It was the question that I could not answer:  Did he ever love me or not? I would lie awake at night and wonder how he could have looked at me the way he had if he did not love me.  When love is a lie, can people fake enlarged pupils and do they look at you with their lips slightly parted, as if they are dying of thirst and you are a pool of endless water?  Do you look into their eyes and see yourself reflected back like rays of gold illuminating a forgotten darkness?  Do you catch them...

Why didn’t I leave the narcissist sooner?  It’s the question people always ask.  It’s the question I used to ask myself. It was only after enough time had passed without sustained contact with him that I began to truly understand how poisoned I had really become.  My mind began to clear slowly and I understand more each day how all this came to be. First, there’s the setup.  Relationships with narcissists escalate very quickly, unnaturally even, through a process called love-bombing.  Two months after we met, he was asking me to marry him.  He hadn’t even seen the inside of my...

Three years ago, I was so much in love, I couldn’t even hold a real conversation with anyone. I could look at you, and it would appear as if we were holding a conversation.  I was probably nodding in the right places, but I likely wouldn’t have added much.  I wasn’t doing it on purpose.  If I knew you well enough, I’d probably let you in on my secret that I had absolutely no interest in pontificating on any deep subjects.  I couldn’t explain why though because I didn’t understand exactly what was happening at the time.  Understanding itself would...