Third Time Was Not A Charm: Surviving Narcissistic Abuse

By Teddy Bowers

About the Book
Abuse has no gender. Teddy Bowers learned this the hard way after his affair with and subsequent marriage to a covert narcissist with narcissistic personality disorder.
From finding the courage to stand up to his abuser to the struggles of the ensuing divorce, Teddy uncovered the realities of narcissism and narcissistic abuse. He now shares his tale to serve as an advocate and ally to other victims and to bring awareness to the topic.
This true story of one man’s life and firsthand experience being a survivor of narcissistic abuse shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Help and healing are possible.

About the Author
Author Teddy Bowers is an avid outdoorsman who enjoys camping, hiking, and fitness training. His favorite outdoor sport, however, is off-roading in his Jeep, or doing anything else Jeep or 4x4 related.
Bowers is a fan of other sports, as well, including NASCAR and football at both the college and national levels.
Often referred to as a social butterfly, Bowers genuinely loves meeting new people, and he brings a fun, carefree attitude wherever he goes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Aug 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889257653

Book preview

Disclaimer

This book is a memoir. It represents the author’s recollections and experiences over time. Names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been recreated. I am not a licensed therapist or a medical professional. All claims on Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder have been based on my own research, which has been cited.

Dedication

This book is dedicated first and foremost to my children. Thank you for always believing in me, even though I have made many mistakes in my life. I love you both, and I am so very proud of the both of you. The two of you have kept me going through the roughest times of my adult life.

To my parents: Both of you gave me a foundation for life. You showed me what love and what a traditional marriage looks like. I love you both.

To my sister: Thank you for never giving up on me. We have had our rough times, but what means the most to me is when you recently told me, I am so happy to have my brother back. I am so grateful for our close relationship that we now enjoy. I will never let go of you again.

To my four best friends: You know who you are. You have been my rock. You have always been there for me, giving me your different perspectives on my life and very valued advice. I love you all. You are my brothers.

A special shout out and thank you to Tammy. With your cruelty, vindictiveness, and dishonesty towards me during our divorce, you unknowingly made me take a hard look at myself. You forced me to recognize my cycle of codependency, which helped me understand how to move forward, heal, and be myself again. You also forced me to research and study a topic I knew nothing about, Narcissism and Narcissistic Abuse. Your horrible and cruel behavior towards me and manipulation made this book possible. Thank you.

Foreword

This book is about my life, my three marriages, surviving narcissistic abuse at the hands of my last ex-wife, and what Narcissism and Narcissistic Abuse is. This book represents my path to self-discovery. In this book, I will be as detailed as I can and explain what I have learned. I will be honest and raw. You will read about my last marriage and subsequent divorce with Tammy, and many of the things you will read will be very hard to believe. These are the facts and recollections from my memory as I have lived through them. I have absolutely no reason to embellish or lie about my experiences with her. One thing is for sure, there have been some hard lessons. I have recently realized that without pain, loss, and heartache, there is no growth. As I continue to grow, my story does not end here. I want to thank everyone who has put up with me and my life’s journey so far. One thing that I can say about myself is I have the ability to re-connect and maintain friendships with people after making mistakes. I know how to sincerely apologize and gain people back as friends. I have changed the names in my story for privacy issues.

A Little About Me

I have always been very outgoing and very social, and some would say that I talk too much. I definitely wear my heart on my sleeve. If you know me well, you will know when I am happy, sad, angry, or stressed out. I am a good man. I have a kind and generous heart. I will give to others before I give to myself. I am an open book. This does make me very likable, but it has its detriments. I often share too much about my personal life with everyone. I realize that I need to learn how to set boundaries. Being so open and kind definitely has its advantages. I can openly speak to anyone and start up a conversation with them. They see me as very likable and open. However, being this way opens me up to bad people who see me as a person they can take advantage of. I am an empath. I am prey to a certain group of people.

I am a fun person, and I love to dance. I love to sing in the car, even though I cannot hold a tune. I love sports. My two favorite sports are football and Nascar. I love music and have a passion for it. For over twenty years, I have owned a side business as a professional deejay. I especially love deejaying weddings. It gives me great joy to see a bride and groom on their big day. It is so fulfilling to be a part of it. I worked as a Regional Sales Representative for an industrial woodworking tooling company; I now work as a Territory Manager for a very large power tool accessory company. Being in outside sales is my thing, my specialty. It allows me to talk to people, build relationships with them, and be successful in selling my product to them.

