that got themselves into a situation like this, that were very accomplished, could learn to understand what is it about me that was so attractive to a narcissist?
Speaker 3:Well, you have stuff and they want it, right? Yeah, so that's why I wrote the book the way it is. So it does have a very happy and redemptive ending, because I really am happy and I have really recovered from this. So it's possible for everybody and anybody. But you need to really dig deep, learn who you are and learn what is it about you. It's not just that people are only victimized by narcissists. There are people like you and me that perhaps other things that happened to us beforehand made us overly compassionate to people, helpers, fixers, whatever it is. Learn those things about yourself, because those things are important to know to protect you from that happening again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how necessary that is. Yeah, how necessary that is. Well, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. I absolutely would love to unpack this further with you. When I read your book and I'm really hopeful that a lot of people will go out and find it and, as always, I will put the link to you and to your book and how they can find you in the show notes so that they can easily find you.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much for that, jessica. It's been a real pleasure talking with you today. I was really looking forward to speaking with you because I really do enjoy your podcast. You're very thorough and you've had a lot of really good guests on your podcast and obviously I know that, unfortunately, you're very knowledgeable about the topic, and I say unfortunately because none of us ever wanted to learn this, but I have a PhD in it now, once you go through it. But that's how it never happens again. It'll never happen to you again because you know what you're looking at now.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, free yourself people. If you're unhappy, trust your gut. Your gut's going to tell you something is wrong. So when you feel something is wrong and your brain will override that just about every time and sometimes very quickly so try really hard to tune into how you feel around a person. Everything in the world has got an energy associated with it, and I'm going to tell you that a narcissist has a pretty dark energy. You can feel it. You can feel it. So just tune into that and try not to make excuses for poor behavior.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. What a way to end. Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:All right. Well, thank you so much, Jessica. It's been a pleasure. I look forward to speaking with you again.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, thank you.