Edit: It’s 2023, and I’m circling back to this article with a deeper, more profound knowledge of what I experienced. Nathan was the first abusive relationship that I experienced, and right after him I began a situationship with another man who embodied many of the same traits as Nathan, but was unfortunately even more outwardly abusive. So I have a deeper insight into why people behave in the ways that my abusers did, and why they continue the cycle of violence against others.
My brief relationship with Nathan traumatized me to the point that I’m still undergoing therapy and treatment. I’ve found it very hard to date and to fully open up to partners and trust them fully, and to this day struggle with hyper-vigilance to avoid upsetting partners and in my mind, thus averting potential abuse (even in partners who have proven themselves to not be abusive); I’ve developed the habit of internalizing all of the problems of a relationship as if I was the one who created them, because that’s what Nathan told me that I did for the months that we dated, he would never take accountability for how he treated me nor for the results of that mistreatment and how they would deteriorate our relationship even further. I have nightmares of betrayal being perpetrated by those closest to me, my new partner, my friends, my family; these nightmares often involve themes of being lied to, gaslit and manipulated, of having my experiences invalidated to my face where I wake up still screaming for anyone to believe me. I’ve struggled with trusting myself and my judgement in people because I was blindsided and manipulated not only by Nathan, but the man after him.
With wiser eyes I now see that Nathan preemptively conditioned me to not believe anything that any past lover or partner of his could potentially come to me with; he primed me to not believe them by painting them as abusive, manipulative liars, people with unjustified vendettas against him who wanted to see him fail; being on the other side of this, he now portrays me as that same type of ex who “did him so wrong”. He does this to perpetuate the cycle of believability and attempt to instill a sense of “honesty” to paint his character as golden and his enemies as sullied and begrudged; this enables him to continue the cycle of abuse and avert suspicion and blame by deflecting it from himself onto others. This is something that people with narcissistic traits do to attempt to come out on top of “drama” and emerge as the perpetual victim in their inner narrative, spilling it out into the world around them. People with narcissistic traits are unable to take real accountability for their actions and are unable to create meaningful change to avoid repeating them and inflicting further harm on others; in their minds, they are the underdog who has always been trampled upon, and they do anything and everything to further justify this narrative and it results in them never owning up to their abusive behaviors.
At the end of the relationship he had already painted himself as a diligent and caring boyfriend, and was ready to point the “she’s psychotic” guns at me the moment we were through, and he did, and subsequently very few people believed me and believed my experiences, even going so far as to say I was lying and actively trying to slander his name when all I wanted was for my pain and suffering to be acknowledged.
It’s been years since this relationship and I still struggle with feelings of powerlessness and poor self image because for a long time, I believed what he had conditioned me to believe; that I was the problem, I was untrusting, that I shouldn’t listen to my lying intuition when all it ever did was lead me to uncover betrayals made by him behind my back, such as breaking boundaries in our relationship by messaging girls behind my back and liking their sexualized content when he knew that I wouldn’t accept that kind of disrespectful behavior, or actively engaging in cheating with “coworkers” during the brief time he actually held employment (which he denies, but I know he was physically cheating on me, the truth is written in front of my face). He broke my trust time and time again when he would get caught violating our relationship boundaries that he had previously agreed to, he broke my trust every time he would go into a “depressive episode” when it was actually narcissistic collapse or a strange sense of guilt he was harboring over the actions he was actively hiding from me, attempting to run from our relationship because he would say “I was too good for him”, another phrase that is a confession of guilt used by people with narcissistic traits. He manipulated me by repeatedly lying about how much work he had accomplished on himself to become the person he was then; all that had occurred was he convinced himself he wasn’t as bad as his past, he hadn’t actively changed any of his secretive and disrespectful behaviors that he perpetrated against myself and past partners of his. When someones actions repeatedly misalign with their words, they are manipulating you into trusting their words over their actions, over their history and patterns; he persuaded me to believe he was a changed man by painting his past self as troubled and admittedly abusive, all he was doing was confessing to me how he still was behind closed doors, admitting the kid of person he was when he was when no one was looking. I would bring something up that hurt me to try and resolve it, I was always the problem, I was “always finding something wrong with him”, he would frequently say “can’t we just have a good day for once” which is a phrase that I’ve come to understand is used by a lot of narcissistic people; it speaks of their perpetual self-victimization and remarkable inability to take accountability.
