I’ve said several times in my posts, and in the real world that I wholeheartedly believe that I have been in an abusive relationship and repeatedly used and manipulated by a covert narcissist. I’ve told my therapist, I’ve told my friends, I’ve told HER.. Every time I brought it up with her, she’d become contemptuous with me. Once, during a two hour ferry ride from Vancouver to Departure bay in which we fought the entire 2 hours, I told her that I think she’s a narcissist. She laughed, and indignantly told me that her therapist told her she is anything but, and her friends would LAUGH at the idea, she then got angry and told me all the ways she was an empath, and the polar opposite of a narcissist, of ANY kind.
So, why would I say it then? What is my opinion based on? How did I arrive at that opinion? What brought me here?
I’ve arrived at this opinion because I’ve done a LOT of reading and research. As a toxic empath, getting into trauma bonded relationships is a pattern I want to break, understand and learn to avoid because I’m sick of getting into relationships with people who are just bored with their shitty relationships and shitty lives and use polyamory as a means to escape. I’ve wasted the last 8 years of my life on people that just wanted to escape and experiment. I’m tired of wasting my time with waste of time people.
According to several credible sources, the these are a few of the most common traits of a narcissist, and things that resonate with me because I can recall multiple examples to go with these.
…………………
1 – They have a pretentious, high and mighty perspective of their own accomplishments, talents and capabilities.
IE: When I first mentioned I’d chosen a therapist that I wanted to see after Erica pushed me well past my breaking point back in August, Erica felt it necessary to explain the differences between a Registered Clinical Counselor (RCC) and a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor (RTC) – particularly how RTC’s weren’t regulated, had FAR less education than RCC’s. (2 years versus her 4 years) She had this whole opinion about how somehow, this therapist was less than her, because she hadn’t put in as much work as her. Her credentials were less than Erica’s. She planted the seed of doubt in my head that a counselor like this wouldn’t be as effective as a counselor of her status.
2 – They display perfectionism, and they expect it from others.
IE: It drove her CRAZY that I didn’t do things like she did. Not finances, not decision making, not housekeeping, not anything. I didn’t keep up appearances like she did. Everything had to be just perfect. She would spend HOURS, and HOURS organizing, adjusting, moving, spacing, arranging, re-arranging everything in her house just so, because how she was perceived by others was just SO incredibly important. She needed everything to be just perfect, and just so. In her office, her home, he appearance, her weight – right down to the fucking Botox, because god forbid, WRINKLES.
3 – They need constant attention and admiration, and no matter how much they receive, it never seems to be enough.
I cannot quantify the number of times I was called upon to support her and soothe her insecurities around her job; if a client didn’t re-book, or if she didn’t have EVERY slot in her calendar filled, she took it personally and fell down a well of “I’m not good enough” despair. If she had a consultation, and the client didn’t book, she took it as a scathing indictment against her skills and abilities as a counselor and therapist. I’ve held her as she cried about how she was clearly not good enough. It seemed to me at times that she needed her clients to affirm her as a counselor. To her, clients and bookings were the metrics by which she measured her worthiness as a counselor. She wasn’t there for them, they were there for her.
4 – They get upset when you tell them how they’ve hurt you or how they made you feel, and get angry about how YOU feel makes THEM feel.
Almost any time I told her that she’d said or done something shitty or hurtful that hurt or upset me, she will almost always get upset and mad at me because I didn’t tell her the right way, didn’t use the correct combination of therapist words, or I told her before work, during work, or after work as she was about to go out with friends, about to eat, etc. How I felt was almost ALWAYS trumped by how it made HER feel. IE; Shortly before we met, her dad was in a motorcycle crash, and got his leg burned pretty good when his leg got pinned under the exhaust. He lived, was fine and made a full recovery.
Shortly AFTER we met, my dad was killed in a motorcycle accident. Dead. Anytime I brought it up, regardless of time, place or context, Erica would shut me down. I was not permitted to talk about it, bring it up or discuss my feelings or the impact on me. Not once was I allowed to talk about it, because Erica’s trauma was too much. Fuck what I was going through. Erica was more important. One time, her dad and I were having a perfectly lovely conversation about motorcycles and riding in France, and Erica was giving me the stinkeye telling me to shut up.
5 – They expect special treatment, even when it’s not deserved.
