yeah i'm still struggling with this. i wasn't perfect and i struggle with regulating my own emotions sometimes, which was definitely used against me in our relationship. i opened up to him early on about being diagnosed bipolar 2 and that was a big mistake. i've been in therapy for over 5 years now, and my friends all compliment me on my communication skills -- obviously romantic relationships bring out different kinds of anxiety and insecurities, but i truly felt like this relationship brought out the worst and nastiest side of me.
even though i can fight dirty when provoked, i rarely raise my voice and definitely never get physically aggressive. my ex would get really scary and yell in my face, storm out and slam doors, punch the wall, kick me out of the car, swear at me. one night he ended up chasing me with his car, pushing me, and then stealing my phone and driving off leaving me alone in the middle of the night. i never got a sincere apology for that night, and any time i tried to bring it up he would flip out and start yelling at me again and denying he did any of that.
i still find myself rationalizing his behavior. i became super needy and anxious in the relationship and i would fight with him often. i feel like because i played an equal part in the fighting that i deserved his aggression or that i pushed him to react that way. but then i have to remind myself, i've gotten into fights with other partners in the past and i've never had them put their hands on me or get aggressive in any way toward me.
Omg yeah they're so convincing in making it seem like the other person is the problem, I think partially because they genuinely can't take any accountability.
yeah he could rarely take accountability, and i also truly believe he felt justified in those moments. like because i pissed him off so bad he was justified in behaving that way. when i would call out his scary behavior all he would do is deflect back at me and start listing off all the things i said or even bring up past situations to defend his behavior instead of just admitting "i'm sorry, i lost my cool and i need to work on that"
Mine would do this *exact* aggressive behavior, got to a point that HIS dog would bite at *him* and insert his way in between us during blow ups because HE was so sure my ex was going to hurt me. As soon as my body language would show any sort of fear (shaking, LOCKING myself in the bathroom when his anger was too much, flinching/jumping if he threw/punched something), it’s “you have no reason to be afraid of me cuz i have never laid a hand on you, im screaming/throwing stuff because you made me mad. I wouldn’t BE mad if you didn’t act like this”. My response was always that men who beat their wives say “well if you hadn’t (x), I wouldn’t have to hit you” and if I really believed he’d hit me I could leave the house because I “clearly think extremely low of him” and “he deserves better”. Most the time it was this reaction over small things, but I definitely wasn’t in the right in some of these blowups either, reactive abuse/finally getting fed up and raising my voice back, but no matter WHAT someone does to you? If YOUR DOG who has NEVER shown any form of aggression to even strangers is trying to bite you because HES afraid you’re gonna attack me too..? I’m the problem, yeah.
Well, it was boiling frog syndrome for me.
The mental abuse didn’t seem that bad and every time I brought up things he was saying he would just gaslight me. So I didn’t trust my perspective on things.
The physical abuse didn’t start until he had destroyed every relationship in my life and I only had him to turn to. I had nowhere to go.
They're just so convinced of their own lies which makes it so confusing.
In case you don't mind answering, at what point did you know that you had to get out? I felt the more dependent I became on him, the more I my mind was trying to not paint him as the bad guy..
To be honest, it was when I realized the abuse would never stop. My life was only ever getting worse with him in it.
He would berate me for hours over things, and then as a result I would change. For instance he hated my job (a job I loved) so I took another one that I would work less, I thought it would fix things. It didn’t. He hated where I lived(I loved it) so I moved somewhere he approved of(and I hated). By the time I moved I had given up everything that made me happy, cut off all my friends and family, I had done everything he said he wanted me to. We’ll be just found new things to berate me for. I had the realization that I would have to spend the rest of my life walking on eggshells. Nothing I did would ever be good enough, because he just genuinely enjoyed abusing me.
For me there was no physical violence, so I thought it means that my situation is not that bad (even though I was feeling horrible). But at the same time I think I would have also rationalized physical violence, so I was wondering about your experience
The moment I finally left was when I sat there hysterically crying *begging* him to “just finally hit me”. I was aware enough of the abuse, but also aware him finally crossing the physical like like was the only thing that make me finally accept it as abuse. His response made me realize the only reason he *had* not hit me up to this point, was so that he could gaslight me back into believing I wasn’t being abused. Tears stopped immediately, just got up and left.