I’m still trying to rewrite my brain to trust others and myself, to trust my judgement and pattern recognition in peoples behaviors, and to trust my intuition again after I had been repeatedly told I “was looking for problems”. I developed a habit of fact checking stories because of the lying I uncovered by him, of attaching onto very specific things about him and his past as a way to understand the origins of his behaviors and why in turn he mistreated me in the ways that he did. I’ve acknowledged my role in this relationship and its downfall, and how months of mental abuse molded me into a different person who acted out of alignment with my own deeply held morals and ethics, I’ve acknowledged the reactive abuse I enacted as well. I don’t like the person that I became as a result of this relationship and all it’s nuances, I don’t like the hesitant and distrustful person I became nor do I like the fact that I had to snoop to find out the truths that he actively hid from me. I don’t like that I’m still here, years later, praying for any semblance of justice. I have the fortunate position of being able to heal and grow despite this trauma, however many years or decades it may take, he has the curse of living out the rest of his life as him… someone who lies and manipulates those closest to him to keep them around for him to continue using.
Besides the healing and grace I’ve granted myself, I’ve come to terms understanding that I may forever be changed by these negative dating experiences, but I still have every opportunity to model myself into a securely attached person who is capable of accountability and growth.
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My Relationship with a suspected covert narcissist:
I’m writing this to name the abuser that I suffered narcissistic emotional and psychological abuse from for 8 months: Nathan Benjamin Goodhew of the UK. He was a small time video game streamer that goes by Rekin Ralph or his pseudonym Ralph. He is now apparently in the restaurant and dining profession in England. Tl;dr at the bottom.
Nathan and I met on twitter late August of 2020. I saw him comment something on a video game related tweet and thought he was funny and his picture was cute so I promptly followed him. Then came the follow back and commenting on each other’s tweets, then I made the first move and DM’d him innocuously asking about his opinions on some new video game changes. That message felt fated, I recall the fluttering in my guts, the giddiness, the euphoria and conversely the bleak poetry I wrote in response to meeting him; all of those are now known to me as red flags that my intuition was trying to clue me in on through bodily cues. When I woke up to a response the next day I was flabbergasted and conversation moved incredibly rapidly from that day on. I felt the sensation of us instantly “clicking” and understanding each other as we had so many shared interests and values; in hindsight I now know that he sneakily waited for me to show every hand, constantly gathering new information to reel me in with through mirroring. We talked for days with barely any delay between responses save for when we were sleeping. He was so excited to talk to me and he absolutely showered me with verbal love and affection; “he had never met anyone like me”, “he had never felt this soul level connection with someone”, “I was so different than anyone he ever met”. He gave up the opportunity to gain an actual career through trade learning after just a few days of knowing me because he was so committed to seeing where things went between us. I thought I hit the jackpot with how perfect I believed this man to be. Within days we had our first phone call and he officially asked me to be his girlfriend; I said yes and was so elated to have finally found someone that was frankly too good to be true. Conversation took on a sexual nature incredibly fast stemming from me sending an “unsolicited video game clip” and he twisted that into an opportunity to change the conversation to something sexual; I’m now aware that this is something narcissists also do with their new supplies. Bonding through sexuality is an easy door for manipulation.