Like the time she met me at the ball diamond, and spent three hours telling me how awful and unfair I was, flinched every time I moved to drive home the point that all men are inherently violent, vicious and dangerous, and then as we walked out of the park asked me to change her oil, check her brakes and build a bed in the back of her jeep? Or that time I got hired to deliver a fridge to Thetis island, invited her to come with me for a day of adventure and sightseeing, and she insisted I pay her $150 out of what I was being paid – for 5 minutes of actual work pulling the fridge off the truck – but didn’t offer ME so much as $5 in gas money for driving her to Costco (after an 8 hour day of driving), loading a giant 3 part sofa into my truck and then spending two and a half hours wrestling the fucking thing up the stairs into her living room. My time was worth nothing, hers WAS.
6 – They lie and manipulate to get what they want, even if it means exploiting or taking advantage of others.
Like using her fiancé to help buy her dream home, then kicking him to the curb while making him keep paying half the mortgage? Then using me to model her new life around – from hammocks to kayaks, to e-bikes, to river swims, and living on Island time… then using me as a free handyman to build her coffee bar, her office shelves, install showerheads, fix her Jeep, haul couches, take professional photos for her websites – then kicked ME to the curb when she was done using me, too?
7 – They lack emotional connection and empathy and only associate with people they consider to be close to their own status.
We fought all the time about how in almost 4 years, I could count on one hand the people closest to her that I was invited to meet. I won’t get too far into that one here, as I have a post pending that takes a DEEP dive into that topic. But, I will say she kept me completely compartmentalized, and was a wizard and making excuses and reasoning away why I couldn’t meet the people in her life. I met a couple, but only because of circumstances largely beyond her control. She once told me she didn’t want to introduce me to her friends because I was “unpredictable”. I was beneath her station and she was ashamed of me. In almost four years, I only met her best friend once for a quick walk in the park, and that was so her friend could meet me and size me up a couple hours before Erica proposed a threesome:
I’m still so pissed with myself for not seeing that I was good for fantasies and fixing, and that was it. That was my role, and when I started wanting more – a REAL relationship, reciprocal effort, strings… – I was told to fuck off.
(I’ll have more on this in that upcoming post – there’s a lot more in that text). This was my place in her life, and why I was never invited to do REAL things with her friends. I was beneath her and her friends. I was dressed poorly, I was uneducated and I was her naughty little secret. Thus, was compartmentalized away from her people for the entire relationship/friendship. Her favorite line was “because covid!”, but covid didn’t stop her from travelling to Joshua tree or Hawaii with friends, going to the river with friends or having weekend spa getaways with friends. The message was clear: She didn’t WANT me around until she had a use for me.
8 – They have no respect for personal boundaries.
Start with my wife’s kitchen, back when I asked her to take care of my dog while we took our kids to Vancouver overnight for a medical appointment. The following texts were exchanged while I was on the ferry:
[2022-08-07 11:53 a.m.] Me: Please, please, please, please don’t be cleaning anything. I couldn’t handle the guilt.
[2022-08-07 1:52 p.m.] Me: please don’t go crazy and do a deep clean of my house. Nobody but me will appreciate it, and it’ll be all undone withing a day anyways. I’m sure that you can find some better things to spend your energy on that would be more rewarding and enjoyable and be more appreciated by others.
[2022-08-07 2:12 p.m.] Erica Van Driel: I’m not doing a deep clean of your house, I’m leaving that for you as requested. I *may* have worked my organizational magic in the kitchen (won’t be offended if shawna hates it), but it makes more space for food prep as she wanted. I won’t do anything else. There’s stuff on the dining table for the boys to organize and put in their rooms when you get home, that’s it.
Spoiler alert: She was offended that Shawna didn’t like it. Despite my pleading and telling her not to, she cleaned Shawna’s kitchen and re-organized everything and re-arranged appliances the way she thought they should be. Shawna was really upset (it was a consent violation, and Erica should have known better. And when we told her as such, she was IRATE and said that given what she does for a living, our choice of words was particularly cruel. I then went to Erica’s house to take care of HER feelings, and I was with her when she started composing an apology text to send Shawna, despite the fact I told her NOT to, and then had a tantrum when Shawna replied with just “Ok, Thanks”. Despite knowing she was absolutely in the wrong, Erica was very offended that Shawna didn’t give a longer, more “thoughtful or heartfelt” response to her apology. Just another example of how Erica’s feelings trump everyone else.
It’s also worth noting that while she was at my house, she decided to steal my essential oils for a diffuser I had in my bedroom. She just decided I wasn’t using them enough, so she just took them. Didn’t ask, didn’t tell me until I confronted her a few days later. Just… Stole them, outright. I would have given her them had she asked. I only had the damn diffuser because of her. I gave it away because I couldn’t fucking stand to look at it and be reminded of her and how I did something TOTALLY out of character and bought it in a stupid attempt to show her I could try new things and be “hip” too. Trauma bonded approval seeking, anyone? Ugh. So much shame.
