evile

Yep. My brother started dating the woman who is now his wife and I sensed something ‘off’ about her from day one. Unfortunately, we were all college-aged and I did not know anything about personality disorders or the mind-control and brainwashing tactics used by abusers. So, I didn’t have the vocabulary or the experience to identify what exactly was wrong, but I did know.

What I wrote in my diary at the time about the first time I met her was that she told me a bunch of (in hindsight) inappropriate “TMI” stuff about herself—she mentioned liking to give ‘kinky back rubs’ (whatever that may be— I mean, who tells people personal intimate things about themselves the first time they meet them?? narcissist crazy people, that’s who!) and that she seemed “Helpless” and concluded my observations with “She's nice enough, and she likes me, but...well. Anyway…” [unspoken/unwritten: she likes me, but I don’t like her, and I don’t have any specific reasons for not liking her, and I don’t want to be a mean person by saying I don’t like her ‘out loud’.]

Which, in hindsight, suggests to me that I knew something was ‘off’ about her but had no idea how to articulate it. Like, I don’t want to be friends with this girl but I can’t really say why she rubs me the wrong way. (kinky back rubs….ew)

I also remember her asking me a ton of questions about my brother—like, family history questions, what was he like as a child, etc. Hindsight again suggests to me that she was assembling a ‘dossier’ and determining his faults, flaws, and weaknesses, rather than ‘aw, isn’t this cute, she wants to know if he had a teddy bear or sucked his thumb when he was little,’—there was definitely a cold and calculated ‘fact finding’ aspect to her questions rather than any kind of affectionate curiosity.

The very next time we hung out (I believe, if memory and journal are correct), the NPD eventually to be my SIL wanted to go do something-or-another down the road in my parents’ home town. My brother asked our parents if he and his new hunny could stay with them overnight while they were in town doing whatever-it-was. Because of my brother’s history of disrespecting house rules growing up (sneaking out to visit girls, using phone after ‘phone hours’, etc.) the parents said ‘no’…so then sneaky Narc-girl came up with the brilliant idea of inviting me to come with them to whatever-it-was event, and using me to obtain an overnight stay at the parents’.

I didn’t know the parents had already told bro and his squeeze ‘no’ so I didn’t realize I was being used in this way, until we showed up at the parents’ house and I expected to be able to stay the night, and the parents said they’d already told brother and Crazy “NO.” …. now, don’t get me wrong, Brother was a sneaky-ass who had disrespected parents’ boundaries and house rules in the past. But he wasn’t manipulative like this, trying to use other people to get around house rules or boundaries. So, I will go ahead and in hindsight, recognize her influence and see her hand in this particular situation.

Her ‘unique’ approach is to rules-lawyer things, and try to get around the rules or bend things to suit herself even though she apparently understood the rules’ intent. She’s done this in many situations over the years, as part of the narcissist’s dysfunction in believing that they are special and unique and rules should not apply to them. But that was the first time I was caught in the crossfire or used as a pawn in the situation.

She also started the ‘shit tests’ pretty early in the relationship. We’d have plans to go do something together and she’d start a fight or create a situation where he would have to choose between soothing & taking care of her and going to do whatever we had planned to do. And, of course, if he chose anything other than pleasing her, he would be treated to hours of screaming, crying, being thrown out of the house, her calling our parents to badmouth him, etc. It was really nuts. At her bachelorette party, she actually said the following: “Being with him has alienated me from my family, so I am going to alienate him from his,”

Unfortunately, as I said, I was young and dumb and didn’t really understand the mental illness at play here. It took me way too long, and way too many bad times and awkward situations, to finally figure it out and go no-contact with her (and, unfortunately, my brother too).

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