Narcissistic Abuse and Financial Abuse
Today I want to talk to you about narcissistic financial abuse and the many misunderstandings about financial abuse. People who have been abused by a narcissist are victims and they are targets they were sought out of a crowd and almost that they had to pass tests with a narcissist to see if they were going to play the game that the narcissist was going to pull on them and so not all narcissist abuse can result in financial abuse it’s really about the victim and whether or not they have money that the narcissist wants her assets and whether the victim is willing to trust this person and as with any type of abuse financial abuse happens very subtly it’s not like boom they have stolen your money it’s something that progresses over time and — it could be so stealth at first you don’t even know it’s happening and a common misconception is that victims stupidly, well you shouldn’t have given him any money you shouldn’t have done that why did you allow him to do that.
That’s the victim blame that we’re so used to people that don’t understand how this could happen just assume that we have handed someone our bank account and trusted them with our life but they were preyed upon and the wolf in sheep’s clothing came along they’re smooth talkers and they’re charming they’re a chameleon so they change for you to be what you want and for someone else they’re going to be something completely different and –they give you empty promises of future. Before they financially abuse you, they have convinced you that you are their soul mate and you trust them and in order to trust them you start to share and mingle your finances and it can be as simple as they invite you to lunch and then they don’t have any money instead of playing like you let’s split the bill I don’t have a lot before we get there he could just say you know arrive and I have no money.
I’m going to say he a lot, but it could be a he or she they can drop subtle hints about something that they want but they don’t have enough money and of course there’s always excuses as to why they don’t have any money. They’re testing you they’re testing you whether you’ll go buy them that new toy or whatever they were looking for they needed their testing you, they’re testing your love and so to prove your love, you end up you know, giving it to them because you want to out of your heart you’re in love with this person as your soul mate it makes sense. But over time it evolves into something else and that subtle I don’t have the money for lunch turns into having them co-sign for a car or even buying the car for them. They will also get some not all of them will ask you to open a separate bank account something that they can use to hide money from their acts for me my ex narcissist had me open an account twice.
The first time I opened it of course he conned me into it and I wasn’t comfortable with this but the sob stories of the wife and wanting to have money and you know freedom. Yet it had to be in my name and then I had to give him the debit card and if you think about that it’s dangerous, right? He could have run up bills and that’s what a lot of other the victims of financial abuse have is they get a hold of your social security number and they were ring up all these bills and you’re liable for it for me opening that checking account when my friends found out that I had done that, one friend in particular she went ballistic and she made me go and cancel it marched down to the bank and close that bank account out. Get a money order and hand to him but I didn’t discuss it with him. I reacted to her reaction and I went and I closed it when he found out that I closed it he went ape shit, ape shit crazy I ruined his life this was the secret to do how important you know how important my children are, you’re hurting my children by doing this and he yelled at me, he yelled at me that me into opening another account for him and giving him the debit card I was fooled twice and it doesn’t really feel good.
They’re masters at manipulation so it’s not your fault if this has happened because you’re just a victim that has been unlucky enough to fall prey. But when you’re being financially abused it triggers fear and a wondering of how will I take care of myself and many times the reason that people go back to their abuser is for financial reasons they want to move out they want to get away they want to take their children but they’re financially bound with this person and they don’t see any way of getting out. Victims often feel shame and the fact that they’ve been fooled, it’s embarrassing you so you just don’t want people to know that and therefore you don’t get the help that you need and you suffer alone. Anxiety. Anxiety is a big one because now you’ve got to fix your credit and you just put in your mind, Ok, I won’t be able to get a house now or I can’t do this or maybe I can’t provide for my children it can go so deep and victims are paralyzed by fear they don’t know what to do and they get so scared that they just freeze up.
It’s very common one thing that they can do is to guilt you into prove your devotion that if you loved me then you would do this for me and it really it makes you feel bad because you love this person and when they start to talk like that you start to question yourself and their goal is to take financial control of you, another place I mean they’ve got control here, they’ve got control there and now they are predators they are con men and women and they will steal your life savings and leave you in ruins. Other things that they can do are forbidding the victim to work or sabotaging their job very often I hear stories of the narcissists going into their place of employment and creating a ruckus and making it hard for you to keep your job or have you lose your job right there. If someone is controlling the way your money is spent then you’re being abused if you’re give no allowance and not allowed to access your own money then you’re being abused. If they make banking decisions if you’re married to them and they make banking decisions without even talking to you then you’re being abused.
