Chapter 5: Choosing Sides

After James left, I felt very alone. Too ashamed to share what was going on with the people I was closest to, I turned to the only people who knew the truth – James’ friends and family.

The first people who found out about our split were James’ brother and sister-in-law, Matt and Cammy. The first night back from our trip to Chicago, James packed a bag and went to stay with them. They had been through their own share of marital strife in their ten years together, and were working through their differences in individual and couple’s counseling. The four of us sat down on a few occasions so they could try to help us work things out, but James was adamant that he was leaving. When he tried to explain his reasons, it became harder and harder for Matt and Cammy to stay neutral. It was clear they found his explanations and accusations as absurd as I did, and tried to no avail to convince him to give me another shot. In some ways I found our talks with them more therapeutic than our sessions with the professional therapist.

After our impromptu therapy sessions, I felt closer to Cammy than I did the rest of the time I had known her. She and her husband were pretty private people, and quiet to boot. I called her regularly, and she was able to offer me great insight into my estranged husband’s actions, as her husband was definitely same cut from the same cloth as his brother. The treatment the boys received growing up verged on (or perhaps actually reached) psychological and physical abuse, and this had a similar effect on the brothers.

James once recounted an incident in which his father locked the boys out of their Queens apartment in their underwear as punishment for some misbehavior. James’ father was the youngest of many sons, and in his native Philippines he was regularly chained to the fence in front of the house or denied food while his older siblings were not. James attributed his father’s treatment as some sort of retribution for, or reenactment of, these past abuses. Despite being aware of the causality of his father’s actions, James (along with his brother) was profoundly impacted by them.

James’ mother was no picnic either, having fully emasculated her husband and run her eldest son out of the house for dating a black woman, she was left with only James to rely upon her. Her apron strings were a bondage to which James was only too willing to submit, as it meant never having to be accountable for his actions. James’ relationship with his mother was clearly in sharp contrast to his brother’s lack of one. Yet Matt and James remained close over the years because they shared the fraternal bond built in their turbulent formative years.

Cammy commiserated with my anecdotes about James’ behaviors and treatment of me. James, Matt and their father were all born under the astrological sign of Aries, which accordingly makes them all very headstrong. This trait seemed to be evident in their relationships with each other. It is also said that the Aries’ motto is “Ready, fire, aim,” meaning that those under this sign are prone to action without forethought. It is this curse of the impulsive Aries that caused Matt to up and leave his familial home in the first place and stubbornly stick with that decision for the following decade. As an Aries myself, I can think of many instances (with James or otherwise) in which I wished I could take back words or actions. Certainly with James I said things that, had I thought about it first, I should have realized would wound him.

As I talked to Cammy, who was successfully navigating a difficult relationship with my husband’s brother, I began to have hope that James and I could reconcile our differences. At my lowest moments, she offered me support and suggestions. I began to naïvely run “if only” scenarios in my head.

If only I could get him to see how sorry I was. If only I could apologize enough. If only I could start being nice to him. If only I didn’t get riled up when he picked on me. If only I could learn which of my actions triggered his anger, I could refrain from them. If only I could lose weight. If only I stop drinking. If only we could hang out and start creating new, happy memories. If only he would come and hang out at the apartment. If only we could have sex. If only I could change. If only these things could happen, I could get him back.

Cammy was as hopeful as I was, and at the time she was all I had so I went on believing it was possible.

Then I discovered the other woman in James’ life, and that was the tipping point. I told Cammy, and she was surprised, but not shocked. It helped explain to both of us that a line had been crossed and James would not be coming back to me, no matter how many “if onlies” I actualized. It meant that while something I did (or didn’t do) may have made James want to leave, nothing I could do (or not do) would bring him back. I slowly came to realize that by marrying a narcissistic Eeyore like James, I had set myself up for failure. Nothing I could do would ever be viewed as supportive, kind or loving. At some point in our relationship I had broken his trust, and unable to come back from that, he allowed every perceived slight to compound until I was the enemy.

