In 2012, I came with a friend to Sweden. I met a guy (in a pub), and fell in love with him. I was a little lost at this time in my life. I’d graduated from college, but couldn’t seem to settle down after a 7-year relationship ended in a very drastic way. I noticed he drank quite a bit. I drank with him, because i have addiction problems (which i now know have to do with generational trauma).

He was in a 1%er Motorcycle Club. I knew about MCs, but at the same time I knew nothing about MCs. He had to serve some time in jail due to something he’d been caught with before I met him. I was so lost in Sweden when he was gone, I kind of unraveled.

We were together just 6 months before this happened, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after he returned. I cheated. This was the 1st “crime” I committed against him that would be held over my head for years to come. Not long after he got home from jail, we married. A year later, we had our son.

After 2 years we learned our son has ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), and also that he is nonverbal. The next 6 years consisted of constant childcare. My husband would go out nearly every night and drink. He was sometimes physically abusive, but mostly emotionally abusive. If I did something that made him angry or feel humiliated in some way, he would interrogate me for hours sometimes, following me around and committing false imprisonment.

He redefined the word “trauma”, along with other words. I was made to feel like there was something wrong with me because I never wanted to have sex. I used drugs that he kept in the house to sell to try to self-soothe, which added to these interrogations. I had no money, no job, and no way to get either. There was severe control over what I spent, and I had to provide receipts. I stole from him I which also added to the problem.

He stopped drinking, which I thought would stop the interrogations. Eventually we moved to a part of the Swedish countryside which was very isolated. Soon after he began love bombing me as though our relationship had rekindled. He bought me breast implants. After years of him trying to get me to consent to going to a swingers’ club (which I stalled on for years except one time in the beginning after threatening to kick me out), he talked about us growing as a married couple. He wanted to invite an extra guy to “share me”. I knew if I didn’t agree my life would suffer in other ways.

I asked him to make it after 10pm and he couldn’t even do that sometimes, telling me that our son would surely be asleep. Then he started stressing about how only one of us worked. The interrogations began getting more frequent. I agreed I could do Only-Fans, but then he started looking at everything I did with it, Criticizing EVERYTHING about it until I started camming.

It was never good enough. I made $13,000 in 9 months, but the control over every aspect of my life continued, including the threesomes. I only got money to buy lingerie and makeup. I watched “The Vow” on HBO and recognized the patterns of abuse. I started to understand the structure.

Out of the blue in March 2023, my husband decided we would move to his hometown. I made a best friend of his ex-wife’s mother-in-law. The shelf broke. I made a TikTok about his toxic personality, and from there we have separated and #igotout!

I’m in school learning Swedish, and will be working as an x-ray technologist soon. I have reclaimed my life, or at least am heading through the tunnel.

~Nicole D.

Surviving 'Happily Ever After': My Life with a Narcissist...