Hey Own, I stopped by your thread late and it looked like you had great feedback from others, so I didn't comment.
Long journal incoming. I'd love any feedback:
I am continuing on my journey. I am trying to get into a daily writing habit so I can finish my schooling and have options to move away from here. I like it here, but I don't love it. I'd been staying because H's kids had a few more years in school and then we planned to move away. Now there's not anything keeping me here except for school.
I have some wonderful friends here. I went and met some of them last night and had a few hours of fun. I'm starting to feel more receptive to the idea of meeting someone new, but I also don't trust my people picker so I'm still focusing on me. I stayed pretty close to my friends all night, but it did seem like some guys were trying to get my attention. Someone did the "tap on shoulder then turn back around" move on me. I'm sure that whomever it was did not reside in an appropriate age range for me so I generally ignored it.
(My IC said that I'd made a ton of progress and I could start dating if I wanted, as long as I didn't jump into anything serious. So far I haven't moved forward on that.)
I'm still GAL. My version of that is getting out and socializing when I'd rather stay isolated. With H it was easy to just do couple things or stay in and let him go out with his friends. I'm continuing my diet and it's paying off; I'm starting to feel really good in my body again. I opted to walk home alone last night rather than catch a ride with someone. (My city is very safe, but of course I'm still cautious.) An all-uphill 15 minute walk at midnight appealed to me. I got a cute new haircut that will help it look fuller; I get stress-related hair loss and this is the second time my hair has fallen out because of H abandoning me out of nowhere.
A friend's husband seems to always give me pep talks when I see him. He's offered to find H and beat him up if I wanted (lol) and I told him to hold off on that. He tells me that I'm a catch and that I need to realize that about myself. And when I'm ready, take it slow in finding someone new. He said rushing can net me a new jerk; taking it slow will help me find someone great.
My IC told me that she was seeing some personality disordered behaviors in H, though of course she can't say one way or another. This is both distressing and a relief for me. Distressing because how did I miss it? Relieving because if it's true, I don't have to have doubts.
I've been reading a book on narcissism, and I do believe some of the behaviors fit H. There was idealization, devaluing, and then discarding happening. I think I threatened his supply when his past choices (marrying his crazy ex and having kids with her when she was so obviously looney tunes) and current choices (passive parenting of his kids) were no longer things he could avoid. There was uncertainty whether his son would graduate from high school, and I think H was realizing his passivity may have hurt his kids.
I think that's the real reason he raged and then I was discarded. I think he also had some sort of breakdown and projected himself onto his son (who was being rejected by his wonderful mother, as H was when he was a child) and became hellbent on protecting his son from women. Not the one who was hurting his son, of course. Just me. Even though I had a good rapport with his son and was trying to build him up, H could only see me as someone who wanted to emotionally hurt his kids. I was the symbol of all things evil-engulfing-female, and wanting to try to work through things also leant me a pathetic and clingy character flaw. (His lack of negotiation with the house tell me I am still all of those things. Sigh.)
I feel bad for H. I think we'd also reached new levels of intimacy and vulnerability and I think he just couldn't tolerate that. He wants a wonderful relationship, but he ultimately doesn't want to take risks. That feels wrong to him. He doesn't want to have to give; I think he's got a fantasy woman in his mind who will be his sexy mommy and fulfill all those things he never got from his mom and have no needs of her own. I had no interest in being anything but an adult partner with obligations outside of the relationship, and I think that wasn't a dynamic he was familiar with. Both times he's left me out of the blue, he has been hyper-focused on whether all of his needs are being met. I go from someone he's put on a pedestal (that I can't possibly live up to given that I'm human) to nothing but an object, and he has no concept that to receive what he wants, he must also give.
I assume he is out trying to locate his ideal sexy mommy now, which hurts, but also makes me chuckle because he's in such a state that he's only going to be attracted to/attract messes. Good luck to him.
He expressed to me so many times that he wanted something different than his crazy family. He used to joke about his parents and how they were terrified of change, and so they stayed in a miserable situation for 50 years. When they had opportunities for improvement, they made excuses to not leave their comfort zone. That's what I represented to him; relief and a way to leave the crazy people behind. But when he got out of his comfort zone, guess what he ran back to? Guess who is turning into his parents by trying so hard to run from them without taking responsibility for his past?
I'm still struck by how he couldn't even explain reasons why he was doing what he was doing. He told me that he was unhappy, but that seemed like rewriting history to fit current feelings. (I know I can't say for sure, but he'd offer up to me how happy he was and how lucky he was to have found me all of the time.) Then it was some darkly humorous "sign" from 5 years ago that he overlooked, which was clearly a red flag about my horribleness as a person. Then it was that we'd simply "grown apart" and the reason I moved out and disappeared was because of how "shocked" i was when he broke the totally normal news to me of how we'd grown apart. (Darn, I hate it when I put a tens-of-thousands of dollars of a downpayment on a house to buy with someone, and then discover 6 months later that we'd simply grown apart.) The very nature of the timing demonstrates that it was a slow and mutual growing apart. Sure H.
