Phase Two: Devaluation Part A

January 2024

L.O. and I began the new year making plans for our future. She painted vivid pictures of our life together in Germany. We even discussed marriage and the possibility of having a child. Emotionally invested, I began taking real steps toward meeting her, I applied for a passport, we discussed possible travel dates, looked at ticket prices and I started researching visa requirements for a one month stay.

January also marked a turning point. That was when the façade began to crack. We had our first serious conflict, which I now recognize as the end of the love bombing phase and the start of my devaluation.

We had been writing poetry together on our shared Discord server. When I lightly criticized something she rote her reaction was unexpected and extreme. She exploded into a torrent of verbal abuse, using words I had never heard come from her lips. It was shocking.

Narcissistic Rage

Furious, she insisted I had no idea what I was talking about and that, as a professional copywriter, she was a better writer than me. She swore at me and, despite my attempts to calm things down, continued the verbal attack until she abruptly blocked me, on Discord, WhatsApp, and her phone. 

I was stunned. I had no idea why such a mild comment provoked that level of hostility. I tried to reach her by email over the next three days, but received no reply. I was distraught and deeply confused.

Looking back, it was a textbook case of narcissistic injury. Even the slightest perceived criticism pierced her fragile self-image. But more importantly, I now believe she had simply exhausted her ability to maintain the mask. The sweet, loving persona she had presented since August was wearing thin. It was now that the real face of the narcissist was revealed. Behind the pleasant but fake illusion was someone far colder, someone who preferred cruelty, control, and sadism to connection or honesty. 

The End of the Beginning

That incident marked the end of the love bombing phase. Through the rest of January, the affection continued, but now it came in waves, punctuated by sudden mood swings, passive aggressive remarks, and unwarranted bursts of anger, followed by apologies and renewed declarations of love. This was the beginning of the intermittent reinforcement cycle, the psychological hook used by narcissists to establish trauma bonding through unpredictability and repetitive reinforcement. Gambling addicts are created by the same mechanism. 

The honeymoon was over. I just didn't realize it yet.

The Truth Dawns

February 2024:

Shifting Expectations

In February, I obtained my passport and began arranging my visa to travel to Germany. I was fully committed to meeting L.O. and exploring our relationship in person. On the day I received my passport, I couldn't wait to let her know. While driving home, I recorded a video where I said, "I'm coming to Germany!" I sent it to her, expecting her to share my enthusiasm.

Her response, however, was disappointing and revealed the first clear sign of what would become a pattern of postponements and backpedaling. It was a 2 minute long voice message. When I heard it I knew instantly that there was something wrong. She was audibly flustered, stammering:

"So, wow, I'm very proud of you that you organized all of this and wow, it's amazing, it's getting real now. I'm like, shit. In this moment in your video when you said, "I'm coming!" and I was like, shit, I have to do some workouts today because he's getting serious about it now and I'm like, fuck. No, I'm just kidding and I can't believe you're really coming here. It's just, wow. I just, oh my God, always when I think about it, I just always hope that it's not going to be disappointment for you... I just hope it won't be a disappointment for you because I know what you're hoping that will happen and stuff... I mean, if you're next to me and we will be like strangers, you know... I can tell you there will be disappointments. I'm sure there will... If this person stands next to you, there's always something that you're like disappointed by... I just hope you're being realistic and shit and if you promise me you're realistic about things, then I really, really look forward to meet you."

(See audio recording below with German subtitles)

Above is a voice recording of L.O.'s reaction to realizing that I was serious about visiting her in Germany. In contrast to the first voice message this one is markedly different in tone and it is easy to hear the reluctance and hesitation in her message. (Voice altered to protect privacy)

Unexpected response

This response was confusing. For months, we had been engaging in intimate conversations where L.O. had consistently initiated discussions about physical intimacy. She had repeatedly assured me that our age difference was irrelevant and that she couldn't wait to consummate our relationship. Now, suddenly, she was expressing reservations and setting expectations for disappointment.

I tried to talk to her, but she remained silent for the rest of the day. This silence was problematic as I was supposed to purchase my flight tickets the same day. When I heard nothing from her I cancelled buying the tickets. This was the first postponement. The first of many.

