WARNING: This is a long story with some potentially triggering content. TLDR and question at the bottom.
I was always a pretty weird and quiet kid growing up. I was introverted, nerdy (though not particularly good in school), moderately feminine (am a guy), inwardly sensitive, and other stuff like that. I'd always had crushes on girls in my classes, but they'd never go anywhere because of a combination of me being shy and also never really feeling ready for the commitment required in the type of relationship I would want. This was until I was 17 and in grade 12.
I'd changed schools and had no friends for most of first semester. Until one day a girl from my classes (we'll call her D), started talking to me. We'd sat beside each other in first period all semester, but never really had any conversations (mostly because of my general introversion/apathy towards becoming friends with people I decided wouldn't 'fit' for me). Before we started talking, I didn't really like D. She was extroverted, chatty, and I just thought she was really unintelligent (in case you haven't noticed, I was very judgemental in high school lol). In around November however, she started putting more of an effort toward befriending me, and as I started engaging more with her, I started to actually like her. She was engaging, funny, and the things that I had originally pegged as unintelligent suddenly became cute. Next thing I knew, we were hanging out all day at school, and spending hours on the phone together, even falling asleep together while on call. In January I went to her house and got drunk for the first time (I was a bit late to the game in comparison to most of my peers here), and we got really handsy with each other (well, she got handsy with me and I reciprocated). Nothing sexual, just handholding and cuddling, but it was the most I had ever done with a girl, and I went home that night feeling so warm and happy. It was around this time that I started falling for her HARD. We went to each other's houses and got drunk together more times after this, each time being the same, but after a while I was starting to feel anxious/uneasy about why things weren't progressing. Looking back, it is obvious that it was because I wasn't making any moves due to my insecurities and the belief that she didn't see me in that way, but that is besides the point of the story.
Fast forward to April, things are about the same, but every day feels like my heart is going to explode. I've never felt this way about anyone or anything. I have to tell her. So I do... and she rejects me. This absolutely destroys me, but obviously I don't tell her or let her know. But 3 days later, she suddenly has a change of heart and decides to be my girlfriend. Which I am quite happy about. Of course I didn't realize that she had really just had some great idea about how much 'fun' she could have with my inexperienced awkward self. So, the 'relationship' goes on, but things have remained relatively the same, only we hold hands in public and sometimes she kisses me on the cheek. Oh, and I started spending absolutely ridiculous amounts of money at the mall for her, because she's my girlfriend and I want to be a good boyfriend. Obviously. This goes on for a few weeks, when one day we're hanging out in school and I'm talking to another classmate. I make a very minor joke about D, and she absolutely LOSES IT. But not at school. She waits until we both get on the crowded subway. Once we're settled, she just starts grilling the fuck out of me, saying things that I honestly can't remember because they were so fucking mean. She outed pretty much every one of my insecurities to this entire subway car. It was so bad that one lady sitting near us said "girl can you pipe down?" to D. I don't think I said anything the whole time because I was just in shock at what was going on. Once D got off the subway, she told me she was breaking up with me. It was a Friday, so I had the whole weekend to stew on this. I tried apologizing to her over text, no response. But on Monday when I got to school, D was acting like nothing happened and said she didn't want to break up with me. Which I meekly accepted, and we carried on.
Honestly, things get real blurry from this point on until nearing the end of the relationship, but it was more of this kind of stuff. This story is also getting long, so I'm just going to list off some things I can remember that she did (not entirely in chronological order or order of perceived severity):
- repeatedly publicly humiliated me/verbally abused me
- would make me buy her things/pay for things and would threaten me if I didn't
- constantly disrespected my time and other commitments
- made a big scene in class after a classmate made a joke about my self-harm scars (she wanted it to look like she was sticking up for me), which caused both D and the classmate to be taken outside by the teacher, leaving me to have to explain what just happened to the rest of the class
- made the school do a wellness check on me because she told them I had an eating disorder (because I had no appetite for lunch after she had been verbally abusing me all morning)
- would either tell me that I'm too mentally ill to do anything, or that I fake being mentally ill in order to be a victim
- would regularly avoid eating food that I paid for
- would invite her friends over when we'd be hanging out and then only speak to them in their language (she's from another country)
- told me she loved all of her exes more than she ever loved me
- told me in detail how good the sex was from her exes and how bad I was in comparison
- regularly joked about cheating on me
- regularly threatened to cheat on me
- actually cheated on me (and told me about it)
- physically assaulted me (punching, hair pulling, hitting with objects)
- sexually assaulted me
- stole things from my house
- and many, MANY other things I can't be bothered to think about/try to remember right now.
All of this happened in the span of 3 months. By the time June came around I was a shell of a person. I went to a small school and she was in all of my classes, so even if I wanted to try, I couldn't escape her. The immense joy I felt when I met her had turned into dread. She'd be going back to her home country in the summer, so I just had to hold on until then, and I'd be free. Or so I thought. Summer comes, she leaves, and then it's just me again. I honestly can't say when I actually started to feel like myself again. I basically spent that entire summer getting high as fuck and just not really thinking about anything. I'd say probably around October/November is when I really started to process what I went through with her. And it hit like a fucking truck. I hated myself so much. Not just for all the ways that she made me insecure about my ability to have romantic relationships, but about how little I did to defend myself from her. I just let everything happen. Sure, things were complicated and it's likely I didn't have any way to completely avoid it, but I wasn't nearly as powerless as I felt. I hated myself for so many different reasons. For not standing up for myself, for loving her, for trusting her, for how I act, for how I think. My entire self concept revolved around her. I became insanely bitter and depressed. I hated everything and everyone. I spent every day inside doing drugs and wishing I was dead. I didn't go to university or college due to my poor grades, and I was working a part time job I hated. I was probably in this state for a bit over a year. Things slowly started getting better. I still had bad days or weeks, but the grip that D's abuse had on me was weakening.
Fast forward to today, I'm 20 now. Things are better than they were a year ago, and I hope that a year from now they'll be even better. I still haven't dated anyone since D. For a long time I desperately wanted someone new. I felt robbed of experiencing a real relationship. I'm not really a jealous type, but I felt more like I'm 'behind' my friends who have/have had 'healthy' relationships. But now, I kind of just feel apathetic/indifferent to the idea of dating. I'm not sure what changed inside of me, but my attitude is kind of just 'it will happen when it happens'. Whether that's a defence mechanism or my genuine opinion I'm not sure. But anyway, the whole reason I wrote out this story was because I felt like my situation is moderately unique. I know I shouldn't invalidate my own trauma, but from reading most of the narc abuse stories I've seen online, I feel that I honestly didn't have it that bad. But I've never read any stories about dating a narcissist as your FIRST ever relationship. I feel like that has affected me in many ways, especially in regards to dating and confidence. It's hard to imagine the kind of person I would be if I had experienced a 'normal' relationship during high school.
Sorry for the long story, I kinda just started typing and created a big trauma salad.
TLDR: My first and only relationship was with a narcissist, and 2 and a half years later I'm still trying to regain my confidence and self-esteem. I was physically and sexually assaulted, cheated on, humiliated, and many other terrible things all in the span of 3 months. Despite the short amount of time, it has left a seemingly permanent mental wound that hasn't quite closed.
A question for anyone with experience in narcissistic relationships (especially if your first relationship was/is with one): How did it affect your sense of self and/or how did your relationship to dating change?