5 Ways To Spot Narcissistic Abuse – Rachel’s Story

If you’re experiencing narcissistic abuse, know that you’re not alone. Here are 5 ways to spot narcissistic abuse – Rachel shares her story.

If you relate and need support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session today.

Transcript: 5 Ways To Spot Narcissistic Abuse

Anne: I have Rachel and Megan Wilford on today’s episode. They are cousins, and they also recently started podcasting and their podcast is called the Traumedy Show. Which is of course, a mix of trauma and comedy. Welcome Rachel and Megan.

Rachel: Thank you so much for having us. We’re so excited to be here with you.

Megan: Thank you.

Narcissistic Abuse: Discovering A Secret Life

Anne: When I first found out that my husband was using explicit material, and that he had this secret life that I didn’t know about, we just had a baby. I think if I had not had children, then my life would have taken kind of a different turn at that point.

But because I had a child. Also because he was saying, “I’m going to go to a pornography addiction recovery.” I thought okay, I’ll try and work this out because we’ve got a kid.

Comedy As A Coping Mechanism For Narcissistic Abuse

Anne: Anyway, instead of, starting podcasting about that at that time, I actually started a comedy blog called Coming To Grips.

I got a lot of followers, which was fun, but I never wrote about what was actually happening. So I was processing my pain through the lens of comedy. I think a lot of comedians do that. I’ve since pulled it from the internet. When my book comes out, I will be simultaneously publishing my comedy blog. So people can kind of read them side by side, to be like, okay, this is what was really happening. And then this is how she was kind of . . .

Anne: This is the public face that I was showing online. I was telling people in person, but I wasn’t really publishing online about it.

Megan: Processing it.

The Traumedy Show Came Out Of Narcissistic Abuse

Rachel: I love what you just shared about using comedy to process what you were going through. Because that’s what we do too. I think we would say that we come from a family of traumedians. We have a big family and we all lean into dark humor and laugh a lot. We’re a bunch of jokesters.

When my life started blowing up, I definitely was leaning into comedy about it pretty quickly. The day that I left my ex-fiance, I started dreaming about what I could do with my whole story. Coming up with one liners about it. I was thinking about like a standup comedy set, just dreaming big.

Then I ended up getting into another relationship in the winter. About six months after, that also imploded in a similar way. And for about a week after that relationship ended, I was in this really crazy creative processing mode. Where I was writing all the time and I was so mad and all these words were coming to me.

Then all of a sudden I lost it. Like it was like a cord was cut and I started asking God, okay, where can I channel this now? So I started creating our podcast all day long, came up with the artwork, came up with the name.

I invited Megan over and sat her down and pitched it to her and she was down for it. That’s how the podcast came to be.

Anne: Let’s start with that.

Five Ways To Spot Narcissistic Abuse

Anne: This episode is called Five Ways to Spot Narcissistic Abuse. So as Rachel tells her story, I’m going to flag the things that indicated, hey, this is a situation that is emotionally dangerous, that is psychologically dangerous. So I’ll be pointing those out as she shares her story.

Can you start at the beginning? How did your relationship start? Did you recognize any red flags at first?

Rachel: I would say that there were red flags from the beginning, but I started dating him really young. I was 17 and he was 20 and he was from my same hometown. We had never met before, but he friended me on Facebook. It was back in the day when everybody was just kind of friending everybody on Facebook.

But we quickly started talking and quickly started dating. I’m 29 now. I was with him for about 10 and a half years. Just as a spoiler alert, there’s two engagements in this story too, with him. Yeah, wait.

Anne: Can’t wait.

Rachel: Good. So, I would say pretty early on I started spotting lying and hiding things.

1st Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: Making You Think Something Is An Accident

Rachel: He pretty quickly put me and his ex in a group chat accidentally a couple of months into our relationship.

Anne: “Accidentally?” Do you think it was on purpose now?

Rachel: No. He had a lot of technological blunders over the course of our relationship. That kind of led to me finding things out and the demise of the whole thing.

