Ally's story
Ally's story
You know the tale… Boy meets girl, boy plays unrelenting mind games with girl, girl winds up on the verge of an emotional breakdown, boy packs up and leaves the state over the Christmas holiday without telling girl. A new take on an old story, no? Below is the longer version for anyone who is kind enough to read and comment.
We worked together for years, but until a major downsizing last year, we’d never been in close contact. After subsequent office restructuring, we began to see each other much more. Proximity led to conversation, and soon, we were spending most of the days at work IMing and chatting and getting to know one another.
When he finally asked me out – over the Christmas holiday last year – I was elated. It was the first time in a long time that I was excited about a guy. I was already taken with him and that first date didn’t disappoint. He came over to my house and we spent eight hours talking over pizza and a bottle of vodka. There seemed to be such a strong connection! I’d never felt anything like it. When he finally kissed me, the sun was coming up. When he left, I was floating on air.
The next few weeks were really good. We kept the relationship quiet at work, but the interaction intensified. We were literally on IM or text from morning until night. When we were together, he treated me like royalty, always opening doors, paying for everything, taking constant pictures of the two of us. Rarely an hour passed when we were not in some sort of contact. I thought he was as taken with me as I was with him, and I couldn’t wait to see how the relationship would develop. I’m really independent, but for the first time, I saw a future with a guy.
A few weeks after the first date I started to sense something wasn’t right. He was still contacting me all the time, but he didn’t seem to actually want to spend time with me in person. It was subtle, but it bothered me. Seeing a red flag waving in front of me, I decided to call him on it. At my insistence, he came to my house and we had another all night conversation. He told me that while he was crazy about me, he had been dating a lot of other women before meeting me and wasn’t sure he was ready to be with one person. Then, in the next breath, he told me that he hoped that didn’t mean WE had to stop seeing each other. I was heartbroken. I told him in no uncertain terms that we could not continue to date. We had already been intimate, I had feelings for him, and I couldn’t continue a non-exclusive relationship. We agreed to just back it off and be friends. I was crushed.
The next few months were a succession of crazy. He continued to pursue me, and (I know, I know) I continued to give in. He would relentlessly ask to get together and act like he couldn’t wait until he could see me again. Then, a couple weeks of togetherness would lead to total retreat. He would run hot and then go so cold that I practically didn’t recognize him. We would spend an evening out together, then cuddle the night away while he talked about all the things we would do together in the days to come. But, the next morning, he would practically push me out the door. I remember one weekend in particular where I woke up to the sound of him saying gently, “Good morning! How did you sleep?” When I turned to respond, I realized he was talking to his DOG. He then got up and went into the shower without a word or look in my direction. I felt like a nothing. That was the theme, actually: one day I felt like I was everything to him, the next day I was nothing.
I tried to adapt to the inconsistencies. I thought he was conflicted and the last thing I wanted to do was try to force a relationship with someone who didn’t want it. I wasn’t going to chase him down. When he retreated, I let him back away and tried to get on with my own life. I tried to accept that he still had some wild oats to sow, and I tried going out with other people as well. Still, he continued to text and IM constantly and every few weeks he was knocking at my door, wanting to know why we hadn’t been spending time together. I was so confused.
The mind games really accelerated in early summer. He would give me the silent treatment without warning or reason. Things would be fine one day, but then he would pout in his office and barely look at or acknowledge me the next. He took me out to dinner and then proceeded tell me about all the other dates he had taken to that restaurant. He made plans with me one afternoon (HE asked ME) and then left me waiting all night without a word. He took a day off of work, IMed to make sure I had noticed he wasn’t there, but then wouldn’t tell me where he was when I asked.
He also grew increasingly controlling. When he would come to my house, I swear he was looking in closets for evidence that another guy had been there. He went through my mail once. If I left the office, even for just a few minutes, he wanted to know where I had gone. He wanted to put GPS tracking on my phone so he would always know where I was. He developed a real habit of texting me on Friday and Saturday nights with some sort of innocent question, just to get a response from me. He wasn’t saying it, but it felt like he thought he was entitled to know where I was and who I was spending my time with but had no intention of reciprocating the information. He never introduced me to his friends. When I suggested that I felt like a big secret that he was keeping from the important people in his life, he laughed and said that ALL his friends knew about me. Really? Because I never met a single one. And, the ones I knew about were all female. I’m a secure woman with a lot of male friends, but this was too much. I felt on the periphery of his life while he seemed to want to be in the very depths of mine.
Things really blew up the week of the 4th of July. It had been tense between us again, and I went to his office to talk to him, hoping we could diffuse some of the tension. We had spent a really nice weekend together just days before, but I was getting the silent treatment again. When I went to find him, he wasn’t there. I soon learned that he had flown out of town for the weekend, leaving his car at the office. In my gut, I knew he had only left the car there so I would wonder where he was. I decided not to take the bait. Predictably, he texted me a couple of days later to tell me he was out of town “visiting a friend.” He only did this to make sure I noticed that he was gone and to trip my insecurity wire by mentioning that he was visiting some girl I didn’t know. When I asked him (over the course of a text conversation spanning several hours) what his plans were for the rest of the weekend, I didn’t hear from him for several days. When he did finally text back, it was the night before we were to go back to work, and he texted to tell me that he was home safe and “just wanted to say hi.” WTF?