There were numerous red flags that I willfully ignored at the beginning of the relationship. All of his exes were toxic or crazy (he was the common denominator), he portrayed himself as a victim in every story of something bad that happened in his life when in reality is was all just repurcussions of his own actions, he told me about the turbulent nature of his serious relationships where he would get caught doing shady or abusive behaviors and would literally punch walls or self-harm or block his partners from leaving or chase them with weapons, he said he used to lie and cheat (and still did, narcissists often tell on themselves through creating a “past self” narrative), he had a criminal history regarding domestic violence, he was unable to hold down jobs, he had no career aspirations but had delusions of grandeur involving fame and money, he constantly was attention seeking, his social media history was sketchy with him constantly creating new profiles and accounts (likely after each discard), he followed tons of e-thots and saw no issue with it despite being in a “committed” relationship, he had no qualms about hiding suspicious social media interactions from me and would only sometimes confess to them when he felt he could create a narrative that would benefit him, namely a false narrative he thought would inspire me to trust him more. The first few months of the relationship were okay, if I had to narrow it down I’d say it was the first two, then the mask started to slip and his true colors started to show. The gaslighting began, the secrecy and hiding began, the “depressive episodes” of untreated bipolar disorder began (I now doubt this diagnosis and think these episodes were actually intended to push me away and manipulate me into doing and giving more energy for him to feed off of and create more instability within me that he could weaponize against me), and the discarding also started. It was a constant game of pushing and pulling against each other, with him distancing himself each time I tried to grow closer to him, to do normal healthy adult relationship things like build emotional intimacy. Yet despite this, I was already trauma bonded to him, used to chasing the highs and lows of the relationship, addicted to the sensation of winning him back and getting a glimpse of the person I fell in love with rather than the monster he was slowly morphing into. Within a week of dating he told me he loved me, within the first month he told me I was his soulmate and he “had never told anyone that in his life”, and I believed it despite it being too soon to even be genuine, I believed it because he presented himself as everything I wanted and more in one person, but only after would I find out he was none of those things.
One of the worst events during our relationship occurred around Christmas when he was working a seasonal job under the premise of saving up money to be able to move to Michigan and the states to be together; I think it’s important to note that he never actually saved any money and always spent it on himself to curate this idealized image of himself because as I said, he was always attention seeking, whatever attention I gave him was not enough, this is just one of hundreds of examples of him falling back on his word and promises. He talked about this temp worker there who was apparently pretty and all his coworkers were hitting on, and I found him even bringing it up suspicious, so I pressed him asking if she knew he had a girlfriend, if they added each other on social media or if they exchanged numbers. He told me no, but my intuition was still set off. I investigated through social media and found that he was using an old Instagram account to follow this coworker and like her sexy pics; he also apparently messaged her. I reached out to her and got her side of the story and confronted him about this behavior, the lying to my face, and the infidelity. He tried to gaslight me into thinking I was in the wrong for even finding out about it, he tried to portray me as crazy and self sabotaging by looking for things wrong in the relationship. He later gave me the silent treatment, stonewalling me all day leaving me an anxious mess unable to eat, drink or take care of myself. He eventually reached out to me apologizing for his behavior and mistake and I took him back, accepting his apology and accepting the disrespect he had shown me. From my research this is a triangulation technique used by narcissists to gain supply, but also to create instability which is easy to capitalize off of as it creates emotional responses that make the narcissist feel powerful. This set a precedent unintentionally that no matter how badly he treated me I would still be there, and he definitely used that to his advantage. Around this time he was growing incredibly distant and blamed it on “having issues with the relationship and the viability of it long term” and despite promising to spend Christmas together, we didn’t and he barely even responded to my messages but was able to be active on social media just fine. I suspect around this time there were more third party situations I wasn’t aware of but he was involved in. This pattern of silent treatment and stonewalling happened at least once a week, and occurred every major fight we had, lasting for hours up to days; the whole time I would be absolutely ill from the anxiety it would activate, unable to eat or sleep. Over time this has made my body produce high levels of cortisol that have actually been shown to swell parts of your brain and cause damage.
