I often wonder why the narcopath picked ME to marry when he was a lifelong bachelor at nearly 60 year old. (Although I have some bits of evidence that he was married to others….) As far as I know for sure, he had never been married. He had been with hundreds and hundreds of women, though, and was usually grooming dozens at a time in cities all over the country. Of course, I didn’t know this until later. Sometimes I’m still surprised at the scope of his predatory behavior. There are sooo many women out there who have been or are being used by him. There are even more that he’s groomed but never dated. As long as they are in the grooming phase, they never see what he’s really like because he keeps his distance and only shows up from time to time to flatter targets during grooming. It’s when he finally picks a victim that the person realizes how sick he is. But out of soooo many women, why ME?
Before the wedding, I had some hints that he might have been a womanizer, but I only had a tiny view of the gigantic picture. I thought maybe he was a serial dater. I had no idea there were hundreds and hundreds of other targets. So when I thought he was just a typical playboy, it was a bit of a compliment that I was so special he wanted to marry me. And RIGHT AWAY. I was confused about why it had to be right away, but he was such a manipulator, he played head games until he kind of pushed me into it. (That is a whole other story.) The point here is, he decided he had to marry me, and it had to be really fast. When I wanted to think about it or wait, he actually became enraged. WHY? Even though he finally talked me into it using sociopath logic that seems weird, but is hard to dispute, he seemed angry that we were getting married. He was in a hurry, but seemed restless and agitated like I was forcing him to do the very thing he was pushing me to do against my better judgement. Even that was confusing.
Before the marriage, he told me if I died he’d make sure my son had a good step mother. That was weird. Why would I die? In the flurry of flattering comments, that creepy one disappeared.
Once I finally agreed to get married, the narcopath swore it HAD to be the next weekend. Then he told me to plan everything and he would show up. I had a week to put together an elopement. When it was time to leave, he was in a huge hurry and was very angry. I was confused. He had pushed me to do this, but at the same time he seemed like he needed to get it over with immediately. Why? Again, why?
I still wonder about this. Why me? Why then? Why so fast?
At first I thought it was because he wanted to adopt my son. He was obsessed with my son, and wanted to control and “own” him. He got angry when I made parenting decisions, because he wanted to take them away from me after the wedding. He started dictating that my son needed to have his hair buzz cut, had to wear certain clothes, could only eat certain foods, and only on the narcopath’s one meal a day schedule. He was controlling and dictatorial with both of us, but worse with my son. He became enraged and even violent if I wanted to step in and give my say over my child, and he was angry if I tried to mother my then toddler in age-appropriate ways such as changing his diaper when it was soiled or feeding him three meals a day. Why?
At the time I married narcopath, I was on good terms with my dad who was in bad health. My dad had a nice home in a good area, a good income, and…an inheritance. His mother had come from a long history of wealth in my area and my dad had received a nice chunk of money. Did the narcopath think he was going to get something through me if my dad died? Did he purchase a life insurance policy on me? I often wonder.
There was some reason he wanted to get married very fast, and there was some reason he was in a rage to get it done quickly. I’m sure part of it was so he could “own” me before I realized what he was, but I often think it was because he was going to kill me, especially given comments he’d made.
I got pregnant right away, but left the abuser weeks after that because his behavior was so violent and extreme. He’d been cruel to me from the wedding day on, but he later physically attacked and shook my son for a small and normal, toddler behavior. When my second child was born 9 months after the wedding, he was was a very fussy and high needs baby. He cried any time someone wasn’t holding him. I had to go back to work after a couple months, but his baby sitter was an old friend of mine, and she too was baffled by my baby’s crying. This went on for months as we discovered some food and digestion issues. It was exhausting and stressful. Many nights I cried because I could not get any sleep. I realized many times that if the abuser was in the picture, he would have been more enraged than I’d ever seen. If I as a docile, passive, and patient person was being tested, how would a raging, violent, controlling sociopath react? Looking back, I realize my child would not have survived. If the abuser had physically shaken and hit my older son who was an extremely easy child, what would he have done to the baby that cried all the time? Fortunately, the abuser ignored the baby for the first year, so I didn’t have to worry.
Years on, I can still look back at the brief marriage to the sociopath and wonder how it was so violent and psychotic in a matter of weeks. And I truly believe he would have killed one or all of us. In fact, I often wonder if that wasn’t his plan from the start. When I read horror stories of murders and suicides in the news, I realize it could have been me. And I also realize, it could still be another woman in the future.