Petar's Story

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#1 Sep 12 - 9PM
Petar
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Petar's Story

I am now into my fourth month of no contact and in the last few weeks have started to see a light at the end of the tunnel. It has been a highly emotionally charged journey and I have felt alone and had a tough time of it with a lack of support from family and the few friends I have. They just don't get it. They either call me 'weak' or "just date someone, get on with it". I have withdrawn from sharing things with people in my circles.

Before I start on my story. I have come to realise I am Codependent and also an Empath. Through therapy and a lot of self-introspection I have been all my life a people-pleaser and never set defined boundaries. I have had a large amount of trauma inflicted on me during my childhood and not proper role models thus shaping me to have tough emotional experiences I have had to face alone. So onto my story of my 3 year odd relationship with a female narcissist.

I met (lets call her Jo) in September 2013. I met Jo, my second long term relationship initially on Second Life through some mutual online friends. We connected immediately and we spoke on Skype voice to voice where we both found out we both lived in Sydney. At this point it is important to admit that I had never met anyone from my online existence in person. But Jo asked to meet up and I said yes even though I was worried and scared as I had little self confidence.

Through our initial interactions Jo told me she was separated from her husband and had been married twice with 4 kids from the combined marriages. She was 12 years older than I and through images exchanged I found her physically attractive and she seemed to so “understand” me. As I did her. We decided to meet up pretty quickly in a public venue of live music and the meeting went well. We connected physically as well as mentally and I felt truly alive at that moment. I felt as if I was turning a corner.

Jo and I continued to catch up after that initial meeting and our relationship developed very quickly, too quickly in retrospect. We became physically intimate during the second meeting. Within 3 months of us meeting, we both decided to leave Second Life. Up to this point, I never knew about emotional personality disorders or narcissism per say. The first 6 months of the relationship was utter perfection, we had fun, and I felt I had found my soul mate. She opened up to me with what I thought were truths and even told me how she had cheated on one of her two husbands and here I thought it would be different with me. This initial phase is what I now know as the idealisation.

There were warning signs early on in the relationship but I was inexperienced or simply blind. She told me she loved me in the first month after a time of intimacy and how she had never met someone like me before. She made me feel good and I thought I was making her feel good as well.

The early warning signs were when she started saying some emotionally cutting things about any opinions I would share about my life with her. At first I chose to try to mollify her and become what she wanted. During this period I lost around 60 kilos and started exercising. I grew in confidence and started a bushwalking club and now have a network of a small group of friends. I started to join clubs I was interested in and doing hobbies away from the “online” specter. Through this relationship and my own experiences, I did grow and have changed.

I did feel real connections with Jo and I do have strong and deep feelings for her. But ultimately after times of criticisms from Jo I did have three months of psychotherapy at Sydney Clinical Psychologist Services at Newtown. The therapist used techniques of Schema Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in our sessions but was the first to say my Partner Jo may have been Narcissistic towards me. Since this period I have researched this and done necessary tests and believe I have been abused on an emotional level.

During the relationship there were countless times she would employ "silent treatment" and be non contactable. She would then update social media to show suggestive postings of hugs with male friends and even telling me on one occasion a male friend came with a bottle of wine to her place and nothing happened. On another occasion another male friend came onto her and she said nothing happened. But she was texting him a lot to the point that the guy asked her to leave me and be with him.

The situation that led to me ending the relationship was a breakdown in communication and that I felt used and abused. I felt emotionally drained and exhausted and felt disrespected and yet I loved her. Jo let me know she was going out for dinner and a drink with an ex-work colleague and would be gone from our texts for a few hours. I came home straight from work, and after 10pm didn’t receive a text, I didn’t get a response. Jo didn’t text me again until the next morning and she acted as if everything was okay.
I texted her how her night had gone and she responded that they had dinner then decided to go dancing, where they were ‘chatted up by guys”. I told her I was very uncomfortable with what she had told me and she immediately said I was over-reacting. She couldn’t see my point and asked her if she could see why it wasn’t sitting right with me. I asked her to put herself in my shoes and imagine if I had gone out and ended up close body dancing with another woman, how that would make her feel? She again couldn’t empathise. I told her I needed to reflect and an hour later I felt a release when I texted her we should separate, I needed time to think. She didn’t argue any fact with me.

I decided to do more research on emotional abuse and narcissism and she didn’t contact me in this time. Randomly a few weeks later I was walking down a street and caught my now ex hand in hand with another man. She didn’t see me and I didn’t contact her.

She randomly contacted me a few days later and asked me to remove all tags and pictures of us on social media (face book). When I asked why, she said she was ‘dating somebody and that it was going well.” I was crushed but I did what she asked. I have since this point remained NO CONTACT.
I am not dealing with things well, emotionally or mentally. She said to me throughout the relationship that “if we ever ended that she could not see herself going into another relationship for a long time as I was within her soul and she completely loved me’. Her actions do not match her words and I am left with trust issues and many other left over reactions.

I am very disillusioned, hurt, confused and intensely frustrated. I am suffering bouts of physical illness, despair and possibly the onset of depression. I am feeling like this could hurt chances of intimacy with women in the future out of the lack of trust.

I am still in love and care deeply for this person, and this whole situation is killing me. But I know I left this relationship because it was not healthy.

There is much I probably have missed, but 3 years is a long time. No Contact has been a godsend. I am using this time to continue to work the steps of The Path Forward. Thanks for reading.

Sep 16 - 8PM
Goldie
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Hi Petar, Welcome

Oct 4 - 11PM (Reply to #3)
johnport
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How do I go about writing my

Oct 7 - 1PM (Reply to #5)
Goldie
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Hi John

Oct 5 - 6AM (Reply to #4)
Petar
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Dear John,

Sep 19 - 7AM (Reply to #2)
Petar
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Thanks Goldie