nextphase's story

The situationship

We met at work, he hired me and was my direct boss. I had never become involved with anyone I worked with, just not something I did. Within about 2 months, a romance began. Two weeks into it, he told me he was in love with me. I thought this strange, he didn't know me, how could he love me so quickly? Nonetheless, I looked at him and knew that I could fall in love with him if he continued to be who he was. I had had 3 failed LTRs
but this guy seemed perfect.. for a while at least. I decided I would tell him I loved him too, because I knew I could and would. By the end of that first year, he devalued me, verbally abused me, alienated me from my family and friends, constantly accused me of cheating (even after I caught him doing it), would gaslight me when I would say ‘remember that time we…’ his reply ‘that wasn’t me’.. of course I would laugh at first cause I thought he was trying to be silly, but he would remain adamant about it not being him, that it was some other man I was hanging with and because I had a poor memory, I thought it was him. I always knew better, my reaction changed tho from giggling about it to just being silent and dropping whatever story I was telling. I felt so often that if I was quiet, if I just remained quiet and said nothing, I wouldn’t ‘screw up’ and make him angry with me, even though I never understood why he was angry. He would do things like constantly ask me loaded questions, ones where no matter how I answered, I either was proving I possessed poor character, or I didn’t care for or love him like I said I did (and actually behaved like I did too). He consistently wanted me to ‘rank’ things that were important to me or that I enjoyed. “Put it in order’ he would say. I would beg him to stop making me do that.. I would tell him I just wasn’t the type of person that ‘ranked’ who I loved more (my kid, my sister, him). He would tell me how lucky I was to be with him, that I would be ‘bored’ with a ‘normal’ guy and needed someone as exciting as him to keep me interested or else I would certainly cheat on my partner. I was often compared to his ‘x-wife’, which I discovered was very much still his wife, (he never allowed me over his house once in the 4.5 yrs we were together) as being better because I wasn’t like ‘plain vanilla cardboard’, but I was a low life (believe it or not a term he adamantly claims he coined, ironic huh) when compared to my parenting abilities, or the fact that he never heard her curse once, but I curse freely, or I smoke and she would never dream of doing that, or I have a tattoo and she would find that horrendous. Then there were the comparisons to the other ‘ex’s’. Those began with me being so much better, and ended with me having to listen to him say things like ‘you know what was great about Janet, she really made you feel loved, like she went out of her way to do that’ or ‘Betty was great to play house with, I mean we had genuine feelings for one another, and I would spend every weekend at her beautiful house, but she became sort of psycho and would accuse me of wanting other women all the time.’

I don’t know… I feel like I’m rambling now.. I’ve been NC for 3 weeks now.. the last time we spoke, I was asking him to stop treating me like a chump basically… I was saying how it was fine if he had other things he had to do and stuff, but don’t leave me hanging around waiting for you to say you can hang out with me or not hang out with me, just tell me your plans and I will make some for myself if you can’t spend time with me. When you ignore me or don’t contact me at all or give me vague answers when I ask what’s up, you’re treating me like a chump and that’s disrespectful and hurtful to me. His reply was (rage) ‘I’m tired, been up 14 hours, doing my best to meet all the responsibilities I have, and I don’t need you brow beating me, I’ll talk to you later if you want’ Then he hung up on me. Haven’t contacted him since. Instead I decided to buy books about NPD and truly begin the healing process… not just talk about it anymore.. It hurts so, so much.