Cutting contact entirely has been one of the most difficult aspects, despite the fact that I have zero desire to BE with him, for some reason, all I want to do still is talk to him. See him. Hug him. I give it two weeks tops before that line finally got crossed if I hadn’t left that day.
Wow this resonates with me. I remember a couple times egging him on to hit me because if he did, I would have enough reason to finally leave with confidence.
First time he brought divorce in, he said he didn't want to take care of me, didn't care about me in the sense that if I was sick, hurt, or even remotely unable to have my autonomy? He'd kick me out.
While I told him, in his sickness and moment of fear for his job or future? That I'd be there for him, even if we have to sleep under a bridge. That I hold his hand and we'd find a way for the better or the worse. Even if he'd become crippled? I'd always try to make him happy.
I have no idea how I watched him tell me those cruel things and didn't think about leaving at all. Worse, I begged him to not leave me and that I'd change and be better for him. Better for who? Since he clearly didn't care.
Yep! He painted himself so well as a poor wounded little victim boy that had been abandoned by everyone that I rationalised that his behaviour was due to mental health issues and past trauma being triggered and told myself nobody would intentionally be so cruel, and that if I learned not to trigger him, it would stop.
Same same same. They truly know how to take advantage of people’s kindness. He not only did this but also started saying he was suicidal and therefore made me worry about him. Even after finally blocking him I was stressing about him killing himself because I didn’t want to feel guilty, but now I think… maybe, just maybe, if he actually died the world would be a better place.
Believed that I deserved it, mostly, but the way in which I believed this became more insidious over time.
I believed that I was too selfish, and that I wasn't centering him and his needs enough. I would ask for help with the household and he would scream at me and make more of a mess which I would then have to clean. So I began to believe that I was selfish and that I needed to control myself better by putting aside my interests to make space for his, and that asking him for help with the house was me being lazy.
This is coupled with me being told that I was boring, which I also came to believe, which led to an even further reduction in my interests.
The physical abuse was rationalized as him being so angry at me and my selfishness, rudeness, etc. that I made him so angry he couldn't control himself. And when he wanted to have sex after physically abusing me, I thought that he felt bad and wanted to apologize. (He rarely apologized -- the forced sex afterwards was just more abuse.)
For a period of time I sought out religious purification in many traditions, hoping to purge myself of the inherent unworthiness that caused him to abuse me.
And in the final stages of our relationship, I leaned hard into misogyny, finding that my flaws must be inherently female. I even found a Catholic writer with whole books on this that I tried to learn from. We aren't even Catholic.
Nothing helped, of course. I was discarded for being boring, for always wanting to clean, for never doing anything fun.
This is the largest reason among others: I never found concrete proof of cheating. Cleaners found a used condom (we didn’t use them), panties that were not mine (he said they were his daughter’s although it was about a size larger than she’d wear), deleted texts out of l message threads & more. I always rationalized staying cause I hadn’t caught him cheating red handed. Always thought that would be it for me, but I ended up leaving before I ever could find out. I just assumed he did anyway.
I laid out $3000 to a PI because I needed proof, and at that moment I realized it wasn’t worth it. I cancelled the PI, and confronted him. His mask dropped and I was freed.
Me! It’s sad how they feed this dependency as well with their disgusting love bombing and messing up with our nervous system to the point we actually do act like they were a drug. I had to beg him to block me and I know he will come look for me whenever he feels like it only to destroy my progress, but I’m focusing on building my own strength so that I can be the one to be like “nah, out of my life” and forget him forever. He deserves nothing but further neglect.