Upon understanding this, I finally felt ready to begin outing myself to my friends and family as a future divorcée. In part I had held out because I hoped I could keep our troubles secret until they blew over. That now clearly was not going to happen. Less than a year before I had proclaimed before my friends, family and, yes, even God that I would be with James until “death do us part” and I still had a difficult time admitting to everyone that neither of us were in fact dead. I told my city girlfriends first, a pair who I am close with but were not amongst those who stood up for me in the wedding and therefore had a bit more distance and objectivity. Soon I told a few more friends, and eventually my family found out (when I removed “married” from my Facebook status, sorry Mom!).

It shouldn’t have surprised me, but of course all of my family and friends were extremely supportive. James had been so toxic as to convince me my friends and family were not the kind of people who would be there for me. James was generally on his best behavior around my friends and family, so they were certainly staggered by my news. James’ friends, however, weren’t nearly as taken aback. They had seen James’ true self, especially the way he’d been treating me.

In the months between my twenty-ninth birthday and James’ decision to move out, his treatment of me became so blatantly abusive that even his best friends felt the need to reach out to me. James worked as a bartender at his best friend’s family restaurant on the weekends. Dennis and James knew each other from high school, and Dennis was James’ best man at our wedding. One night after their shift ended at the restaurant, the three of us went out to some bars, along with Dennis’ girlfriend Shelly.

On the way home I called in a pick-up order to our favorite late-night Chinese spot. When the four of us arrived back at our apartment with the food, James realized I’d ordered him a roast pork soup instead of the roast duck soup he’d requested. It was an honest mistake on my part as both were menu items he was likely to order, but it was an error that drove James into a rage. He began one of his typical rants about how stupid I was, how I didn’t care about what he wanted, and so forth. I offered to call the restaurant and have another soup delivered at my own expense and was on the phone trying to do so when he told me not to. He ate the other dishes he’d ordered, but didn’t touch the same soup he would have happily tucked into on any other night.

On another evening when the four of us were hanging out, Shelly pulled me aside and told me that Dennis had initiated a conversation with her about James’ treatment of me. The soup incident was just one example they’d seen, and they didn’t understand why he reacted so strongly. She wondered how I was holding up. I shrugged my shoulders and wrote it off, as I tended to at that time, as just James being James. In some ways I felt callous not taking his complaints seriously, but if I did drink his Kool Aid, it meant I was in fact a mean, stupid, uncaring, fat bitch who was not loved by her husband. It was easier to assume that these words, like so many uttered by an Aries, were in the heat of a passionate moment and forgotten in the next. However their concern touched me and reassured me that I was not crazy for thinking that James had become a bit unhinged.

I don’t know what Dennis and Shelly should when they found out James was leaving me. He failed to mention to them that he’d met someone else. He was upset with me when I told them as much myself. He claimed to be taking the high road by not badmouthing me to his friends and was upset that I was “gossiping” to them. My response was that it wasn’t gossip, it was the truth, and if he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, why would he be bothered if his friends knew about it? And frankly, I don’t think it would have mattered if he had debased me to his friends. Their opinion of me was formulated, and they had witnessed first-hand how he behaved. He was only insulting their intelligence if they assumed they would not judge him for his actions

In the months following James’ departure, I kept in touch with his friends and family. Cammy would check in via text message every now and then. James’ friend José, whose bachelor party was when James met Jacinta, lived near our marital apartment. When I was moving out, he gladly came over with his wife to help carry a few heavy things out. While they were there I plied them for information about my ex-husband. José had little to offer, telling me that James had all but disappeared. José and Dennis had tried getting in touch with him, but James didn’t respond. Bruno, James’ accomplice at the bachelor party had similarly been absent. I could only assume that James was in part so wrapped up with his new girl that he didn’t have time for his old friends and in part that he was so ashamed by his actions that he didn’t want to face them. I felt bad for an instant that I had in some way broken up a ten year friendship, until I checked myself. James made his own bed, and now he was lying in it (with another woman).

