My story is very long, I'll post story starting from the beginning, they are about 4. I'm sure that you all know how complicated these things can be. Honestly, it is only in this last week that I have realized that he is indeed a narcissist. Up until know I kept on doubting myself and thinking that I was the problem. I'm sorry for the extremely long post but I feel all the information is pertinent bc I'm always questioning myself, although that has pretty much died now.

First Inkling that something was wrong in February/March:

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This is going to be long. I’ve been married for 16 years. We have two boys in middle school and our marriage always seemed rock solid. This past September I found out my husband had been vaping weed. Initially he denied it but quickly admired that it had been smoking before bedtime for about 2 years. I wasn’t upset up the weed at all, but that he had kept this from me.

Up until then, I had never known my husband to keep anything from me, so after almost 16 years of marriage this threw me into a tailspin. I saw my husband in a different light, as someone who was capable of keeping a big secret from me. A year before he had opened a checking account so we could do our business transactions separately from our personal account, and wasn’t able to add me to the account bc I wasn’t with him when he opened it. Because I had never been distrustful before I never thought about it and we never got around to adding me to the account.

A few days after discovering the weed, I told him I wanted to be added to the business account( I handle all the administration side of his craft side business). He said no problem but when I asked a few days later if we could call the bank to add me he blew up and said really you have to bring that up again??? I was upset but let it go. I started having panic attacks and broke down and he briefly let me scroll through the phone to see the past few transactions. But I wanted to be in t the he account and said that he must be hiding something if he wasn’t willing to put me on an account t that I was supposed to have been in anyways. He got very upset and said if I was going to be like that that we needed a break. This completely crushed me that he would say that. It felt l I’ll le a betrayal bc why would he want to separate when all he had to do was show me the account. We had never had separate accounts.

We made up but at the jus point I was doing really bad. My anxiety was through the roof and I was afraid that something was going on, but had no idea what that something was. But nothing felt right about his reactions and it made me have some questionable moments. At one point I accused him of doing cocaine because of a mirror in our bathroom. We had a huge argument and after a few days he said this was the last time he was forgiving me and I promised to go to therapy to get help for MY problem. He never acknowledged that any of his actions were causing my trust issues.

Things got better. Throughout all this our sex life was way better bc I was anxious and insecure and therefore wanted more sex. I told him about a threesome fantasy I had during sex one time and we would talk about it during sex and I thought he was into it until during one argument he accused me of playing with his head. He thought that I was bringing up the threesome fantasy to catch him. It wasn’t like that at all, it was just a fantasy and dirty pillow talk so I stopped mentioning it after that. Until one occasion during sex that he said he was sorry about saying he didn’t want to hear about it and it once again became a topic. Eventually we talked about it outside of bed and we even went to a strip club together to gage my reaction. I loved it so we decided to go ahead with the threesome.

I said I wanted somebody completely random but he wanted someone know. I kept on saying someone random is better, he wanted someone know and even suggested to it happen more than once with whomever it might be. I told him that wasn’t a threesome, that’s a relationship and he just patted my head and said, well I’m a man of habit. It felt very dismissive but I was excited about the prospect and started looking for women on Tinder.

About a week later he said he had found someone that he knew from his previous job ( but only knew her from seeing her around the private community where he worked and from casual conversations.) She was the daughter of the maid at the house that he worked at and according to him a lesbian, but she had agreed to a threesome bc she needed a car and we had one that we were getting rid of. When I asked him how he had her number ( since he only knew her through her mother) he said it was bc her mom had told her that he was selling a car. Mind you it had been a little over a year since he stopped working there but I remembered him making quite a few trips to the mothers house (the maid at the house he worked for before) to help her with her car, to take a bicycle for another one of her daughters, etc. The mom and daughter live together by the way.

The day before the threesome was set to happen we went grocery shopping. He got cranberry to drink with some vodka we had at home that we never drank and suggested we get some brownies. I thought the vodka thing was strange since I’ve never seen him drink that ever. Brownies either. In talking about the woman, he mentioned how her mom treated her badly and had wrecked her car and never fixed it. This seemed odd to me that he knew such details of her life since he only knew her casually. It gave me a sinking feeling but I ignored it. Amazingly, he also knew her age, which I also thought was weird.

