Today I want to drop a little bonus content based on my own lived and learned experience with coercive control. It’s an example of the material we have been covering so far. Stage 1: love bombing and stage 2: intermittent reinforcement with gaslighting and isolation and enmeshment. I am a firm believer that academic understanding of what’s going on in coercive control only takes us so far. But nothing brings us a deeper understanding than other people’s lived experiences. Since I have been happily married to a wonderful man for 19 years, that means the story is going way back in time to the year 2001. I was 26 years old when I met a man we will call Narcissus Incarnate.
Don’t have time to read the full article? Listen to it on any/all major podcasts (here).
Or if you want to see the woman behind this site telling you this story, it’s on YouTube (here).
On my YouTube and podcast, we are currently taking a deep dive on my article on coercive control. That article is (here).
The following terms covered in this article are in Trauma Glossary 1:
- Cluster B Personality Disorders
- Coercive Control
- Enmeshment
- Gaslighting
- Induced Conversation
- Intermittent Reinforcement
- Love Bombing
- Trauma Bond
Meeting Narcissus Incarnate
I saw this man who looked like a soap opera star. I mean he was so drop dead gorgeous. And this is something I’ve noticed again that these cluster B disorders have – not all of them – I’m not saying that all beautiful people are cluster Bs or vice versa. Just that the vast majority of cluster Bs tend to be well above average in the appearance department. I was out with my friends at a bar when I met him as a “friendly acquaintance” of my crowd of friends. He was so charming and down to earth and friendly. There was this charismatic aura about him that I can’t fully explain to this very day. I felt so drawn to him almost instantly.
So, he was hanging out with us and I remember one of my friends teasing him at some point about being a Playboy. And he said “No way, I am a one woman man all the way.” He kept reiterating this and adding a little seasoning to his moral high standing but…
Spoiler Alert!
This man would actually turn out to be equal parts narcissistic personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder. Plus, reining in 3rd place was meeting just enough of the criteria to also qualify for antisocial personality disorder. But see, the year was 2001. Not many of us had heard about personality disorders, much less the different types out there. When you don’t even know there’s a name for it, what are the chances of understanding red flags? None, that’s what.
So anyway, as the night progresses, he seems to be showing more and more interest in me. All the while I’m over here thinking, “Oh my God, this knock dead gorgeous guy is interested in someone like me. I can’t believe it!” Thus began the stage 1 of coercive control.
Coercive Control Stage 1: Love Bombing with Narcissus Incarnate
It (stage 1) lasted three whole weeks. Let me tell you how it went. His first time at my apartment, he brought – swear to God, two VHS tapes – yes, we were still using VHS. He brought two videos of him playing flag football. He wanted us to watch these videos of his 32-year-old self playing football and compliment him on how amazing of a jock he was. And yes, if you’re familiar with the movie Napoleon Dynamite, it was a classic Uncle Rico moment but of course, that movie hadn’t yet come out.
He was rocking my world in the bedroom and was – surprisingly – showing some mild signs of jealousy, like when he found out I had more guy friends than girlfriends. He said, “Well, you would never cheat on me, would you?”
I was like, “Oh, this guy is so into me, there’s something about me that’s making this drop dead gorgeous guy with all these morals feel insecure about me. He’s really, really into me!” Because he always wanted to know where I was and what I was doing.
He confided, “Every woman I ever loved has cheated on me and that’s why I’m so paranoid of it happening again. So, I really need to know before I invest all these feelings and get too involved with you, would you ever cheat on me? Because I’m so scared about that.”
So I said, “No, I would never cheat on you.”
Spoiler Alert!
He (Narcissus Incarnate) was a liar, liar pants on fire. He was never cheated on; he was the one who cheated on every woman in his life. But I wouldn’t know any of that yet.
Oh and he also missed me “so much” and couldn’t get me “out of his head”. And his favorite line, “I’ve just never been this comfortable around anyone before. I don’t understand this.” So, by week two or three, he tells me I love you and I was like, “Oh my God, I love you too!”