The last time I spoke to James’ mother when she came to collect a few remaining things from the apartment, she reassured me I would always be her daughter and if I ever needed anything, or wanted to visit the Philippines, to give her a call. I can’t say the same is true of my family. I was talking to my brother recently, and he recounted a conversation he’d had with my father. The two were talking about how disappointed they were in James, and my dad said that if he ever saw James again he couldn’t be responsible for his actions. My brother said he agreed with my dad, and the two used words like “lynching,” “broken kneecaps,” and “tied up and tortured in the basement.” My dad is not the most outwardly affectionate man, but I never felt more loved by him then when I heard he would handily rearrange my pretty-boy ex-husband’s face on sight.

Similarly, none of my friends have any interest in reaching out to James to inquire how he is doing. While he may have played a victim with me, they certainly don’t see it that way. To them, he is a villain to whom karma will come full circle.

José’s wife and Shelly regularly reach out to me to say hello, and while we have not met up in person, their electronic messages reassure me that I am not in fact a mean person, as James would like me to believe. José’s wife and I share the same birthday and traded wishes for happy returns on the day. When Shelly had her birthday party recently, she invited me and reassured me that James was not invited. It may be petty, but I feel vindicated that in our divorce I was left with all of our shared possessions, all of our friends, and most importantly, my dignity while his prize was the freedom to be with his female Doppelgänger.

The irony is that as I was writing this, Shelly instant messaged me, saying how she and Dennis missed me and we had to get together soon. After a few volleys of catch-up, my curiosity got the best of me, and I enquired after James. She told me she had seen him a few weeks prior when he went by Dennis’ restaurant to invite them to a party James was having at his place in New Jersey. That’s right, the same guy who refused outright to move to New Jersey, where I wanted to live, because he claimed his commute would be too long now lives even further away then I would have even wanted to. Shelly went on to tell me that James had moved into Jacinta’s place, which was no surprise to me. It made perfect sense that instead of getting his own place, as he told me he planned to do when he left me, he would move in with someone else who, like I and his mother before me, would take care of him.

Right about now James is getting ready to celebrate one year together with Jacinta. In that time, it took me five months to mourn the loss of our relationship and another three months for my heart to heal enough to let me open it up to someone else. In the process, I have learned so much about myself and who the most important people are in my life. When faced with the choice, I feel like the people I cared about sided with me. With their support, I am finally feeling optimistic about my prospects and beginning to believe what they have been telling me:

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“You are better off without him.”

“You seem like you are in a good place now.”

In my life I always find exes coming out of the woodwork at the most random times, so it will probably be my luck that since I, like James, am now dating a New Jerseyan, I will run into him in a mall or something. I hope when that time comes I am wearing my hottest new size 6 jeans, with my amazing boyfriend on my arm, and a smile on my face. I will be able to look James in the eye as I brush by him, knowing that I am improving my life not because of him but in spite of him.

A Character List

A list of characters who appear in this story in alphabetical order, so I can keep their pseudonyms straight, and you can keep the characters straight! This will be updated as new people are introduced.

Bert - Crystal's ex-husband
Bruno – James’ friend from high school & a groomsman
Cammy – James’ sister-in-law, Matt’s wife
Carlos - James' high school friend
Cathy – one of my close girlfriends in New York City
Chuck - Crystal's new man
Clancy – James’ friend from the CD shop he worked at
Crystal - my recently divorced aunt
Dad - Dad
Dennis - James' best friend from high school & best man
Erik – Lisa’s husband/Jamie’s stepfather
Gram - my mom's Mom
Gramps - my mom's Dad
Grandfather - my Dad's Father
Grandmother - my Dad's Father's wife
Jacinta - the girl James started seeing as he was leaving me
Jamie – James’ son
James – my ex-husband
James - awkwardly the name of one of Crystal's suitors
Jeremy - a freak I met while out one night
Joey - my former roommate and love interest
José - James high school friend and groomsman
Katie – me!
Lacey - Owen's baby mama
Lisa – Jamie’s mother/James’ ex-girlfriend
Margaret - my college friend & sorority sister
Matt – James’ older brother
Mom - Mom
Owen - a guy I once dated who is now a friend
Ramón - my boyfriend
Sara – the hostess at a restaurant I worked at and James’ college friend, our matchmaker and one time roommate
Shelly - Dennis' girlfriend
Suzanne - my best friend from college

Chapter 3: The Polyester Bride

I was so happy to be engaged. We pretty quickly set the date of the wedding as September 2, 2008, the Sunday of that year’s Labor Day Weekend. This meant our engagement would be about a year long, twice as long as we’d been dating up to that point. With the date set, I began envisioning what I knew would be an amazing event. I am the kind of person who likes to have a plan, which is a great asset when preparing for a wedding. However, I am also stubborn, so if things don’t go just as I’d planned, I can get really upset.