On the whole, I am a good person. I try to do my best in life, but like anyone, I make mistakes. In the past thirty years or so I have made some big mistakes. I am fifty years old now, and I am finally breaking my cycle of codependency and constantly seeking the approval of women. I have recognized my problem. I have stopped it. I am now moving forward to not repeat my cycle and to heal from my current pain, which was my most recent divorce from a Covert Narcissist.

Chapter One

Introduction

This book is first and foremost about my affair with Tammy, and my subsequent marriage, separation, and divorce from her. My affair with Tammy began while being a member of the Mormon Church, four years after my second wife, Paula, and I moved to the city where Tammy lived and attended church. During these four years, Paula, myself, Jim, and Tammy were all best friends. Having an affair with anyone was definitely out of character for me. I had never done it before, and I certainly have not done it since, and I never will. Crossing that moral line for me was devastating to many people, especially two separate family units: Paula and I’s family, and Jim and Tammy’s family. I saw firsthand the damage and devastation that having an affair causes not only the people directly involved, but close friends and family as well.

I was married to Tammy for almost twelve years, and I helped raise her two children as my stepchildren. They had their father Jim in their lives as well. I will tell you in great detail the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned. I will take you through my journey of being married to a Covert Narcissist and what the psychological abuse entails. You will learn about Narcissism, Narcissistic Abuse, and NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), and my healing journey from this. I put myself out there to raise awareness to the fact that men suffer from this type of abuse as well at the hands of their female narcissist. Most men are afraid to come out and admit that they were abused by their spouse or significant other, but it happens more than you think. I wish to be an advocate for all men who are suffering from this type of abuse, whether they are still in their narcissistic relationship and do not know how to get out, or maybe they recently got out of their narcissistic relationship and do not know how to move on and heal from this abuse. You are not alone, and abuse has no gender. I have been there, and I am coming out on the other side, finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I will give examples of Tammy’s abuse and offer advice to someone who may be in a similar situation to the one I found myself in. Make no mistake about it, I played a big role in this as well, allowing myself to have the affair with Tammy in the first place, and allowing her to control me, manipulate me, and emasculate me.

This book is also about my first two marriages, how I continued the cycle of always feeling the need to please women and gain their acceptance, and how I stopped this cycle from within myself. Throughout this book, you will get to know me a little better, and what type of man I have become since the divorce with Tammy.

Chapter Two

My Upbringing

I was born in the Midwest to very loving parents. When I was nine months old, I contracted bacterial meningitis and became very ill. As my mom put it, I came very close to death. If it was not for my mother’s due diligence, I would not have made it. She noticed one morning that I was crying, had a fever, and was not acting normal. My mom knew that something was wrong; I just wasn’t right. I was generally a very happy baby and did not cry too often, so this was out of the ordinary. My mom took me to my normal family doctor on Monday. He gave me oral antibiotics and told her I would be fine.

On Wednesday, after no improvement, my mom took me back to the doctor, insisting that something was seriously wrong with me. The doctor then gave me an antibiotic shot as well as an oral antibiotic prescription. He told my mom if there was no change or if I was not getting any better to contact him immediately. My mom noticed that he checked the soft spot on my head, which was even, and my mom didn’t think anything of it. My soft spot was still soft, but not as concave as it should have been.

Two nights later, as my condition worsened, I cried all night long. My mom held me throughout the night, trying to console and comfort me. Early the next morning, I suddenly stopped crying, and I was visibly different. As my mother described this to me, she said I was listless. She fed me, and I immediately threw up. Both my mom and dad knew something was seriously wrong. They called our doctor, who had seen me earlier in the week. He happened to be at the hospital making his rounds; he told my mom to bring me there immediately. Our family doctor met my mom and dad in the emergency room as they arrived. After checking me over, he called in a neurologist to see me. The neurologists told my parents I needed to have a spinal tap. My mom explained to me they could hear me wailing while getting this procedure done in a nearby room. This horrified both of them. Once the doctor looked over the results of the spinal tap, he informed my parents that I had contracted bacterial meningitis, indicated by the color of the fluid on my spine. This was a Friday morning, and the neurologists told my parents I had a 50/50 chance of survival over the weekend.