I want to share this insight from my experiences. I truly do believe that a lot of the love bombing and why it’s so effective is that they are doing things in some way that’s making us with low self-esteem fall in love with ourselves. It’s something to think about because I do remember feeling so amazing, like I was at the top of the world because I had this amazing guy that I was connecting with and bonding with. And we just had so much between us in such a short period of time.
Anyway, after we dropped the big “L-word” on each other, we immediately started talking about living together. And so, I said, “Hey, I have an apartment. I live by myself. You should move in with me.” So, we made our plans for his move-in date.
Coercive Control Stage 2 with Narcissus Incarnate
You cannot make this up. The very day he brought over all his stuff to officially start living with me, I get my first phone call from one of my friends. She tells me this man has not been faithful to me. Then she proceeded to drop a name of a person I did not know but she knew this person who told her that just last night, Narcissus Incarnate had tried and failed to jump this girl’s bones and left a mark on her neck as proof.
So, I get off the phone with my friend and I tell him what my friend just told me. He opened up his cell phone and said, “No, she tried to come on to me and I can prove it.” He played a short but mildly provocative voicemail message that she had left him. As I would learn later, she had left that message as a joke but he took it seriously and thought she definitely wanted him. Because hey, Narcissus Incarnate believed that everybody wanted him anyway. I wouldn’t find this out until later, of course.
So anyway, there’s this provocative message being left on the phone. I’m like, “Oh, okay. Now I get it. Yay! It was a misunderstanding, and that girl was trying to lie on my boyfriend.” But that wouldn’t be the only phone call I would get during this relationship.
Ultimatums
The phone calls kept coming in. “He was spotted here while you were at work…” And by the way – at the time, I worked night shift at the airport. So, this was the perfect setup for him, who enjoyed the nightlife and the partying and all of the mess that he was doing behind my back while I was completely oblivious.
Here were my friends who also enjoyed the nightlife telling me, “Oh, he was spotted here doing this with a girl,” and “Oh, we just heard from another girl that she had sex with him just the other night.” I am telling him what my friends are starting to say and where he’s been spotted etcetera, and the first of many ultimatums began. He got very wrathful and said, “You know what? I didn’t want it to come to this, but you’re just going to have to make a choice. Your friends, or me. Because if you’re going to keep those friends, then I’m out of here, I’m moving out
Because I was so hooked, line, and sinker in this trauma bond – because this extreme high that he was giving me – misled me into thinking, “I have never loved anyone like this before in my life. I can’t live without him. What will I do?” So, I chose him.
Narcissus Incarnate Starts Isolating Me
Most of my other friends worked at the airport with me. Working night shift meant that by the time we get off work it would be breakfast time because we would see the sun come up. Now and again we would meet up for breakfast instead of all of us going straight home. Well, that started declining once Narcissus Incarnate entered my life. I would tell him because he always wanted to know where I was because he always “missed me so much”. So, I called to say, “Hey, we’re going to go to breakfast and I’ll be home afterwards.”
He said, “No, please come home to me. I miss you so much.”
I’m like, “But I’m only going to be away for an extra hour or so.”
“No, I want to see you now.” Another time he had a bad night and he needed me to come straight home and comfort him because he had such a bad night. “Please just this one time.”
Next thing I know, one of my friends pointed out, “What, you’ve got to ask permission to hang out with us now?”
I’m like “No, no, it isn’t like that.” I was defensive because I loved my narcissist.
When occasionally it was okay for me to hang out with my friends – always having breakfast, not doing anything wrong – guess what would happen?
Calling Restaurants and Demanding They Put Me on the Phone
Let me go ahead and say this. We did have cell phones in 2001, just not everyone. I didn’t have a cell phone; I was still on landline. So, this made it even more embarrassing. He would call the restaurant and have them ask for me so that he could talk to me while I was at the restaurant.
I cannot tell you how embarrassing that was. The second-hand embarrassment you get because all you could think was, “How are you not seeing how you’re embarrassing yourself by doing this? Calling the restaurant to page me to answer their business phone?”
