Narcissists are highly secretive. They create special compartments for their innumerable secrets. There are narcissists who lead a series of impenetrable compartmentalized private lives. Since narcissists don’t have a developed conscience it doesn’t bother them that they are continually betraying those closest to them–spouses in particular. I hear from men and woman who have been married to narcissists for years and decades who were psychologically and emotionally devastated to learn that the person they trusted the most and whom they loved deeply, cheated on them multiple times throughout the marriage. Narcissists are often obsessed with acquiring money in various forms and keeping it all to themselves. NPDs don’t “share.” Many of them have hidden cash and bank accounts that are cleverly concealed from their partners. They are masterful at “spiriting away” their assets. The spouse does not suspect this venal level of duplicity. One scenario that occurs preceding a divorce is that the narcissistic spouse will have taken control of most of the money and financial assets and hidden them through complex financial instruments or by making “arrangements” with an old business partner or some other back door means. After the divorce papers are served and the opening rounds begin, the narcissist claims that he or she has no money or assets or investments of any kind. Surprisingly, this “story” can play well during the divorce skirmishes. At times a forensic accountant is hired to analyze and trace the money and investments that have been pilfered and concealed by the narcissistic spouse. As they cheat and steal from you, narcissists are highly suspicious even paranoid that they are being taken advantage of by their spouse. They play the victim role to the hilt. They rage that the spouse has stolen what is theirs. Narcissistic personalities are psychologically delusional. They manufacture their own reality. They detest the truth, especially when it is pointed out to them. It enrages the narcissist and activates his volcanic rage. Don’t blame yourself for not picking up the clues that you are married to a narcissistic personality. They are so masterful at concealing the truth about your relationship with them. They know just when to turn on the thousand watt charm, to promise you whatever you want and to woo and hypnotize you into believing that they love you. A time will come when you have put enough of the puzzle pieces together to know that you are being deceived and hurt, that you can longer overlook, rationalize or tolerate the insidious lies, the recriminations, the primitive wounding projections. Many spouses start to research the NPD and discover that this is the person to whom they are married. Others know deep inside that this way of living is hurting them psychologically and emotionally too deeply and for too long. At this point the spouse can make a decision to stay with the narcissist or to get a divorce. Those who stay in the marriage are making a very tough choice but some men and women do this if they have children and want to maintain some kind of family. In some cases the narcissist has discarded you long ago and is already in a new, more exciting romantic relationship and is relieved to put you aside. Others say: “No more!” They do careful research, interview attorneys, obtain the tools that they need to move through the divorce process. Often this is a battle royale with the narcissist playing very dirty. At some point the gavel comes down and the formal marriage is over. I give tremendous credit to those who go through this process with courage, grace, fortitude, focus and stamina. Rediscovering your unique creative gifts, you unleash the power within– the True Self.
12 thoughts on “Narcissists–Secretive, Suspicious, Devious”
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Wow! You have described my situation and my partner as if you lived with us.
How could I have known – I always believed in him and his love and did everything I could…. until the first dirty secret emerged, then the second… the third and now he has become entirely not credible but rather than showing real remorse and change he behaves like its my fault, is grumpy, angry, aggressive etc.
Can’t take it anymore. Everyone in such a situation needs to get out.
After 22 years with a husband with NPD I am now divorced and healing. The real casualties have been our children. He rejected our son when he was 19, he kicked him out of our home and has had no contact with him for 4 years. Our son is now 23 and after continuing therapy is doing well but realizes he will never have a relationship with his father. Our daughter is 19 and after subtle but persistent grooming, over many years, by her father sees me as the ” bad parent”. It is a very very painful case of parental alienation. She wants no contact with me, I text her every few weeks to keep the door open but she has not responded at all. Linda, in one of your blogs can you address parental alienation and how it relates to NPD.
Hi,
I had a very quick romance with a narcissist resulting in the birth of our beautiful daughter. However, it ended as quickly as it started supposedly because I wanted to have another baby before I got much older and buy a house. NP wanted to wait 2-3 years have another child which would make me over 40 and took me to look at $5M houses for fun knowing they were well well out of our purchase range … but apparently it is ONLY my fault because I pushed and pushed. He will not understand that we are both at fault for getting where we are now and that at the end of the day he ended our marriage flying to spend 3 hours with us to end it. Admittedly, I was unhappy in the house that he owned as I was not allowed to put my own belongings out and make it a family home without him or his family disagreeing or commenting.
My NP husband does not understand that since meeting him & having our daughter he was the reason I was in the town we were in as my job/income had ended (due to giving birth). My family are much further north and have been such a support since everything happened that I am speechless. I have no other family in the town we were in.
Do you have any advice on going through custody/divorce matters with someone like this and co-parenting? I feel so much for our little girl who will now have to go through being raised in 2 different households and being split between houses for events like Christmas, Easter, birthdays etc.
I just wanted to say thank you. I am still going through child support court with my ex husband and have only recently discovered that he is in fact a “narcissist”. I still have a very hard time “dealing” with him, can’t even look him in the eye. But it is VERY good to know that I am not crazy! Now I understand he has a very unstable mind set. I meet I guess I always knew that, but I can put a name to now. Anyway, thank you.
Forever grateful, Susan Aaron
My mother and father in law are both narcissists. These people are impossible to deal with and get worse with age. My mother in law just left my father in law after fifty years of marriage. I have spent years baffled by my mother’s behavior. The rage, seathing and silent treatment have left me angry. I merely now accept that there are severe limitations to how my mom can interact with my wife and my children. We will never really be close. She is ok when she gets what she wants. She is completely unable to understand the effects of her actions on others.
Those married to narcissists should leave if they do not have a damn good reason for staying. These people are capable of causing great harm. They will never take responsibility for their actions. When it is possible , limit your contact with these empty shells. They will suck you dry.