Anne: Maybe that’s going to be number one red flag. I’m going to say here that they do things on purpose sometimes. And they make you think it’s an accident. That’s not your case, Rachel. Sorry, I’m not trying to be like, no, you don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s not what I’m trying to say. In your specific case it was an accident .

But in general, they’re strangely the stupidest smart people or like the smart stupid people. Victims have a really hard time because they’re like, for how smart he is, why is he doing this? I want to just maybe throw out the idea that one of the things you can look for is that dissonance.

When you’re like, wait, if they’re so smart, why are they doing this thing? In so many cases, it’s actually on purpose to throw people off, to get people confused.

Teaming Up With The Other Woman

Rachel: This girl on our podcast, I call her Natasha and there’s more to the story with her. But since our podcast came out, she actually came on and I interviewed her. She reached out to me and she and I are now friends 11 years later. It’s pretty awesome. There’s a lot of teaming up with the other woman that happened since our podcast.

Yeah. So he puts Natasha and I in a group chat and so she and I have each other’s numbers. He sends a picture of him snowboarding and then a couple of months later, both to me and her.

Anne: So is he intending to send it to both of you? Who did he intend to send it to?

https://youtu.be/ZvQwP2Hzjfk

Rachel: He was intending to send it to both of us, he didn’t have an iPhone. He had like a Windows phone. He didn’t realize that if you sent it in the same thread, it would go in a group chat at the time. A couple months later, it’s my 18th birthday and he cheats on me with her.

He drives down to San Diego to pick her up from the airport. The next day on my 18th birthday, I get a text from her, since she now has my number, that he came down, picked her up and made a move on her. And they kissed, all this stuff.

2nd Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: I’m Going To Give Him Another Chance

Rachel: I end up breaking up with him at that time. Then I ended up getting back together with him a week later. I wish that I never had. Staying broken up when you are a victim of narcissistic abuse would’ve been better.

Anne: This is a crossroads for you. What did he say to groom you to get back together with him?

Rachel: Good question.

Anne: Maybe this is another red flag. So number one, they do things on purpose when you think they do them accidentally. Number two, There’s a point at which you notice, hey, something really bad happened. But also I’m going to give him a second chance.

So many women have this story where they found out he was having an affair. Or they found out he was stealing money from them. Or they found out he’d hidden a camera in their bedroom or something like that.

Rachel: Yeah, he definitely was kind of promising me that it was nothing. She just was somebody that needed help. It was nothing. They hadn’t been talking, but she had said that he’d been sending her pictures and stuff this whole time. Texting her and communicating. In that conversation, he did threaten suicide when he drove away.

So I would say that you could think that maybe that’s a red flag too.

Feeling Stuck & Isolated

Rachel: So over the course of a week, I took some time apart and then I decided to give him another chance. You know, and this was 11 years ago now. I went off to college, the next year is my freshman year of college.

So we were long distance and then something happened to me while I was there. That I, you know, haven’t shared publicly, but it bonded him and I. It made it hard for me to leave for a long time. I ended up coming home from college and went to community college and he ended up coming home too.

We were both in our hometown again. I was working a job at Starbucks, going to school. I had an internship, and was very busy. Then I found out about a virtual affair he was having with an old friend of mine. I started noticing some suspicious behavior online.

Anne: An old friend of yours.

Rachel: Yes.

Anne: But not an old friend of his?

Rachel: No. An old friend of mine. Yep.

Anne: And I’m guessing he met her the same way he met you through social media.

Weird Online Behavior Can Be A Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse

Rachel: Yes, he told me that he met her because she worked at a restaurant in town. He went to pick up food and that was the first time that he met her. But he friended her on Facebook and Instagram and I started fishing around for information. Because I ran into her on campus one time, because she went to the same community college at the time and her behavior was super weird.

I was noticing weird online behavior and so I went searching and found messages between the two of them. And that was devastating and embarrassing and a lot of shame for me. Especially because it was somebody from my life that I had known and we knew a lot of mutual people. I felt a lot of shame about that, but I felt really stuck and like I couldn’t leave.

Anne: Were you living together?

Rachel: We were not living together at that time.