Sometimes he’d say, “Oh, I love you. This is all, I just wanted to call and tell you that.” Or there was another time he called the restaurant to page me and he proceeded to go off on me. “The woman I love, that I want to marry – just forgot about me!” He kept saying this over and over again. Classic DARVO, got to give himself the victim card.
I Forgot to Mention That Narcissus Incarnate Stayed Unemployed
Oh, and here’s the best part. I forgot to mention this too. It turns out when he moved in with me, he didn’t have a job anymore. Weird. And he continued to be unemployed the entire time he lived with me. So, here he is having all this free time while living off of me and controlling me. The drama starts to escalate; he’s creating problems where none should be. He can’t understand why I can’t drop everything to attend his needs whenever he wants.
He once gave me a hard time just because he was hanging out with the guy who lived one floor above me and he was mad. Why? Because I had to go to work and I did not take the fifteen seconds to go up there and give him a hug and a kiss before I left. He kept repeating that one. “Fifteen seconds for a hug and a kiss. You couldn’t even give me fifteen seconds!”
His Paranoid Jealousy
By this point, all of my friends hate his guts. They cannot stand him and he knows it. So, he doesn’t want me hanging out with them. He’s getting increasingly paranoid jealous of me. If I spent more than 10 minutes in front of the mirror getting ready for work, he would ask me, “Who are you getting dolled up for?” And he would constantly bring that up, accusing me of getting dolled up for work.
But it was okay for him to take all the time in the world grooming himself before going out while I was at work. I said, “Yoo-hoo, you don’t see this contradiction? It’s okay for you to spend all this time in front of the mirror getting ready to go out, but I can’t spend more than 10 minutes in front of the mirror getting ready for work?” It was always different for him versus me.
It’s also important to note that working at the airport loading and unloading planes all night, you’re working outside in all types of weather. So, coming home from work after a cold and rainy night, wanting to soak in the tub to get some heat back in my system, he would ask me, “What are you really washing off?”
I Realize I’m Dating My Mother
It was around this time, it was starting to dawn on me that he reminded me of my mother. In fact, I was dating my mother, who was not narcissistic or histrionic. She was a borderline – but again, I wouldn’t know that until over a decade later. He would start fights and then be like, “I’m moving out!” and he would be gone all night, sometimes two nights. I know now these were the nights he was intentionally starting a fight so that he could cheat while I was unaware. There were a couple of times he would up the ante and take all of his stuff, pile it into his truck, be gone for a few days, and then come back of course with all of his stuff. As always, it was all my fault. I wasn’t doing enough, he couldn’t trust me, etcetera, etcetera.
There were times I would get so fed up with all the drama, but then we would always have a conversation. It was strange. No matter what he did, we would have a conversation and boom, I would be hooked right back in. There was a song that came out in 2001. I Keep Falling by Alicia Keyes. In that song she is describing the trauma bond itself. Part of the lyrics – I don’t want to commit copyright infringement – but listen to the song carefully. She says, “I keep falling in and out of love with you. I have never loved someone the way that I love you.” When I heard that song I said, “My God, this is me. This song is how I feel about him.”
His Future Faking Helps Save Me from Sinking into Stages 3 and 4 of Coercive Control
There was future faking too. He wanted to move back to his hometown – several states away – and take me with him. According to him, everything would be so much better for us, but only if we moved away. I think this was the part where he really messed up and also saved me from sinking into stage 3 and then stage 4 of coercive control. Because every time he pressured me into moving away and marrying him, it also reminded me of two very good reasons not to.
Number one, that would mean taking me far away from my grandmother, who was the first great love of my life, the most important person of my childhood. I always swore I would never live far away from my grandmother as long as she was alive. So, that was one thing.
