A newspaper columnist last year wrote about the ever-increasing malady of narcism today. Her thesis was built on today’s over usage of social media, where posters, bloggers and twitterers display themselves fully, for attention, for all to read and see.

I wrote the columnist a letter, indicating her presumption about narcism was partially true but wildly superficial. I wrote that if you have never lived with a narcissist you certainly cannot understand one. It’s not about being self-congratulatory or staring into a mirroring body of water as Narcissus did. It’s not about vanity. It’s about something much different; like living with a heroin addict, living with a narcissist means you can no longer predict from day to day or even minute to minute.

If you fall in love with a narcissist, all will be fine for about six months. And then, suddenly, strange things start to creep up, of which baffle you senseless. After this initial honeymoon period, a narcissist begins to show his or her true self and soon thereafter the love you felt transforms into a daily struggle for survival and care-taking of what is essentially an adult trapped in a two-year-old’s body. All two-year-old’s are naturally narcissists. The world revolves around them and they expect it to continue to do so. But two-year-olds grow out of this phase and become actualized persons. Narcissists don’t.

My first witness of true narcissism happened before we were married and were out doing errands on a late Friday morning. Having experienced hypoglycemia all my life (my mother would often say, “Oh, be quiet, you’ll get something to eat soon”) I had a similar drain of blood from my face that only hypoglycemics understand, followed by the inevitable and debilitating mental confusion. I simply needed something to put in my stomach: some nuts, a candy bar, a glass of orange juice, anything from the local 7/11.

He dismissed my needs, echoing my mother’s commentary: “You’ll be fine. We’ll get something for you to eat in a while.” And then the suggestion clothed as an admonishment: “You know, you really should carry with you something to eat.”

After three hours of more errands, we finally landed at a restaurant about 2 p.m. (his family’s restaurant where he could eat for free) where I engulfed a Monte Cristo sandwich. At this point, I was so sick, I was unable to speak; to listen; to hear or to communicate.

Dismissal of one’s needs is the key component of the narcissistic personality. I never forgot the brain fog I experienced that day due to low blood sugar and that which was not necessarily related to hypoglycemia: It was my first experience of his narcissism and there would be countless examples more for the next eight years.

A narcissist slowly chips away at your sense of self: devaluing and dismissing you followed by debilitating upsets over nothing much at all. Like trap doors, you never see these hairpin curves or minefields coming.

Once he invited friends to our home for a Christmas dinner. They were to arrive at 5 p.m. I left work at 3 p.m. to go home to start dinner preparations. But on this particular day there was a “One Day Only” sale for something he really thought we needed.

“I have to start dinner,” I said. “You go on without me and purchase it.”

But he was unable. Unable, he said, to make a decision on this very minor and inexpensive item. He always needed me to hold his hand for any purchase (and then when some of his purchases turned out to be scams, as they often would, he needed me to go back and fix, demand a refund, or convince whomever we wanted out of the deal). My narcissist also had a serious money problem, in that he saved like a mad-man but was incapable of spending any amount of money, no matter how little, on anything, without considerable evaluation and debate. Then he would turn around and throw thousands of dollars out the window on worthless schemes.

“I need you with me,” he implored. “You must come with me.”

This is what dealing with a two-year-old is like.

Exasperated, I went with him, made the simple purchase and arrived back home about 30 minutes before our guests arrived. Later I was scolded for not having dinner prepared and not being available for conversation with his friends. I overhead his friend say,  “You would think she could have at least set the table for us!” And further, after dinner when I finally had a chance to sit down from all this dinner/narcissistic commotion, he refused to fetch firewood out of the garage to rebuild a fire in the living room, saying, “Oh, our guest isn’t that cold, but if you want, you can go get it.”

Three day upsets would occur with my narcissist if I merely signed up my children for soccer. His thinking: driving my sons to soccer practice and games each week took time away from him. Three day upsets would occur if you wanted to sit within eye range of your 10-year-old son (who really can’t swim very well at all) bodysurfing at the beach. (You see, my narcissist wanted to sit over THERE, he pointed 50 yards away.) Three day upsets would begin if you requested to wait until a Cross Country match of your son’s was over, rather than walking rudely through the course of the lingering finishers. Three days. And when you started planning a trip to Paris for your family, his response was, “I will go anywhere IN THE WORLD, but Paris.”