Anne: It’s his fault that you felt stuck. Not feeling like you were able to leave is a sign of narcissistic abuse. And we’re putting 100 percent of the fault on him. So this is not like a victim blaming question, but can you kind of explain that feeling of being stuck?

The majority of our listeners share children with their abuser. And so in that way, it’s very difficult to extricate yourself. So those of us with kids, when we hear people who don’t have kids saying they feel stuck. We’re like thinking oh, what was it? But then I want all the listeners to think about when you stayed with him, when you didn’t have kids. Like when you got married, we also were stuck at some point.

So to have empathy for that all around.

Blaming Problems On Self Instead Of Narcissistic Abuse

Rachel: Yeah, and I totally empathize with people that have kids. With their abuser, it’s really hard to break away. I’m fortunate that that wasn’t the case for me. There were a few reasons that I felt stuck. I think this event that bonded us really tied me to him. He was a big support system for me. I considered him my best friend.

I think I really isolated myself during this time of my life and kind of removed myself from friendships. Because of this narcissistic abuse cycle that was going on with him. Because of this shame spiral that I was in from his infidelities. He was kind of my person at this time. Um, and also there was this sense of I just moved home with this person. We were kind of like starting this new chapter and journey together back home.

I didn’t want it to all be for nothing. That I just left school and changed paths. I put a lot of the blame on myself because I had been depressed. Because of what had happened my freshman year of college.

He put some blame on me too. At the time of what you weren’t giving me enough attention and whatever. This happens with narcissistic abuse. So this becomes a pattern for the next eight years of our relationship. This becomes a pattern of, I need to work on myself so that I can be better and he won’t do these things.

This kind of is when I think this starts.

Anne: It’s my fault, and if I were acting differently, he would not be acting like this way. This is a sign of narcissistic abuse, where you to think it’s your fault, when it’s not.

First Engagement & Family Concerns

Rachel: Yeah, so a couple years goes by. And we get engaged the first time on a family trip to Machu Picchu. Actually of all places, he comes and he proposes to me on New Year’s Day. At this point I am 22 and I’m a senior in college. I’d been living down in San Diego, going to San Diego State for the past couple of years. I was about to graduate.

We were looking at apartments. We were planning our wedding and getting ready to start life. At this point there hadn’t been any signs of infidelity in a couple of years.

Anne: Is this with your family, like your parents and your brothers and sisters? Okay, how do they feel about him at this time?

Rachel: My dad had actually had a chat with me, a couple of years prior, that he was worried. And didn’t think that this person was right for me. He saw some signs that definitely gave him pause. And I think my family accepted him, but they didn’t love him for me. For sure.

Anne: What’s your feeling about your family feeling this way. Did it kind of accidentally bond you closer to him? Which it does with so many abusers. Because then it’s like well, it’s just you and me against the world sort of a feeling.

Rachel: Absolutely. That’s a really good way to describe it. It made me protective. I would say of him too. And yeah, accidentally bonding me closer to him. This kind of like fierceness of like, we’ll prove them wrong kind of a thing.

3rd Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: Isolation

Anne: Yeah. So we’re going to call that number three. When something happens where you start to pull away from healthy people that care about you. Because narcissistic abuse includes isolating you from your loved ones.

Rachel: Oh yeah, I was definitely isolated. So we are planning this wedding. I’m about to graduate college and I graduate. And then all of a sudden his behavior starts getting really fishy and weird. He’s kind of just MIA all of a sudden. And one day I’m at his parents house with him. He goes to the bathroom.

I look on his phone and there are texts with him and a coworker.

He had at this point started an emotional affair, we’ll call this person Grace. I’m distraught. We are at this point, like four months away from our wedding. We start going to couples counseling and all sorts of things.

I’m trying to make it work. I’m trying to hold together this image for my family and friends that nothing’s wrong. Ultimately it blows up and we call off our wedding, but I tell no one the real reason why.

The Downfall Of Couples Therapy With Narcissistic Abuse

Anne: When you started going to couples therapy with an abuser, which we never recommend. But because you didn’t know it’s narcissistic abuse, did the therapist help you realize this is abuse?