The day of the threesome came around and my husband suggested we get sushi. She was coming over to our house and we’d have dinner together. She got there and I offered her beer, red wine, vodka and cranberry. Before she could answer my husband interjects “vodka and cranberry”. My heart sank because it was clear that he knew what she liked to drink from before. There was a familiarity between them that was unsettling but I didn’t back down. I asked her if she had ever been with a woman before. Nope. But she had been in a hetero relationship and had a 15 year old kid. Didn’t come across as lesbian at all. But I ignored my gut feeling and invited her to the bedroom. Now before she got there I told my husband about how nervous I was and he said don’t worry everything will be fine. I did say don’t do too much with her until I give you the go ahead that I am comfortable.

Her and I made our way to the bedroom and my husband followed. Her and I were did some kissing, I performed oral sex on her while my husband had sex with me. We moved positions and she got on top of me. My husband was standing next to the bed by our legs. He hadn’t done anything with her yet. Mind you this is supposed to be a lesbian woman who is doing this for a car. You would think he would start with something light like grabbing a boob. Instead he shoves what seemed like his entire hand inside her and started pouring her with his hand. She instantly went crazy. No where close to her reaction with me. He was going at it so hard that I could feel her rocking back and forth in top of me. Instantly I thought, these two have had sex before. That’s just not a first move with a lesbian acquaintance you barely know who’s doing this for payment. I said I thought they had had sex before and they both vigorously denied it and asked me if I wanted to stop. Perhaps bc I was high in weed (but I’m clear in the details) I decided to keep going. The whole thing lasted for some 3 hours. Several times during lulls I would close my eyes while we rested and both of them would repeatedly ask me if I was following asleep which made me think they were hoping I would’ve passed out so they could continue alone. A few time while her and I were cuddling in bed with my husband standing behind me I got the sense as I opened my eyes that she was looking at him. My husband kept saying he would go to the sofa and her and I could sleep in bed but I didn’t say anything. She mentioned going home and when I didn’t say anything she got the clue and said she would go home. I wasn’t about to have her sleep over.

We drove her home and I told my husband that I thought he’d had a relationship with her before. He got upset and said he knew this was going to happen. I got scared like I did during the last few times we had argued and blamed it in the weed fir making me paranoid. Next day he was constantly checking in on me at work to see how I was doing. He had asked if I wanted to di it again with her, if I had liked it, saying I could take it just with her. He told me that she was crazy about me and wanted to do it again, insinuating that she was all about me. I told him I wasn’t sure about it, bc even if it was just the weed making me paranoid, the whole thing left we thinking they had know each other well before. And again he said well I don’t have to be involved at all. That evening he suggested I send her a text thanking her. I thought that was a weird thing to request if your wife.

Did I mention that she never took the car, bc her license was expired. So this lesbian woman he barely knows came all the way to have sex with us and then left without the car. I wasn’t buying it. He was eager to see my text to her but wouldn’t show me their convos, saying that he hadn’t texted with her anyways. Mind you the contact he sent me was her WhatsApp. This was Tuesday night. Threesome was Monday night. Wednesday I’m at work obsessing over it but questioning myself. Then I get a text message from her asking if we can add her to our insurance, since she doesn’t have the money to do the car transfer. Huge red flag. A woman he barely knows us not going to have the gall to ask this, but I knew I would know every by his reaction. So instead of saying hell no I said let me check with my husband.

When he got home I told him I had talked to her and he said he knew and showed me their WhatsApp chat. Amazingly the chat started that morning, nothing before that. It was basically her saying how badly she wanted to get back together with me. It seemed really scripted because I knew there was no way they had never texted before that day if they had been communicated since before. I asked him about the insurance and he said yeah she told me I told her to talk to you. And that’s when I became certain that he had not only fucked her before, but they were pretty close. There is no way he would be ok with adding a woman we had slept with to our insurance if he barely knew her and even if he knew her well. The fact that he was on with it told me that he had quite an esteem for her. Did I mention that before he had mentioned her specifically but in the few days preceding( when he already knew it would be her obviously) he had said that we could take her when we went away for THe weekend in March to celebrate our anniversary? I was so down the rabbit hole that I was like oh ok. After the actual threesome it became clear to me that he was trying to infiltrate his side chick into our relationship.