I was immediately taken to the pediatric unit, right next to the nurse’s desk, so they could constantly watch me. At times, my fever spiked so high that they had to pack me in ice. My legs were tied down, and I was given heavy doses of antibiotics. My parents were not allowed to hold me at all for the entire weekend. My fever finally broke on the next Monday or Tuesday, but I still had to stay in the hospital for a few more days so they could continue to monitor me. The neurologist was not sure what the lasting effect would be on me after having this condition. Ultimately as I grew up, I developed a stuttering problem, which was a result of bacterial meningitis. As I returned home, I needed to relearn how to walk and talk again, getting back to the point where I was before this illness occurred. After my final checkup with the neurologist, he told both of my parents he was very pleased with my recovery, and I would grow to be at least 6’2" in height and have size 12 shoe. He was pretty much dead on.

In recent discussions with my mother, we both believe this is where my codependency began. My mother explained to me that from a very young age, maybe around three to six years old, she tried to get me to socialize with other children. She told me they even put me in daycare, although this was not needed at the time, just to try to get me to be around other children my age. I would not have any part of this, she further explained. Wherever we went in public, I would wrap my arms around my mother’s leg, hide my face behind her, and refuse to let go.

At the age of ten, my father got a very good job opportunity out west, and we made the long drive across the country for a new future as a family. I remember being traumatized at a very young age, leaving all of my family, cousins, and school friends behind. I cried off and on the entire drive. My mother told me I had finally cheered up once we had arrived, until we pulled up to our first home, which was a temporary rental. As we drove up, the very first thing I noticed was the house was pink! I remember asking my parents, That’s not our house, is it? When they said it was, I started crying all over again.

In recent conversations with my older sister, she told me she remembers me taking this move a lot harder than she did. Yes, she was not happy about leaving all her friends and family behind, but she told me she remembers at this point our mother had to work full-time, no longer being able to be the stay-at-home mother we had grown so accustomed to. She told me, You have to remember that in a smaller city in the Midwest, we had Mom full-time, we rode the bus to school, and we had our family and friends around us. We now suddenly found ourselves walking to school across dirt parking lots and traffic in a desert city we knew nothing about. My mother told me at this point she did drive us to and from school, but the strange new desert city, compared to our roots in the Midwest, was definitely a shocking experience to us both.

After about five months in our new rental home, we found our permanent home in a smaller town nearby. This home was what I consider to be the home I grew up in. I did not make many friends in the city; however, I do remember that our new town had a much more down-to earth-feel to it. Immediately upon moving into our new home, my dad told me to go outside and look under a top brick on our retaining wall to the neighbor’s house. The mortar on this brick had become loose and eroded away. As I looked under this brick, there was a white envelope. I opened it, and there was an invitation to join the Secret Club. This was from the neighborhood boys, who wanted to make friends with me. I quickly made friends with these neighborhood boys, and my childhood seemed happy.

I finished elementary school, junior high, and high school in this home. I made tons of friends and played football from the sixth grade to my second year of college football at a local community college. We had a large backyard pool, and my sister and I would have friends over to swim and make great memories. Looking back, I am grateful to my parents for making this move out west.

My parents have been together for fifty-eight years, married for fifty-three years. They were high school sweethearts, and neither of them had ever been with anyone else. I love and respect them so much for this loyalty to one another.

Although both of my parents were heavily involved in both my sister’s and I’s activities and sports, there are some things I wish I had been taught. For instance, my father would sit at the kitchen table each and every week paying the household bills. I remember asking him a few times if I could watch him do this, and I also asked him how much money he earned. He would always tell me, no, that it was none of my business. I remember at the age of nineteen, when I had a job and got my first checkbook, I owed my father some money. He told me to write him a check to repay him, which I did. When I handed the check to him, he snapped at me and got upset and said, What is this? You cannot write ‘Dad’ on the payment line! I remember snapping back at him and saying, Well, how would I know, Dad! You never taught me how to write a check!

My mother was a hard worker and loved her family dearly. However (and this is due to her upbringing), whenever there were problems or arguments between her and my father, or there were problems in general, my mother would sweep them under the rug, so to speak, and hide the problems going on with them from us kids. I do not think I ever really learned how to be open and honest with my emotions and feelings up until now, at the age of fifty. These bad habits would most certainly not benefit me later in life.

Overall, my childhood was happy, and I have nothing major to complain about.

