Things I never should have excused...

What a great start on your list of why you will never be with him or someone like him again. You must have grown so much stronger that you can see these things now.

The first red flag SHOULD have been immediately talking about coming to visit me out of state and taking me out to dinner and holding my hand after we reconnected for the first time in twenty years - and we hadn't even been friends been then. That struck me as really, really odd, but I just played it off and didn't acknowledge to him that I even heard what he was talking about. The first flag to consciously tip me off that something was wrong was his sense of entitlement. Just in conversation, telling me about things he was doing and people he'd interacted with, I couldn't believe how much he seemed to feel he deserved special treatment. How his friend should have dropped everything and busted his butt to fix his car sooner, how much the tattoo artist was charging him for his new tattoo ("For what I'm paying him, he should give me a discount"), how his health insurance would expire if he didn't get a physical by a certain date but "look, they're not going to drop me if I don't," how he needed to get an appointment somewhere that was booked solid but "I'll just call them and say, hey, this is {name}" (and it's not like he was a local celebrity or anything - he was just a regular guy) - I noticed all of this, and it bothered me because I was raised to be humble, but I didn't think at the time that his attitude was a sign of something so much bigger than a simple ego trip. Now I know better.

I still have shame after seven months on this site telling the truth about the awful way he treated me and the things I tolerated - everyone's story is similar but my exN just seemed a tad less human than most and more cold blooded... a few of many: throwing me out of his house in a a bad winter storm when I had a serious flu and the storm had taken the power out at my house - he wanted to go to the gym and did not want me in his house alone (even though I was sick and resting in warm bed) for a few hours - we had been going together about 5 years then... six week silent treatment for no reason, three years later 4 week silent treatment after he promised to never hurt me like that again no gifts for 10 years and no vacations, only a few dates and social isolation refused to discuss anything important - ever here is the big one - refused to introduce me to his children (I am a clean cut educator and he is a partying drinking drugging bar person but apparently I was unworthy) He was so compartmentalized it was all crazy and I am so messed up from trying to find excuses for it so that I would not have to leave him and face the truth that he never loved me

Unfreakin' real is right! Looking back at these things makes them so much easier to see, but each at the time are very confusing and throws us off kilter. Only by clearing the fog from cog dis do we truly see how disturbed and contradictory they actually act. My exN did much the same things as yours... they really are driven by their disorders.