As a girl, I’d always dreamed of getting married under the weeping willow tree that stood next to the pond in my paternal grandparents’ suburban Chicago backyard. When they moved to another house nearby, and my parents moved into their house, I was thrilled. There was not even a question in my mind that we would be married there, especially since tradition dictates that couples get married in the bride’s hometown (I guess because the bride’s parents also pay). I even started thinking that Sara, who introduced us, could officiate.

When I laid out my plan to my new fiancé, he balked at the whole thing. James wanted to get married in a Catholic church in New York. To me, that made no sense.

I was set on having it in Chicago. In addition to my girlhood dreams, there were practical considerations. First, there was the cost. A suburban Chicago backyard wedding would cost significantly less than anything in New York City or Long Island. To expect my parents to front the extra money to have it in a town other than their own seemed presumptuous on his part. In addition, the cost of New York accommodations for the out of town guests could have become cost-prohibitive for them. Logistically, if my parents were hosting the event (and my mom was so excited to plan with me), it would make sense for it to all happen by them.

I have a much larger family than James does. His father does not talk to any of his side of the family, and his mother has many brothers and sisters in New York, California, West Virginia, and the Philippines. My family is full of cousins, second-cousins, step-siblings, great aunts, etc. on both sides and is pretty much based around Chicago and the Midwest. James' family only has a few members living in the New York area, so many would have to travel regardless.

As it turned out, many of James' family members did make the trip to Chicago, including his son, but very few of his friends. Most of his friends were still in school or working minimum wage jobs, so couldn’t justify the expense of the trip. Additionally, because of the drama associated with their parents, James' brother refused to attend. Yet friends of mine who I had not seen since graduation, long lost relatives, and a host of others showed up to support me on our big day. Final headcount: twenty on the groom’s side, eighty on the bride’s side.

With the venue settled in my stubborn mind as non-negotiable, the topic of officiant came up. I was marrying a Catholic man whom I had never seen go to church. Yet James was so insistent on a Church wedding. I didn’t understand why religion was suddenly so important to him. I wondered, “Is your God not going to look down over the beautiful willow tree and sparkling pond and bless our union just as he would in an edifice created for worshipping a religion that I did not believed in?” I was happy to go to church with James if he wanted, and support him in his faith. But for me to personally say something about “the Lord” or “Christ” in my vows would seem like starting off the marriage with a lie, because that is not where my faith rests. At the time I also assumed that I would have to convert in order to be married in the Church. This was something I was not interested in doing one bit. I found out later that we would simply have to agree to raise our children in the Catholic faith, but even that absolute made me uneasy.

We quickly discarded the idea of Sara as officiant. Partly because James did not think an online ordination was good enough in God’s eyes, but also because Sara was growing increasingly flakey. So I began scouring the internet for pastors with actual ministries who would be available for our backyard nuptials. After a few false starts we found a mutually agreeable pastor, and I thought the matter resolved.

It came to pass, however, that throughout the course of our marriage the location of our actual nuptials was a major sticking point for James. It was regularly brought up in arguments as an example of how I didn’t care what he wanted. Even though he selected the pastor himself, and resigned himself to the Chicago location, it was never fully forgiven or forgotten. Having the party in New York so his brother and friends who could not attend the wedding could still be part of the celebration was a compromise, I thought. But not enough of one, I guess. We are both Aries, and with that comes an innate stubbornness (if you buy into that sort of thing). As time passed, it became a battle of who sacrificed more.

There was no compromise that seemed to work. If we spent one holiday with his family, it seemed fair to me to spend the next with mine. I only see my family once or twice a year (usually for July 4th and/or Christmas), so it’s not like we were jetting off to Chicago for Thanksgiving, Easter, Arbor Day and Flag Day. His parents and brother lived locally, and we saw them with some regularity. The Fourth of July James told me he was leaving me, we had gone to Chicago. I really wanted to go since I hadn’t been since the wedding, had asked if he wanted to join me, and he said yes.

