This is interesting to me... "He was pretty much always lovely to me - except that one night when I cried on the way home from the cinema. It was basically like - here's a lovely man who's in love with you."
Really? I remember you telling us other stories about non-lovely things about him, that you are forgetting while remembering the things you miss. I don't think I heard the cinema story actually.
This is a lovely man so in love with you that he wouldn't kiss you. You think you don't care as you were still in the honeymoon stage, but I think that things like that would begin to rankle over time, especially if you had married this perfect man to have the perfect life you fantasize about. Eventually you would have woken up to the fact that these things were going to bother you over the course of a marriage.
What about the skiing incident?
What about the hiking incident?
Those are three things I can think of off off the top of my head that were NOT him being lovely to you. Imagine those things continually happening to you... that hook isn't allowed to make a mistake or not be perfect without being punished with contempt. Sounds like a long happy life...???
While you were going out, he was FEEDING. Like a lion on an antelope. No matter what you think it was now, or believed it to be then, it was control and flattery and playing with his food :(
Nothing hurts like this. You were completely devalued. It is devastating.
Probably, he discarded you like trash because he knew, by then, that you were not going to be an easy meal.
You aren't some man's FOOD. You aren't a piece of meat packaged just so on a shelf so you will get bought. You missed this guy's predatorhood because you see yourself as a commodity, maybe. Something that looks good enough to buy.
You are so much MORE than that. From your previous posts, you describe yourself as a knock out (I am sure you are) and you judge the OW against your attractiveness . . . as if that were some kind of outrage against you.
He's a Narc. He needs someone who worships him, gives in to him, obeys him and seeks to disappear into him. She could be butt ugly or a goddess, it doesn't matter because what HE wants to have control.
And you just aren't his "type".
Thank GOD and his blessed Mother for that :)
Brainwashing: Believing that he really cared about you, that all those "good times" were real, no matter how spectacular they were. They weren't. When you realize this, you won't miss him, you won't long for him. You were FOOLED. And extremely fortunate that he did not decide you were his kind of lady.
you have got to believe that I don't think any of those things about myself. Yes, I am rabidly jealous of the new one and yes, I would like to hurt her badly, and yes, objectively I am more attractive than her, but she's not a total hag. In fact she even looked quite pretty at that wedding, which is probably why he was reeling her in. She does dress pretty well. I don't know. But I do know that I do not see myself as a commodity. I believe that part of the reason I was dumped was precisely, as you say, because I was proving to be too difficult of a meal - as in, I had my own life going on, my own opinions, my own confidence. But one of the things that just enrages me beyond belief is that he told me that those were exactly the things he was looking for in a relationship. And then I get punished for having them. He used to talk disdainfully about blokes he had been in school with and their empty-headed, submissive wives who never had an independent thought in their heads. He talked like he despised these men for setting up lives with such dull, uninteresting women. However it seems to me that that is exactly what he wants for himself.
"you have got to believe that I don't think any of those things about myself. Yes, I am rabidly jealous of the new one . . ."
This is contradictory though. If you don't think of yourself as a "dish" to be served up, then it's got to be brainwashing. Nothing else makes sense. You know what this man IS. You are clear on why he probably discarded you.
But you are jealous and want to hurt this OW, for "taking away" something you don't want in the first place.
"I was proving to be too difficult a meal. I had my own life going on, my own opinions, my own confidence. One of the things that enrages me beyond belief is that he told me those were things he was looking for in a relationship. Then I got punished for having them"-By my junior year, I was questioning the ex-Psych professor. I was questioning his treatment of me, I was thinking for myself... I was *dating*!!! He even commented "I guess you don't like the idea of being stuck with me." From the Narc-mare marriages I've read about here,he was right.
The ex-P acted (I do mean *act*) like any other teacher-he wanted me to think for myself, have my own beliefs--and then YES, he PUNISHED me for them. He'd accuse me of being narcissistic,of not paying attention to him, etc.
