“Lilly”

Let’s call this narcissist “Lilly” .

Lilly moved to our area from another part of the country.  She came here with husband number 5.  Lilly admitted to her girlfriends that she didn’t particularly love #5 but that she already had 5 kids and he had land, money and a strong work ethic. Lilly convinced #5 to marry her when she became pregnant with child #6.

Getting pregnant was Lilly’s modus operandi.  She would meet a man she liked, usually the husband of a girlfriend, and she would do everything she could to seduce him.  If Lilly was particularly jealous of her girlfriend and/if the husband had any kind of sign of money, Lilly would become pregnant ‘accidentally’ by him after she had seduced him.  Lilly has broken up several marriages this way.  After her girlfriend’s marriage broke up, Lilly managed to talk the husband into marrying her because she was either pregnant or  had their child.   This marriage inevitably broke up as the new husband found out what a nightmare he had gotten himself into with Lilly.  When the marriage broke up, Lilly refused to let the father see their child.

Sometimes Lilly would go after child support from the latest father but she found filling out all those forms, appearing at court, all too much work for her. Instead, she would go and hunt down another girlfriend’s husband. That was much easier to Lilly.

There is just something about Lilly that some men find irresistible.   She is not attractive at all.  She has a plain face with coarse features.  Her body is nothing to fantasize about…especially after multiple births…and her posture is very bad.  But Lilly knows how to  make a man feel incredibly special….for awhile.   The man usually doesn’t know what has hit him but he feels loved, understood and appreciated when Lilly sets her sights on him.  He doesn’t realize that Lilly has figured out what is important to this man, where his weak spots are and to say Once she has him, she gets bored with him as there is no longer any challenge.  Then she starts abusing her latest husband financially, stealing money from him, his bank account or his credit cards.  After that Lilly starts screwing on her husband, usually with another woman’s husband.  Sometimes the husband leaves Lilly and sometimes Lilly has already lined up another man and leaves her husband.

Lilly would also be very charming with people she wanted to befriend as well.  She would go out of her way to compliment, flatter, and charm anyone whom had something that she wanted.  Lilly also had a knack for attaching herself to vulnerable people; people who were going through a difficult divorce, recently lost a member of their family or simply depressed and getting something out of them.  Once Lilly had what she wanted, she usually dropped the friendship like it was dog shit on her shoes.

And woo betide any friend who had confided in her: one of Lilly’s favorite expressions was “She better not say anything about me because I’ve got all sorts of shit on her and I’m not afraid to use it.”

So Lilly arrived here in our area in 1999 to ‘start afresh’.  She arrived with 7 kids (having just given birth to her latest two with husband #5) and her latest husband and they moved into a house he had built by hand on 70 acres of land.   Her husband practiced being frugal and it drove Lilly around the bend as she liked to show off, be status conscious, while at the same time convincing people that they were poor with many kids and needed money.

The first five kids had to learn to call #5 “Daddy” and take on #5’s last name as Lilly did not want it known that she had all those kids by all those different fathers.  The eldest of the five kids rebelled and bolted.  At the age of 15 he went back to the town they had moved from and slept on the streets until he found his father.

Lilly and #5 settled on to their acres and #5 grew a large garden and canned and preserved food to help feed all those children in addition to working for a living.  Lilly stayed at home with the children and collected the social benefit for the children.  She considered the children’s money to be ‘her  money’ . To clothe and shoe the children, she would tell people how poor they were and people would drop off bags of clothes and shoes at the end of their driveway for them.  Then Lilly would take the children’s money and go out for lunch several times a week, purchase a new ceramic top stove for herself, a couple of pairs of Birkenstock sandals for herself (at approximately $200 each) or squirrel the money away for herself.

Once, when one of the fathers of the children sent a birthday card to his daughter, Lilly intercepted the card.  Lilly was the only one permitted to check the mail box at the end of their long driveway so when she saw the card to one of her children, she knew what it was and who had sent it.  Lilly immediately opened the card, pocketed the $50 and  that the father had send and threw the card into the wood stove to burn.  I know as I was there and her action shocked me.  I saw Lilly do this on at least four other occasions with birthday cards for her kids from their various fathers.

Lilly knows no boundaries when it comes to mooching.  Her brother would send her money regularly for her to buy something for the kids for their birthdays, Christmas, etc.   Lilly would not tell the children that their uncle sent any money and pocket it herself.  One Christmas, Lilly’s brother sent her $2000 for the kid’s Christmas gifts.  Lilly pocketed the money  and the kids got second hand stuff and dollar store items for Christmas.

Lilly did not physically abuse her children but she was a MASTER at manipulating them.  Lilly would swing between smothering her children with baby noises and hugs and kisses to  neglecting and ignoring their needs and wants and leaving them with whomever would babysit them at the moment.  The children never knew what kind of attention they were or were not going to get or what stranger they were going to be left with.

Lilly was also a very gifted mooch.  She could get people to hand over clothes, money, babysitting, services or their car and they would often think it was their own idea.  I had picked up on Lilly’s mooching and watched for it.  Once, when Lilly was visiting me at my home, I would make it a point to see if she could get through the whole visit without asking something of me.  When she was at the door leaving, I thought “My gosh! This is a first! She is actually going to leave without asking me to do or give something to her”.  I had no more than finished the thought when she turned around and asked to borrow my car the next day as her van was going into the shop for repairs.

I became friends with Lilly when we met at a parent’s organization.  I was taking my pre-schooler to this parents’ group at the same time that Lilly was taking her two youngest children.  Lilly sought out my friendship to ‘help’ me when she heard that I was going through an acrimonious divorce and was a single parent.   I was grateful for the friendship at first but I saw, fairly quickly, what I was dealing with.  I knew that Lilly was a moocher but I didn’t figure out she was a narcissist until much later.  I quickly figured out that she wanted my babysitting services for when she went to lunch with her girl friends. My house was also in the centre of our town and she lived way out in the country so my house was handy for her to drop off her kids while she lunched.  When she found out that I had a decent car, she started asking to borrow it whenever her van broke down.  Then she figured out that I saved money and she started asking for $20 here and there and never re-paid the money because she was always ‘broke’ because “I needed to buy milk for the kids” or whatever other reason she came up with.  Often she would just ‘forget’ and expect me to ‘forget’ as well.

Then came New Years Eve 1999.

Stayed tuned for Lilly: Part 2