James' friends in New York had been talking for months about driving out of state to pick up a trunk full of fireworks to set off that weekend. But much like him, they were not the kind to plan anything in advance. No set plan by mid-June, in my mind, means nothing that requires planning will be actualized (such as an out of state drive). So when James said he would go with me to Chicago, I thought he was excited to go and didn’t mind missing whatever shenanigans his friends got up to. Once again, it turns out I was wrong, and he viewed it as me forcing him to go to Chicago and not caring about what he wanted to do for the holiday. This was just the last in a laundry list of ways James felt he had put in so much and received so little.

In the beginning of our relationship, perhaps James gave more than I did in terms of commuting time, with his long drives from Manhattan to Long Island. Then after we were married, we moved to Queens which doubled my commute to an hour and a half each way, and cut his to five minutes. When we were living in the city, we would see my friends with some regularity as a couple. With him living and working in Queens, and with his weekend job in Long Island, he would rarely be interested in coming to the city to see my friends. Yet every Friday and Saturday night we would both head out on the town in Long Island with his people. James worked an extra 10 hours at the restaurant on the weekends, for pocket money, and lorded that over me as being a much harder worker and therefore somehow better (no matter that the salary at his 9 to 5 job was about half mine)

The division of chores was a battle. When James would cook dinner for me, it was my responsibility to the dishes (which I accepted as an even division of labor). Never once did I see him mop the living room (“The only messes in the house are caused by your cats, so it’s your job to clean up”), scrub the bathtub (“I clean the bathroom floor by sweeping up my hair after I give myself a haircut”), or wipe up the grease splattered around the stove after preparing another one of his fried meals. The clothes in his closet spilled out into the middle of our bedroom, and his receipts, change and other miscellaneous detritus gathered during the day littered our dresser-top.

I am no Suzy Homemaker to begin with, but having someone else in the house who expected to be some sort of perfect wife, mother and maid all in one just frustrated me. When we were living in my old bachelorette pad, it was a bit of a different story since it was first and foremost my place so mine to take care of. Plus we had Sara living with us for a time, who equaled the two of us in messiness, so it diffused the situation some. But back then I was so excited to be settling down into engaged life and tried to play the good wifey.

The wedding planning continued blissfully for me. James had pretty much lost interest in the whole affair when he didn’t get his way with the location, but I didn’t see it that way. I just chalked it up to the fact that he was a guy and not the kind of person to plan things. He would weigh in on various options I presented him with, but was only really concerned with what he would wear, the DJ and the food. I needed to have my ring resized to fit since my Gram must have tiny fingers or have the stone reset in a new ring. I dragged my fiancé into a chain jeweler, and he looked around with me. When I found something I liked, he bought it for me, begrudgingly. It was probably the least romantic moment of my life. We spent much more time browsing online to select his ring, and in the end his cost about the same as having my stone reset. Seemed fair.

I was happy to do all the planning work with my mom, it was fun for me. I was on theknot.com constantly searching for creative ideas. I designed my bouquets and centerpieces, created all the paper goods (menus, program fans, place cards, etc), decorated votives, and shopped for candy for the old time-y candy buffet I was planning. Mom was busy shopping, spray painting decorations, sewing slip covers for the lawn furniture, and trying to put up with my exacting bitchiness. My dad visited vendors, prepped the grounds, built an archway to be our altar, and kept my mom sane after dealing with my exacting bitchiness.

The most exciting thing, of course, was finding the perfect dress. I tried on every dress on the market, or so it seemed. I had an idea of what I wanted, a vintage number inspired by a dress worn in a famous scene in a Marx Brothers movie. My groom had requested to wear the style jacket sported by Groucho, so it seemed like it would be a good fit. I shopped with my mom and aunts in Chicago; I shopped with my friends in New York. I shopped new stores and second-hand, ran with the brides at Filene’s, and met with a woman who could do a custom design. I went into a high-end Atelier in midtown Manhattan and found a gorgeous Italian-made silk dress that made me feel so amazing. Its $5,000+ price tag however, did not.