Rachel: No, it made it much worse. I think we only went to a few sessions before we really kind of broke away from each other for a bit. She was treating it like premarital counseling. An issue would come up in this session and we would kind of blow up about it. Then we would leave because the time was up. Then we would try to kind of resolve it ourselves afterwards.

It would just make it so much worse. It just was this big snowball effect of things getting worse. Definitely the couple’s therapy exacerbated it for sure.

Anne: It always does with narcissistic abuse. So it’s never, ever, ever recommended. But most couple therapists don’t know about it. If someone’s not coming in saying I’m being abused, then the couple therapist doesn’t hear that. They don’t help the victim identify it. And if they did, they would have to stop being their therapist.

They have an invested interest in not identifying the narcissistic abuse for monetary interest. I’m like, don’t ever go to couples therapy. If your relationship is so bad that you need couples therapy. I’m like, 99 percent of the time there’s a narcissistic abuse issue. And you shouldn’t be going to couples therapy.

Rachel: There’s twice that we go to the couples therapy and it ends up helping our relationship blow up. Which is what needed to happen for me personally. So we break up.

Taking The Blame & Anxiety From Narcissistic Abuse

Rachel: I tell no one the real reason why. I take all the blame because he was telling me at this time that I was selfish and I wasn’t giving him what he needed. He was questioning if we should get married.

I took the fall and told literally not a single person about his emotional affair with Grace at this time. I got away from him for about a month. Then one day he comes knocking back on my door and it started the whole process over again. I’m a writer, I journal a lot.

At the time I was writing a lot and this was summer of 2018. There’s a handful of pages from right when I break up with him. My mind is clear and I know I don’t deserve this. I’m pointing out so many issues with him. Then he comes knocking back on the door. The rest of the pages of that journal are just anxiety, so much anxiety.

Starting Over and New Relationships

Rachel: For the next year, I moved down into an apartment with a friend and kind of just start over. I was having anxiety and panic attacks all the time because he and I were still seeing each other. But there was no label. He was very secretive, very emotionally shut down.

It was this battle of me kind of trying to get him to open back up. After a year of that, I end up starting to see someone else. At this time he and I weren’t seeing anybody else. Or so he told me, that he was just taking a break. He was taking time for himself. He needed to think about what was going on and just heal.

I was doing the same thing, but then I met somebody. And so I asked for permission and I kind of start seeing this other person.

Confusion & Anxiety From Narcissistic Abuse

Anne: You asked him for permission?

Rachel: I did. I ask him if it’s okay if I pursue something with this other man.

Anne: And he’s like, it’s fine. Even though you had no defined relationship, really. Are you kind of just friends at the time? Are you kissing him?

Rachel: We were still like being physical. We were still going to dinner. It was acting like we were in a relationship, but a lot of the kind of emotional connection was removed on his part at that time. I couldn’t really figure out why.

Anne: How often were you seeing him?

Rachel: At least once a week.

Anne: Once a week, but you’re not really serious.

Rachel: So it was a lot of anxiety for me.

Anne: Do you want it to be more?

Rachel: Yes, yes, yes, I do. I want to figure it out. I’m dealing with the shame of my failed engagement and calling off the wedding. I had this whole picture for my life and I felt like this was my person. We just needed to figure this out and work through it.

Motivations For Dating Someone New

Anne: So what are your motivations for dating the other guy? While you’re still being physical with the wolf and seeing him once a week ?

Rachel: Yeah, the other guy we call Jack and I think I saw him as maybe an out. He lives a handful of hours away. So he wasn’t close necessarily. We weren’t seeing each other all the time, but I kind of saw him as this like escape. And maybe the answer to getting out of what I was in. I felt super stuck and super confused.

I just kind of wanted to explore, like, what else was out there. And see if maybe this could be the answer or a different path or something, Or maybe in a way to, I was hoping that it would make the wolf think he wanted to be with me for sure. And get more serious and be a little bit upset that I was with this other person, even.

Anne: The motivation is like twofold. It’s maybe an escape. But maybe this will like be the light bulb that he needs to realize how amazing that I am. Many women start to realize they may need a strategy for dealing with these types of men. To learn more about strategy, enroll in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop.