Back to boundaries. How about the dozens of times I needed or wanted a bit of space to figure things out, and she steamrolled my needs with her wants, just like the text exchange in my previous post. She would tell me she’d give me space, then message me to tell me how much she missed me, and lay it on until I gave in and went to see her.
I could cite dozens of examples of her taking a shit on my boundaries. And my wife’s boundaries. And don’t even get me started on her lectures about how my wife and I raise our kids. She would go on and on about how we were doing our kids a disservice by things like buying them new base model computers (for Christmas) or buying them a PS4 (for the entire family as a media machine) or new cell phones, or because we bought Kayaks for the family, or E-bikes (so we could all go on family outings together). Because when SHE was a kid, her parents gave her nothing, and she had to get a job and earn it all herself. She figured it was her right to tell me what she thought, and to tell me that our kids would one day end up in a chair in front of someone that does the same job as her.
I’ll keep repeating it until I’m blue in the face: Those who find the idea of having kids repugnant and have never raised one should shut the fuck up about how people raise theirs. STFU, FULL STOP.
And she didn’t just disregard MY boundaries, or those of my wife. She disregards her clients’ boundaries. At leasttwice that I can recall, she spoke to me directly about her clients in a way that breached their confidentiality, in one instance, telling me where they worked, what department they worked in, their gender, and specifics about their situations that brought them to therapy in the first place. She also referred to her clients by profession in casual conversation.
[2022-01-27 1:52 p.m.] Erica Van Driel: My 2:15 cancelled with 45 minutes notice. She got a positive covid test yesterday and feels too sick to have a session. Which I get, but also… she should’ve canceled yesterday and I would’ve waived the fee. I asked her to pay half for the late cancellation. Trying to not feel guilty about it but I think it’s fair
[2022-01-27 1:53 p.m.] Me: I think it’s fair too. I’m sorry she canceled any so late, that’s a bummer
[2022-01-27 1:53 p.m.] Me: Besides there’s no way for you to truly know for sure that she’s actually sick. I find that when people cancel last minute like that they use it as an excuse because nobody can really argue with it.
[2022-01-27 1:55 p.m.] Erica Van Driel: Yeah that’s definitely a possibility. She’s a(profession)and we have really good rapport though so I have a feeling she’s telling the truth, but it is suspect that she didn’t tell me till 45 minutes before our session.
And it’s not just a “he said/she said” situation. There is NO means in which I could possibly know these details unless she specifically told me. If I have enough information to contact these people, she’s told me too much. Mentioning her client is a (insert profession here) while also making it clear on numerous occasion where her client works makes it rather easy to find her client.
9 – They do not hold themselves accountable for their actions.
Over the past two years especially, we fought so often, because she would lie to me, and I would refuse to blindly accept her lies as the truth. She’d get furious with me, and we would go around and around, all the time telling me that she wasn’t lying. She would SWEAR she wasn’t lying. Earnestly. With pleading, sincere eyes. With TEARS in her eyes. She would gaslight me into believing that I was fucking crazy for doubting her, and spin, re-spin and re-spin the story again to convince me that she didn’t say what she said and that I remembered incorrectly, or misunderstood what she was telling me. I would get completely exhausted and I would walk away questioning my reality and my sanity. So, I started recording our fights so I could go back and PROVE to myself that I wasn’t crazy, and that my memory worked just fine.
On October 11th, I went to her house to talk, on her invite. We chat a bit, make small talk, and we start to dive into the status of our relationship, and the possibility of reconciliation. She explains to me – in a sincere and caring way – that she couldn’t date me anymore because she was too broken, too damaged and had to work on herself, for at LEAST 6 months. She needed to figure out why she acted the way she did, did things like overstep boundaries like she did with Shawna’s kitchen, and work on her “issues” before she’d be ready to date again. I was ok with that, and I understood it. We talked until 11 pm, and as I left, she gave me a hug at the front door. I get home and we have the following text exchange:
[2022-10-11 10:59 p.m.] Me: I cannot shake the feeling that that hug is the last one we’ll ever have. :/
[2022-10-11 11:04 p.m.] Erica Van Driel: Wasn’t planning on it being the last hug on my end, so that’ll be up to you or an unfortunate act of god. That wasn’t a goodbye, at least not for me. I’m sorry to hear you are left feeling that way.
