The Adventures of Dan and Tina
Narcissistic abuse and recovery explored and explained through a true first-person narrative.
Cognitive dissonance is a state of conflicted thoughts, ideas or realities. Or, a confused, frightening mental conflict between evidence of reality and contrary beliefs. It’s a difficult, even traumatizing phenomenon that I believe my subconscious mind was trying to prevent by avoiding information that would bring the dissonance about. Tina had been staying with me at My Mom’s house, with
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As I recall and write my stories (and there are so so many of them), I’m forced to confront the biggest burning question, “what the fuck is wrong with me?” There was no one holding a gun to my head forcing me to stay in the humiliating, abusive relationship I was in with Tina. There were many times when it
Read moreJuly 29th, 2015 Merlin’s Rest was long a favorite haunt of mine, especially in my heavy drinking days. It was a British Isles pub that featured a tremendous selection of whiskeys (and whiskys for those who enjoy a peaty scotch). I’d become acquainted with a number of regulars there over the years. One such was an east-African man named Abraham.
Read moreAfter Tina returned from her extended stay at the Nategate Hotel, she told me some things. First, after some tears and apologies for “being away from me” she told me that a big part of the reason she stayed those three nights with Nate was that she was binge drinking and didn’t want me to see it. She said further
Read moreAmber was going away for a weekend to participate in the nuptials of her roommates and Tina was tapped to stay at the house and look after her pets. I recalled some discussion of this ahead of time and had a fuzzy memory of Amber had telling me I could hang out over there to keep Tina company. When the
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| August 2018 | The Grand Finale Narcissistic Discard | The Irish Fair in St. Paul was an event I looked forward to annually. It was taking place on Harriet Island the weekend that Tina and I had our first and last session of couples’ counseling. I was planning to take Tina to it, but she was staying at her
Read moreJuly 3rd was the day before Tina was supposed to be Nate’s date to his brother’s wedding. I hadn’t realized when I was asked about her going that it would ruin Independence Day for us, but, Nate and Tina would have fewer opportunities to see each other with him in California, so I tried not to let that bother me.
Read more| Drugs and Baby Oil – Unraveling a Narcissist-Addict’s Strange Behavior | Tina’s next door neighbors were an interesting clan and it was odd how small degrees of separation linked the interpersonal web between myself, my friends, Tina and the neighbors. Shortly after I’d stopped drinking, I met my friend Donovan after work in Farmington. I think it was around
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| Social Media Quirks are Common with Narcissists | In the early days of our relationship, when Tina was claiming not to have a Facebook account (she did), she had no qualms about any photos I might want to post of her and I on my Facebook wall. I had quite a collection of our adventures together going. I didn’t
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Narcissist Triangulation Tricks and Signals I took Tina up to the Hexagon to shoot some pool. As had become our custom, she was drinking whiskey and I had a Red Bull. We were having a fine time. Pool was one of our main forms of recreation and I pretty much always enjoyed Tina’s company. After we’d shot a couple games,
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