Thanks so much for the support, LH19 and BL42. I feel the emotions swinging already. Hardly slept at all last night. Good thing I'll be going to Big City soon and will be very busy, living a fabulous life.
Yep, guilty as charged—I fully knew I violated DB principles. I think it worked for me, though, in the sense I feel that I got my power back and I confirmed just how far gone H is. Everything he said was so nutty, it made the importance of not taking any of this personally sink in that much more. The affairs hurt. They do. But they also show how broken and weak he is.
Re: what he said about not looking his best and being lazy. That thing was really nutty. He blamed our relationship for him not going out and not cleaning the house last year. But that's when we were apart due to COVID and he was living by himself in the boonies (he moved there thinking it would make him happy). So of course it really had nothing to do with me. I wasn't even there. And when I did live with him there for an entire year, we did go out on dates and we had a cleaning schedule.
We were long distance for a few years, but visited each other frequently and for extended periods of time.
BL42, I take your point about the OP. Yeah I'm not gonna trust him. Gonna try to not ruminate on that crap either. Of course, it's a struggle. I am proud of myself for not asking for details. I don't care to know. One day, none of this will even cross my mind. I know the way forward is to just live my best life.
Funny thing about the running. I actually encouraged him to run races when he started complaining about feeling stagnant two years ago. And here he is doing exactly that. I know you say not to diagnose, but man if that doesn't align with the classic MLC signs!
He mentioned thinking about how much he learned in therapy. He went a few years ago when we lived in Country D (yep, we've lived in many countries together) after much encouragement from me due to his mood and alcohol issues.
Those issues were red flags for sure. Therapy helped a lot, but he stopped when he moved to Country B, and he slowly started to behave erratically. I was even kind of troubled by the selfies he would send sometimes. He had weird eyes in them. He's been slowly falling apart for the past two years. I regret not suggesting therapy again when he would say strange things. The erratic behavior got on my nerves sometimes and I withdrew. I own that part.
Another red flag from even earlier in our relationship was that I didn't like some of his friends. I thought they were emotionally immature and exhibited poor behavior in their relationships, which have since broken down (!!). I ignored it because I rarely saw them, and at the time, H treated me like a queen.
BL42, wow, your ExW went on a manic rampage there. That must have been really hard to go through. Nope, these huge changes definitely don't bring happiness. I told H sorry for his unhappiness simply as a textbook reflective listening move. In context, it was clear that I wasn't taking responsibility for any of it.
Interesting what you say about this not being the last that I will hear from H. At least for now, I don't want to talk to him beyond business matters. I don't want to think about his dumb life.