The Option Of Being Alone

Anne: So many women don’t realize that there’s this awesome option and it’s because we haven’t been taught that especially women of faith who’ve grown up, when are you going to get married? Asking you about who you’re dating, that there’s this other awesome option, which is not dating anyone.

You really don’t need someone else as an escape plan or something, But we don’t think of that in the moment. We can just be alone and it’s fine. Since my divorce, I’ve been single for 10 years. And I was single for 10 years until I married my husband.

So I’m almost 47. I got married at 30, so single 10 years till I’m 30. Then he gets arrested when I’m 37.

You guys don’t know my story, but you’ll find out when you interview me for your podcast. So 37 to 47, I’ve also been single. So for that 27 years since I’ve been 20, I’ve only been married for seven of those years. And now I’m proudly, happily single and not dating anyone. And it’s great for me, I love it.

Megan: We need more examples of that.

The Danger Of Needing A Relationship

Megan: We don’t actually need to be in a relationship to be fulfilled.

Anne: Exactly, so that feeling of like, maybe this is my out. I think is how so many victims feel, but it’s also really dangerous because it often sets you up. Which I’m guessing we’re going to hear in a little bit for another abusive relationship. Sometimes, when we think we need a man for anything. Really it’s a little dangerous.

Rachel: I was 24 and I think what you said about growing up as a woman of faith. Yeah, you are taught that finding a husband is the end all be all. You’re in your early 20s and that’s the time to do it. So I thought I need to just grab all these pieces and make them fit. Like I don’t want to start over.

This is how it’s supposed to be. This is the person I am supposed to marry. We’re just hitting a bump in the road or whatever. I started dating this other person a little bit and see him. After a few months, he was dating around, but he starts having a serious girlfriend where he lives. So that was kind of over.

And the wolf at that point jumps in and is like, okay let’s be, you know, a little more serious here.

COVID & Relationship Dynamics

Rachel: This is around COVID. So early COVID time, we start getting more serious. We start integrating back into each other’s families and friends, and that was a big deal.

For the next couple of years, I really thought that he and I had worked through our things. We had come back together in a way that I thought was healthy. Fast forward a little bit, we get engaged again in November, 2022. And this is definitely where things are getting very dicey. Because I didn’t realize that he had been living a double life for about four years. At this point I am 27 and he is 30 and we pretty quickly start planning our second wedding.

We buy a house in February 2023 in which I pay for 80 percent of it and he pays for 20 percent of it. Because I have more of the stable and successful career than he does.

This was a big point of contention, our whole relationship too. I really wanted him to pick up another thing because we live in Southern California. It’s expensive to live here. He kind of tried some things, but at the end of the day, was kind of a quitter. He lived at his parents house for this whole time.

It kind of allowed him to not be super ambitious in this way. I was always kind of trying to push him and motivate him because I am a self starter.

4th Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: Future Faking

Anne: Was he future faking you? Like, oh, I’ve got this thing going on and I’m going to be doing this. This shows up a lot.

Rachel: Yeah, I think he would definitely do that sometimes. Or like, oh I can’t say what he does for work. But he would be like, come fall I’m going to be doing something different. I’m not going to be doing this anymore. Like he would kind of come up with these promises and these plans and they would, yeah, never come to fruition.

Anne: Okay. That’s number four, future faking. Hey, we’re going to do this thing. We’re going to go on this trip. And then to actually get that thing done, either they never do it. Or you have to be part of that. You have to be the one that’s like, okay, you know, that cruise that you promised me six years ago? I’m going to be the one that plans it.

Then if you end up going, he’s like, see, I did this for you. And you’re like, no, no, no, no. Lots of victims have applied to college for them or applied to jobs for them, or . . .

Rachel: Yes, and I was doing this stuff. Yes.

Anne: That’s part of that future faking, right?

Megan: Me too.

Anne: They’re like, I’m going to do this. You’re waiting for them to do it. Then you end up doing it for them. Then it doesn’t go very well because they never wanted to do it in the first place. They were just lying to you.

Lack Of Follow Through

Rachel: Yeah. That was a big pattern for us. And I would say too that he was doing that for the second proposal too. He’d be like, this is coming. Let’s go look at rings. And then it would be like months would go by and he would waffle. He was promising me the world.