Thank you for your vulnerability tonight and for clarifying the experiences you’ve had. I’m sorry I haven’t been my best self for a long time and that I don’t have more to give right now.
A few days later, after giving Erica space like she asked and keeping to myself, I was on Bumble looking around. She had pushed me to “find someone” else to connect with. I’m browsing profiles and I swipe left and… ERICA. I see her face there, and I feel like I’ve been shot. My whole body is numb, I look at the words “New Here” and I feel like I’ve just been dropped in a pool full of boiling water and I’m having a hard time breathing. As I type this and look at the screengrab right now, my body is on fire, and not in the good way. I’m feeling that spear of an insult go right through my chest. “We’ll get along if… the only games you play are the video or board variety”. In one of our more recent fights, she said that she was “tired of my games” because I kept asking questions when I was pretty sure she was lying again.
So, yeah, I own it. In my highly activated and upset state, with every bit of my Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria in full swing overdrive, and in a fully dysregulated state, yeah, I was shitty. I sent her a shitty text:
[2022-10-19 5:12 p.m.] Me: Do you EVER tell the truth? Like.. ever?
Yeah. I fully own it. I was upset that she was on Bumble. I felt lied to, gaslit and manipulated because she was on Bumble only a few days after telling me she couldn’t date me because didn’t have anything to offer, and that she had to fix herself. And that her Bumble profile stated she was looking for something casual, but open to long term, and also had an insult aimed directly at me in it. Which she even admitted to. She wrote that with me in mind. That hurt. Deeply. Because the LAST thing I wanted was to play games. I wanted to fix things. Desperately.
She invited me over to “talk about it” and proceeded to lie her face off, trying to tell me it was an old profile (“New Here”?) that she re-activated for a few moments one night when she was bored and lonely. (And horny, no doubt) That it had somehow reactivated itself and she had NO idea how it got turned on. When I called bullshit and just asked her to be HONEST, she lied and lied and lied, tried to gaslight me and then finally, when I refused to buy her bullshit, she admitted she was lying – but blamed me and said it was my fault that she decided to lie.
Here’s two audio clips from that conversation:
Deny, deny, deny, lie, lie, lie.” (There’s a dead spot in audio where I was looking up her text in my phone to read back to her)
I wish I was a good enough writer to properly convey just how fucking crazy you feel when and how damaging it is to be lied to ALL the time, and to constantly have to question everything you’re being told. Every conversation, every bit of data that comes in, you have to ask yourself “is this true, or not? Can I trust this?”. It’s exhausting and awful to have to constantly sort bullshit and lies and analyze everything and try to discern what parts are close to honest and then extrapolate something that resembles the truth. And then because you’re constantly trying to find the truth and unsure about everything, you ask questions. And when you ask questions, you’re labelled as “controlling” and “emotionally abusive”. Which you believe, because its a fucking registered clinical counselor that specializes in domestic violence/emotional/sexual abuse telling you that that is what you are!
I just wish I’d been smart enough to understand that a registered clinical counselor that specializes in domestic violence/emotional/sexual abuseis capable of perpetrating abuses too.
………………………………………..
I hate that I’m perceived as the sole problem in this equation. That all of this is because of me and my actions. In no way will Erica ever have to own or take any accountability for the shit she’s done. I’ll never get an apology, and I’ll never get any kind of acknowledgement or validation of the things she did to hurt me or my family. She’s a woman, I’m a man, so by default, she’s the victim and I’m the monster. She spent THREE AND A HALF YEARS telling me over and over and over and over that men are awful, EVERY man is potentially violent and that’s why she is in the line of work that she is.
Yet, I’m not a monster. I’m a human being with emotions and feelings who was being lied to, manipulated and gaslit, and I finally got to my breaking point. I definitely got upset and I definitely had my moments of reacting poorly, absolutely. But I NEVER laid a hand on her, and I never threatened to. I NEVER raised a fist at her, not once. I never intimidated her, I was never violent towards her or her property… The worst thing I ever did in four years was tear up photos of us and throw them at her feet. For every time I’ve ever had a full disconnect where I lost myself and did or said something shitty, I’ve done dozens and dozens of good things that she disregards.
From the very beginning, when I first met Erica, she lied. She lied about being on the island the day I broke my back on October 26th 2019. She asked Shawna to lie to me about being here on the Island, riding her bike with her fiancé. Shawna told me she was here, as I was using her phone to text our friend:
[2019-10-26 4:29 PM] Erica Van Driel: Hospital still? How long do you think they’ll keep you?
