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Hi Maria,
I got involved with a man that I now recognize to be a textbook narcissist. Very charming exterior but there were many red flags I chose to ignore. We did not have an exclusive relationship. It was very casual but there was a condition that I had which was that I did not want to see him if he was taking other women out on dates. He initially had taken me out but that faded and his excuse was his hectic schedule. He told me repeatedly that he did “not date.” In fact, it is my impression he has not had an exclusive relationship since his short-lived marriage 20 years ago.
Anyway, I began to sense I was being repeatedly lied to and it was driving me crazy as I had no proof. I thought maybe I was being paranoid but my gut instinct said otherwise. A few weeks ago he was at my house and used my computer to check his email. He forgot to log off, which I discovered after he left. I debated on whether to look and my curiosity got the best of me.
I found an email which seemed to confirm my suspicions, actually a few emails. In my disbelief, I made a stupid mistake. I cut and pasted an email and sent it to him with a note that I could not believe he lied to me to that degree. Hindsight! On the surface, he comes across as a very affable man who is successful and has lots of admirers. Well, to say that he went into a rage is an understatement. Threatening to send the Secret Service to my house to take all my electronics. Screaming and calling me numerous names. (Click the link below to read the rest of this story).
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The goal of this website is to give support to people who are facing problems in their relationship related to cheating, abuse and narcissism. I am living in Europe and English is not my native language, I wish you will excuse me if I make some grammatical errors. I have a background in neuroscience and behavioral sciences and I am currently doing brain research related to these topics in university in my home country. I decided to write in English because I wish to reach as many people as I can around the world. If you wish to read more about me, please visit page Site Overview.
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Dear Friend,
Thank you for your message. I understand your situation very well. Please do not blame yourself for looking into your boyfriend's email (let me call him "boyfriend" for now even tho you said you had a casual thing going). Most people in your situation would have done the same. This does not mean I am saying it was right to look into his email. You also said yourself you know it was wrong. What I am saying is that under those circumstances you would have had to be some kind of a superhuman to resist the temptation to check the email, especially after having doubts about your boyfriend's honesty (you suspected your boyfriend was cheating on you and lying to you... Even thought you were in a casual relationship, he had agreed to your condition of not dating others when he was dating you. If he would break that promise, it would count as cheating).
We can all make mistakes. Reading other person's email is after all a quite small "sin", it is not like you killed somebody. I believe most people who are visiting my site have checked the email of their partner if they are suspecting cheating or an affair and if they have not, they wish they could get the password and have a secret access to the mailbox. You have no reason to blame yourself too much for checking your boyfriend's email. Please let go of your guilt regarding that matter.
The first thing you now must do is to get rid of the mental pain related to the dishonest and rude behavior of your boyfriend. It is possible to learn to control the negative emotions related to tragedies such as cheating or betrayal instead of letting the emotions control you. Human brain is truly an amazing device. It is possible to teach the brain and the mind to deal with the tragedies in life such as lying, an affair and living with a narcissist. Many of my readers have sent me email telling they have found the mind control methods described on this site to be helpful. You can read more about this topic from page Recovery After Cheating and Narcissism.
 About you sending your boyfriend an email where you told you looked into his mailbox. I understand that when looking back today, you feel sorry you sent that email to him. But when you did that, you were extremely angry and upset. You suspected your boyfriend was lying to you and cheating on you, your emotions got the best of you and you acted before you could think. On the other hand, what if you would not have sent that email to your boyfriend? I personally believe that would have been a lot worse option. If you did not do it you would only have been dwelling on doubts about what was going on and whether he was cheating on you or not.
You could not have asked your boyfriend about the matter without revealing to him that you had checked his email. The only thing you could have done would have been to follow the situation and see if you can get additional proof of cheating and dishonesty. But since I assume you did not have a password to your boyfriends email, you could not have kept on monitoring his interaction with other women via regularly checking his email. You only had that one shut to ask him directly whether he was cheating on you and lying to you, and you used it. I think you did the right thing. If you did not do that, your negative thoughts regarding those emails would have tormented you for weeks, perhaps months. You might have become seriously depressed due to the uncertain situation with your boyfriend and the scent of lies, cheating and dishonesty in the air. If you feel currently depressed over what has happened, visit page Training the Brain to find out how you can help yourself to heal faster.
I think in a long run sending him the email was the best way to go. You forced your boyfriend to show his cards, which he has now done. Now let me say couple things about your boyfriend getting angry like that to you when you accused him of lying and cheating. What you are dealing with is a self-defense mechanism of a narcissist. When a narcissist knows he or she has done something wrong (like cheating or lying), he or she may enter the state called narcissistic rage. Narcissistic rage is exactly what it sounds like: It includes uncontrollable shouting, raging, accusing and (often verbal) attacking. The aim of this fierce attack is to direct the attention away from the main focus (the mistakes made by a narcissist).(Click the link below to read the rest of this reply).
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To read more about the recovery process after being in a relationship with a narcissistic person, visit page Recovery After Cheating and Narcissism.
Warm thoughts,
- Maria
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Stories - Narcissism 
My man got furious when he thought I was in touch with other men. I was not. He misread something I had written down and got it all wrong. He went into a rage and called me things I cannot write here. He told me he was going off on a cruise to have a great time and get as much sex as possible with other people. I have not heard from him since. He also had revealed that there were a couple of other significant lovers in his life all along. There is no way of curing this type of relationship except to end it totally. You have to for sanity sake. Once the person is out of your system, it can take ages, only then can you move on.