Page 39 of Off-Limits Love
“So he’s manipulative and willing to use his child to get his way. Has he always been that way?”
Mak plucked at the pillow she held as a shield and nodded again. “No, Brad was charming at first. He made me laugh, left sweet notes and gifts, flowers. He couldn’t know enough about me. We’d talk for hours and hours about our future and dreams. Then we got married, and…after a while, it was like I’d married a different man entirely. He’d lie and then deny lying. Sometimes about stupid things that he didn’t need to lie about at all. Or he’d do things he knew would upset me, and then blow up at me for questioning him. It felt like Jekyll-and-Hyde-type stuff. Then he’d go back to being Mr. Charming again and act like he did when we were dating.”
Emi was in her appointment with Dr. Rachel while Mak had hers with Zoey. It was a relief to know Emi was cared for and allowed Mak to relax a bit and open up since she didn’t have to worry.
“I can’t diagnose someone who isn’t in my office,” Zoey said, “but I think it’s safe to say your ex is a textbook narcissist. You’ve described love bombing, gaslighting, future faking, devaluation followed by reward, and ultimately discard. But that man at the end? Rest assured that was him all along.”
Mak nodded, knowing in her heart that Zoey was right. “I made so many excuses for him. To myself and other people.”
“Unfortunately narcissists train their victims to do just that. And when you see the truth and you can’t unsee it or go back to accepting breadcrumbs and making excuses for them, that’s when the discard happens. You’re no longer useful to them. And by then they’ve usually already lined up their next supply.”
“Oh, he had,” Mak mused softly. “I think she was barely twenty-one. And there at the end, he didn’t even try to gaslight me anymore. He did things—awful things—and laughed when I got upset. Brad could always be a jerk, but he’d never turned the worst of his behavior on me until then. He had these tells, though…”
“What kind of tells?” Zoey tilted her head.
“He’d make this sound when he talked to people. People he pretended to like but thought beneath him.Mmm-mmm-mm,” she said, imitating him. “At first, I thought it was him showing sympathy, but then once we were away from the person, he’d rip into them and make fun of them for how stupid he thought they were. Family or friends, it didn’t matter. I started seeing the pattern, and sure enough, every time he made that sound, I’d get an earful later of why he was better than them. And if they were better off financially? He talked about how he should have whatever they had because he deserved it more than they did.”
“Entitlement is probably the number one narcissistic trait. Narcissists believe they are above everything, including the laws. They think the rules don’t apply to them.”
Mak pressed her palms to her eyes and rubbed, careful to try to avoid smearing the light eyeshadow and mascara all over her face but needing to release the tension making her face feel pinched. “I think the thing I struggle with the most is the anger I feel for not seeing it earlier, for getting fooled by it in the first place, and for putting up with it for so long. For not getting out sooner.”
“Mak, the upset and anger are very real and it’s something you have to address, but you need to be kind to yourself. You didn’t know he was a narcissist, so when he began to show himself, you tried to survive a marriage that was riddled with minefields. And trust me, narcissists are master manipulators.”
Makayla couldn’t look into Zoey’s kind gaze right now. She felt…bombarded by all the things. The anger and rage, the embarrassment and pain, the hurt and betrayal.
They were a shotgun blast of needle pricks that left her bleeding and hurting from the many cuts. “He would tear me down so badly. Mock and belittle me. Make me feel so small and pathetic and…unworthy.”
“He did that to feel better about himself. It had nothing to do with you.”
“I’m starting to see that now but then? Nothing I did was ever right or good enough, and I tried so hard to please him. I felt like such a failure because of the things he said to me,aboutme to friends and his family. He criticized everything. The house, my body, my clothes. The way I walked, talked, laughed. Myshoes. Nothing was ever right. But I stayed.” She made a derisive sound. “Whydid I stay?”
“From what you’ve told me, you were trapped. Can you not see that? He didn’t want you to work, correct?”
Mak nodded. “He said it would make him look bad, like he couldn’t take care of us and support us.”
“Makayla, that was his way of isolating you and keeping you financially dependent on him.”
“But I wanted to be home with Emi,” she confessed. “I agreed to it. At the time I thought it was…sweet. That he was being supportive of me being home for our daughter.”
Zoey’s expression didn’t change, and Mak wanted to kick herself for defending Brad once again. Maybe she had wanted to be at home, but even then, she’d felt controlled by him because he’d made it clear that only he got to decide what they’d spend money on. She hadn’t had a say whatsoever. He’d made her feel as though she was being disrespectful and foolish when she argued counter to whatever he wanted. And since she didn’t earn money, he was in charge.
“One of the hardest things to understand about people are their motives. In our goodness, we want to take people at face value. And there are men who do and say the things we love to hear because they genuinely care for us and want to support us and our endeavors. They wouldn’t dream of using our desire to be a stay-at-home mother against us as a way of controlling us.
“Then there are narcissists, who say all the right things, but they do it so that you trust them, confide in them, and then they use everything you’ve told them to control you.”
Mak knew Zoey was right. It was such a twisted, awful concept to wrap her head around, though. To think someone would be so manipulative and deceptive. “Did he ever love me? Did he ever plan to spend his life with me, or was I just someone to fill a void?”
Zoey inhaled and sighed, her gaze soft and kind but brutally truthful. “Do you think he loved you?”
Her heart sank, and she stared down at her chipped nail polish. “He liked to introduce me as his first wife. He thought it was funny.” And he hadn’t cared that it hurt her or that she’d asked him repeatedly to stop. How could she have been so foolish for so long?
“Mak, narcissists train you to put them first. They want their needs met, want all our attention and adoration, and when you see beneath their mask and can no longer give that to them, that’s the beginning of the end.”
Realization settled in, hard and bitter and soul-stabbingly deep, shredding her very core. Her life with Brad had all been a lie. Right from the start. It was crystal clear now. And so very hard to accept because of the love she’d felt for a man who had only used her until he’d used her up.
The looks she hadn’t been able to decipher in the beginning, the expressions that weren’t kind at all but…assessing and measuring. Like he was deciding how far he could push. How much he could say and do and get away with.
How much she’d tolerate.