Some victims are forced to write bad checks which ruins their credit but it’s almost, it is an abuser and they can run up large amount of debt and if they refuse to work, that’s a really big one lots of people keep telling me that you know when they met their narcissist they had a good job seemingly at least and they decided they weren’t going to work anymore and therefore you became the sole provider for your family and they are going to just continue to take that money from you. They ruin your credit score and they can file false insurance claims this is a big one. They are con artists and they will scam you. If you’ve been married to a narcissist and you’re divorcing them they could definitely refuse to pay support, refuse to pay child support and they also like to hide assets and not disclose everything about themselves when I was getting a divorce from two ex you had to fill out this financial paper of your expenses and he had two thousand dollars a month for magazines, seriously.
That is just to show that you know hopefully the judge will realize that nobody could read two thousand dollars’ worth of magazines a month but they’re going to try everything they can to get more on their side than on your side. So, you know when you’re filling out those financial documents really look theirs over and I ended up having to go through all of our bills and all of our credit cards for the last year or two to write down how many magazine subscriptions? Well, it was like $200 in a year so I don’t know. I’ve got some ideas here to talk to you about how I was financially abused and I didn’t even realize how I was financially abused but these are common to other people and I’m just going to share them with you when I was at the height of my career working back in Connecticut he had me quit my job and he moved me across the country. Now this is also isolation, right? Isolation from my family, my friends and here goes my career right. So, he’s moved me two thousand miles away from anything that I know and because he was the knight in shining armor and we had a lot less expenses when we moved here and he had a good job.
He didn’t want me to work and well that seemed like a nice thing it didn’t hold me down. I couldn’t not work I have so much to give and so much to share that I started my own business but he belittled it, him and his family belittled it and thought that you know it’s so nice that she’s got her own little business but they treated me as though it was a hobby and that’s financially abusing me not enabling me or encouraging me to be the person that I am today. By having someone put you down, it belittles and makes you unable to be yourself unable to do what you know you can do you need your person, your other person to be your biggest supporter. I was financially dependent on him and when they pulled it out from under me and then sent me to do some career counselor thing during the divorce proved that I can make what I made when I was back in Connecticut. That was just financially abusing me. From the moment, I met my second husband I was told as well as he, not to save for retirement and not to save for my son’s college that was coming up.
His family was very wealthy and they told us to enjoy our money and not worry about it because they had plenty of money and they were going to pay for my child to go to school and my husband was going to inherit millions when his parents died so don’t save. I don’t know why I listened because in the end he was gone and I had no money saved for college and I had no money saved for retirement so that was financially abusing me I should have been able to have the right to do it I should have done it on the side I should have just snuck it and I would have been in a much better place but I believed that I was married forever and believed I was going to be there and it wasn’t good. Something that happened to me was that they bought me my ex in-laws and ex-husband. I wanted nothing from their family and I always said that I always meant it I didn’t think that their money was our money and I thought it was kind of like wimpy of him to believe that he should rely on his parent’s money or wait till they die to get money that’s just crazy. They would take us on extravagant crazy hundred thousand dollar vacations and I didn’t like going.
It was an uncomfortable feeling to be taking their money and you asked me why I am putting this part in about financially abused when they were buying me a fancy vacation, was that they were trying to buy me there were conditions there were things that I had to do in order to be rewarded for this vacation and part of it was in the false self that they presented to a segment of their family. I had to pretend that they were poor I had to lie about the fact that I’d been on this vacation I had to not post anything on Facebook that relatives could find and one time I did post something and I was like shattered that the family at a meeting called me in and like yelled and screamed at me that I had ruined their life because I made a post at an airport in Buenos Aires. Really? I ruined their life? Well, they were living in this fake life, this — but pretend world that you know — It’s not my job to hide it you’re taking me somewhere, I’m going to be honest but when you live with people in their life that are liars and you get trapped into this lie you know it’s crazy making and making me lie for them was abuse.