And another thing was because he reminded me so much of my mother, I was able to see my future. Because I grew up watching my father get whittled down day by day, year after year. I was born just one year after my parents were married. So, I witnessed him sink into stage 3 and then stage 4, even though I didn’t know there was a name for it at the time. I knew how much worse my relationship would get because I already watched what happened to my father.
It was a constant reminder that all those years I had grown up in such a hurry, I couldn’t wait to turn 18 so that I could legally leave my abuser at last. Marrying Narcissus Incarnate and moving far away with him would send me straight back into the same hell, just different names involved this time. Childhood repeated. I couldn’t.
I Learn About Personality Disorders
And yet I still didn’t have the strength to let him go. On one hand, I feared living the rest of my life in an abusive, controlling relationship. And on the other hand, I was in fear that I would never love anyone like this ever again. The trauma bond had me convinced that no matter what happened, I was doomed to love him and only him for the rest of my life. So, around this time I learned the term personality disorder.
“This is a psychological condition? Really? And from what I’ve described my boyfriend has this? Oh!”
So, I get on the Internet – it’s dial up – and I found the 9 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, followed by a short piece written by a psychologist talking about “Narcissists are rare, only 1% to 2% of the population have it” and they did not know much about narcissists or how to treat them, purely because narcissists are not inclined to seek therapy because they (narcissists) believe everyone else is the problem and there’s nothing wrong with them.
So anyway, when I read this criteria I said, “Oh my God, this is him. He meets all nine.” I was a few years away from learning about histrionic and antisocial and realizing he had those too. The information on the Internet at the time was pretty scant. But at least I found one of his disorders and was able to make sense out of what I had been dealing with.
Writing Narcissus Incarnate a Life Manual
So, having this information – as limited as it was – on narcissistic personality disorder, my knee-jerk reaction, all because “I loved my boo so much”, I was going to save him from his narcissism. So, I wrote him a life manual. I kid you not, I wrote him a life manual on right choice versus wrong choice, common sense, human decency, fairness, all of that. I threw so much energy and into this life manual, you won’t believe what happened next. Narcissus Incarnate completely rejected my life manual! Oh no, now what?
The Divine Timing of Mary J. Blige’s Song
Here I was learning more about narcissistic personality disorder – focused only on that one at the time – still going through the drama going, “Oh my God, this is hopeless. This is bad, really bad. My boyfriend is a narcissist.” Then another song came out that also spoke to my soul. It was one of those nights I was driving to work, upset over the latest drama my boyfriend had stirred up and I heard a song by Mary J Blige. No More Drama. It spoke to me.
I was like, “Yes, I am so tired, I’m so exhausted from all this drama. I’ve got to escape this. I want what Mary J Blige is singing in this song. No more drama,” and I can’t explain what happened next. I think between learning narcissistic personality disorder and the divine timing of Mary J Blige’s song coming out when it did, it did something to me. Literally one night I went to bed believing I was doomed to love this man for the rest of my life and the next day – swear to God – it was like the spell had broken. Because I did feel like I was under this really weird spell the whole time I was with him.
Devising My Plan to Have Narcissus Incarnate Gone from My Life
When I woke up that morning, I didn’t love him anymore. It was like the trauma bond was broken. I felt nothing for him but throughout this relationship that spanned eight months, I had picked up on patterns where I had been at that point before – where I told myself I don’t love him any more because all of the drama is outweighing those beautiful moments in between the drama. The pattern was every time we had a conversation, I was hooked back in.
So, I devised a plan to trigger him into wanting to leave me one more time and do the over the top walking out on me – taking all of his stuff so that he wouldn’t have a reason to return. Then I vowed I would not answer the phone. I would screen my calls so that I would not risk having a conversation with him.
That’s going to be another important take away as we move into the series on coercive control. You will see how that really is one of their superpowers. Having that conversation will hook you back in, the same as it did me. (See also induced conversation in Trauma Glossary 1.) But I didn’t know there was a name for it then. I just knew what the most common pattern for me had been.