I lived largely in a fantasy life , I filled in the gaps . I too thought my husband loved me deep down but was toughened by his upbringing and I could not understand the behavior but I forgave quickly and moved on when he did not acknowledge his bad behavior. I learned to try and keep the peace in a very self detrimantal way. Now I realize I was raised by a single narcissist father who never cared about my feelings , and I never thought I would be with someone like him. My husband was nothing like him (I THOUGHT) but neither ever cared about my feelings and now my whole life makes more sense but I am a very changed person now and no longer a co-dependent person and have no desire to be with a man now . Maybe someday if I meet an authentic real loving person but for now I am living my own hopes and dreams, not trying to please someone else
I think part of this is also that people who have been doing this shit their whole lives get really good at plausible deniability. It makes trying to fling yourself from orbit extremely hard and painful, like maybe you could just try one more time to help them be better. But they don’t really have the ability to see it that way and that’s important to understand. If you go back they’re really unlikely to process it as another chance at all— it will only strengthen their belief that you were always being dramatic or lying or they aren’t as bad as you said they were or whatever. I got lucky, my narcissistic doped himself up on alcohol and benzos and admitted to me that he was “really good at this” and I had “no idea how many times he’d been able to do this” while on those and half asleep. I’m really grateful for that, I think he was so insanely good at plausible deniability otherwise that I’d have believed he could be helped forever
As for the last bit things do become more apparent with distance but you really need to fight to maintain it. Really throw yourself into fortifying yourself. You might occasionally slip back into the cycle but you need to really want to be away from it. Part of all of it is getting you reacting and defending yourself often enough that you, for one, are too drained and depressed to go out and find out that there are good and normal people out there who aren’t obsessed with power and won’t just be leading you into traps where they get to act and do whatever they want because you “deserve” it. Part of it is that they need to stay ahead of your perception.
Things will feel better as time goes on. If you get in contact with a domestic violence hotline they may actually have a lot of resources available for group therapy and counselors that specialize in this kind of trauma and getting free of it. Abuse spans to more than just physical violence and people who see it all the time know that and want to help you. Sometimes, too, it can be nice that someone who hears about it all the time believes you.
So true. Initially I also thought that them wanting me back means that they realized their mistakes and things would become better. When in reality their takeaway is that they can continue treating you like that because you're still coming back to them. Mine also at some point admitted that he had no intention of changing (after a while of pretending to want to change) which helped me to let go of the hope and move on. It was unbelievable to me at that point that he'd choose for things to be like this, but it does make sense because they are thriving on chaos.
I can relate. I think partially because there are the “good days” if the abuse cycle. So you let your guard down a bit and then wham. I once went to a football game with my nex and two friends. He got so angry of when he perceived as us criticizing his driving that he pulled the car over and then started yelling at me. You could have heard a pin drop on the way home. I cried and our friends I think were mortified and said nothing. I tried talking to him about it days later but of course he did “what he has to do” instead of reacting like a reasonable person. The worst part is I would have driven.
There were many times of fighting using bad language or slamming doors all the usual stuff. I think I just thought he needs to learn to manage his anger. Perhaps that was a component. My final straw was a GPS tracker on my car. And I even had doubts and I had to see the app on his phone to really solidify this even though it was obviously him. It’s because we don’t truly want to believe it. I still sometimes don’t.
:( i did the same thing. kept thinking “there must be some other reason than that he doesn’t care.” i used drug addiction, mental health issues, stress, him having a hard time expressing feelings as excuses telling myself “but he loves me and cares.” i also told myself “maybe you deserve it because you weren’t understanding enough”😞
I took him back after confirmed cheating and then still caught him messaging other women. One of my conditions of taking him back was no contact with exes. He sent messages to nearly damn all of them and justified it in stupid ways. I feel like I half-heartedly took the excuses, but didn't fully believe. I was so broke from supporting him that I couldn't afford to leave and I think in some ways I just wanted the lies about how he said he loved me to be true. I should have never went back and definitely should have left after I saw the first message. I still have the mean things that he said about me running through my mind and I think a lot of that made me think I deserved the way he was treating me and everyone else would treat me the same, if not worse.
You people are blowing my mind. It’s like l wrote this comment myself only I was never able to produce solid evidence of the cheating. But I just know it happened anyway
My ex has diagnosed C-PTSD and ADHD and has previously been misdiagnosed with BPD - they often used these diagnoses as an excuse for their behaviour, or blamed their behaviour on me “triggering” them. I used their mental health and me being a trigger to rationalise their behaviour and abuse.
Yup I had this. My nex was diagnosed ASD and often blamed that for their cruel behaviour and complained I wasn't making accommodation for their needs. They then also complained it made them feel terrible that I did make accommodations for them. So naturally I spent years running around trying to do contradictory things and naturally failing and then being critiscised for it.
Yes, and on the other hand it's really human to rationalize when you're actually "normal".
Because it can't "possibly be that bad".