They promised my son’s future and his education and they pulled it out from under us that’s abuse. His parents always kept money in like three different countries that I know of. I’m sure there were more but they would sneak into the country and they would invest all the money out of Swiss bank accounts and strap it to their selves but then go through first class because you know they’re not the first class people so they would take all this money out and I remember one time they made me carry $40,000 cash and I was a wreck and another thing that I can remember that they made me do one time on this special vacation was I think now it was a test and I was horrified and apparently I didn’t pass the test because what they were doing was a simple thing when you’re going in between South American countries or pretty much any country, right? What’s the rule don’t bring any food in don’t bring fruits and vegetables and meat in, right? That you’re not supposed to have that stuff it’s like customs 101 and the family planted all the food, this fruit and grapes and stupid stuff.
Why am I talking about this financially I’m on a tangent sorry but it’s about how they test you and how they tested me and what they were doing was seeing how I was when I got caught and the most horrifying thing to me was, I mean in some of these countries there are armed guards I’m talking machine guns over their shoulder at the airport they’re not little T.S.A. people they are serious people that make sure that you’re paying attention to their laws and I got pulled out and I got in trouble and I got pulled into another room and interrogated. And it was scary. Yeah, and they all walked away they walked away got their luggage and got into the limo waiting for us on the other side. Alright, I’m going to talk about putting me in charge of all the money. And then lying and I oversaw all the bills and we had plenty of money it was really easy to do it but on the flip side because they made me responsible. They turned around in court and accused me of stealing their money, that’s financial abuse I can’t steal a penny. I was so careful and if there was like a charge on there that shouldn’t have been I called. I was responsible and this typical kind of behavior is the narcissist deflecting what they’re doing onto you and they point the figure and they make you feel guilty they make you look guilty, this is abuse.
And I’m going to talk about three ex for a second here. We’re not married to him but for those of you who have watched my YouTube videos, he’s the one who had me arrested and that was to protect his lies and his double life. How he financially abused me and I want you to look at these things in your life and look at the narcissists that are there for you. He abused me by claiming to be poor so I had just been in a relationship. I just broke up with someone who had lots of money so for me I was like I don’t need money, I don’t want money. I want a normal person and he claimed to be poor. He fit that mold of what I was saying I needed or didn’t care. And then he would make me pay because he didn’t have any money. He would make me pay for everything vacations and dinners and I wanted to because I wanted this relationship to work. I was in love with him, he knew it and he played that up and he would make me pay for everything. This is the one that made me open the bank accounts. In the end, I found out that he was making $300,000 yet he borrowed money from me. He also conned me out of my belongings, he conned me out of my son’s Xbox and about a hundred games because he couldn’t afford them and in the end, he took that and he took all the games and he traded them in and he kept the Xbox but he bought another one so that he and his son could be playing on different floors.
And he blamed all his financial trouble on his ex-wife and the I.R.S. and then he claimed that this is financial abuse too. He claimed that he couldn’t pay for a nanny when he would go away on business trips and so he would make me or I wanted to, I guess and he made me but — take care of his kid to me it was something that proved to me that he trusted me that he loved me enough to have me watch his kid. But he could have afforded that nanny and. I believe that he had me watch his kid. Certainly, when the other woman would come into town and he would take her to a hotel, here I am paying for everything and he takes her to a hotel.
The financial abuse there is that, he conned me and told me he was poor and I believed him. I was willing to do everything for him to prove my love. Why didn’t I see these as red flags? Why didn’t I see this as financial abuse? If someone is a narcissist or that you’re breaking up with you might suspect is a narcissist, I want you to remember that they might know your passwords they might know your credit cards, call your credit card companies and ask them to change the number.
Call your bank make sure that you reset all your passwords and make sure that your credit is intact. You can get a credit report free every single year from Equifax and all those credit card companies, all of those credit reporting companies will give you one free credit report. Check it, make sure that they didn’t like to run up and take out credit cards in your name it’s important. And hide all your documents make sure they don’t have access to your social security number and your birth certificates, insurance cards, loan information whatever you can do, your car title, just take it and get it offsite put it in a safe deposit box put it at your best friend or your mother’s house just make sure that you’re protecting yourself. The impact of financial abuse is long term and in the short term it can mean you have somewhere to live or not live and without assets, the survivors are often unable to obtain credit and housing so start protecting your money now and make sure that you’re always protected, make sure that if you get into another relationship that it is fair that it is equal and that no one should be asking you for money. Remember that financial abuse happens in so many ways and I just want you to know. This is not your fault because you’ve been conned, you didn’t do anything wrong. But now protect yourself and make sure that they don’t have any access to your money, cut the tie soon as you can.
