Red Flags
Day 2 of 365 - Man Break
I read some journals today about red flags that were found in people's relationships when dating a narc. It is amazing how obvious they are when you really start looking at things and how early on in the relationship they show up. The subject of trusting our intuition came up often.
Susy mentioned the book "The Gift of Fear" which talks about how we are becoming less and less tuned into our intuition and how if we paid attention to it we could prevent dangerous things from happening.
The funniest thing is I have that book on my bookshelf. I have never completely read it. Ironically it was given to me by the man I should have used my intuition to never have gone on a second date with him again. He was a cop of all things and when we first stated dating he bought me the book saying it was the most important thing a woman should have. He talked about how I wouldn't believe the dangerous situations put themselves in. I trusted him because he was a police officer and authoritarian and I was naive and gullible. Supposedly he was divorced and had two kids. On a later date I was in his car and saw a picture of FOUR kids and asked about it. He admitted that he actually had for kids and when I asked him why he lied he said he didn't think I'd date him if I knew he had so many kids. RED FLAG!
As we dated longer things just weren't adding up and also having been burnt in the past I trusted basically no one. So I knew a private detective from work and asked him if he wouldn't mind poking around a bit to see if this guy was legit. Gee if that isn't a red flag I don't know what is. I have so little trust for this guy already I'm send a PI on a mission!
Anyway I finally got the report back and in turns out: a) he was still legally married b) he was on suspension and being looked into because that said wife had accused him of RAPING her! When I confronted him he said it was all because his wife was a bitch and made false accusations....yadda yadda yadda. What makes me cringe is that HE actually broke up with ME because he said he couldn't be with someone who didn't TRUST him!
What!!!!! And this is the guy who gives me the book about how to spot danger!
I can barely relive these stories because I feel soooooo STUPID. How could I fall for all this shit and why didn't I not walkd but RUN away from these men. And it wasn't just one or two it was a long string of them. I feel humiliated and ashamed of myself for the horrible situations I put myself in. It makes the skin stand up on my arms when I think of what I may have escaped.
I used to say I just pick assholes but I know they are more than that now. They are seriously dangerous men!
I know I should be mad at the men but right now I am just mad at myself for not seeing through their deceptions and lies.
I read some journals today about red flags that were found in people's relationships when dating a narc. It is amazing how obvious they are when you really start looking at things and how early on in the relationship they show up. The subject of trusting our intuition came up often.
Susy mentioned the book "The Gift of Fear" which talks about how we are becoming less and less tuned into our intuition and how if we paid attention to it we could prevent dangerous things from happening.
The funniest thing is I have that book on my bookshelf. I have never completely read it. Ironically it was given to me by the man I should have used my intuition to never have gone on a second date with him again. He was a cop of all things and when we first stated dating he bought me the book saying it was the most important thing a woman should have. He talked about how I wouldn't believe the dangerous situations put themselves in. I trusted him because he was a police officer and authoritarian and I was naive and gullible. Supposedly he was divorced and had two kids. On a later date I was in his car and saw a picture of FOUR kids and asked about it. He admitted that he actually had for kids and when I asked him why he lied he said he didn't think I'd date him if I knew he had so many kids. RED FLAG!
As we dated longer things just weren't adding up and also having been burnt in the past I trusted basically no one. So I knew a private detective from work and asked him if he wouldn't mind poking around a bit to see if this guy was legit. Gee if that isn't a red flag I don't know what is. I have so little trust for this guy already I'm send a PI on a mission!
Anyway I finally got the report back and in turns out: a) he was still legally married b) he was on suspension and being looked into because that said wife had accused him of RAPING her! When I confronted him he said it was all because his wife was a bitch and made false accusations....yadda yadda yadda. What makes me cringe is that HE actually broke up with ME because he said he couldn't be with someone who didn't TRUST him!
What!!!!! And this is the guy who gives me the book about how to spot danger!
I can barely relive these stories because I feel soooooo STUPID. How could I fall for all this shit and why didn't I not walkd but RUN away from these men. And it wasn't just one or two it was a long string of them. I feel humiliated and ashamed of myself for the horrible situations I put myself in. It makes the skin stand up on my arms when I think of what I may have escaped.
I used to say I just pick assholes but I know they are more than that now. They are seriously dangerous men!
I know I should be mad at the men but right now I am just mad at myself for not seeing through their deceptions and lies.
Replies
wow! I\'m gonna say something that a million people said to me, \"don\'t date cops!\" I was so determined to prove them wrong. My last ex was a federal cop who took advantage of me when I went to his office to report the previous ex stalking me. What he did was illegal and he\'d probably get fired and maybe arrested if I reported him, but knowing how unstable and dangerous he is, I never did anything about it. After that all I did was date cops. The next one, 6 months later was another NPD cop, same issues, same behaviors. Then went on dates with probably 3 or 4 cops after that, most didn\'t make it past 1 or 2 dates, they were so screwed up and I was finally starting to see it. I am an auxiliary (volunteer) police officer in my city, so I know a LOT of cops, and they are really screwed up, I had to generalize like that but it\'s true. After doing a lot of research I found that men in law enforcement and military are up to 4x more likely to be abusive (aka Narcissistic). Also my dad was very abusive and in the military. Since I have a knack for finding NPD men anyway, I needed to stop looking for men in a field where they are 4x as likely to exist. So I have a rule against dating cops now.