What They Lack in Common Sense Human Decency…
He sensed the shift in me almost instantly. And this is something important for you guys out there wanting to know how to escape a relationship like this. Always have some sort of exit plan and whatever you do, do not let them know you’re leaving or want them gone from your life. Because I’m telling you right now that what the cluster Bs lack in common sense human decency, they more than make up for it with their intuition. It can’t be reiterated enough that they become the most unstable at the threat of being abandoned by their victim.
For myself, I was lucky that Narcissus Incarnate was the somatic narcissist, which is narcissistic personality disorder plus histrionic. Then the antisocial side of him that came in 3rd meant that while yes, he did have the malignant narcissist side – being domineering and controlling in our relationship – he was far more the disingenuous histrionic than the malignant narcissist. In other words, things could have been far more physically dangerous for me at this time had it been the reverse. His high impulsivity without any foresight and his chronic need for stimulation and excitement would soon get the better of him.
Above is a visual aid showing you a side-by-side comparison of what happens when antisocial personality disorder blends with narcissist and histrionic. Notice their differing traits. If you or someone you know is dealing with a somatic narcissist who also has antisocial in their makeup, this might be a helpful guide on predicting a good exit strategy.
The Longest Three Weeks of My Life
For three weeks I watched him try and be on his best behavior around me. He would make make a couple of comments like, “It feels like you don’t love me anymore.” Another time he calmly asked me, “Do you want me to leave?” Even though inside my head I was screaming yes, I wisely and calmly said “No,” because if I said yes, we would have had a conversation and I was scared of being hooked back into this trauma bond that I didn’t even know there was a name for.
I did not want to fall back in love with him again; I wanted to keep this apathy in my heart forever. I was emotionally free from him but not yet physically, and I know that’s so strange. Because usually when breaking the trauma bond, it’s the reverse. You break free physically and then you have the emotional withdrawals you’ve got to deal with. And yet I was in danger of getting emotionally hooked again as long as he remained in my physical life. Every day for three weeks, I would intentionally bring up something that I knew would trigger him and I watched him get angry and then promptly work hard at controlling his wrath. Christmas was just around the corner and all I could think was, “All I want for Christmas is this man gone from my life.”
I Tell Narcissus Incarnate “You will never leave me”
Then it happened one day when I informed him – I did not ask permission – but I informed him that I would be having breakfast after work with my friends. He knew which restaurant and he decided to call the restaurant. When they paged me and I had to go up there and answer the business phone, “Hey honey, I’m just calling to say I love you,” I let him have it.
I laundry listed every manipulative and needy demand he had ever made on me and that I was sick of it. Then I said the magic words. I played reverse psychology and turned his manipulation game around on him. I said, “And you know what else I’m fed up with? How you’re always threatening to leave me. You’re always saying you’re going to leave me but I got your number now. You will never leave me. You know how I know? Because you always come back. So, you can stop playing that little game right now.”
See? I dared him to leave.
Today, December 15th is the 23-year anniversary of the happiest day of my life. Because that was the date in 2001 when I came home to an apartment that not only did not have him in it, but all of his things were gone too. I arrogantly told him, “You will never leave me,” and he couldn’t wait to show me. That high impulsivity within him made him react without thinking, without reviewing what he knew had changed within me the past three weeks. Nor was he thinking of the consequences after he left.
A Week’s Worth of Unanswered Phone Calls from Narcissus Incarnate
He started calling me right away, but I wasn’t answering the phone. He was leaving messages on my answering machine every day, sometimes twice a day trying to get me to talk to him, trying to love bomb me, but I deleted the messages as they came in. I also had the good sense to talk with the guy who lived one floor above me that he was friends with and explained the situation. That I just got rid of this guy and, “I’m not asking you to be friends with him anymore, but all I’m asking is, if you hang out with him again, please do not bring him back into the apartment building.”
It was a secure building and the only way he could get in was if someone let him in. So, if he got inside the building and went to the guy’s apartment unit, he would literally be one floor away from getting at me. I was scared.