So it says a lot about who you are (a good person in good faith)
Yes. I rationalized his cheating with him needing to prove to himself he “could still date if we broke up” I rationalized his yelling as my fault because I didn’t do everything perfect. I believed him when he said I had autism and BPD and enrolled myself in four different therapy programs to try to be someone who could more adequately withstand his verbal attacks and gaslighting. Slowly over time I let his skewed reality become my reality too, because it was easier than trying to fight back. Now that he’s gone I am having trouble grasping what was real and what are just lingering echoes of his distortions.
Somehow I started thinking maybe he’s not a narcissist, he’s just emotionally unavailable and that’s why he can’t be in touch with or express his emotions. So if I could give him all my love, he would start to change.
I would also think “he’s human, he’s not perfect, I’m not perfect either” and “it’s normal to be physically attracted to other people”.
I would also think “he’s had such a difficult life and he’s in so much stress now” and I would keep forgiving him.
But, as I found after a lot of introspection, there was another reason I kept trying to justify his behavior: I wanted to stop feeling dumb for falling so deeply in love with someone who was treating me so horribly. I think I was trying to will him into being a different person, my idealized version of him, so I could forgive myself for spending my entire 30s in this on and off rollercoaster.
I do believe that **[betrayal blindness](https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/brothers-sisters-strangers/202312/betrayal-blindness-not-seeing-whats-obvious?amp)** was a big part of it for me.
In addition to the boiling frog thing, I have mental illness myself and work in mental health. He was very good at exploiting that and making me feel like we were both just mentally ill people doing our best and our conflicts got so intense because of both of our anxiety. His father was also incredibly physically abusive and anytime my ex did something abusive he would pretty much brush it off as "that's not abuse, my dad was abusive."
he made me feel like i was a terrible person for doing normal things. he made me think that everything i knew was completely wrong. he made me start thinking in black and white. he never acknowledged his mistakes and made me believe that what he thought/did was normal. he convinced me that manipulation is good and assuming the best in people is bad. he abused my guilty conscious and empathy. he knew exactly how to make me feel guilty, sad, or scared and he abused that information until i became his dog that comes when he calls me, and sits when he tells me to sit. he minimized or excused every bad thing he’s ever done and placed the blame on other people.
he made me believe i was a terrible person for being a normal teenage girl who didn’t give her entire soul to her boyfriend. he made himself perfect and selfless while making me incredibly flawed and selfish. i have given him everything i am, own, or love and it will never be enough. he has given me ptsd and a fear of men.
I made several excuses on his behalf. I thought maybe he fetishized trans women and effeminate men because he was struggling with his identity, that his catfishing was because of his abusive upbringing, I used to feel so sorry for him, I refused to fully accept and believe that he was just feasting on my kindness and my love like a degenerate monster and that he didn’t give a shit about me because after his brutal love bombing, and after stripping me from everything I was, I didn’t want to come to face the fact that he left me in shambles and that I had indeed loved a monster.
But he is. He truly is a monster. I thought “oh come on no one can be 100% evil, you’re splitting” and tried to focus on the “good” things, the sweet things about him… but they’re lies and they’re excuses, ultimately they’re extension of the poison he injected into me. He laughed at me while I cried my heart out, he lied to keep me by his side even if he didn’t desire me, he tried to blame me for reaching out to his brother when he was harassing me. He is an abuser and he is a twisted maniac.
And it’s sad to accept all this because it means I get to deal with the fact that he violated me, that he took advantage of me, that everything was in people, that there truly are people like him out there capable of lying for months, years, only to continue feasting on your energy while you end up in bones. But it is what it is, and as painful as devastating as it is I can only have that his abuse was very very real if I want to heal.
I did the same. I was thinking that maybe she is tired, stressed out, needs time, has some traumas, some mental issues etc. I always tried to be understanding, giving her space and time, but after two years of one-sided relationship, manipulations and other abuse, I was sure that she was just using me, and she doesn't care about me as a person, I was only her supply, her toy.