I settled on a dress that was one of the first I’d tried on in Chicago and that when purchased online would cost one tenth that of my dream dress. In the end I really loved it. It was lace, and had a long skirt with a train, which I would wear for the ceremony. Then for the reception, I could remove the long skirt portion, and the lace would hang down, about to my knees in the front and a little longer in the back. The lace was not fine, the beading not Swarovski, and the lining was, in fact, polyester. But it was fun and flattering, and I made it mine by adding a sash pinned with an heirloom brooch and swapping out the plain buttons for more interesting antique ones. I teased my poor fiancé, showing him lime green, turquoise, teal, or blue dresses (our wedding colors) in the stores and saying that was the color of my dress. I actually think he was shocked that in the end I walked down the aisle in white.

It may be cliché, but the actual day of the wedding was a blur. There was so much to do in the morning and early afternoon that I ended up being the last one showering and dressing, quickly doing my own hair and makeup. There were a number of small dramas. Sara, a bridesmaid, had to take a train in because of a chronic ear infection, and was not sure she could even pull that off for awhile. My father’s best friend came in from Arizona, and on the eve of the wedding, his mother passed away which he would have not been present for had he not been in Chicago that weekend. My dad had to walk me down the aisle on what turned out to be a broken ankle, after tripping a few nights before the wedding. Bridesmaids and groomsmen were hooking up left and right after the rehearsal dinner. But on the scale of dramas go, these were small and anecdotal. For me to have put so much into planning this day being able to just let things go and enjoy my day was critical. So I think for the most part, I did.

The ceremony was beautiful; with perfect weather, a lovely sermon, harp music filling the air, a poem read by my brother, a favorite hymn sung by my bridesmaid, and the man I loved holding my hand throughout it all. I surprised James again by reciting the Lord’s Prayer which I had learned for the ceremony. We said our vows, mine which I had been thinking about for weeks and his which he winged in the moment. We kissed, and then we were Mister and Missus.

The reception too was a great success. One of my biggest compliments were from my grandma’s cousins, who said they hadn’t danced at a wedding in forever, and had so much fun dancing at ours. The other great comment was from my aunt who works at a photo studio and sees way too many weddings. She said generally she hates weddings but was surprised to have really enjoyed herself at ours. Dancing with my friends, family and especially the little boy who was now my step-son was such a blast. It was a whirlwind, but I remember the food was good, the candy buffet was a hit, bridesmaids and groomsmen were still hooking up left and right, I had a cigar with my brother and dad, my little cousin fell into the pool “accidentally,” and everyone got eaten alive by the mosquitoes.

The only thing that upset me that night is that my new husband was running around with his groomsmen, drinking heavily, and not (as I envisioned) arm-in-arm with me all night. I had to drag James to the dance floor, drag him to the table to eat, and drag him around the room to say hello to each table of guests. It seemed he would have been perfectly content hanging out by the martini bar we had set up in the “cigar lounge” by the pool rather than dancing the night away with his new bride under the tent where most of the guests were.

At the end of the night, as we prepared to return to our honeymoon suite in a local hotel, I had the guests all light sparklers as a send off (instead of throwing rice). For some reason my inebriated husband decided to stick a few lit ones in the outside breast pocket of his brand new Groucho Marx jacket. Seeing as it, like my dress, was polyester, it started melting and burning and was immediately ruined. James thought it hilarious, I, less so. But he was my husband, so I shrugged my shoulders, climbed into the car taking us back to the hotel, and set off into married life.

Chapter 2: Falling in Love with Narcissus

When I was proposed to on August 18, 2006, it felt like a dream. I was so thrilled to be joining the ranks of the “marrieds,” to have a stable life, a little family (of two, for the time being), and someone who would vow never to leave my side. Yet the notions of playing house, and the actual practice, are two very disparate things. I could say that I wish someone had warned me, but honestly, I wouldn’t have even listened. Heck, maybe some people did warn me. If that is the case, clearly I was not prepared to listen and have blocked their words from my mind.