Well, one day the phone calls stopped abruptly after a week. So, I called the guy who lived one floor above me and asked if he had heard from Narcissus Incarnate and if he had moved away yet. Because while Narcissus Incarnate was in my life, he kept telling me the only reason he is staying in my town is because of me. He wanted me to move away with him to his hometown. So, the guy told me that he had moved away and that gave me a huge whoosh of relief. Because now I was in no danger of running into him anywhere.
But then he proceeded to tell me how Narcissus Incarnate got the message that I was in no way, shape, or form going to ever take him back.
Narcissus Incarnate Gets The Message
They had been hanging out at a bar and Narcissus Incarnate kept pushing the guy to tell him how I had been doing. He even told the guy that he knew I wasn’t doing well because every time he had left me before I couldn’t handle being in my own apartment without him. So, as the night went on and the guy consumed more alcohol, it loosened his lips until finally he told him, “Jaena is ecstatic that you’re gone and she’s so happy that she can finally be around her friends.”
Then Narcissus Incarnate responds, “She really said that? Well fine, you just remember one thing. I left her.” He sure did, and I made sure that he could never come back.
Falling in Love with Life and Freedom Post-Narcissus Incarnate
Once I got rid of him, let me tell you, I fell head over heels in love with life itself. I had so much freedom that I had taken for granted until I got rid of him. Just being elated at the grocery store the first time I realized I only had to buy for one. I did not have to think about buying anything for him. The freedom to be in front of the mirror getting ready for work longer than 10 minutes and not having to answer for it. All the freedom, every day there was something that just made me so jovial on the inside because he had taken away so much. I was reexperiencing freedom.
I survived the first two stages of coercive control but then again, our relationship only lasted eight months. But I can tell you this. I nightmared about him for six months after I got rid of him. While yes, I was enjoying life to the fullest in my waking life, I was nightmaring in my sleep. Then one day, fed up with the nightmares, I wrote him a letter that I never intended to send (confrontation letter) telling him I wanted him out of my life for good and forbid him from entering my dreams. It worked. Even the nightmares stopped.
The Victim’s Secret Shame
Those first two stages of coercive control that I dealt with were traumatic but to be perfectly honest, I got so much post traumatic growth out of that, that I enjoy sharing this time of my life. Because it helps others and I understand more of where people are coming from in a coercive control relationship. I understand how in these relationships, they get you to do things you wouldn’t normally do, and that’s where a lot of shame comes from.
I would have never imagined myself allowing someone to live with me unemployed, serial cheating on me, and controlling my every move. And I was very ashamed of what I was allowing but I didn’t have the strength to sever ties with my abuser. It made me not want to confide everything because of that shame. So, I just want to tell people out there that being led to do things that you wouldn’t normally do in these types of relationships are actually a very normal response to a relationship that is completely abnormal.
Narcissus Incarnate was My “Relationship Rock Bottom” and My Wakeup Call
He wasn’t the first narcissist I ever dated but he was the worst, the most severely controlling. Because before, I definitely had a specific type who kept “confirming” and “reconfirming” for me all of the cruel things that my parents used to say to me. I didn’t know how to value anyone who saw value in me. Narcissus Incarnate was my wakeup call to say “No more!” because I had learned this new term, narcissistic personality disorder and other personality disorders. It gave me just enough validation to understand the difference between me and the guys that I was attracted to and attracting to me. I spoke it into existence, I said, “No more, no more! I’m not doing it, just like Mary J Blige says no more drama,” and I meant it.
And it just so happened that the next person I dated was my husband. I can honestly tell you this. He is in truth, the only man I have ever loved. Because love isn’t that chemically induced, intense, extreme crap that the trauma bond tricks us into thinking is real. With love you’ve got to have trust, you’ve got to develop a secure bond where you can be calm and relaxed. The trauma bond will never get you there. And so, real love is solid. Real love is peaceful, and that’s the thing we as trauma survivors have to learn, making peace with peace. Learning how to accept peace as the true sexy that’s out there. Because believe me, there’s nothing sexy – really – about a trauma bond.