From all outward appearances, it looked like I had it all. My master’s degree in psychology, I married my college sweetheart, he made a great living and was the life of the party.  I had a beautiful daughter and chose put my career on hold to be a stay-at-home mom. I had a well-appointed house.  I had a great circle of friends.  Heck, even my dog was handsome!  Why did I have a sinking feeling in my gut?  Somewhere, lurking in the deep recesses of my brain, alarms were ringing.  I tried to silence them. I didn’t want to see the tiny drill team in my head waving dozens of flags in every shade of red imaginable.  Instead, I tried to make myself believe this was the good life! I was happy…wasn’t I?

Throughout the years:

I blamed myself for even the smallest things that went wrong.

I tried to single-handedly fix my marriage.

I tried individual therapy.

I, unsuccessfully, tried to get my husband to couple’s therapy.

I felt overwhelming confusion.

I felt lonely.

I felt worthless.

I felt drained.

I felt I was walking on eggshells around him.

I felt I was being destroyed by the very person who claimed to adore me for nearly 20 years.

When I finally figured out it was time to leave, I knew it would be bad.  Let’s face it, even the most amicable divorces are rough, but I could never imagine the utter catastrophe that was headed my way!  I was blissfully unaware of how unprepared I was.  Up until that time, he had done a relatively decent job of hiding behind the facade he created. In retrospect, I played along with the facade too. I was finally ready to admit I had lived almost 20 years with my head buried in the sand.  It was when I left that I discovered the full extent of who I had married. Once I “dared” to leave him, a raging monster was unleashed.  It wasn’t until the legal proceedings started that I began to get a notion of what he had been doing, how he had been preparing, and who he had been our entire relationship!

It started when I caught him cheating. At first, he feigned contrition.  Together, we made a plan on how to best separate in an effort to make this less traumatizing for our daughter. I believed what he told me. This lasted as long as he thought he could hoover me back.  When he realized I wasn’t coming back, chaos ensued.  He became enraged.  Massively enraged.  Within a very short time he destroyed the contents of the house and systematically ripped every image of me from all of our family pictures.  He changed the locks on the doors and claimed I abandoned the family home.  He kept the sole family car (red flag I had ignored for years).  He locked me out of our joint bank accounts and attempted to gaslight me by telling me I had forgotten the password.  The same password we’d had for 10 years.  He remotely performed a factory reset on my iPhone, iPad, and laptop via the iCloud (he knew all of my passwords, I knew none of his…red flag), all in an attempt to erase proof. He knew I had proof he had been cheating, he knew I had texts that could have been used as evidence against him, and he knew I had the pictures of our destroyed home.  He left me and my daughter penniless, homeless, without a car and without any devices. Then, he spun a tale to all of our friends accusing me of cheating (projection) and later claimed to the courts I had kidnapped our daughter. After being an absent and uninterested father for all of my daughter’s life (except for times he was trying to preserve his public facade as a good parent), he actually petitioned the courts to gain full custody.  This was just the opening act.

I thought I was prepared for what was ahead of me.  I had my master’s for Pete’s sake.  I knew mental health and mental disorders frontwards, backwards and sideways.  I had experience with mental health clients.  I had a phenomenal support system.  I thought he and I had a reasonable plan in place. I thought he would be honorable. How could I have been so naive?

It took an agonizing divorce and a five-year custody battle to win my freedom (and sanity) and ensure the safety of my daughter.  This was like no other divorce I had ever heard of (at the time).  In retrospect, I had been training to fight a heavy-weight boxing champion by taking a couple of Zumba classes.  No offense to Zumba, it happens to be one of my favorite forms of exercise! But boy, did I really get knocked on my ass. Repeatedly.

In 2019, I “won” sole custody of my daughter. The courts granted me permission to move with my daughter to our home state to be surrounded by our family.  The outcome turned out about as good as I could have hoped, considering our very broken family court system. However, the process left me financially ruined, isolated, lost, and an anxious mess. It was a no-expense paid trip through the sewers of hell. I wish I would have had a “tour guide” on this miserable journey.  Someone that would understand and validate my experience.  Someone who would support me through the really awful days. Someone to guide me on how to navigate a counter-intuitive family court system. Someone that had been through it before and made it out successfully.  I wish I knew then the hard lessons I learned along the way.

While I was navigating the devastating process and the trauma that comes along with it, I vowed to help those that came after me. Throughout those five years, I read every book, re-read my psychology textbooks, ingested every article, blog, listened to every Podcast, and YouTube video available on narcissistic personality disorder.  I spent 1000s of hours learning about narcissistic personality disorder and toxic individuals. So now, I am making good on my vow. It has become my mission to help those on a similar journey.  Wherever you are on your journey, let me help you find your smart path forward.

Sending you love, strength, and positive energy!

Esther