During the 8 months we dated there were numerous instances of him saying or doing something on social media to intentionally make me feel insecure, but when I would want to have a productive conversation about it, he would say things like “I thought we were gonna have a good day, you wake up in this bad mood and the good day is ruined”. He blamed my emotional response to his disrespect on my mental health, which was frankly deteriorating rapidly, and tried to manipulate me into believing I was wrong for even taking issue with these things rather than him taking any sort of accountability for his actions and disrespect. This is one of the more insidious forms of gaslighting he used on me that actually ended up making me doubt myself and my motives and made me afraid I was turning into a paranoid and over-sensitive mess, when in reality I was just being conditioned to be that insecure and vulnerable so he could manipulate me and feel powerful. He would frequently gaslight me by saying things like “If I only cared about sex don’t you think I could find something here” or “I could realistically be messing around behind your back and you would never know- but I’m not”. He would plant seeds of doubt inside my mind about my own thoughts and behaviors and it’s left me with a deep emotional wound that requires me to reconnect more deeply to myself. All throughout our relationship he had grandiose and unrealistic goals of becoming famous whether it be through music, through video game streaming, or street clothing, he ultimately didn’t seriously pursue those things and seemed to just think that he deserved money and fame on merit alone because of who he was, and I now recognize that as extremely delusional and a hallmark characteristic of narcissism. My friends at the time were there for me during every discard, every fight, and it got to the point that my friends tried to stage an intervention for me to end the relationship because they saw how much I’d changed, how bad my mental health was, how lackluster I was, and how isolated I was. I unintentionally cut myself off from friends and family as I had absolutely no energy or drive for any relationship outside of the one with Nathan; he also made it clear that he didn’t want me discussing the intricacies of our relationship with others likely because he didn’t want anyone else to know how bad things were or how badly I was being treated. My business and creativity began to suffer because of how depressed and anxious I constantly was. I lost all passion for life except for him and was addicted to the illusion of love he cast when he lovebombed me in the beginning, and I stayed despite him only giving me breadcrumbs of what he used to. Whenever I would ask him about his change in behavior or if he could put more effort in the lovebombing would commence for up to a week, but he would slowly slip back into the breadcrumbing and bare minimum effort, because in his mind he already had me and had no need or intention to put in more work because he was so secure in me not leaving because he knew full well how bonded I was to him.
The toxic cycles of hot and cold continued as the months wore on. With one serious fight per month where we would almost break up, it was “usual” for us, and despite me telling him how these fights would affect my mental health he continued to put me through the ringer because he didn’t actually have empathy for me or care about what I was going through as a result of his actions. I was quickly losing my sanity and my health was deteriorating to the point that I couldn’t sleep through the night anymore, I barely had an appetite, and I had no energy to do much else besides shower and play video games with him. Over this relationship I became very co-dependent and had issues with needing constant validation and reassurance because I never felt secure in where the relationship or I stood in his life, and I now know this was intentional; previously I was a fiercely indepedent woman who knew her worth and would have never tolerated that behavior, but I was so seduced by the illusion of him being my soulmate that I traded my identity for the illusion. Never in any previous relationship had I needed reassurance like that, nor did I ever experience the uncertainty that I did in that relationship. I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells and unable to actually advocate for myself and my needs because there was always this undermining energy that implied I was asking too much of him. When we would have fights he would usually resort to extreme gaslighting to make me think I was always the problem, or he would actually call me “crazy” or “psychotic” or “weird”. He blamed a lot of his emotional immaturity on being self-diagnosed as autistic and blamed his flighty nature on his trauma, but in reality it was simply because everything was a facade and an illusion, one he knew he couldn’t keep up forever. These were key signs of the devaluation stage occurring.
The first actual discard occurred early March when he broke up with me for asking about his decreasing sex drive and if he had issues with it in the past, especially in very sexually active relationships he had, I asked about a specific partner of his that he always painted the image of him not truly being over due to the way he talked about her. This set him off and he blamed me for “bringing up the past constantly” when in reality I was just trying to establish if it was a pattern or if there were more sinister issues going on in the relationship.
