4myfamily and bea, This post is the lighthouse in the fog for me! I can't tell you what a relief it is to have validating factors to compare to!
Stand back and look at ourselves, and our feelings, and just see how confused, hurt and well CRAZY we feel when dealing with these people! Yes, I've always been the one to apologize. I've taken the journey of working on myself to the extent of saying it was all my fault, apologzing, sending heartfelt emails to him several months ago, to only have NO RESPONSE!!! His excuse was " well I just don't know what to say or if Im supposed to say anything?" .
Well what I know now compared to what I knew then is big. What I know now is that when a person is a long term relationship with such a PA, then WAS, what is truly considered unhealthy and abnormal.....feels NORMAL to you. When we get the chance to stand back and really learn what's going on, and see the forest for the trees and see what truly healthy and normal is, that's an awakening. This has happened with me over the last month because I've developed a good friendship with a very emotionally healthy and available man. And I literally don't know what to think. I was almost brought to tears because he told me he enjoyed listening to me.
My PA/MLC is the type that likes to "sandwhich" his PA ,covert/overt, narcissistic abuse. It's as of this last two years he's become outwardly angry and verbally abusive, when he never used to be this way. I finally called him on his cake eating behaviors and emotional ups and downs. That's when he directly went to his next victum that I think he's been keeping an eye on for years because he knows she's and easy target. She's been after him for years anyway. She's proven how gullable she is to him, and he knows exactly how to control her. Apparently she does everything but chew his own food for him, and that makes me sick.
Yes my stbx's reason for leaving was extreme depression and needing to go and find his " happy". Well he was a mess, quite frankly acting very bi polar before he left, and still does. More on a mania high, which mania also has huge irritability shifts and spewing. And that's what he does. Happy high, then snapping at me for things that I couldn't make up if I wanted to. Then he got on a real high and blew thousands of dollars. Now that his thousands of dollars are gone, he's now blaming me that it's my fault. I mean the reasoning with these people....
Yes Bea they seem to continue to always keep us engaged. It's happened again now with my STBX, and I realize it's always going to be that way to a certain extent because we have youn children together. I've been going through some serious "revisiting" of strong emotions lately because we've resumed contact. He acts as if nothing has happened. He's being very "sweet" but I have now learned that "sweet" is a covert PA behavior that will serve as an MLC Spewing 2x4 later.
I think what I really have to work on is that I will always care about this man, but accept he is not a whole man. He is just part of one. And I think he's so scared of himself, all he knows to do is keep running, controlling his external life in order to think that's what's making his internal well being taken care of. If he can manipulate everything and everyone into doing what he wants, then he's in total control, and then he's ok. If it doesn't go his way, we switch the emotional button and turn it off. And it's done, and no longer his problem to deal with.