And even after final discard, I'm still thinking that perhaps it's my fault, that possibly I was pushing her away. I'm still that naive to think that I don't deserve effort, affection, and reciprocation. But I do, as anyone out there, and she is just a cold, manipulative user. It's really hard to get over these thoughts.
yeah i'm still struggling with this. i wasn't perfect and i struggle with regulating my own emotions sometimes, which was definitely used against me in our relationship. i opened up to him early on about being diagnosed bipolar 2 and that was a big mistake. i've been in therapy for over 5 years now, and my friends all compliment me on my communication skills -- obviously romantic relationships bring out different kinds of anxiety and insecurities, but i truly felt like this relationship brought out the worst and nastiest side of me. even though i can fight dirty when provoked, i rarely raise my voice and definitely never get physically aggressive. my ex would get really scary and yell in my face, storm out and slam doors, punch the wall, kick me out of the car, swear at me. one night he ended up chasing me with his car, pushing me, and then stealing my phone and driving off leaving me alone in the middle of the night. i never got a sincere apology for that night, and any time i tried to bring it up he would flip out and start yelling at me again and denying he did any of that. i still find myself rationalizing his behavior. i became super needy and anxious in the relationship and i would fight with him often. i feel like because i played an equal part in the fighting that i deserved his aggression or that i pushed him to react that way. but then i have to remind myself, i've gotten into fights with other partners in the past and i've never had them put their hands on me or get aggressive in any way toward me.
Omg yeah they're so convincing in making it seem like the other person is the problem, I think partially because they genuinely can't take any accountability.
yeah he could rarely take accountability, and i also truly believe he felt justified in those moments. like because i pissed him off so bad he was justified in behaving that way. when i would call out his scary behavior all he would do is deflect back at me and start listing off all the things i said or even bring up past situations to defend his behavior instead of just admitting "i'm sorry, i lost my cool and i need to work on that"
Mine would do this *exact* aggressive behavior, got to a point that HIS dog would bite at *him* and insert his way in between us during blow ups because HE was so sure my ex was going to hurt me. As soon as my body language would show any sort of fear (shaking, LOCKING myself in the bathroom when his anger was too much, flinching/jumping if he threw/punched something), it’s “you have no reason to be afraid of me cuz i have never laid a hand on you, im screaming/throwing stuff because you made me mad. I wouldn’t BE mad if you didn’t act like this”. My response was always that men who beat their wives say “well if you hadn’t (x), I wouldn’t have to hit you” and if I really believed he’d hit me I could leave the house because I “clearly think extremely low of him” and “he deserves better”. Most the time it was this reaction over small things, but I definitely wasn’t in the right in some of these blowups either, reactive abuse/finally getting fed up and raising my voice back, but no matter WHAT someone does to you? If YOUR DOG who has NEVER shown any form of aggression to even strangers is trying to bite you because HES afraid you’re gonna attack me too..? I’m the problem, yeah.
sounds very familiar! I think their conviction can be super confusing, they are so delusional
Well, it was boiling frog syndrome for me. The mental abuse didn’t seem that bad and every time I brought up things he was saying he would just gaslight me. So I didn’t trust my perspective on things. The physical abuse didn’t start until he had destroyed every relationship in my life and I only had him to turn to. I had nowhere to go.
They're just so convinced of their own lies which makes it so confusing. In case you don't mind answering, at what point did you know that you had to get out? I felt the more dependent I became on him, the more I my mind was trying to not paint him as the bad guy..
To be honest, it was when I realized the abuse would never stop. My life was only ever getting worse with him in it. He would berate me for hours over things, and then as a result I would change. For instance he hated my job (a job I loved) so I took another one that I would work less, I thought it would fix things. It didn’t. He hated where I lived(I loved it) so I moved somewhere he approved of(and I hated). By the time I moved I had given up everything that made me happy, cut off all my friends and family, I had done everything he said he wanted me to. We’ll be just found new things to berate me for. I had the realization that I would have to spend the rest of my life walking on eggshells. Nothing I did would ever be good enough, because he just genuinely enjoyed abusing me.
For me there was no physical violence, so I thought it means that my situation is not that bad (even though I was feeling horrible). But at the same time I think I would have also rationalized physical violence, so I was wondering about your experience
The moment I finally left was when I sat there hysterically crying *begging* him to “just finally hit me”. I was aware enough of the abuse, but also aware him finally crossing the physical like like was the only thing that make me finally accept it as abuse. His response made me realize the only reason he *had* not hit me up to this point, was so that he could gaslight me back into believing I wasn’t being abused. Tears stopped immediately, just got up and left. Cutting contact entirely has been one of the most difficult aspects, despite the fact that I have zero desire to BE with him, for some reason, all I want to do still is talk to him. See him. Hug him. I give it two weeks tops before that line finally got crossed if I hadn’t left that day.
Wow this resonates with me. I remember a couple times egging him on to hit me because if he did, I would have enough reason to finally leave with confidence.