It was getting frustrating waiting for it. So I started getting pushy, and then his proposal was blasé, and Megan has more context on that, because she was kind of involved in it.

Megan: Very haphazard, last minute put together, because he had another girlfriend at the same time.

Rachel: Yep, so we move into our house March 1st, 2023. He finally starts a new job. Because now we’re paying a mortgage and he started seeing the dollar signs and got a reality check. He starts this new job and in mid-March, we’d only been living together a couple of weeks.

Suspicious Texts

Rachel: And one day he has his phone plugged into the kitchen. And a text pops up from a girl and I asked to see it and he opens it. It’s this very suspicious message about what are you doing tonight? And it’s a coworker from this new job. I say to him, what, what is happening here? And he’s like, well, she’s the one that plans the group get togethers for all the coworkers.

So I just was trying to see if they were going to play volleyball tonight. And I say, that’s not what you asked. You asked, what are you doing tonight? I said, do you understand how triggering this is for me? Last time we were engaged, you were having this emotional affair. I found texts on your phone.

Discovering The Truth

Rachel: At that point, I decide to go snooping. I open his laptop and the last place that I look is his trash and there’s a document in there detailing in bullet point format. It’s like a diary detailing his whole sexual history with Grace for the last four years.

The woman that he had an emotional affair with when we were engaged.

Anne: What? Do you know why? So many women have been betrayed you are not alone.

Rachel: I think there were a couple of reasons why. I think it was like a fetishized thing for him. Um, he would go and like, look back on. Even think . . .

Anne: Like his own erotic novel that he wrote himself?

Rachel: I think so, but he was trying to convince me that none of it was true. But there are weird details in there that we’re confirming that it was. So I find this document.

Confrontation & Panic

Rachel: I call him. He’s gone to his next job and he comes home and we sit down on the bed and he has a panic attack. And he is trying to convince me that none of what he wrote is true. He made it all up as a fantasy to help him cope with me dating Jack years ago. He made it all up.

Anne: Was this a fake panic attack?

Rachel: Uh, yes, I definitely believe so. Looking back.

Anne: At the time it feels like it’s an “accident,” but they’re doing it on purpose. Which was our number one thing. He’s acting like he’s having a panic attack. My ex would say like, I’m feeling so much shame. At first I was like, Oh, I feel bad for you. And later I was like, so what?

Rachel: Exactly. So he has this panic attack. He’s trying to convince me none of these things that he wrote are true. Then he says these words to me, it’s a direct quote, which comes back into play later. This is mid-April. And so he says to me, “I would never touch another woman with my dick.” That is what he says to me.

So for a week, I am trying to believe these words that he’s telling me. He’s telling me every single day. None of that’s true. The next day he goes to work after this event happened. I’m at home a having panic attack. I work from home and he is texting me that I’m safe, that I can trust him, that he would never hurt me. Anytime that he hurts me, it hurts him, and all these things.

Physical Rejection of Lies

Rachel: And so, for a week I’m trying to believe him and my body is physically rejecting his lies. I physically cannot do it. On the seventh day, after I have the gnarliest panic attack I’ve ever had. I say to him, I’m going to be contacting her. She had also blocked me on social media too. And that didn’t make sense to me either.

If nothing had happened between them, why would she go through the trouble of blocking me? And so I told him. I’m going to be contacting her because I cannot believe what you’re saying. I physically cannot believe you. And so at this point he tells me, okay, I’m going to come clean.

We did have a relationship for a couple years and it ended during COVID and when you and I started dating again. And he tells me this made up timeline. I am devastated because obviously that’s still been a lie the whole time we were still seeing each other. And he was seeing her at the same time and lying about it. And so I am devastated. I’m not eating. I’m not sleeping. I still say to him, that’s still cheating.

The timeline that he made up, he thought it was safe, but it wasn’t. It was overlapping. And I say, okay, you know what? It was years ago. I’m going to choose to forgive you and move past this.