I confronted him with all my suspicions. Initially he had said that the vodka was for him, but he didn’t even drink vodka that night. He finally said well I called her and asked her what she wanted and she said vodka with cranberries, sushi, and brownies. He had never mentioned that all of these were for her. He had me bake the fucking brownies thinking they were for him. He’d had one piece maybe that afternoon and she took the rest with her along with all The leftover sushi. I had checked his google contacts and she was listed under her name, but her mom, which was the one he claimed he knew her through was listed as “so and sos mom” which means that the person he knew first was her, not her mother. When I told him this he said that it was because it helped him remember, but when I pressed him in who he had met first ( he had always maintained that he knew he through her mother) he said that he knew her froM seeing her at the community market and she had asked for a job for her mom since they needed a made at the house he worked for. I didn’t buy it, there were just too many things. Now it made perfect sense why he had been helping her mom so much, even though he was no longer working with their fir over a year. I asked him to tell me the truth but he vehemently denied having had anything with her. She was just someone he found so that I wouldn’t go looking in Tinder. He had done thus all to please me and now I was accusing him of an affair. He asked me if I wanted him to leave. I said no but that I believed he had cheated and would always believe it. If he was ok with that he could stay, but he needed to cut if all contact with her and her mom. He said no problem. I told her it was a no in the insurance but to contact me once she had her license and we would do the transfer. She decided that she didn’t want the car bc she hadn’t earned it properly .

After a few awkward days things cleared up and he became extremely affectionate, constantly checking in on me. I was doing my best to move on, and refused to cry but I was occasionally upset because well my husband had cheated on me but I had to pretend like everything was ok. I admit this past month he was wonderful, so doting and affectionate. I figured he was trying to make up even though he would never admit to the affair. It was hard fir me to let go of it, so I would constantly check to see if she was in WhatsApp when he would got into the bathroom or start texting in his phone. Oftentimes she was but she was on almost all day, on and off. It wasn’t good for me to be checking this if I had chosen to forgive him but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were still talking. This weekend(Sunday March 1) we went away and were haunt a great time until I freaked out bc she was online just as he was texting. I had gone to the bathroom To check and was fine a few minutes. I asked him who he was texting and he got upset and said just so and so I was sending him a photo and he shows me he hands me his phone. I saw ok and don’t see her on any of the latest WhatsApp chats but decide to put her name intbe WhatsApp search. Her contact pops up. I ask him why since he had agreed to end all intact and he was like well I haven’t contacted her, I just haven’t erased the contact. When I press him as to why he says it bc he was expecting her to contact him about the card and that he would have given it to her (but let me know about it). Remember how she had said she didn’t want the car.

I know the real reason she was still a contact is bc they were talking, but his excuse was pretty bad too. So he was willing to risk our marriage by keeping his promise to give her the car. A woman he barely knew? I told him it was horrible that he had preferred to honor the promise he made to her over the one he made to me and he just scoffed and said that nothing he dies will ever be right. He left andcame back drunk and crying. Next morning he blamed me for constantly looking for something and that it was done. I thought he meant the conversation. That was Monday morning. He was no longer talking to me. We got home Monday night and he slept on the sofa. Yesterday I got home and told him I wanted to apologize for the constant WhatsApp checking and saying that I knew it wasn’t good.

But he said he is done. He’s forgiven me too many times. Basically this is all my fault for pushing and pushing this past few months. He’s completely blameless and it’s all my fault. All he wanted was to make me happy, and this weekend was the last straw. He said he was done with us but that he would stay to help out with bills and the kids. I begged him to reconsider, to give me one more chance. But he did not relent. I told him that I can’t live with him as just a roommate but that he should stay o e month and to please reconsider. That was yesterday. I humiliated myself so much. I shouldered all the blame. I begged. I told him I knew I was “sick”. It was horrible. And now another day has passed. He basically doesn’t talk to me, today I got see you later in the amand hey in the pm. That was it. No other talking, he walks past me in the house like I don’t exist. And even though I know what is happening, I doubt myself all the time. I know he cheated on me and he’s playing with my mind, trying to make me believe it’s all my doing. And I love him so much but this morning I just didn’t wake up feeling that he loves me.