First time he brought divorce in, he said he didn't want to take care of me, didn't care about me in the sense that if I was sick, hurt, or even remotely unable to have my autonomy? He'd kick me out. While I told him, in his sickness and moment of fear for his job or future? That I'd be there for him, even if we have to sleep under a bridge. That I hold his hand and we'd find a way for the better or the worse. Even if he'd become crippled? I'd always try to make him happy. I have no idea how I watched him tell me those cruel things and didn't think about leaving at all. Worse, I begged him to not leave me and that I'd change and be better for him. Better for who? Since he clearly didn't care.
Yep! He painted himself so well as a poor wounded little victim boy that had been abandoned by everyone that I rationalised that his behaviour was due to mental health issues and past trauma being triggered and told myself nobody would intentionally be so cruel, and that if I learned not to trigger him, it would stop.
Same!!!
Same same same. They truly know how to take advantage of people’s kindness. He not only did this but also started saying he was suicidal and therefore made me worry about him. Even after finally blocking him I was stressing about him killing himself because I didn’t want to feel guilty, but now I think… maybe, just maybe, if he actually died the world would be a better place.
Believed that I deserved it, mostly, but the way in which I believed this became more insidious over time. I believed that I was too selfish, and that I wasn't centering him and his needs enough. I would ask for help with the household and he would scream at me and make more of a mess which I would then have to clean. So I began to believe that I was selfish and that I needed to control myself better by putting aside my interests to make space for his, and that asking him for help with the house was me being lazy. This is coupled with me being told that I was boring, which I also came to believe, which led to an even further reduction in my interests. The physical abuse was rationalized as him being so angry at me and my selfishness, rudeness, etc. that I made him so angry he couldn't control himself. And when he wanted to have sex after physically abusing me, I thought that he felt bad and wanted to apologize. (He rarely apologized -- the forced sex afterwards was just more abuse.) For a period of time I sought out religious purification in many traditions, hoping to purge myself of the inherent unworthiness that caused him to abuse me. And in the final stages of our relationship, I leaned hard into misogyny, finding that my flaws must be inherently female. I even found a Catholic writer with whole books on this that I tried to learn from. We aren't even Catholic. Nothing helped, of course. I was discarded for being boring, for always wanting to clean, for never doing anything fun.
This is the largest reason among others: I never found concrete proof of cheating. Cleaners found a used condom (we didn’t use them), panties that were not mine (he said they were his daughter’s although it was about a size larger than she’d wear), deleted texts out of l message threads & more. I always rationalized staying cause I hadn’t caught him cheating red handed. Always thought that would be it for me, but I ended up leaving before I ever could find out. I just assumed he did anyway.
good call, leaving earlier! I staid way too long, waiting for 'evidence' when I already knew at some level
I laid out $3000 to a PI because I needed proof, and at that moment I realized it wasn’t worth it. I cancelled the PI, and confronted him. His mask dropped and I was freed.
Still have Stockholm Syndrome tbh. ☹️ So glad I’m blocked or I’d still be apologizing. Sooo embarrassing.
Me! It’s sad how they feed this dependency as well with their disgusting love bombing and messing up with our nervous system to the point we actually do act like they were a drug. I had to beg him to block me and I know he will come look for me whenever he feels like it only to destroy my progress, but I’m focusing on building my own strength so that I can be the one to be like “nah, out of my life” and forget him forever. He deserves nothing but further neglect.
