Barbara H. Peterson
As I sat there feeling the emptiness surround me, and the vacuum created by it attempt to overwhelm my soul and drag me into an endless pit filled with nothing but self-pity, I tried to understand just how I got where I was and why.
Is the situation I found myself in really all my fault, as those around me claim? Have I no one to blame but myself for the poor decision that I made in choosing a mate whose only goal was to extinguish all goodness and hope in me? To strangle any flicker of life and leave an empty shell to disintegrate into dust and blow away in a gust of wind?
Did I really ask for it, and was I now getting exactly what I deserve?
These are the thoughts that were rolling around in my head on any given day, at any given moment in time.
Who am I? I am an ex-victim who is just now recovering from an attack by a narcopath (narcissistic sociopath).
It is difficult to think of oneself as a “victim,” with all of the “enlightened” people out there stating with assuredness that we are all responsible for our own actions, and that we must accept responsibility for each and every choice we make. But is it really a choice when one finds oneself in the clutches of a predator? Does a deer choose to be shot by a hunter? Is that a conscious choice that should be accepted and owned?
When a narcopath hunts his prey, he deceives her into thinking that he is someone else. Someone he could never truly be. It is all a game to him, and he lays a trap so intricate and deceptive that telling it from reality is difficult at best, if not impossible.
So, I ask again, is it really a choice when you are targeted by a narcopath and fall into his snare? Does a deer choose to be targeted by the hunter and shot, or is she in the wrong place at the wrong time, having been purposely led into a carefully laid trap? And if she escapes, should she be blamed for allowing it? Is it really her fault?
For me, the game started 13 years ago when the trap was set, and I walked into it wholly unaware of what was in store. Yes, if I had known then what I do now, I would have made a wide berth, but I didn’t, and so it began.
I met whom I refer to as Tin Man, man without a heart, when I was taking care of my elderly mother. We were alone, and she was the last of my family. I am an only child. I was raised to take full responsibility for my actions, and to never give up no matter how difficult things got. I always thought that these were my strong points, but unbeknownst to me, these just happened to be the exact qualities that Tin Man was looking for, and because of them, I was lined up to be his next target.
How do you go about setting a trap to turn strengths into weaknesses in order to snare your prey? He was an expert, and did so with ease. During the course of our relationship, no matter how bad it got, he would remind me that I should never give up. No matter what hateful thing he did, he reminded me that I should bear responsibility for doing things that caused him to react the way he did. He was well-practiced at this type of manipulation having had a previous failed 16 year relationship with someone that he constantly complained about, and repeatedly blamed for just about everything that had gone wrong in his life. In the beginning, I couldn’t understand how he could stay with someone he obviously despised for 16 years, but now I realize that he was getting so much pleasure from the pain he was putting her through that he simply couldn’t let go of the fix. Every time she tried to commit suicide, he must have been right there, drinking in her agony with relish.
And so I persevered. I tried to be a better person, to understand what he must have been going through, and to try and help him heal. I thought that we were building a future together. That is what he said. And I believed him. That is, until the carefully put up façade that he was hiding behind began unraveling and the true nature of the beast lurking behind the mask began surfacing more frequently and I could rationalize the behavior no more.
The road to my realization that he was not the person he appeared to be started with a lie. A simple lie, really. But a lie none-the-less. It was a lie about something that would have been better handled with the truth. So I confronted him. He looked shocked that I would even think that he would lie to me. And he said: “Do you really think I lied?” I said “yes.” He got angry and stormed out of the room. A few days later, he started accusing me of telling people that he lies. He withdrew his attention and gave me the cold shoulder. The lying got more blatant, and the accusations got worse. Each time he lied it was even more exaggerated than the last, and I was made out to be a horrible person who lied to the neighbors by accusing him of lying. He turned it right back around and accused me of doing exactly what he was doing! And then, he would change and act like nothing had happened. I must be imagining things.