"I suppose you feel the same as on Tuesday (to which he sat stonedfaced and said nothing) so this arrangement will not work for me. Please take a few days to find a place and once you are ready to move out let me know so we can both sit down with the kids and tell them you are leaving. I don't want to them to come home and you just be gone." His only response was to the kids part which he agreed with. Nothing else, just a blank expression. I said ok, bye and left.

Thursday night was really weird when he first got home, just hey, but then I felt more comfortable and chilled out on the dining room table on my phone drinking a beer while he watched tv. Went to sleep without talking.

Yesterday, Friday, was truly when the bizarre behavior started. I guess it wont be bizarre to other people, but it was my first time seeing things for what they were and I was floored. No contact inthe morning other than good morning which I said to him. He served himself coffee and didn't even offer me any. Left without any words.

He gets home last night and as I amde coffee for myself he prepared his dinner. This was right when he got home so I went to sit outside the patio while I waiting for the coffee because I really did not want to be around him. By the time I went back to get my coffee he was in the garage and could see me pass by. I could hear him whistling happily.

Normally that would have upset me, that our marriage was falling apart and he was whistling. But I saw it for what it was. I figured he was upset that I had called his bluff and asked him to leave and that I was seemingly ok with it. I was not longer begging him to stay. His whistling seemed to be a manipulative ploy to get me feeling bad again and back under his control. I got my coffee, went outside and chilled out for a good while. For the rest of the evening while he was working he would always walk into the house whistling loudly (our house is quite small so I could hear from the bedroom, and he knew that).

And here's the kicker. He walks into our bedroom where I was on the phone just relaxing on bed (he was getting my car keys to move the car) and he whistles loudly as he enters and makes a point of looking me dead in the eyes as he does it, looking quite relaxed. I had to laugh to myself when he left because it was so ridiculous. I went out to get bread and tell my mom about it and after I got back he said he was going out and left for around an hour.

This morning (March 7, our 16th wedding anniversary) he woke up early to go to the farmer's market where he sells his wares. The dogs were making a racket so I got up after a while and served myself coffee and sat on the sofa to watch the news. We said good morning when he got out of the bathroom and I continued watching the news and drinking my coffee. He went out to the car and comes back in and hands me a gift bag and says "Happy Anniversary". Today is our 16 year anniversary. I say thank you but remain with a blank expression and take the bag and proceed to look through the contents while he stands nearby. a necklace, two rings, and a pair of earrings. All from our artist friend who makes jewelry for the markets and he know I love her stuff. I ask him when he got the stuff, because I''m thinking if it was last night, it's just completely crazy. He doesn't say anything and I say she does really nice work and that's it. He goes to the bathroom and when he comes out I say thank you it was all really pretty. But at not point did I get up to hug him or change my expression. He's gone.

After I ask him to come clean and admit everything or we are done, all shit breaks loose:

On 3/7 after he gave me the anniversary gift I had a conversation with him that night. I told him that if he wanted to reconcile that I needed several things:

1. complete honesty about everything that happened
2. all bank statements from account he opened for our business for which I do all the taxes and banking but have never been able to see (he closed the account)
3. WhatsApp status (online or not)
4. Google Location sharing
5. phone pin

I told him to take a few days and think about it, to figure out what he wanted, and what he was able to do. 10 minutes later he packed up all of his clothes and left, leaving his wedding ring behind. Next day he shows up and says he's not going anywhere in a defiant tone. I tell him fine I can't force him to leave while we're still married and tell him I'm going to pick up the kids from my mom's house so we can tell the kids. This was Sunday. Now we kept a revolver in the house and out of an abundance of caution I had taken the bullets from the case and hidden them elsewhere Saturday morning. On Sunday when I get back home with the kids I go about my business doing chores. I noticved that the gun case was in a different spot on the closet shelf and that a box on my dresser had been opened. He was sitting on the sofa like he wanted to talk but I didn't say anything and kept on with my day and went out and had some coffee on the patio. When I come back in he's opening all the drawers in the living room. I knew he was looking for the bullets but he didn't say anything when I asked him what he was looking for. After about two hours of random searching through the house I was nervous enough to tell the kids to put their shoes on. He finally asked me where the bullets where at which point I hightailed it to the kids room and told them to get in the car. He starts dry eye crying about not wanting me to take the kids away from him. I tell him that he's freaking me out and ask him to go talk outside. He says that he would never hurt me or the kids, but that he doesn't want to live without the kids and shows me a suicide letter he wrote them. I calmly tell him that I would never separate him from his kids (which I had made clear to him before) and that he needs to think about them and not himself. That we can always work out an agreement so that he gets to spend time with them as much as he wants, blah blah. He keeps on dry crying (no tears). Finally hands me the gun which was in his pocket. I tell him that I want to take the kids to my moms because I don't feel comfortable with the situation and sleeping there that night and he goes into their room crying and hugging them and saying he doesn't want me to take them away. Which freaks them out (14 and 11) and then I have to tell them what is happening that we are separating. Because he wont let go of them I have no choice but to call the police. This was Sunday night. He gets baker acted and taken to the hospital.

