Phase 2 contd (2)

[Pax_luv]

Thank you Ciluzen and Sotto. I appreciate you sharing your experience. You ladies are tough cookies for enduring your situations with grace.

I fully intend to be as pleasant as possible during the next few d steps.... But I'm not sure he'll ever understand that I've "lawyered up" to protect myself from him. I never wanted it to come to this, but I would be a complete fool if I didn't engage a professional to look after my interests. Stbxh is clearly looking after his interests and continues to manipulate and is using coercion for me to comply with him.

Admittedly, I'm having a hard time with this. I just feel hopeless again (like I did 8 months ago). Actually I'm waffling between anger towards stbxh and helplessness. Divorce stinks. Overall, it's just been a depressing day. I made no gal plans and I've been in my pjs all day with that all too familiar anxiety hanging in my chest.

I'm still very filtered when it comes to me sharing my situation with others. Nobody knows the whole picture, but some feedback I've gotten lately is that others thought that stbxh was verbally abusive to me... And yes.... The word narcissism has been thrown around a lot. Arent all mlcers narcissists? Even temporarily? I don't think it's fair or accurate for me to diagnose him, but I thought I would research this subject further as I dont know anything about it. I started reading a book on the subject and I'm blown away by the description the cycles. the similarities were spot on, much like they were when I started reading on MLC. Now, I'm not going to start labeling my h as narcissist, but learning about the subject (and how I personally might be drawn to a narcissist) has been eye opening. honestly, I think reading on this subject has aided a bit in this brief depression I'm feeling. It's very sad.

Anyway, I'm 1/3 done with the book... We'll see how the rest shapes up.

Ok, that's all for now. Sending everyone my best.