He broke two more friendships in the span of a month. One was mine. One was ours. Both of them never recovered.
The first was my friend Annie.
Annie was one of the first real mom friends I'd made after Ashton was born. We met through our Mommy and Me group, the same group that connected me to the neighbor John had already driven away. Annie was sharp, blunt, and no-nonsense. A former military woman with a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit. She was also fiercely loyal, the kind of woman who made you feel safe just by standing next to you.
One day, she witnessed John raise his voice at me. I think, though my memory blurs around that moment. He may have grabbed my arm or shoved me a little too hard. Nothing "dramatic" enough to leave a mark, but enough for Annie to see red.
She didn't hesitate. She stepped between us and told him point-blank, "Get your hands off her or I'll kick your ass."
And she meant it. You could hear it in her voice. See it in the way John instantly backed down. She didn't buy his charming excuses, his laugh-it-off jokes, or his fake apologies. She called it what it was.
Abuse.
She encouraged me to see it too. She tried to pull me out, to open my eyes, to get me to name what was happening in my home. But I couldn't. I wasn't just blind. I was blind, deaf, mute, and emotionally curled into a corner, rocking back and forth and calling it love.
I pushed her away. Or rather, I let John wedge himself between us until the friendship faded. I'll always regret that. She was one of the only people who saw him clearly from the start.
And it wasn't just my friends.
He ruined a friendship that was supposed to belong to both of us.
Our friend, Brad, had been close with John since before the deployment. We had all been in that car accident together before John left, and in the aftermath, it bonded us like only trauma can. Brad had even moved his stuff into our basement to save money while he was away.
But when he got back from deployment, everything shifted.
Brad had reconnected with his high school girlfriend while overseas. They'd rekindled things, started talking seriously, and by the time he came to get his stuff from our house, they were together. The retrieval was tense, John made it awkward, but not explosive. Not yet.
That came later.
We were all hanging out when John made a cruel comment about Brad's girlfriend's teenage pregnancy. Something disgusting, shaming, and laced with judgment. I can't remember the exact words. Maybe I've blocked them out but I remember the look on her face. The flush of humiliation. The steel that followed.
She stood up for herself. For her son. For her worth. And that was the final straw.
Brad cut us off. Quietly, at first. Then completely.
His girlfriend tried to stay my friend for a while. She knew I was trapped. She saw it. She was patient. Gentle. She would text to check in. Offer to hang out. But over time, even she couldn't keep holding space for someone who wouldn't save herself. Who wouldn't— or couldn't —leave.
After nearly a year of watching John insult her, manipulate me, and spin every interaction into chaos, she finally blocked me. I don't blame her. I didn't even get mad.
Because I knew it was his fault. And worse, I knew I let it happen.
These weren't just social casualties. They were part of the pattern. A pattern I didn't know how to name yet. The classic playbook: isolate, shame, control. Make sure the only voice you hear is his. And once you're alone, once he's cut off everyone else, the voice in your head starts to sound a lot like his.
And when that happens, you start to believe it. That you're the problem. That you're the burden. That you're lucky anyone stays.
But isolation doesn't happen overnight. It happens one friend at a time. One insult. One ruined relationship. One slammed door. Until you look around one day and realize the only one left is the person who broke everything else.
And that's the final twist in the knife, isn't it? They don't just isolate you. They convince you it was your fault. That your friends left because of you. That you're lucky they stayed, because no one else ever would. They twist it into proof that they're the only person who will ever truly love you.
In some cases, they even convince you your family is done with you, too. That you're too much, too broken, too dramatic. And they, your abuser, are the last one standing. Your hero. Your punishment. Your prison.
Lucky for me, my family never left. They were still there, waiting, hoping, loving me from the sidelines. But I couldn't see it then. Because John made sure I couldn't. He needed me to believe I was alone. So I'd never dare to leave the one person who claimed he never would.
What people don't talk about enough is that sometimes narcissists let you have a friend. Just one. Not out of kindness, but out of strategy. A curated friendship, handpicked and pre-approved. A plant in the audience, there to watch you, not help you.
In a strange way, John encouraged me to be friends with the wife of another man he worked with, a fellow cop on base. They had a daughter about a month before Ashton was born. I had met her at a few events, and somehow, I was allowed to be her friend. I say allowed because that's exactly what it was. Permission. Conditional. Controlled.
Looking back now, I think he let it happen because she was safe. Her husband was part of his boys' club. One of the guys. The inner circle that protected each other, no matter what. I don't want to say her husband was just like John, but honestly? At this point, it wouldn't surprise me.
He tested her. Pushed the boundaries. Made sure she would fold to his narrative and she did. She became exactly who he needed her to be. She didn't question him. She didn't defend me. She became part of the system that helped keep me in line.
The way we were allowed to hang out was always controlled. Structured. Limited. Nothing spontaneous. Everything filtered through him. And while I didn't see it then, I know now: it wasn't about friendship. It was about control. She was a tool in his arsenal.
What made it harder to see was how good he was at the act. At work, he was the sarcastic, lovable asshole. The kind of guy people joked about but respected. The kind of guy who could charm a room and make you feel like the only person that mattered. But that version of him? That was a mask.
A damn convincing one.
So convincing, even I believed it sometimes. If I hadn't seen it slip in the privacy of our home, seen the cruelty, the rage, the calculated manipulation. I might've believed it was real. He fooled everyone. And that was the scariest part.