He wont take my calls for the first few days and gets any information he needs by having a nurse call me. On Wednesday his psychologist calls me saying we need to do a family meeting. We meet and I agree that he can come back home if he behaves and cuts the silent treatment out, can be respectful, etc. The psychologist says we should do couples therapy and wants me to make an appointment right away for the next week. He gets out on Friday.

That night he buys me wine, I get drunk, he offers me weed, well, you can imagine what happened. My plan was for him to continue sleeping on the couch. Instead Friday night after I go to sleep he comes in a few hours into the night and asks me if he can sleep in our bed. I was so out of it I said yes. Next morning he says he just wants to hug me and I say I don't think it's a good idea. He says no sex, just hugging and me being the idiot that I am I give in. We end up having sex. He starts acting like everything is ok, being supper nice. I'm pretty sure the whole wine and weed where done on purpose to get me in a drunk state so he could get back in bed. He knows sex is my weak spot.

Tuesday we have our first couples therapy which is mostly just intake and telling our sides of the story. I tell mine and he tells his and he keeps on maintaining that nothing happened. I say that I want our marriage to work out but that I feel that if I don't get what I asked for all the couples counseling in the world is not going to help. The therapists asks us each why we want to save the marriage and what we want out of counseling. He says that he loves me and he wants to feel that he is trusted. I said that I needed to be able to trust again. So in the end she said that we had a bump in the road, a big one, but that it was not insurmountable. I'm not so sure. I feel like I had all this determination to stand my ground and I was ok when he packed up and left. And now he's back home and it's like everything is back to the way it was. He said after therapy that he was not going to let me slip away (or something like that) but again, there has been no admission of anything on his part.

I'm going to give this therapy my best and I hope that he can be honest as times progresses but I just don't know at this point. I love him and I really want this to work but I'm so afraid that this is just more fake niceness on his part and he's not really wanting to change. He hasn't mentioned any of the stuff I asked for except in the couples counseling to say that it felt excessive and intrusive. I'm so fucking tired.

At this point everyone on reddit was telling me NO NO NO get the heck out of there, but I still had a little bit of a doubt as to whether he had cheated, and I didn't really beleive that he was a narcisssist, so I stayed and things got better until last week when I found the last little bit of evidence that I couldn't ignore the cheating anymore. And the way he's acted ever since that last come to Jesus talk on July 21 has solidified in my mind that he is a narcissist and he is not capable of loving me.

Last confrontation on July 21st and aftermath:

I continued doing the couples therapy with my husband that was prescribed to him when they released him from the hospital for saying he wanted to kill himself. We went a few times, he never admitted to anything but he did provide the bank statements (though none of the other stuff I wanted bc it was an overreach according to him). At one point a previous argument came up during therapy and he stated that he wanted to approve all of my friendships because I could not control myself when I went out. I was really upset bc part of what I was working on was being more secure so I wouldn't be so dependent on him (I learned that I'm anxious attached and he is avoidant). I told him and the therapist that it wasnt fair that he wanted to control all of that but that what I was requesting was an invasion of privacy. He didnt talk to me like for two days after that. He stopped going to therapy bc he felt it made things worse, but I continued on my own.

I felt like we were doing better and I suppose I thought that maybe I had imagined things to be worse than they really were and perhaps it was my anxiety that cooked up the supposed affair. I was feeling more secure and in control.

