With the Civil No Contact order in place, my narcissist was still not talking to me. I tried a couple of times to send him messages letting him know that I loved him. He did not respond. I thought that his silence was because, this time, he was following the law but, his reasons were much more nefarious. Instead of being thankful that he was free and not going to lose his job or spend time in jail for injuring me, he began to craft and weave a different story about what happened.
He (who was a much beloved President of our church) and his first wife and mother of his two boys, Prissy, (who was one of two paid employees at our church) formed a tight group of friends, all of whom attended our church, and with them, they began to reinforce the story that I went crazy, self-harmed, and made the whole story up.
When I agreed to drop the PFA to a Civil No Contact order, the narrative they crafted was that I could not get a PFA because I made up the assault. They even said that the Civil No Contact order was ‘mutual’ (it was not, it was only one way – he could not contact me).
When I asked for an apology and permitted him to go through the Violence Diversion Program instead of a trial and jail, they told their group of church friends that his charges were dropped because I had gone insane and self-harmed/ made the story up.
Every bit of goodwill that I showed to my narcissist, he and his first wife used to paint the picture that 1) he didn’t assault me; 2) I went insane; 3) I self-harmed; 4) his charges were dropped because there was no evidence; and, 5) we both were not allowed to contact each other because the No Contact order was mutual. Of course, each of the claims was utterly false and based on lies.
A week after my narcissist completed the Violence Diversion Program and his record was expunged for the second time, his lawyer sent a letter to my lawyer demanding that I pay him for half of the equity in the house, furniture, appliances, food in our cupboards, etc. His lawyer also demanded that I refinance the home (the house was financed at under 3% and the new rates were around 8% which would have priced me out of my home). And if I could not come up with this amount (which was something like $50,000) and refinance the home, he would take my home from me (thankfully, he was ultimately unsuccessful, I kept my low-interest rate, and he is now sleeping in a basement/ garage while I reside in our five-bedroom house – sometimes karma does work). I was traumatized and terrified.
My narcissist also sent his flying monkeys, whom I now realize he had been grooming for years, after me. I was purposefully made to feel shunned and uncomfortable in our church, so I quit attending, and, one by one, some of the people whom I thought were my friends turned on me and supported my abuser.
In a month’s time, my whole world was turned upside down. I had lost my husband, step-kids, a quarter of my 'friends' (aka faux friends), and my church. I was stuck paying all the bills and the entire mortgage, caring for my kids and pretending things were normal for their sake, holding a full-time job while simultaneously healing from a concussion and broken collarbone, worrying about being priced out of my house, dealing with lawyers, attending counseling sessions 2-3 times per week, and dodging flying monkeys. All because I loved my husband and tried to do the right thing for him and, more importantly, his boys so that they would have a father who wasn’t in prison and could support them.
To say that I felt foolish, alone, shocked, stunned, betrayed, humiliated, manipulated, and confused might be the understatement of the century.