The psychopath I dated before the federal cop, the one that stalked me, did the lying about kids thing to me. He created an entire world of lies. Every single thing he told me about his past, career, relationships, children, etc was completely fabricated. He was 100% pathological liar. I started finding out about other exes, other children he had, etc. He turned out to be a very dangerous psychopathic, convicted felon, and registered sex offender.
Good job on day 2! :)
Thanks AS! Dangerous and unstable is exactly how to describe this guy. It is interesting to note that NPD is found in this profession. And you don\'t have to tell me twice about dating cops! I definitely learned my lesson with this one. It was truly amazing to me how he could be so deceitful and be in law enforcement. He thought he was God\'s gift to woman too. He always told me that I was beautiful and when I said \"really?\" he said \"of course. I wouldn\'t be with you if you weren\'t. I only date people of a certain caliber\". Duh! Red Flag number 107!
Wow I can\'t believe the guys you dated. It\'s like an epidemic. Mine said he was going to sue the police board because they had him under review for false accusations from his wife.
All I can say is we are lucky women to have escaped this. These are seriously dangerous men.
We are lucky. Especially when you see so many cops abusing/killing their gfs/wives/exes. It\'s unreal. Your guy sounds so much like my ex. He thought he was god\'s gift to women (Narcissistic trait). Told me how beautiful I was all the time, perfect legs, perfect stomach, perfect this, perfect that. Then suddenly, when I found out about his sex addiction (he was going on Russian mail order bride sites looking for women, amongst other things), he suddenly said something to me about how it\'s weird that we ended up dating because he normally goes for \"bombshells\". He\'s in his 50s, overweight, broke as hell, in massive debt, house foreclosure, not good looking, etc, and in his demented mind, he actually thought he was gonna get the super models that he stares at all the time. I am about half his age, get TONS of attn from men bc of my looks, have had modeling offers, etc, and he was gonna act like I wasn\'t attractive enough for him suddenly. This was him trying to justify it to himself since he got busted and couldn\'t keep up that image of being the perfect guy anymore. There were so many red flags I ignored, he was a pretty extreme NPD. But I was just in an extremely vulnerable situation, scared out of my mind of the stalker, in fear for my life, shaking. And he saw the opportunity to take advantage of a young, vulnerable girl, and to use his badge as an easy way to do that. It\'s incomprehensible what he did to me and I wonder how many other victims there have been.
They are very very dangerous, and yet they are allowed to carry weapons. It\'s insane that someone so unstable can be given a gun. And mine is federal, so he actually has a security clearance, yet all the stuff he does would supposedly cause him to lose his clearance. How can someone break so many issues that you have to maintain to keep your clearance, and yet still have it?? It amazes me.
I hear ya. I don\'t even understand how this guy was still a policeman with the pending investigation against him. My PI friend said to get away from him because he seemed like a very dangerous guy and no one on the force liked him. They said he was arrogant and cocky.
Trust me this guy worked out like a demon...he was BUFF and good looking and I\'m sure all the girls were all over him. He acted like he was the good guy always trying to look out for me when HE was actually the predator. Lucky for me I wasn\'t with him long. Probably because I got suspicious so quickly and had him checked out. That probably sent him into a tizzy!
I\'m sorry to hear about your experiences but I know how you feel. You automatically trust people in power sometimes and I have finally learnt that you can trust NO ONE automatically. Trust is earned for me now not implied.
Sounds so similar. Nobody likes my ex either because of his cocky arrogant attitude. They all make fun of him when he talks on the radio. And he thought he was a hero, he had these intense fantasies of being praised for being like a super hero. And that\'s what he thought would happen w/ me. He would pretend to be the hero and rescue me from the bad guy, and I would just worship the ground he walked on. He had actually written a book about it, about 10 yrs before I met him. I happened to find it (out of print) on amazon and read it and I thought I\'d die! It literally was like a play by play of our \"relationship\". It was like he wrote it about us, but 10 yrs before we met! It was scary as hell to see he was just living out this fantasy w/ me, this fantasy he\'d had for years. And who knows how many other women he\'s tried to play this fantasy out on. He\'s so delusional, he thinks he\'s like super cop or something. I\'ve told other officers the story and they want me to report him. Good cops actually can\'t stand scum like him who take advantage of their trusted positions to violate victims. I told another federal officer who works for the same dept as him, but in another state, without revealing his name, and that guy was blown away and said he had never heard of anything so serious involving one of their officers. He really wanted me to report him but understands why I haven\'t. Other people in my building who work w/ him have said they would worry about my safety if I reported him, knowing how unstable he is.
But good for us for recognizing it and getting away from these losers before it was too late. Look at Scott Peterson, killed 2 wives before anything was done about it. Nothing worse than a dirty cop. The punishment should be double for their criminal acts.