The Lost Letters: The Dark World of Narcissistic Abuse

The Fall

I am walking on air. I cannot believe my luck. I have just met the perfect man. When my best friend gave me a copy of The Secret to read I was doubtful that airy-fairy crap could ever work, but in the year that has passed since my broken engagement to a Danish guitarist I felt I had nothing to lose. I began to visualise exactly the kind of man I wanted to end up with: Sensible, mature, smart. Good job. Nice looking. Good with his hands. Manly. Interested in me.

I still can't wrap my head around the concept that visualising the kind of man I wanted to meet would actually turn up, and so fast. But he did, and he's exactly the one I have been waiting for my whole life.

He did stare at your breasts a lot more than your face.

I brush away the unquiet thought. It's true. He did look at my breasts a lot. It made me a little uncomfortable. At one point I even reminded him I was 'up here'. He didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed though. Just smiled in a cocky way that reeked of confidence, like he already knew I was going to be his.

He was so interested in me, wanted to know all about me, and he listened carefully, asking questions in a way that flattered me, and encouraged me until my throat grew so raw from talking I had to stop. I realised far too late I knew hardly anything about him and he had the advantage of me. What was it he said when I pointed this out? 'You are far more interesting than me.' Then, before I could say anything more, he left to buy me another latte exactly the way I like it.

It began at Copenhagen airport. I felt his eyes on me, watching me in a way that said: 'You are going to be mine'. It wasn't love at first sight, but damn, the electricity that snapped through my body from that look of his, of being watched by a man as beautiful as him, of having been selected out from all the others . . . I was both intimidated and flattered all at once. He had the advantage right from the start.

He asked if he could buy me a coffee. I said yes. We spent four hours in Starbucks. He was so male, so big and strong, he made me nervous but in a delicious way. He had beautiful hands. I couldn't stop looking at him, at how perfect he was. I couldn't believe he was real. Handsome, tall, clean cut, smart, witty, an engineer, travelling for work. Masters educated, fit. The ultimate alpha male. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Just as I had visualised.

We agreed to meet again when he returned from Germany at the end of the week. I would pick him up from the airport and he would stay at my flat before he continued his onward journey into Sweden on Sunday. He kissed me goodbye, a chaste thing but with the promise there would be more. Much more. I shivered with delight. Perhaps it was moving a little too fast, but it just felt so right. Anyway, who was I to question destiny?

We spoke several times during the week and on Friday evening I went to get him, my gut screaming I was making a huge mistake. I listened to it, uneasy, because usually my gut was good with its instincts, but no matter how I combed through the conversations I'd had with him or his behaviour (apart from the breast staring) I couldn't pinpoint why my gut was panicking like a wild thing trapped in a cage, so I turned the music up and drove faster towards the one I knew was meant to be my soul mate and told myself it must only be nerves.

We eat the roast I cooked. We drink single malts. We kiss. I tell him I want to wait to sleep together since things were moving so fast. We fall asleep on top of the bed, still dressed and full of whisky.

I wake sometime in the night, my jeans around my knees and him riding me.

'You are inside me.' I am so stunned, I can only state the blindingly obvious.

He says yes and continues doing what he is doing.

'But I was asleep.' Also obvious.

He smiles and kisses me.