Then I noticed that a specific date I had worried about (November 16, 2019) that he had a birthday listed and said it was a guy friend though he never ever writes anything like that down. Well that date always bothered me after we had the 3some with the lady bc that week was the week that he went over to her house a couple of times to help her mom out. And about two weeks ago I noticed on my google photos that in November 16, 2018 he left for a few hours from a farmers market we were doing to make more products (he's a woodworker) for the next. He's never done that and we really weren't selling THAT much but I never thought anything of it at the time. Now I was like, really of all days to leave it was that day? So I started feeling a bit antsy again.

Which brings me to yesterday. Another date that bothered me was June 9, 2018. I was away in Europe with my kids and mom. When everything happened a few months ago I snooped his google photos and found that he had been that day in Key West (we live in Miami). on our bank account there was no record bc he took out cash (which he never does either). I was worried about that date when the whole infidelity thing came up with the lady and worried that maybe he had gone with her. But all I had was a photo of Key West but no proof that he was there with her.

Yesterday I'm cleaning out old papers and I come across the statements from a bank account that was his bosses that he would use for buying things for work (he was a handiman for a very rich guy). June 9 was there and there was a charge at a Key West restaurnt. That was suspect bc it showed he purposely hid the trip from me (he only used that account for handiman related purchases). There was another charge that day, from a parking garage on the corner of where this lady lives. I t was $20 which is what they charge for overnight parking. Of all the charges on all the pages, the only one that he scratched out is the key west one.

So I'm pretty sure I can't ignore it anymore. It's too many coincidences. He spend the day with her in Key West and then spent the night with her hence having to pay for parking for his car. He picked me up from the airport the next day.

I confronted him with it and he once again denied that anything happened. He said the parking charge mustve been from another day but the date is there as different from the post date.

. I told him I was telling him all this to give him a chance to make things right, that I coudlnt go on without him being honest. So know he says that it seems to him that I don't love him anymore and I'm just looking for an excuse to break up.

Where we are now:

After the last post I told him I wanted a divorce. The home we live in is owned by my mother and me (she paid for it in cash). At first he wanted to go after that. Then he wanted me to let him live in an RV in the back of my house until our youngest is 18 ( so 6 more years). Finally we came to an agreement that I would keep this house, he would take all the money in our savings (75% of which is money left to me by my dad when he passed away) to pay off his debts, but he'll move out. He keeps a vacation home we own together and continues the mortgage payments on that. I keep a lot of land hopefully I can sell it for $25k otherwise I am left with no cash at all. But I wanted him gone and don't want a drawn out divorce so I was ok whatever.

The he comes back the next day saying he applied for a PPP loan and will get $15k if approved (which he wont have to pay back one cent bc it will be forgiven). So he's not putting any money forth. But he says he'll give me the $15k and I sign over my rights on the land. BEcause he wants to keep it for the kids and I would need to sell it to have some cash for emergencies.

At first I was like ok maybe. And then I realized that he would be getting the land for free since he wont have to pay back the loan and he can always turn around and sell it. He had also offered to give me just half of the loan money (7.5k) and I keep the land and I went back and said I'll take that offer and he was like AND you take over the kitchen loan payments for me ($5000). I was like noooo, I'm already giving you all the money in our savings to pay of your debts, and on TOP of that I'm going to pay off one of them????

Keep in mind I'm not requesting alimony and I will be letting him continue to work out of a workshop located in our yard AFTER the divorce. And still he says that he's being really generous with his offer.

Right now I'm on autopilot. I found the smoking gun cheating info on Monday the 20th, confronted him with it on the 21st, and saw the divorce lawyer on the 29th. I don't think I've been able to process that I've been married to a narcissist for 16 years and that he never loved me because he's not able to. I imagine once this is done and over with I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

Right now I'm reading a book by a French psychiatrist Marie-France Hirigoyen called Stalking the Soul and another on called The PErverse Narcissist by Jean-Charles Bouchoux which seem to be very good.

Hoestly, right now it just helps to hear that I wasn't crazy all this time with my anxiety and my distrust. I feel pretty stable, but he's still here and wont be out until the divorce is over and he keeps on trying to con me (like getting me to sell him the land with money he wont have to pay back).