Bachelorette Trip Revelation

Rachel: And then we go on my bachelorette trip in Mexico. And on the last day there, we’re all sitting around the table having a great time playing games. One of my best friends, she gets messaged screenshots from one of her friends from high school. And he had been sending messages to a girl while I was gone. This girl was a sister of my friend Sabrina’s friend. So these messages get back to Sabrina, and he had been asking to hang out with this girl while I was gone.

I see these screenshots on her phone the next day in the van on the way to the airport. I asked her, what the heck are those? And she tells me she was trying to wait until we got home. I confront him about it. I’m devastated. I’m having a panic attack in the Cancun airport. My best friends and my sister are on this trip for my bachelorette party celebrating this wedding that we’re supposed to have in a couple months.

And it’s all blowing up again in my face. Now everybody that I love essentially is involved and knows. And so I’m deep, deep, deep in shame here. He’s telling me he just wanted to hang out with her as a friend. She’s a friend from high school and all his friends were busy.

5th Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: Saying They Didn’t Do Something Very Specific

Rachel: And I get home and what starts happening is I start figuring out how to out manipulate him. And how to essentially coerce him into giving me more information. So I learned, with me saying, I’m going to contact her. That got him to confess things. So I kind of do the same thing. And I get him to confess when I get home from Mexico, a bunch of virtual affairs that he’d been having for years. He confesses all the ones that he can remember.

Anne: Is that what he said?

Rachel: That’s what he said.

Anne: He said all the ones I can remember. I want to say number five is when they tell you a story, like, I never touched another woman with my penis, for example. Then they for sure did.

Rachel: Yeah.

Anne: For sure did that thing. So if they give you a strange detail that is a sign that they’re lying.

Specific Lies & Truths: Hallmarks Of Narcissistic Abuse

Anne: Because, for some reason they think if I lie specifically about the specific thing. That’s going to cover it up rather than realizing it’s like a dead giveaway. So I 100 percent did not hang out with her at that restaurant on Wednesday. If they’re giving you specific details. Then you can be like, okay, well now I totally know. That he for sure hung out with her at that restaurant on Wednesday.

Like you wouldn’t even think to lie about something like that unless it had happened. That’s what I’m trying to say. Like the details are not things that you think of lying about if they didn’t happen. Does that make sense?

Rachel: Yeah. No, that does make sense.

Anne: So I think that’s where you’re going with this, is that he’s telling you specific things.

Like I didn’t touch another woman with my penis. And you’re just finding out every detail that he told you, that he didn’t do, is the thing that he did.

Rachel: Yes. Oh, yes. He confesses. Okay. The relationship with Grace went on longer than I said, and it essentially went on up until he proposed to me a second time.

Engagement & Narcissistic Abuse

Megan: And he was trying to decide between you and her.

Rachel: Yeah,

Anne: Did Grace know about you?

Rachel: Grace knew that I existed and I still haven’t talked to her yet. I would love to, but she was blindsided too. She didn’t know that he and I were back together. So he was puppet mastering us both. At this point I am a shell of myself, my friends are distraught.

My sister is a mess and I’ve asked her not to say anything to my parents. I am in this deep trying to keep everything together all over again mode. Almost exactly five years later to the day.

Anne: In this mode are you still really wanting to get married? You’re still trying to hold it together because you’re still like, this wedding is happening?

Rachel: Yes, mm hmm. And he was definitely very much brainwashing me. There was a lot of like spiritual manipulation going on at this point, too. That we were going to church and God was giving him these messages and dreams. And he’s learned so much . Now we’re in mid-June. And I’m basically just like not functioning which was an effect of spiritual abuse.

One night in June, his phone is plugged in to the charger upstairs and he’s downstairs. I have already scoured his phone, but I get this weird feeling that I need to go and check his voicemails. I scroll down all the way to this little section at the bottom that has blocked messages and deleted messages.

Multiple Betrayals

There are two messages in his blocked messages little tab from very recently, like just a couple of weeks prior. It’s a woman and it’s this sultry voice saying how she misses him and hasn’t heard from him in a while. And he initially was telling me they just are sending inappropriate messages to each other.