He isolated me from my friends by telling stories behind my back and then accused me of sleeping around if I talked to another man or telling stories about him if I talked to a female friend. He also made up stories about my friends, putting them in a bad light and saying how they were two-faced and how I could never trust them. He didn’t want me staying at my job because of the drive in the snow and ice during winter, so I quit. And then my vehicles started mysteriously breaking down so that I couldn’t get to town to get another job.
He went so far as to tell me that the neighbors hated me and were sneaking over to cut the gas lines on my truck. I use the truck to get hay for my animals, and several times while doing so, they burst and spewed gas all over the ground while I had several tons of hay in the trailer. One spark would have set me on fire. He even put a motion activated camera under the truck at night to “catch the neighbors.” No one ever came. The only person who worked on the truck was him. After he left, I never had a problem with the gas lines again after having them fixed by the neighborhood mechanic.
He would tell me how much he loved me, and in the next breath, tell me that if I wanted affection I should go stand on a street corner.
The lies were so thick and the behavior so erratic that nothing he said or did could be trusted. When we did things together he would intentionally push a little too hard, pull a little too much, until I fell or got hurt in some way and stopped wanting him to help. I learned that any interaction with him meant pain for me, and he seemed to enjoy it. He would laugh at my pain and intentionally do and say things to make it worse. We lost a goose that I raised from birth to a coyote attack. I felt badly and was crying. He told me that she committed suicide because of me.
I stopped wanting to interact with him at all. This made him angry and even more demanding because I wasn’t doing enough for him.
In 13 years, he never once celebrated my birthday. The best I got was an offhand “happy birthday” as we passed in the hallway. The last birthday I had he wanted to go online and order something for himself since I was on the computer. I refused. He got mad and accused me of not doing anything for him. The veneer was off and the true Tin Man was live and in color, and his hatred for me was apparent.
When he decided to leave, he planned to do it wreaking as much havoc as possible. My vehicles were broken down, the place was littered with garbage that he simply threw outside and left. Then he took off for California, promising to send money for the bills and to make the house payment. For the first couple of months he allowed me to have $548 per month. This was not enough to cover the $300 electrical bill, the $585 house payment, the car insurance, phone bill, hay bill, or anything else. So, I had to make tough decisions. He told me not to pay the mortgage and he would catch things up when he got back. I didn’t listen and scraped enough money together to pay it. At that point I understood that he fully intended to let me go into foreclosure after calling and promising that he would make sure that I didn’t lose the house. Lies. I got food stamps, energy assistance, and got by. Then he said he needed all of the money and showed up to collect his gear and leave.
I got a restraining order on him when he demanded his gun and said he hoped I would die a horrible death. I haven’t seen him since, and have no idea how I will make the monthly payments. He is on his way to another victim, and I would rather be broke that be with him one more minute.
So again I ask the question that I asked in the beginning: is it really a choice when you are targeted by a narcopath and fall into his snare? Does a deer choose to be targeted by the hunter and shot, or is she in the wrong place at the wrong time, having been purposely led into a carefully laid trap? And if she escapes, should she be blamed for allowing it? Is it really her fault?
My answer? NO! It is not. If I had known then what I know now, I would have run away just as fast as I could. I would not have played the game because I would have been aware of it and headed on down the road. If you do not know that you are being deceived, it is not your fault. I do not accept the blame for being targeted by someone with no true feelings of love or remorse. It is hard to accept that some people do not think the same way as those of us who have actual feelings of love, empathy and compassion do, but they don’t. They are hardwired differently for whatever reason, and they simply do not play by the rules of common decency.
I will heal eventually. He will not. He will go on to the next victim and play the same game over and over because that is the only thing that he knows how to do. He is a lost soul who doesn’t know the meaning of love. Who preys on others and feeds off of their grief because that is his nature. He is not welcome here ever again.
I have learned a very hard lesson, and one that will stay with me for as long as I live. I just hope that I can heal enough to accept another person into my life in the future. But I can tell you one thing, I will be looking intently for the carefully concealed evidence that I ignored when I fell into the trap laid by a very crafty and skillful predator, and if I see any of the signs I will run as fast as I can in the other direction.
©2016 Barbara H. Peterson