The next week, he was in pursuit again. I was finishing my garage and he wanted to offer his help. When can we get together? He misses me! Can he come over this weekend? Again, I was totally baffled. My gut told me that the “friend” he had gone to see the weekend before wasn’t just a friend, but would he really spend an entire day texting me while out vacationing with someone with whom he was romantically involved? Would he leave her and text me the moment he got home? Would he bounce back and forth between us like that? The concept was so foreign to me that I couldn’t even conceive of it. I felt guilty for even suspecting he was capable of that.
The next weekend, he did come over. The entire day was flirtatious and fun, and we had a blast. He was in great spirits and no one is more fun than he is when he’s in a good mood. When we went to bed though, he brought his phone. As he was lying in bed next to me, I noticed he was checking messages – messages from the girl he had gone to see. I felt physically ill. I lay awake in bed all night, trying not to cry and feeling like I was losing my mind.
That was when I decided it needed to end. I needed to get my head on straight. He bombarded me with text messages, emails and IMs asking what was wrong, why I was mad, why I wasn’t logged into IM, why I wasn’t talking to him. I told him to give me some time, to let me think. I tried to be friendly at work but kept it strictly professional. He started to lose it. He went back and forth between giving me the silent treatment (literally walking the other way if he saw me coming) to making heroic efforts to be near me when he had no reason to be. He would wear my favorite sweatshirt several times a week just to get my attention. He would have loud conversations near me that I know I was meant to overhear in attempts to make me jealous. I could feel him watching me all the time. I didn’t know what to make of any of it. On one hand, I felt I was in love with him. On the other, I knew he was going all out just to get under my skin. I sensed he was looking for a reaction from me and tried every day at work to remain pleasant but detached. I cried myself home every night.
I finally went NC back in October. The decision came after a loud conversation one day where I overheard him talking on the phone about his “girlfriend.” He was speaking at such a volume that I knew I was intended to overhear. I was crushed, but also angry. Why was he messing with my emotions like that? After a lot of consideration, I decided I needed to do everything I could to detach. It’s not easy to be NC with someone you sit forty feet from all day long, but I did what I could. I blocked him from my Gmail chat, deleted his texts from my phone (over 1000 of them!), returned his stuff to him, and removed him from all my social networking sites. I stopped responding to texts and IMs. I didn’t send a goodbye letter (although I wrote one) because I didn’t figure it would do any good. What could I say that he hadn’t heard before?
I also started seeing a therapist in October. I’ve been through break-ups before, but never anything that got to me like this. I needed some confirmation from an impartial third party that I wasn’t a crazy person, that he had indeed been playing with me, and that it wasn’t normal or okay. She’s been great. Within a few weeks, he stopped contacting me. Things were tense but manageable in the office. I was starting to feel better, and my therapist assured me that I would eventually get over this trauma and be myself again.
Then, the week before the Christmas holidays, the messages started again. The thing is, they never really SAID anything; they were just prods for a response. They were either totally cryptic or seemingly innocent, “Ally…how long are we going to ignore each other...” followed by “Ally, how are you loving this snow?!” followed later by “Alllllyyyyyyyy…” Still, I didn’t respond. I figured if he had something to say, he could be direct and say it. All the poking at me to get ME to open the conversation was just unfair.
I got one last message before the holiday. I think that it may be the last one, and I have mixed feelings about that. It said, “Santa Barbara is nice…close to LA to…” I moved from LA to where I’m currently living a few years ago and it’s no secret how much I want to be back in CA. I figured the text message was just him needling me about him being on vacation or something – I smelled a trap, so I didn’t respond. Well, I got back to work after the holiday to find that he quit his job over the break and relocated to CA. While I’m sure this will be better for me in the long run, I am totally heartbroken. I’m hurt to have found out this way. Doubly difficult is that he went where he knows I want to be. We talked about SoCal a lot, and he always told me that he didn’t want to live there. The choice of location feels like a slap in the face.
I don’t know what I expected or what I should expect now. Is it possible that he didn’t ever care for me at all? Was I just a game to him? Is it really over, or just on hiatus? I never thought the last time I saw him would be the LAST time. Was he a narcissist? Maybe you can shed some light because I’m still trying to figure it out.
It's all about control!!!!
i am sorry ally that you
Hi Ally, I'm sorry about
Jesus, Ally . . .
helldweller
Narc
You're probably right
Ally
Idealk
Ally
Going (and staying) NC
Ally
He sounds like a narcissist
N and anger
Ally
passive aggressive
Passive Aggression
He sounds like a narcissist