It’s a coworker from his new job. Over the course of eight hours, I out manipulate him at five in the morning into telling me that he had slept with her twice in April. He tells me that he told me a lie, that he texted me that he was going to be late coming home from work. And I go back in my texts and I figure out when this was.

The first time that he slept with her was the day before I found the document on his computer about Grace. And then the second time was the day after I found the document about Grace on his computer when he’s texting me that I’m safe. You know, that he would never hurt me and all these things.

I’m finding out about this other four year relationship at the same time that he’s having an affair with his coworker, a completely different woman. It was a Sunday, went to church and I screamed in church during worship, get me out of this hell. I was so manic at this point. I felt like I was losing my mind. I’m experiencing so much abuse from him at this point.

Family Interventions For Narcissistic Abuse

Rachel: My family at this time was noticing that something was going on. They could tell my sister was like hiding secrets and like something was not right. They end up getting some information out of me. Over the course of a few days they invite me over for a series of interventions. And the last day my parents tell me you can’t marry this person.

We don’t support it. We’re not gonna pay for it This needs to not be happening. I tell him this and he essentially shuts down. Then kind of tries to manipulate me in these other ways. He starts mocking me like a child and kind of throwing a lot of tantrums and crying. He says that I’m abandoning him if I’m gonna go over and spend time with my family. All these things are common in narcissistic abuse. And the next day he leaves for work. I take my dog on a walk and I asked God, What am I supposed to do now?

It’s June 29th and I hear God go, open up your journal from five years ago, and I open up my journal. And to the day, I had written five years prior, that there’s a darkness in him. That he has sexual addiction and I need to get away from him, all these things. It was like I was writing it right then.

It snapped me out of whatever brainwash that I was in. And I came back to myself and I just started screaming in my house. No more, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not giving him another five years. Like this is it, My parents called me in that moment, which was so strange because they had only been texting me that week.

Breaking Free From Narcissistic Abuse

Rachel: And in the middle of this panic, I had them come over and we came up with a plan and I left him. Over the next few months while we’re selling my house and everything, he does some really crazy things. He tells me he’s going to get a tattoo of me. All sorts of ridiculous threats that are common within narcissistic abuse. At that point, Megan and I went on my honeymoon together.

Anne: Yay!

Megan: After I just left my husband as well, so we were both on her honeymoon, single for the first time in a decade. Being like, oh, let’s start over our lives.

Anne: That was epic.

Rachel: Yeah. And that was the beginning of the rest of my life, honestly. So that’s my story.

Healing From Narcissistic Abuse Takes Time

Anne: Thank you so much for sharing your story, Rachel. So many women that listen to this podcast are going through that same thing. Only they are married and they didn’t find any of these things out until after the marriage. Or after they had a kid or multiple children. And so good for you. You always had it in you.

That’s the thing that kills me about narcissistic abuse. Sorry, the one thing, no, there’s so many things. Is that women are trying to get to safety, right? The whole time you’re trying to face it, the whole time you’re trying to figure it out. The whole time you were trying to do the right thing and had you known he is a con man. He is a compulsive liar and a narcissist.

Because you don’t know what you’re looking at. You’re trying to figure it out. Once you figure it out, you’re like, okay, I know what to do now. But they love to keep you in the dark. That’s what is so infuriating, that they are keeping you in the dark on purpose. To exploit you for whatever they’re exploiting you for, your emotions, intimacy, for some people it’s money.

It can be all sorts of things. Maybe all of those things combined, but they are exploiters. And they want to keep you in the dark. So I’m so, so glad that you were finally able to see the truth.

Saved From Narcissistic Abuse At The Final Hour

Rachel: Yeah, me too. I thought that it was a redemption path for us getting this house and getting re-engaged in all these things. I am so grateful that we did buy that house and we did live together for a few months. Because that allowed me to find out what he had been hiding for years. I really do feel so strongly that I was saved at the final hour twice.

I just really try to live now and not take it for granted and just lean super hard into life.

Anne: That’s awesome. If you want to hear more of her story and Megan’s story, their podcast is The Traumedy Show with Rachel and Megan Wilford. Thank you both for being here today.

Rachel & Megan: Thank you so much, Anne.