[2019-10-26 4:30 PM] Me: 3 or 4 hours, maybe. I sent Shawna and the boys home. I told them i wanted to be left alone. I really hate being here.
[2019-10-26 4:33 PM] Erica Van Driel: 🙁
[2019-10-26 4:33 PM] Erica Van Driel: That’s a long time
[2019-10-26 4:33 PM] Erica Van Driel: I’m sorry I can’t be there
[2019-10-26 4:33 PM] Me: It’s ok.
[2019-10-26 4:36 PM] Me: I’m kinda kinda glad you aren’t. To be honest. I adore ever fibre of your being, but it’s not fair to you that I’m always broken for you.
[2019-10-26 4:36 PM] Me: I want you to have a better version of me. You deserve better than what you’ve been getting.
[2019-10-26 4:37 PM] Erica Van Driel: Oh gosh silly man, I adore you and don’t mind at all
[2019-10-26 4:40 PM] Me: In case you have any Grand schemes of showing up to surprise me again, please don’t.
[2019-10-26 4:40 PM] Me: <3
[2019-10-26 4:44 PM] Erica Van Driel: Lol ok
[2019-10-26 4:44 PM] Erica Van Driel: I’m out for a bike ride
[2019-10-26 4:49 PM] Me: I know you are here. Shauna’s friend Jen is coming over with coffee. I told Sean this phone to ask Jen to bring me a coffee too and I saw the text. So I know you’re here.
[2019-10-26 4:50 PM] Me: *took shawnas phone
[2019-10-26 4:51 PM] Erica Van Driel: Fuck!!
And then, she walked into the ER. I told her not to come, and she did anyways. Because narcissists care nothing for your boundaries. And because I am a complete fucking moron, I STOOD UP off my gurney and walked over to her to give her a hug. With a fractured spine. :/
She lied all the fucking time. She lied to her fiancé too. All the time. About what she was doing with me, and where and when. We would go to the river to swim, or to the waterfront to walk, or out into the woods somewhere, and on the drive back, she would say “Don’t tell B I was with you.. I told him I was going for a walk and to have coffee at the vault” or something like that. She was always keeping secrets. She was always deceiving. She was always lying. To everyone. She lied to her fiancé, she lied to her mother, she lied to her dad – and forced me to be complicit in her lies – about us being romantically involved. Because of her lies, I had to lie to her dad too, about being in love with his daughter, and that we were more than just friends. A LOT more. Carnally more.
The roots of my distrust for Erica grew deep into soil that SHE tilled with her lies, deceptions and misdirections every day. In order to achieve those objectives, she gaslit, manipulated and buried me in word salad. She used her skills as a registered clinical counselor to fuck with my head, gain my unwavering trust, tell me everything I wanted to hear, lovebomb me, soothe my traumatized inner child and said such beautiful things that filled me to my very brim with hope, love and care. She knew when to go “sad, scared little girl” to diffuse my anger and hurt and flip me into caregiver mode, and she used her vagina to manipulate me into complacency. Oldest fucking trick in the book. Pun intended.
There was a point in this relationship that I would have given Erica my life. I would have taken a bullet for her, I would have donated a kidney for her, I would have given her my blood, my bone marrow, or a piece of my liver. There was a time when I loved that woman with every atom in my body. I would have done anything for her. I would have given her my life.
And she didn’t think enough about me in return to just tell me the truth.
To be clear: I am not saying she needed to reciprocate that level of love for me. I was married, poly and she wanted her own person. I get that. But I sure as fuck earned the right to be treated with respect and I deserved honesty and truth. I deserved to be treated better. I earned that.
I made this slideshow for her, over two years ago and the peak of my hope for a future with her. I haven’t watched it since the day I showed it to her, and I won’t watch it now, because it hurts to watch. The memories and the feeling it gave me when she cried and got angry at me are still very vivid and very clear. The hurt I felt when she told me she always wanted a boy to feel like that about her, to make a video like that for her and DO that for her… But she didn’t want it to be me. She asked me to delete it and never let anyone see it. I couldn’t see it at the time, but it was because she wanted her Disney prince, her fairy tale love story, and her fantasy sunset ending. But I wasn’t any of those things.
She didn’t love me, she didn’t care about me, I was just some guy that would keep her occupied, scratch her itch and fix her shit until her fairy tale ending came along. And I fucking HATE myself for not seeing it then. I hate myself for not seeing Erica Van Driel for what she was.
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