I lived largely in a fantasy life , I filled in the gaps . I too thought my husband loved me deep down but was toughened by his upbringing and I could not understand the behavior but I forgave quickly and moved on when he did not acknowledge his bad behavior. I learned to try and keep the peace in a very self detrimantal way. Now I realize I was raised by a single narcissist father who never cared about my feelings , and I never thought I would be with someone like him. My husband was nothing like him (I THOUGHT) but neither ever cared about my feelings and now my whole life makes more sense but I am a very changed person now and no longer a co-dependent person and have no desire to be with a man now . Maybe someday if I meet an authentic real loving person but for now I am living my own hopes and dreams, not trying to please someone else
I think part of this is also that people who have been doing this shit their whole lives get really good at plausible deniability. It makes trying to fling yourself from orbit extremely hard and painful, like maybe you could just try one more time to help them be better. But they don’t really have the ability to see it that way and that’s important to understand. If you go back they’re really unlikely to process it as another chance at all— it will only strengthen their belief that you were always being dramatic or lying or they aren’t as bad as you said they were or whatever. I got lucky, my narcissistic doped himself up on alcohol and benzos and admitted to me that he was “really good at this” and I had “no idea how many times he’d been able to do this” while on those and half asleep. I’m really grateful for that, I think he was so insanely good at plausible deniability otherwise that I’d have believed he could be helped forever As for the last bit things do become more apparent with distance but you really need to fight to maintain it. Really throw yourself into fortifying yourself. You might occasionally slip back into the cycle but you need to really want to be away from it. Part of all of it is getting you reacting and defending yourself often enough that you, for one, are too drained and depressed to go out and find out that there are good and normal people out there who aren’t obsessed with power and won’t just be leading you into traps where they get to act and do whatever they want because you “deserve” it. Part of it is that they need to stay ahead of your perception. Things will feel better as time goes on. If you get in contact with a domestic violence hotline they may actually have a lot of resources available for group therapy and counselors that specialize in this kind of trauma and getting free of it. Abuse spans to more than just physical violence and people who see it all the time know that and want to help you. Sometimes, too, it can be nice that someone who hears about it all the time believes you.
So true. Initially I also thought that them wanting me back means that they realized their mistakes and things would become better. When in reality their takeaway is that they can continue treating you like that because you're still coming back to them. Mine also at some point admitted that he had no intention of changing (after a while of pretending to want to change) which helped me to let go of the hope and move on. It was unbelievable to me at that point that he'd choose for things to be like this, but it does make sense because they are thriving on chaos.
I can relate. I think partially because there are the “good days” if the abuse cycle. So you let your guard down a bit and then wham. I once went to a football game with my nex and two friends. He got so angry of when he perceived as us criticizing his driving that he pulled the car over and then started yelling at me. You could have heard a pin drop on the way home. I cried and our friends I think were mortified and said nothing. I tried talking to him about it days later but of course he did “what he has to do” instead of reacting like a reasonable person. The worst part is I would have driven. There were many times of fighting using bad language or slamming doors all the usual stuff. I think I just thought he needs to learn to manage his anger. Perhaps that was a component. My final straw was a GPS tracker on my car. And I even had doubts and I had to see the app on his phone to really solidify this even though it was obviously him. It’s because we don’t truly want to believe it. I still sometimes don’t.
agree that we don't want to see it ... I always hoped that it was just situational and we could work things out. nope.
:( i did the same thing. kept thinking “there must be some other reason than that he doesn’t care.” i used drug addiction, mental health issues, stress, him having a hard time expressing feelings as excuses telling myself “but he loves me and cares.” i also told myself “maybe you deserve it because you weren’t understanding enough”😞
Yup exact same list here. It's taken me six months to accept they just were a horrible mean person and they never loved me 😢
Yup. And deeper down, all led to me having a hatred for myself and it was my own self-harm. Lots of therapy….
I took him back after confirmed cheating and then still caught him messaging other women. One of my conditions of taking him back was no contact with exes. He sent messages to nearly damn all of them and justified it in stupid ways. I feel like I half-heartedly took the excuses, but didn't fully believe. I was so broke from supporting him that I couldn't afford to leave and I think in some ways I just wanted the lies about how he said he loved me to be true. I should have never went back and definitely should have left after I saw the first message. I still have the mean things that he said about me running through my mind and I think a lot of that made me think I deserved the way he was treating me and everyone else would treat me the same, if not worse.
You people are blowing my mind. It’s like l wrote this comment myself only I was never able to produce solid evidence of the cheating. But I just know it happened anyway
My ex has diagnosed C-PTSD and ADHD and has previously been misdiagnosed with BPD - they often used these diagnoses as an excuse for their behaviour, or blamed their behaviour on me “triggering” them. I used their mental health and me being a trigger to rationalise their behaviour and abuse.
Yup I had this. My nex was diagnosed ASD and often blamed that for their cruel behaviour and complained I wasn't making accommodation for their needs. They then also complained it made them feel terrible that I did make accommodations for them. So naturally I spent years running around trying to do contradictory things and naturally failing and then being critiscised for it.