I still spend time thinking about him, as you can see, but it's more me trying to make sense of the senseless for my own sake. I want to know what red flags I may have missed. I want to know if he's disordered, but I want to know that for me. My IC says I'm an empath, which I think is true.
Something I can't reconcile with H being a narcissist is that, aside from me, he does not place blame externally. He'd own up and take responsibility, and, frustratingly, he had very little recognition that his ex was horrible. The reason they divorced was because "marriage with kids was hard." He never blamed her, and that's something I'd expect to see from a narcissist. Also, I know and have met some personality disordered folks, and I normally see right through them and feel disgust being around them. I never felt that way about H. Any dysfunction seemed like learned behavior that he could unlearn if he wanted to.
So I still wonder if this is an MLC that brought out narc tendencies/learned behaviors. It seems like being an N would be visible to me, but maybe I'm fooling myself.
He did have a false self he protected fiercely. He liked to think of himself as a "glass half full type of guy" and you should have seen how he'd glow when one of his male friends (always self-absorbed and disasters at relationships) would compliment him on his optimistic outlook on life. I found it hilarious, because I got to see the anxious insomniac who rubbed bald patches into his eyebrows, and would sometimes wake up sobbing at 5:30am and banging his head on the headboard when his ex-wife was emotionally harming his son.
A few weeks before H did a 180, I remember telling him that I didn't agree that he was a lighthearted optimist. I told him there was much more to him than that, but that his true self was still lovable and I loved all of him. I thought that was a nice thing to say, but I guess that may have been an incredibly threatening thing to him.
In the end, it doesn't matter, but I still want to know if I missed something and how. It's all so confusing for me because he appeared to adore me, until he didn't. He was happy, until he wasn't. I got the rug yanked out from under my feet and I want to know why. Not to go back, or to not detach, but because I want to know because of what it means for me.
I am proud to say that I don't feel I was very codependent with H. I had very solid boundaries, and would talk to him about how he could improve things, but I didn't fix anything for him. I remained focused on me and I always felt I liked who he was at his core. The largest source of stress we had was the constant BS coming from his ex and some from his two teenagers, but we'd talked about how we just had 2-3 more years of it and then we were home free. Other than that, we were pretty happy, I thought. I liked who he was, though I did wish he'd get some help for his anxiety and his repressed childhood issues. I really liked his kids, and they seemed to like me. I'd thought that once he was free from being legally required to communicate with his ex - who was trying her hardest to traumatize him - we'd be free from the majority of the stress on us.
As for the legal stuff, it turns out I haven't technically been served yet. My L asked for my permission to be served so that the sheriff wouldn't come to my workplace. The 20 day response deadline starts from that date. We talked it through and my L will be writing up a denial of their claims, and we'll also counterfile. My L wants me to settle and then get the case dismissed, but we don't see any way of H being receptive to a settlement that does not have me incurring a financial loss for his decisions without counterfiling. H and his L are still approaching this as if he should get a full refund for a faulty Cadence, and that H's actions are all perfectly normal, which is fun.
My L said the bills don't start really racking up until depositions and hopefully this will be settled by then.
I asked my L why H's L wouldn't just advise him to give me a fair amount of money and settle this so he can sell. He said that it's not unusual for clients not to be forthcoming with the whole story, and he feels that's likely in H's case. So I'm hoping that describing how this all unfolded will lead them to want to settle. And, honestly, I'll be describing H's actions after he decided he wanted to be rid of me, which were emotionally abusive, so I'm hoping the threat of exposure countering his "nice optimistic guy" image will lead him to want to settle out of court.
I shared H's likely view of me with the L, and he hilariously interrupted me and said "so you're a demon, then?" and I said "pretty much. But a clingy one who is trying to keep him from selling the house because I am SO hoping to get back together." and then we laughed. He's going to include language that I am eager to get the house sold to counteract that ridiculousness. Who knows if it will work. I am bothered by the fact that not reaching a settlement could be furthering H's belief that I am hoping for him back; I've worked so hard to detach but it's not visible because of the circumstances/H's foggy brain.
In the end, H chose the comfort of familiar dysfunction over living an emotionally healthier life. In my mind, there are definite narc tendencies there, but I'm still unclear if that's his true self, or if there was a CPTSD breakdown/MLC that led him to seek out familiar defense mechanisms. I may never know, but I wish I did for my own sake, so I can figure out what it all means for my people picker.
Right now, I'm happy alone, even though it's tough wading through all of this, while not having anyone to hug me and tell me it will be alright. It's tough not having someone to tell about my day and confide in about my fears. But I'm hoping I'm putting in the time to be ready to meet someone healthy and reliable. I still wish it could be H, and maybe there's a .5% chance that he'll show up one day haven taken responsibility for himself, but I know that's unlikely. If he did want to try to R, I am very clear that pretty words are not enough this time, and it would take a great deal for me to ever trust him again.
Logically, it will be so much better/easier for me to find someone new.