I had become too difficult a meal.... and I was his STUDENT! He was furious when I wanted to volunteer at a nearby elementary school... but I did so anyway. Oh, it really helped that I told him off IN FRONT OF HIS STUDENTS and that I walked off, triumphant, nose in the air... basically mimicking his way of walking.
He wanted to discourage me from writing about religion... well, it's because he writes about religion (no wonder he D&D'd me and married a curator... he married her WHILE she was pregnant)
The ex-P said the SAME THING about men marrying "empty-headed, submissive wives."
Let's not forget the ex-P was totally paranoid-
1)He was afraid that I'd write about him. The fact that I'm a published writer probably scares him enough. I once said I'd write about what he did to me... and it terrified me. Even when he said I'd change his name.
2)He was afraid I'd go to Massachusetts and seek out former acquaintances. I am NOT wasting my time in the Bay State doing that... I have a life. Well, he (and a bunch of my former professors) KNOW I've been to Boston. Several times.
I'm not good a meal... but I guess in feeding his paranoia and envy, well, that is SOMETHING I'm good at! Along with his low sense of self-worth, because what sort of teacher wants to be compared by a former student to a toddler,just because said toddler and said teacher have fathers with the same name?
I've been doing a bit of online dating and of course it has depressed the hell out of me, because I might as well be watching paint dry for all the attraction I felt to any of them. It's just a whole universe apart from how it was when I met him.
WHY THE FUCK DID HE HAVE TO LEAVE AND JUST PISS AWAY EVERYTHING GOOD THAT WE HAD? I'm veering a lot these days between murderious rage and beaten-down sadness at his loss and the loss of our relationship. I'm still not even sure he was a narc. I mean, definitely passive-aggressive, but a full-blown narc?
Don't worry I'm not about to break NC. My pride forbids it. However I have been drafting a letter to him. It's mostly abusive and critical of the horrible way that he suddenly abandoned me, but I've now started to want to write him a love letter too. I also at last made myself put all of his things in a bag (including his valentines' card to me this year, the TIffany bracelet and the iPod he got me, a spare pair of scrubs, clean underwear and his spare washbag - and it hurts so much that he would rather never talk to me again than contact me to ask me for these things back - and he LOVES his scrubs because they remind him of his time in clinical practice) but I cannot bring myself to delete 8 months of mostly loving and affectionate texts he sent me. I just feel we were so right for each other and we are meant for each other. Him being with this dull, ugly hag is just a travesty.
When am I going to be able to have absolutely no feelings for him? When am I going to stop wanting him? One good thing is that I've stopped having sexual feelings for him (at least while I'm awake - I did have two very sexual dreams where we were having sex, last night and the night before) and I don't fantasise about him sexually any more. But I still long to throw my arms around him and kiss him all over his face.
Do not believe a word this guy told you. His favorite scrubs, etc. I doubt much, if anything, he told you is true. Most of it was a manufactured mythology.
What you miss is the man you believed he was. He fed right into what you wanted. In the beginning he idealized you. Then the inevitable disappointment occurred. Here you are taking the blame & believing that you could have done something different to keep Dr. Jekyll. You believe you are responsible for the appearance of Mr. Hyde. Nope.
Keep hanging in there. Try to forget him. I know it's hard. But really, it was all an illusion. Mine was very handsome, highly educated, successful. I too was immediately introduced to his parents. Wine cellar, European trips. I married mine. Ugh. In the end, I have gotten to know the woman who replaced me & his first ex-wife (I am the second). I have learned the layer-upon-layer of deceit mine operated. In fact, he uses the same lines, writes the same love letters, to each woman! Mine did the pornography thing too (I never knew but the other women told me). And some of his behaviors as you described in in your story were like my N. Your's is a gaslighter. These are the worst. Forget him. Take back your life! Trust me.
This is interesting to me...
Hookline
Briseis
"you have got to believe
Wow. Your words speak to me.
No one comes near
Do Not Believe