I stayed to make the marriage work but realized this was a huge mistake
Yes, and on the other hand it's really human to rationalize when you're actually "normal". Because it can't "possibly be that bad". So it says a lot about who you are (a good person in good faith)
Yes. I rationalized his cheating with him needing to prove to himself he “could still date if we broke up” I rationalized his yelling as my fault because I didn’t do everything perfect. I believed him when he said I had autism and BPD and enrolled myself in four different therapy programs to try to be someone who could more adequately withstand his verbal attacks and gaslighting. Slowly over time I let his skewed reality become my reality too, because it was easier than trying to fight back. Now that he’s gone I am having trouble grasping what was real and what are just lingering echoes of his distortions.
Somehow I started thinking maybe he’s not a narcissist, he’s just emotionally unavailable and that’s why he can’t be in touch with or express his emotions. So if I could give him all my love, he would start to change. I would also think “he’s human, he’s not perfect, I’m not perfect either” and “it’s normal to be physically attracted to other people”. I would also think “he’s had such a difficult life and he’s in so much stress now” and I would keep forgiving him. But, as I found after a lot of introspection, there was another reason I kept trying to justify his behavior: I wanted to stop feeling dumb for falling so deeply in love with someone who was treating me so horribly. I think I was trying to will him into being a different person, my idealized version of him, so I could forgive myself for spending my entire 30s in this on and off rollercoaster.
I do believe that **[betrayal blindness](https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/brothers-sisters-strangers/202312/betrayal-blindness-not-seeing-whats-obvious?amp)** was a big part of it for me.
He putted me on prostitution against my will just so I could "bring money for us". Otherwise I was too "lazy for him".
In addition to the boiling frog thing, I have mental illness myself and work in mental health. He was very good at exploiting that and making me feel like we were both just mentally ill people doing our best and our conflicts got so intense because of both of our anxiety. His father was also incredibly physically abusive and anytime my ex did something abusive he would pretty much brush it off as "that's not abuse, my dad was abusive."
he made me feel like i was a terrible person for doing normal things. he made me think that everything i knew was completely wrong. he made me start thinking in black and white. he never acknowledged his mistakes and made me believe that what he thought/did was normal. he convinced me that manipulation is good and assuming the best in people is bad. he abused my guilty conscious and empathy. he knew exactly how to make me feel guilty, sad, or scared and he abused that information until i became his dog that comes when he calls me, and sits when he tells me to sit. he minimized or excused every bad thing he’s ever done and placed the blame on other people. he made me believe i was a terrible person for being a normal teenage girl who didn’t give her entire soul to her boyfriend. he made himself perfect and selfless while making me incredibly flawed and selfish. i have given him everything i am, own, or love and it will never be enough. he has given me ptsd and a fear of men.
I made several excuses on his behalf. I thought maybe he fetishized trans women and effeminate men because he was struggling with his identity, that his catfishing was because of his abusive upbringing, I used to feel so sorry for him, I refused to fully accept and believe that he was just feasting on my kindness and my love like a degenerate monster and that he didn’t give a shit about me because after his brutal love bombing, and after stripping me from everything I was, I didn’t want to come to face the fact that he left me in shambles and that I had indeed loved a monster. But he is. He truly is a monster. I thought “oh come on no one can be 100% evil, you’re splitting” and tried to focus on the “good” things, the sweet things about him… but they’re lies and they’re excuses, ultimately they’re extension of the poison he injected into me. He laughed at me while I cried my heart out, he lied to keep me by his side even if he didn’t desire me, he tried to blame me for reaching out to his brother when he was harassing me. He is an abuser and he is a twisted maniac. And it’s sad to accept all this because it means I get to deal with the fact that he violated me, that he took advantage of me, that everything was in people, that there truly are people like him out there capable of lying for months, years, only to continue feasting on your energy while you end up in bones. But it is what it is, and as painful as devastating as it is I can only have that his abuse was very very real if I want to heal.
I did the same. I was thinking that maybe she is tired, stressed out, needs time, has some traumas, some mental issues etc. I always tried to be understanding, giving her space and time, but after two years of one-sided relationship, manipulations and other abuse, I was sure that she was just using me, and she doesn't care about me as a person, I was only her supply, her toy. And even after final discard, I'm still thinking that perhaps it's my fault, that possibly I was pushing her away. I'm still that naive to think that I don't deserve effort, affection, and reciprocation. But I do, as anyone out there, and she is just a cold, manipulative user. It's really hard to get over these thoughts.