Introduction - The Hardest Thing Ever

Learning the greatest lessons from the hardest times.

The hardest times of our lives are filled with the greatest lessons; it’s up to us whether we ignore those lessons, learn from them, or, best of all, share what we’ve learned with others. Holding up your most painful and embarrassing moments in front of strangers and turning them into object lessons is not an easy thing. But it is, in this case, worthwhile.

Hope springs eternal, and so it is my hope to pass on some lessons for men (and women) on the risks and consequences of making poor relationship choices by way of examples from my own lived experience.

All too often I see young men entering adult life with poor templates on how relationships should work and how they should behave within their relationships, much as I did at the same age. Instead of demonstrating solid templates for relationships and behaviors, society has reinforced tolerance for the intolerable, investing time and money into bottomless pits for attention, and so many more examples, but it all serves to make this point:

We, as men, MUST know ourselves before we can truly know and understand another human.

But once we do, it makes the job of creating our own good templates, defending our boundaries and ourselves a much clearer task. To that end, I believe it’s useful to present relatable stories that illustrate some clear examples of just how badly a relationship can go if one fails to be vigilant in paying attention to concerns early on, fails to defend boundaries with a significant other, or gets duped into a relationship with the wrong person.

Where My Journey Began

I was 32 years old and three days into the honeymoon of my second marriage when I knew without a doubt that I’d made the mistake of my life.

To this day I can only approximate my new wife, Anne’s, words but, to paraphrase - “I’m just not sure I can love and stay with a man like you”.

WHAT???

I laid in bed with the sick, cold, sinking feeling of that knowledge, staring at the wall, my mind a jumble of static and intruding thoughts.

I’d only ever tried to be kind, supportive, and protective of Anne, but in that one sentence I knew in no uncertain terms that every weakness I’d ever divulged to her would be exhumed and held against me as an example of my lack of worthiness, and every mistake I ever made while with her would not only not be forgiven, but it would serve as leverage for her to use against me forever as emotional and psychological blackmail. And I could not have been more correct. What I didn’t know at the time was that my better qualities would be weaponized against me, too.

You see, I’d made the classic blunder of opening up to a covert narcissist despite my early misgivings and, while I didn’t have any notion of what that was at the time, I knew deep down that I had been duped and that one sentence was a major clue. [1] Every intimate secret I’d ever divulged, every misstep I’d shared, had been the supply that she was looking for. My gut reaction was a major indicator that I’d fallen prey to her love bombing and was now on a trajectory of pain. Little did I know.

You may well be asking now “Why did you not leave right then, Fritz?”

During the rather short [2] dating period, there had been a few occurrences that gave me pause. The single most memorable one, however, was in a moment of solitary reflection. I was sitting in the temple one day [3] in meditative prayer, and I was asking the question of whether I should marry Anne or not. Sitting there, silent, I was stunned to hear:

“It will be the hardest thing you ever do”.

And I thought “I can do that”, and went on to propose and get married. Incidentally, I took the name of this substack from that bit of revelation.

Despite the absolute gut check of my honeymoon, I stayed because, being raised in a Mormon home where duty and commitment were key facets of our upbringing, getting married was a huge commitment where a man (quite correctly) is supposed to do his duty as husband and father in protecting, caring, and providing for his family. Just jumping right back out was… inconceivable.

What’s more, my new wife had a beautiful, innocent, red-haired nine month old daughter from her previous marriage with whom I was completely enamored and who had very quickly attached to me and my son from my previous marriage. What man would abandon that?

And besides, I’m stubborn.

What followed was the hardest 16 years of my life. That’s not to say that there weren’t good times; there absolutely were. But underneath those good times there was the constant drumbeat of a covert narcissist [4] weaponizing against me the very struggle to be better, work harder, and do more to make her happy.

As rough as those years were and as dark as some of the coming subject matter is, my story is one of hope and redemption. Looking back I can see the roots of so many positive things in my life now. It was truly the refiner’s fire making me who I am today; still a flawed human, but with much greater clarity in who and what I am and the strength to stand by my boundaries and convictions. Most importantly, it has honed my capacity to love people where they are in their own journey.

I have much to be grateful for.

Going Forward

This introduction tells only the briefest story of how things got started. In the next chapter I’ll detail just how badly things ended and, as other chapters unfold, I’ll touch on clues that should have warned me off early in the dating process, places where I should have set hard and fast boundaries with absolute consequences, and examples of behavior that perhaps should have been indicators that things should end immediately. Through recollected events I’ll illustrate object lessons so that others may learn from my mistakes.

See you there.

-Fritz

1. Down the road I’ll do at least one chapter on “female covert narcissists”. They’re hard to spot unless you know the signs, and really good at hiding it until they feel safe. After that, the gloves come off.

2. Met in July, married in December. Talk about abbreviated.

3. I was raised Mormon but am more spiritual than religious these days.

4. I owe a sincere debt of gratitude to Lisa Leblanc. Her content on female covert narcissists was the key to understanding so many things that I didn’t have a name for. Give her a listen on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@LiseLeblanc