I am pretty sure that our announcement pretty much shocked everyone. James and I had been dating just shy of six months when he proposed. The two of us had met through a mutual friend in the fall of 2005. Sara was the hostess at the restaurant that I worked at the time and had become my partner-in-crime. Together we would attend a weekly quiz night hosted by one of the other waiters. She started bringing along a friend of hers from college to be on our team.

The first time I saw James, his smile charmed me, and as I got to know him, his knowledge impressed me. He was well versed in topics that we two girls would have had no clue about, like old school hip-hop and sports. He was quirky too, with his penchant for Marx Brothers movies and oldies music. He knew, as did I, that when you say forte to refer to someone’s strengths, it is pronounced “fort.” I think I first impressed him when I identified the CD he was playing in the car one day as Nellie McKay, who at the time was a somewhat obscure chanteuse attending Columbia University. Over time we became friends, and one evening he drove me home, and we kissed. The rest, as they say, is history.

I once told James that if I had initially encountered him on an online dating site, I probably would not have agreed to meet him. He was two years my junior, less one day. He lived in Long Island (a long distance relationship, in my mind) with his parents, so he could finally finish up his bachelor’s degree. The reason for his delayed graduation was the birth of his son, so he had to drop out of school for a time to earn money to support the child and its mother. Lastly, if I had seen his photo on this hypothetical dating site, his photogenic good looks would have likely intimidated me. All of these things, on paper (or “on screen” as this scenario dictates) would have deterred me.

My saying so made James furious despite the reason behind my words, which was: none of those things mattered to me because I got to know him for him and not what he was like on paper. I was trying to show that I acknowledged my prejudices and to say that I was proven wrong. He probably still holds those words against me, as he would frequently reference this exchange in arguments as an example of how critical I was of him. The problem was, and likely still is, that he is a narcissist. Certifiable, diagnosed, capital N, Narcissist. This is a fact I learned well into our relationship, and if I recall James dropped this factoid on me during an argument as an excuse for one of his behaviors or actions.

Wikipedia describes Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) as being “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.” So as was the case when I said I wouldn’t have dated his online profile, anything short of praise is read as criticism. NPD is, according to Wikipedia, “indicated by five (or more) of the following:”

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special".
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement
6. is interpersonally exploitative
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Wikipedia also lists several hypothetical causes for NPD.

1. An oversensitive temperament at birth
2. Overindulgence and overvaluation by parents
3. Valued by parents as a means to regulate their own self-esteem
4. Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic feedback
5. Unpredictable or unreliable care giving from parents
6. Severe emotional abuse in childhood
7. Being praised for perceived exceptional looks or talents by adults
8. Excessive praise for good behaviors or excessive criticism for poor behaviors in childhood

Shortly after James’ son Jamie (named after his father, of course) was born this “modern day Narcissus” penned a manifesto. He called it his “Life in Verse,” meant to be “spit” with a hip-hop beat (a non-freestyle freestyle, if you will). Looking at these cause and effects lists side-by-side with his lyrics to me paints a very clear picture that he is indeed a narcissist. It’s like one of those matching games you might do in grade school where you draw lines to connect words from a list on the left to, say, their possible synonyms on a list to the right. For the sake of formatting, I have extracted some corresponding lines from the verse and numbered them according to the two lists above. First, the indications:

1. Or maybe I'm just some sort of twenty-first century Job
2. …so I could go back to school/Dean's List consistently
3. Teachers braggin, "One day, I could say that I taught him"
4. Persistent feelin like I was in but always kept at a distance [about friends]
5. So they withheld money from me and was strict as could be [regarding his parents during high school]
6. Moved my girl in [to his parents’ house]
7. 3 schools in 4 years, never got close though I had a few friends
8. Got to stay strong to face the heat cause I wasn't #1 in the class
9. Attained genius status young, my brain, it was awesome

And then the causes

1. An oversensitive temperament at birth [this I can’t speak to]
2. [his brother] moved out with his girl and succeeded [thus leaving essentially an only child]
3. Parents were dependent, now I'm alone, began makin demands
4. Attained genius status young, my brain, it was awesome [according to others]
5. So they withheld money from me and was strict as could be
6. Emotionally father was fucked, I bottled it up and hobbled along
7. Teachers braggin, "One day, I could say that I taught him"
8. Forced to be the smartest, eighty-five just wasn't enough

These examples may not be entirely clear out of context (both of the full verse, and of not having heard his whole story) or are a bit of a stretch, but they give a rough view of who James perceives himself to be in relation to the people in his life. It is probably impossible to love a narcissist because it is impossible to be loved by one. In fact in the spring of 2008, shortly before he left, James began frequently telling me that he didn’t love me anymore, and in fact never loved me at all. Knowing all this now, I have a whole different perspective on the course our relationship took.