How do you explain this? You cannot.

The narcissist will tell you, “Just tell me what you need.” This is a trick, surely, as whatever request you make goes unanswered. If you do tell a narcissist what you want, it is merely a road map of which they now possess, a key to making sure you will get nothing that you need or want. Want to visit South Bend, Indiana to see your football team take on the Fighting Irish for your birthday? Instead, you’ll end up in Cleveland, Ohio.

Why stay? By that time you’ve married and made a commitment and you truly believe one day you’re going crack this narcism “Great Santini” thing. You won’t.

Narcissists also have a warped sense of time. They cannot quantify it. If you stop and talk to a colleague for a minute or two at an event, they will claim 20 minutes have passed where you have left them, abandoned them, for some other. And then when an argument ensues and you provide facts to support your argument, they will tell you “You cannot convince me of anything.” No matter how right you are.

They have selective memory and often rewrite their histories, as I have recently discovered. My narcissist has lived one lie after another his entire life.

A narcissist thinks nothing of doing an illegal u-turn in the middle of a street in order to flag down a police officer engaged in a traffic citation to interrupt that police officer to ask for directions. A narcissist thinks nothing at all of answering a cell phone and chatting it up while on the alter of church during mass. They also think nothing of lying or lying by omission. All narcissists believe they are above the law. Rules and prescriptions are only for others. Everything you have becomes their’s and nothing of their’s becomes yours; they make sure of that.

Traveling with a narcissist is also interesting. On more occasions that I count, my narcissist and my children would walk 20 to 30 yards ahead of me wherever we were, Rome, New York, Boston, Los Angeles. He had engulfed my children with his charm (narcissists are very charming, indeed) and you, the not-so-enamored-anymore, don’t really make for good company. You see, the narcissist sticks closely to where he can get supply. They are mere parasites in need of puffing up and possess a tremendous ability to cry, dry tears, on demand.

When you express concerns or upset with a narcissist, they listen quietly and then respond with, “Is there anything else?” And then they leave to go sun bathe for a couple of hours.

The day I stopped loving my narcissist was after I had committed a major, political blunder in a very public forum with my business. I was a moderator at a political debate for the Los Angeles City Council. One of the candidates was a friend of mine and in an attempt to be completely impartial, I went the opposite direction and was harder on my friend (and easier on his opponents) than I had intended.

After the debate concluded and I stepped down from the stage, a line of people with complaints awaited me. Lots of people. I was a little shell shocked fielding each and every spoken displeasure of theirs’. As I tried to leave the building, more people stopped me with unhappy commentary.

We were finally near the parking lot when I remembered I had left my notes back on the stage on a podium. By this time, my narcissist was involved in a conversation with one of the attendees on another matter. Not wanting to interrupt their conversation, I gently patted his shoulder saying, “I’ll be right back. I left something in the auditorium.” Of course, while doubling back to retrieve my notes, more attendees tried to stop and talk to me with their pot shots. At this point, I just wanted out, so I hurried along and retrieved my notes. With tears starting to well in my eyes, I stopped momentarily to compose myself in the ladies room.

I walked back to where I had left the narcissist. He was enraged. “You left me! You left me!” he shouted. “I’ve been standing here for 20 minutes!” (It was always 20 minutes.)

As I was clearly crying now, my only goal was to shuttle us both quickly to my car. On our way home, he admonished me for how rude I had been to him.

“Did you not see what just happened to me back there?” I said. “Did you not see?”

“I don’t care what happened to you,” he said. “You left me alone and standing there.”

That was it. I knew at that moment, this narcissist, as all narcissists, had no ability to empathize.  I was but a mere prop in his life, only there to be used at his pleasure and to take care of his needs. I was his source to bleed.

And he blamed me for everything. Every upset that ever happened, because I had the health to not be eaten alive by him and fought back.

I have since pried my narcissist from me. I saw him recently. Without a steady source, like an addict, he now seems half his size, his clothes hanging loosing from his waist and shoulders. His face was ashen and gray even through his dark, California tan.

Me, I am back to normal, angry at myself for putting up with this as long as I did. But narcissists are smart in that way. They always seem to find those, like me, who are compassionate and caring and nurturers: all wonderful traits on the surface but vulnerable character faults for the narcissist.

I can see a narcissist a mile away now. Once you know, you just know.