Every time I thought we could have a mature adult conversation about something it was always flipped onto me being a problem or creating problems. In this instance he ignored me for a day and then wanted to video call the next morning to break up with me. I begged him to take more time to think about it and we were supposed to have another video call but I went nuclear and broke up with him on my own terms. I later begged him through various twitter accounts to talk to me because he had blocked and ghosted me leaving me with no closure whatsoever. Eventually he did reach out to me and hoovered me back in, and I also participated in the hoovering because I was desperate to be with him and get my fix. The week we were broken up I was suicidal, barely eating or sleeping or even drinking water, it was so bad that I barely even had the energy to walk around the house. He knew the whole time what he was putting me through and still didn’t have a shred of empathy for me and what he was doing despite his “I’m sorry I made you feel that way” non-apologies. I suspect he wanted me back for financial support as I had sent him $200–300 the length of our relationship, and that whatever new supply he thought he had found had fell through. During the time we were broken up I slept with one of my housemates and he continuously held that over my head when we got back together and eventually used it as part of his reasoning for the next discard. Things always seemed fine on social media as we both curated this perfect vision of what our relationship was and nobody outside of my few confidants would have ever known what was happening, I’m ashamed that I participated in that facade in hindsight. We were together for about a month until the next discard and it’s final. He cited “falling out of love with me” and me having slept with my housemate as reasons for breaking up with me but I strongly suspect again that he had been actively sourcing a new supply and decided to go after her as I was becoming too hard to manipulate to suit his needs, he didn’t like me questioning his motives or actions. After the first break-up we both set boundaries regarding behaviors we would and would not tolerate and agreed to them, both of us, one of mine was that I was uncomfortable with him following e-thots so he made a big show of unfollowing them, namely tiktok thots, but I later found out he had been active on the “Tiktok Thots” subreddit and when I confronted him wanting to have a convesation and solve the issue, he ran, he dumped me via text, blocked me on everything and completely ghosted me rather than take accountability for his mistakes; he later than cited non-coherent various reasons for breaking up but ultimately I don’t think any of them were the full truth. With this discard I enacted reactive abuse against him as I was so fed up and wounded and toxified from being with him that I tried to hack into his social media accounts and resulted to name calling and insults as a way to enact the hurt he had bestowed upon me back onto him. This abusive relationship turned me into someone I didn’t even recognize at the end and I’m deeply ashamed I endured it for so long. I also tried ferverently to establish contact with him by tweeting at him from alternate accounts, calling him from an international number app, anything to try and gain the closure that he refused to grant me, which is something narcissists always do. Eventually during one of these interactions I was able to get him on the phone and tell him how I didn’t deserve anything he put he through and told him how much he ruined me and my life and told him I started casually seeing someone new and he took offense to that and got on Hinge the same or next day, because his narcissistic ego was so wounded he couldn’t stand the thought of me having anyone else in my life so he wanted to hurt me and move on prematurely to wound me back. Only after he found a new supply did we actually have a semblance of closure with a video call after I reached out to him again and he made the mistake of telling me she was an abuse survivor too. So I made the bold decision to reach out to her and warned her about him, and thankfully she reacted with grace and told me she had already been seeing the red flags and her friends didn’t like him and eventually she dumped him too. So I can rest easily with a clean conscience having spared someone the same abuse I endured.
The smear campaign against me that’s frequently enacted by narcissists after a breakup/discard has been trying to paint the narrative that I’m “crazy” or “bitter” and unfortunately he’s been using the reactive abuse I enacted against him to his advantage to further perpetuate that narrative. I do recognize that my actions were unacceptable and I take full responsibility for that. I also want to note that in no other relationship of mine have I ever behaved that way, so take that as you will. I know he’ll perpetuate this narrative that I’m psycho or was too controlling or depressive in the relationship, but I hope others can see through the blatant projection that’s occuring. I did try begging for him back because the trauma bonds created a very deep addiction to the highs and lows of the relationship, and I had been so thoroughly destroyed in the relationship that I thought he was all I had at the end. I’m happy to say that I’m now clean of him, and that addiction has been broken. I’m seeing a therapist and am actively working to recover from this abuse.
Tl;dr: Here are the signs to look out for: lovebombing you and smothering you with inappropriately timed compliments that seem too fast or sudden to be genuine (they aren’t), all of their past relationships and exes were “toxic”, hot and cold, insecurity and instability, jealousy, devaluing, isolation and triangulation, gaslighting, grandiose thoughts and comments regarding themselves and their future, mirroring your interests, personality and speech patterns to create a false sense of intimacy, future faking where they create a false illusion of a future together often involving all the things your heart desires that they have sussed out from conversing with you, and lastly, discards which involve no closure and leave you wondering what the hell even happened to make it go so wrong so fast. The narcissist ultimately does not care about you and is only using you as a means to an end; they do not have empathy or emotions the way that normal people do. They leave a trail of destruction in their wake that they try their best to distance themselves from so it’s not unheard of for narcissists to move around frequently so their reputation doesn’t catch up with them. If you listen closely enough a narcissist will also frequently tell on themselves and their true nature and it’s up to you to actually listen to it, because it’s the truth blatantly sitting right in your face.