At 3:00 a.m. the following morning, L.O. sent me a WhatsApp message that didn't make sense. Rather than acknowledging her own reservations, she blamed me, claiming I had been placing "too much pressure on her to have sex". A complete fabrication given that she had consistently been the initiator of our intimate conversations. The message continued by saying she had time to think things over  that she felt this "contact" wasn't good for her. She wasn't interested in feeding my ego by being my sexual plaything, and that I should rather go "be with your old wife". By the time I saw the message she had again blocked me. 

Now had this been any normal relationship she could have said she was done and I would have accepted that and left it. But she didn't. She unblocked me a day later and apologized for what had happened. Plans were made for me to come in March 2024 and we continued on, talking every day and most nights. But always when the time neared from me to get the tickets and fly to Germany she would engineer an argument or fight and the whole thing would be called off again, with me being the one blamed for her decision to postpone. 

This incident showed several classic narcissistic tactics:

1. Moving the goalposts: Changing expectations after I had committed resources and emotional energy
2. Projection: Accusing me of pressuring her about sex when she had been the primary initiator
3. Creating artificial obstacles: Introducing new concerns precisely when progress was about to be made
4. Blame-shifting: Making her reluctance my fault rather than taking responsibility for her changed feelings

This was the first of eight postponements over a seven-month period, each one accompanied by increasingly implausible explanations. Once she actually tried to convince me that we needed to delay our meeting as she was starting a new job and in Germany it was "customary to go out every night with your new colleagues to drink, for at least the first two weeks." The postponements served multiple purposes: maintaining control over the relationship, testing my commitment, and more importantly, ensuring that the fantasy relationship remained just that, a fantasy, without the reality check that an in-person meeting would provide.

But this turn of events was just the beginning move in a series of ever more bizarre twists and turns that would soon have me reeling in disbelief.

Escalating Devaluation

March 2024

During early March 2024 things shifted from manipulation to direct sabotage. While texting her from a work related event she flew into a rage when I complained that she was ignoring me. She first assaulted me verbally before blocking me again and then punishing me with what was now becoming ever more familiar, the 'silent treatment'. A few days later she contacted me via email and made several demands. I was to delete every item I had, as well as all our text chats and any screenshots I may have made of our interactions. If I didn't comply she threatened to write to my wife and tell her about our sex chats as well as intimate that I had spoken badly of her. I was stunned. I couldn't understand why she was doing this, but I never believed she would actually follow through with the threat. Nonetheless, I deleted whatever I had of her and decided to call of the whole thing. It didn't matter though, she had already decided to try and destroy what she could.

Above: A composite image of the series of messages that led to the first betrayal. The highlighted sections show typical narcissistic traits, catastrophic thinking and a inability to see our relationship as anything more than a "contact". 

Above: My reaction to receiving the email in which she blackmailed me. I have no idea why she felt it necessary to do this, as I had done literally nothing to her. In addition to the email to my wife she wrote another to my employer, alleging that I was stalking her and that I had threatened to kill her. She was deliberately trying to wreck my relationship with my estranged wife and to get me fired from my job.

False Accusations

Even though I complied with her demands, she acted on her threats anyway. The email she wrote to my employer, shown below, was especially shocking in its calculated attempt to destroy my career and reputation. She did this without thinking twice. It was a very well written email, and would surely have succeeded had my boss not known me personally for close on ten years. 

With the subject line "Urgent: Harassment and Stalking by Employee," L.O. falsely accused me of harassing and stalking her for "almost a year." Her email included extreme and fabricated claims. Se said I had "terrorized and stalked" her, "threatened to kill" her, and had used AI technology to "manipulate voice messages" and create "AI talking porn." She ended the message by saying she intended reporting me to the German police the next day if my employer failed to act immediately. This betrayal was deliberately fabricated in a calculated move to cause maximum professional harm and to destroy my personal relationships. I just couldn't believe she was doing this. 

Below: The email she wrote trying to get me fired.

She also deleted our entire Discord chat history, over 800 pages of messages, in an effort to erase all evidence of our mutual relationship. These chats would have immediately disproved her later claims of harassment.