But I didn’t know all this back when we first met, and I was ready to fall in love, so it may not have made a difference. The guy I had gotten to know week by week at the quiz night had made it so all those hypothetical online profile red flags weren’t important. James was generous with his time (and fuel), driving me home from work or out to see him in Long Island. He would stay in my Manhattan apartment at night and then in the mornings drive about two hours to his university, on the eastern end of Long Island. For the first couple months we were dating, we didn’t pass a day without seeing each other. We were getting along great, and it just felt right as though the Fates, and not Sara, had brought us together.

Around the time of his graduation in May 2006, James officially moved out of his parents’ house and into my apartment. This was a decision, like many more to follow, that he would later say I pressured him into. Between the dorms, the girlfriend & baby, and his parents, James had never lived on his own. He could have gotten his own apartment and gained some desperately needed independence, accountability and sense of responsibility. But at the time, I did not know of his personality flaws and figured since we spent so much time together it would make fiscal sense to shack up together. At this point the notion that we would end up married had been brought up – by James – so I felt living together was the next logical step in the progression. I see now that that jump from his parents’ house to mine meant that my role to him was not that of live-in girlfriend or even roommate, but of Mommy 2.0. James both loves and detests his mother, so that was not a great position to be put in.

I felt for the first time that James did love me when he asked me to go with him to visit his son. Jamie's mother Lisa had moved him to Summerville, South Carolina where they lived with her new husband Erik and their growing family. We went down for Jamie's birthday, in June 2006. Having heard only one side of the story, I was prepared to hate Lisa. The version I heard had her painted as a trashy, loud, mean, cheating, loser who selfishly kept her son from his father but had a “bangin’ body.” When initially confronted with this supposed monster, I was incredibly confused. Who was this quiet, almost meek girl with her beautiful home and military husband? She certainly didn’t look anything like the photos I’d seen of her from years before. Lisa looked, if anything… kind of like me!

We had a great visit primarily because Jamie is just so freaking sweet and adorable. He looks like a miniature version of his father, but with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He is incredibly intelligent and good natured, and has developed evolving passions for Napoleon Dynamite, Sonic the Hedgehog, and most recently Guitar Hero. Over the course of our several visits with him, I don’t think I ever saw him act up or shed a tear. All in all, he was just a joy to be with. So how did he get to be this way with such a “monster” for a mother? Clearly Lisa had done a lot of growing up, in ways her ex-boyfriend, now my boyfriend, had not. I was in love with James though and so was on his side no matter what.

Flash forward to August 18th. I had gone out with my girlfriends during the day and mentioned that I thought a wedding was in the future for us. My recently-engaged friend Cathy got excited to go back on the prowl for jewelry. We started looking at rings on the internet to see what style I might want. I told Cathy that my maternal grandma had given her wedding rings to me for my birthday one year after my grandpa had passed away. I had always hoped to somehow incorporate the stone in a new ring or resize the existing one when I got married.

Upon arriving home that night, James asked me what the girls and I had talked about that day. I mentioned the engagement ring conversation and that I had my Gram's ring. He asked to see the ring, and took it from me to have a closer look. The next thing I knew, James was down on one knee asking me to marry him. In shock and wanting to be sure (in part because we were both a bit tipsy at the time), I kept repeating “For real? For real real?” Every time, he answered “yes.” James told me later that this, much like moving in together, was something I had pressured him into, and that he immediately regretted it upon waking up in the morning. I don’t know if that is just something he said to hurt me, but I do know that I sure as hell didn’t force him down on one knee.