My First Love Was A Sociopathic Narcissist

If you asked me two months ago, I would have said I was the furthest thing from happy. I was the most miserable I have ever been in my entire 19 year old life. Broken-hearted, self-loathing, empty.

I mean, picture trying to have a relationship with someone who manipulates you with every carefully executed sentence, action, and emotion. Someone who made you constantly doubt whether or not he actually cared about you. Someone who only talked about himself, and never inquired about you. Someone who guilt tripped you to get what he wanted. Someone who used you as a pawn in his twisted chess game. Someone who purposefully made you so insecure that you began to hate yourself. Someone who wanted it to be that way. Someone who convinced you it was okay for a relationship to be that way.

He was good at it. He warped my entire perception of what love was. I put up with all of this with no problem. Extreme emotional pain, yes, but I thought that all of the good times made up for the bad times. I fell in love. I’ve never been so caught up in another person before.

Eventually survival mode kicked in, and I snapped out of the manipulation. I reluctantly ended the whole charade, mostly because the timing was bad and I was leaving town. Truthfully, I worry that if I didn’t go to college so far away that I would still be involved with him.

The wreckage from the relationship was unparalleled. I didn’t think there would be a day that I didn’t think about missing him. Whatever he was trying to do to me worked, because I did not believe I could live without him in my life.

Just recently I felt completely and entirely happy for the first time in a year. It took over six months to reach this point, and I honestly never thought it would come. But now looking back on this boy and our relationship together, I smile. Pain is an emotion that I don’t feel in regard to him anymore. Instead, I’m thankful. He was crazy manipulative and made me an entirely different person when I dated him. But he also made me an entirely different person after I dated him.

I used to lament the fact that I had changed so much. I wanted the old me to come back. But now, I want nothing to do with that girl. I came to know myself better than I ever have. I learned what to worry and not worry about. I know how I should treat myself, how others should treat me, and most importantly how love actually works. I now love everything about me that he tried to make me hate.

So I’m saying thank you, sociopathic narcissist boyfriend. Thank you for putting me through this game of yours, because without it I wouldn’t be as happy as I am right now.