Months of our conversations, poetry, scripts we had authored together, our shared plans, and emotional messages were wiped out in minutes. She wiped out our only record of interactions without blinking an eye. It meant literally nothing to her. Once again I was left in disbelief.

This was narcissistic rage, triggered by my refusal to comply with her demands. More than that, it marked the first time I saw just how far she was willing to go to maintain control, targeting me where it would hurt most. And despite threatening to go to the police and claiming she was severing contact, she did the opposite. She returned days later full of remorse and vowing to never again let her "psychological issues" get the better of her and continued the relationship with me. She seemed genuinely remorseful and I was already heavily invested in making the relationship work, so I finally accepted her reasons and we moved on. But it wasn't long before I realized that she in fact blamed me for the entire episode. She had convinced herself that I had initiated the conflict, and that she had merely reacted. In other words she rewrote history to suit her narrative, something I would soon learn she did whenever anything happened that caused her to act badly.

Below: The email L.O. sent to my wife.

Below: Screenshot clearly intimating that she would use my private text messages against me if I did not do as she demanded.

Cycles of Abuse and Reactive Abuse

April 2024

The spring months of 2024 revealed a clear and destructive pattern. We alternated between brief periods of calm and sudden, clearly manufactured conflicts, followed by her disappearing for days or even weeks at a time. These silent treatments became increasingly difficult to deal with and took a growing psychological toll on me. When she inevitably returned she would gaslight me about what had been the cause of the most recent argument. She always blamed me.

Reactive Abuse

In Mid April 2024 she disappeared for 21 days. Three full weeks of total silence after months of almost daily, intense personal contact. As the silence grew longer, I became desperate to get some reaction from her.  With all social channels blocked, I turned to email, the only method she couldn’t shut down. My emails began as pleas but, as the silence dragged on, they grew darker. I now recognize this as reactive abuse, a documented response to sustained psychological manipulation where the victim lashes out in uncharacteristic ways. That recognition does not erase the guilt and shame I still feel about the things I wrote. Desperate for any kind of response I wrote ever more abusive emails, even threatening her with writing to her boss, just as she had done to me previously. I no longer even recognized myself. I suffered a mental breakdown during at this time, fully believing I had lost a soulmate for reasons I did not even understand.

Narcissists provoke these reactions deliberately. They know where to apply pressure and when to withdraw. Once they trigger a reaction, they store it as ammunition. Later, when they want to present themselves as the victim, they pull those responses out of context to support their story. These tactics are well documented in psychological literature. I knew nothing of this at the time. I only knew I needed to talk to her and I tried whatever I could to achieve that. It was only after she got what she wanted in the form of threatening emails that she suddenly reappeared.

When L.O. finally returned, she used my abusive emails against me in every way possible. She ignored everything that had led to them and focused only on my worst moments. She called me a "psycho terrorist," a "fucking criminal," a "sick 60-year-old pervert," and many other names. She used those emails to shame, threaten, and control me, reminding me constantly that she could share them with others if I did not comply. This was pure emotional blackmail. I began to realise I was dealing with someone who had severe psychological problems.

This tactic, provoking extreme emotional reactions and then using them as proof of the victim’s instability, is common among narcissistic abusers. It serves several purposes:

• Shifting blame onto the victim

• Collecting "evidence" for a future smear campaign

• Inducing shame and self-doubt

• Creating a power imbalance that forces the victim to seek forgiveness

During this time, I had begun researching narcissistic personality disorder(NPD). Although I initially refused to believe she was narcissistic and tried desperately to rationalize her actions and behaviour, I recognized many of the same patterns described in the literature repeated in our relationship:

• Gaslighting: She denied past conversations or rewrote events to make me question my memory

• Ghosting: She disappeared without explanation, creating anxiety and confusion

• Blocking and blame-shifting: After provoking conflict, she cut communication and blamed me for her actions

• Intermittent reinforcement: She alternated between affection and cruelty, creating a psychological dependency

Even with this awareness, it was difficult to let go. Like many victims of narcissistic abuse, I still hoped the woman I had fallen for would return. I could not yet accept that the loving, attentive partner I once knew had never been real. She was a carefully crafted persona, designed to hook me into the cycle. I was trauma bonded and did not yet realize it. I would only find that out after the final Discard.

Next: The devaluation worsens