Chapter Three

Young Love

I met Lucy over thirty-two years ago. I was nineteen at the time and still living with my parents. I was playing college football and was working part time at a bar/nightclub as a bouncer/security guard. Lucy was in town from out of state, visiting her brother and his family. After midnight, when my shift was over, I was allowed to hang out inside the nightclub. Lucy was with a friend, and I asked to join her at her table. We hung out, and I was very attracted to her. She was twenty-three, if I recall, and when the night was over, we exchanged phone numbers.

Over the next several months, we kept a long-distance relationship, and in the fall of 1990, I was in a car accident just before my second year of football at the local Junior College. I hurt my back pretty badly—not requiring surgery, but my football days were over. Lucy and I were in a long-distance relationship, and I do not recall who asked who, but I wanted to make the move out of state to be with her. She and her mother were living in her father’s house, which was paid for. Her father lived out of state, as her mom and dad had been divorced for many years. I was adamant about moving. I had a talk with my parents, and they tried to talk me out of leaving. I wouldn’t listen. I was nineteen, full of piss and vinegar, and I thought I knew it all. My parents asked me, they pleaded with me, to at least finish my semester at school. I still wouldn’t listen. I was hellbent on making this move. One of the things that enticed me to move was the fact that at the time, Lucy was working as a personal assistant to a famous actor who starred on a very popular TV sitcom. I was told he might be able to get me a job working as one of the crew members on the show.

In late December—December 30th, 1990, to be exact—I packed my truck and headed out of state. Lucy’s house was a small, two-bedroom home in the heart of the valley. I remember one of the first meals that Lucy cooked for me were her homemade chicken enchiladas. They were so good. We lived together, from 1990–1993. As I recall, things were good; we both seemed happy. The job on the TV show did not pan out as planned, so I found a job at a telemarketing company selling computer diagnostic hardware and software to computer stores around the country. This was my first true sales job, and I excelled at it. After a couple of years working there, things went south with the owners, and I found myself unemployed for a short time.

We got married in June of 1993. It was a pretty large, traditional wedding, as wedding standards go. Lucy had the beautiful white dress; I was in the rented tuxedo. We had the flowers, the photo album, and the deejay. All my family from back east made the trip to be at our wedding, and all of Lucy’s family and friends were there as well. It was a beautiful wedding, and I have no regrets.

Shortly after we wed, her mother moved into her own apartment to give us our space. This was probably the happiest year of our marriage that I can remember. In January of 1994, there was a big earthquake that hit about four miles from our home. It was really bad and cut off the northern freeway from where Lucy’s mother lived and the valley where she had to travel to and from each day for work. This added hours onto her daily commute. A couple months later, her mother moved back in with us. In my opinion, this definitely put a strain on our marriage. However, looking back at the age I am now, in retrospect, I was probably too young to deal with this and I made many mistakes. I was not mature enough to handle it.

Lucy’s brother was a professional house painter, and he hired me to be a painter and work on his job sites for the summer. This was a lot of fun, and I am still grateful for her brother helping me find employment. To this day, because of her brother’s expertise in house painting and repair, I am an excellent house painter. I can cut lines without tape!

I then got a job at the construction company that Lucy worked at, but the pay was very low, and the working conditions were not good. However, I did learn some valuable trade skills. As things in the construction field were getting very slow, I was laid off, and once again, I found myself unemployed. Her mother worked as a nanny for a wonderful family. The mother of this family worked at a local saw shop that sold woodworking cutting tools and did re-sharpening. They needed a counter salesman, and I needed a job. I knew nothing about sawblades or cutting tools of any kind, but she got me an interview, knowing that I had excelled in sales. Needless to say, I got the job, and this is the industry I am still in today.

As our marriage went on, the tension between Lucy and I began to grow. I was not prepared to be a good husband and did not pay enough attention to Lucy’s needs. I focused more on my interests, such as watching sports on TV, and neglected her. Lucy tried communicating this to me the best she knew how, but I was not listening. Don’t get me wrong, Lucy was not perfect, as no one is, but I believe she tried to make our marriage work much more than I did.

In 1997, our beautiful daughter Hannah was born. For a moment, I was much happier in my marriage to Lucy now that we had a newborn. Unfortunately, it did not last long, as I began to get back into my old ways of neglecting Lucy’s needs. I was just not on the same page as her in our marriage. I was still not open with Lucy with my emotions, and I was more concerned with my own interests than with being a good husband.