I want to testify of the good work done by a faithful Dr Akim, a spell caster. in my life I never thought there is such thing as love spell intercession. my problem started nine months back when the father of my kids started putting up some strange behavior, I never knew he was having an affair outside our matrimonial home. it dawn on me on that faithful day 19th of April 21st 4:23pm when he came to the house to pick his things that was when I knew that situation has gotten out of hand and he then told me he was quitting the marriage which I have built for over five years, I was confused and dumbfounded I called on family and friends but to no avail. two months after I started having problem with my kids welfare rent-age and all of it, I really went through hell. until a day I was browsing on the internet and I happen to meet a spell caster I never believed on this but I needed my man back so I gave the spell caster my problem at first I never trusted him so I was just doing it but you know a problem shared is half solved after a 2 days my husband called me telling me that he his coming back home and that was all. now we are living happily.contact him on this email:([email protected]
Thank you for your posts… so much validation here to help undo all the blaming and mind games! All of your posts are informative. My mother was a narcissist, and I turned around and married another… I always wondered why they were always trying to “one-up” each other!
I was able to instinctively do very limited contact with my mother, move away early, and lead my own life. Unfortunately, it was many years before my spouse’s true character was revealed, though the signs were there when we first met. I just didn’t know how to interpret them or that I should be alarmed by them.
Now I know to trust my intuition, and I know what narcissism feels like. Hopefully never again! My divorce was just final 3 months ago after 24 years. The marriage had been deteriorating for 10 years and I couldn’t understand what was changing because I knew it wasn’t me. I discovered his porn addiction and affair. Researching porn addiction mentioned that narcissism is often co-resident. Researched that, and BINGO. I finally understood the pain in my life.
Free at last!
My mother is a pernicious, I will dare to say, evil, N. I finally got away from her and married a man like a N but not as bad, but terribly selfish. He actually has developed a conscience, its impressive. He left after 22 years.
After 11 years single Im with a huge N who fools everyone. Divorce is not an option Id pursue. My advantage now, is that I know its not me, I know its him, no matter whom he fools. Ive had this emotional success because Ive had a very effective type of therapy called resonance repatterning that has literally saved my life. I cant recommend it enough. Along with that, prayer, bible reading and self examination have been terribly important and healing. The bible shows how much God loves and cares about the oppressed. I found many excellent articles on JW.org. I also recommend the books “the dance of anger” “recovery from rescuing” and “men who hate women and the women who love them”. They are excellent, I got them from the library. These bear reading over and over again to sound down the important truths found, therein.
My ex did so many of those things it’s amazing. I still don’t understand how these characteristics and these practices like gasoline are the common thread with these personalities. Did they read a manual and automatic?
I’m curious if any of you have heard of a secret society called NeoThink. My ex, who is extremely frugal and believe everyone is a scammer, has invested hundreds of dollars and hours and hours of time to move through this program. He is not want to learn new things or study stuff but this he’s invested so much does anyone know anything about it and I know it’s based on coded documents and mind control and being able to see the future with the ultimate goal being becoming very rich and ruling people through mind control. He of course denies any of this, and says it was just a book he picked up and had barely glanced at. Yet he had a complete program with huge books and work books & decoded documents. I think it’s a huge mass marketing but I also believe narcissus of the ones who were “carefully selected” since it totally addresses their characteristics and they believe they are smarter and better than everyone else. What do you guys think? Has anyone heard of it? Is it dangerous? Thanks
Diana Smith..mind control and emotional manipulation is readily available it seems everywhere you turn. There are youtube videos about how to ensnare your next date..etc basically how to snare a soul and use it for your purposes. Which is what narcsists and sociopaths do.. there is a Lil book I read on amazon.com called 30 Covert Emotional Manipulator Tactics by AB Admin. This book is an easy read and explains their tactics. Once you learn their tactics you can recover yourself and spot them fairly easily. Healing from this type of a relationship is a process and not an event. Go easy on yourself.
It takes so long to recover from these relationships. Mine was grooming me slowly over a year, I had no idea he had a partner. I began to question his history but was shut down or he denied the facts. I found him talking to women online & he claimed to be naive. As a favour he deleted his account. Eventually he became a nasty controlling man who tagged so I slipped away.
He was dating a new lady a week or two later so I believed I was finally safe. He got back in touch, all edged love etc.
He was behaving as if I was his partner, albeit a secret one. I protested and he grew angry despite his situation being an obvious source of irritation when I mentioned it.
As I was being sucked into his strange deception I checked a dating site, guess what he was very active so we are all in a group of conquests. Each at a stage of being in a relationship with him. Yet he can’t talk about the cheating or dating site addiction.
He is extremely unsavoury and dangerous, he’s intelligent, comes across as humble kind & with integrity. I’m sad that so many women are getting hurt he courts being found out too.
I think they are motivated by the deceptions and the conquest.
They won’t be easy to spot as a dive states, they play a long game with multiple victims.
To the t I met her 8 years ago we worked at same company she is 9years older but I was 100% blinded by her charm we both wanted are own business we tried what she did before cleaning company after 1 day that would not work for me as we were in the lift business I came up with a plan and was very successful I was running all over the state building the company she was at home office working. we married 4 years in i know now the wedding was just a cover she was stealing as much money as possible making fake reports and I worked day and night when I finally brought an account in she was against we discoverd a lot of embezzling an much more she has taken every thing, left almost homeless if not for my family as we go through the divorce she has taken my name off company closed and changed business accounts ran the company into the ground and now trying to take house and give back company that she has destroyed and put into debt I thought I was alone with these kinds of people felt very stupid for letting this happen i feel now after reading about narcissistic that I am not crazy