Although there were many mistakes on my part, the big one came when AOL Chat and the Internet became available to the whole world. I spent many nights chatting with people I did not know, both male and female. Nothing inappropriate happened in the beginning, until one weekend when Lucy took Hannah out of town to visit family. I am embarrassed to say I used Lucy’s online profile picture to pose as her in a chatroom to attract people to me. I never met anyone in person from the Internet, but the conversations were inappropriate nonetheless. Lucy found out and was obviously devastated and pissed off at me for doing this. Soon after this event, we separated, in 1998. I moved into an apartment near my job, and we eventually divorced. Looking back on my marriage to Lucy, I think the bottom line was that I was not ready to be a husband. I was too young and way too immature. The divorce was not so smooth in the beginning; there was a lot of arguing over the phone over silly things. We both had our separate attorneys, and after almost a year of bickering back and forth, we both came to the conclusion that our attorneys were the ones mainly responsible for dragging out the inevitable, so as to make as much money as possible off of us. I agreed to fire my attorney, and we used Lucy’s attorney to draft up the final agreement. Our divorce was final in late 1999.

Chapter Four

Paula and The Mormon Church

I met Paula online on AOL Chat. I was working at the local saw shop at the time, and my former boss and friend had called me up one evening after work and asked if I could come over to his house to help him figure out this new AOL chat feature. I agreed, and when I jumped onto his computer, I started showing him around a bit. I explained to him that AOL Chat was a new feature where you could directly chat with friends and family and meet new people. This was the late 90s, and it was an exciting time for this. I went into a chatroom and saw there were one or two people there besides me. Now back in those days, when you introduced yourself to a new person online, the first thing everyone did was type M or F, which meant you were asking the person if they were male or female. Once they answered, the next question that always followed was their age. Paula responded, and then she told me she was nineteen. I was twenty-seven at the time, but I told her I was only twenty-five. My boss seemed to get a kick out of that, and then he left the room for a bit.

Paula and I continued our online conversation for about two hours, getting to know each other. My boss told me it was getting late, and I needed to go, as we both had work the next day. Afraid of losing contact with Paula, I asked her if I could give her my phone number. She replied with, Yes! Can I call in about 30 minutes? I was super excited. My boss, however, was skeptical. He kept joking with me that she was never going to call me, and that this could be a man! I rushed home, and as soon as I walked into my apartment, the phone rang! A rush of excitement came over me, and I answered it with an enthusiastic Hello! I then heard my boss’s voice laughing, saying it again, She is never going to call you! Haha…I quickly hung up on him after joking around a bit; then Paula called. We spoke on the phone for three more hours. The next day, without ever seeing each other in person, she made the fourty-five-minute drive to meet me at my apartment. I then drove her to the beach, and we had our first date. It was just wonderful.

At this time in her young life, Paula was in her rebellious stage. We drank together, partied together, and had wonderful times just being alone. I knew she grew up Mormon and was from a strict Mormon family (I was raised Catholic.) She told me she believed in the church, but at this time, she was not active in the church. I knew very little about the Mormon church. About a year into our courtship, things had gotten pretty serious between us, and Paula had expressed an interest in going back to attending church and asked if I wanted to join her. I asked her if I could think about it. A few weeks later, we were discussing marriage, and she basically gave me an ultimatum. Paula told me that whoever she married, it was going to happen in the Mormon Temple, and she wanted it to be me, but I would have to be baptized Mormon. At this point, I was in love with her, and yet again, I did not think on my own. I was seeking Paula’s approval, and I agreed to start attending church.

In December of 1999, I was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon. I had fulfilled every requirement to be baptized. No alcohol, no tobacco, no sexual intercourse from now on until marriage in the Temple. That was a tough year. On January 6th, 2001, Paula and I were married and sealed in the Mormon Temple, and at this point in my life, I was happy. My family, being die-hard Catholics, were supportive and happy for me, but I know deep down they were disappointed that I switched religions. They were also very upset due to the fact that they could not be present in the Temple to watch Paula and I get married. Only worthy members of the Mormon church can enter the Temple. We had a secondary civil ceremony just before our reception, which is common to do for families that cannot enter the Temple. From 2001–2005, we lived close to my daughter Hannah, who was living with her mother Lucy, and her stepfather.

Paula became pregnant quickly after we got married. It was a normal pregnancy up until about the six-month mark. We were both so excited, and we knew that we were having a baby girl. At or near the six-month period in her pregnancy, I was at work, about forty-five minutes away from our home. We lived very close to Paula’s place