With all I know-Still SHOCKED at the atrocities N's get away with in plain sight

[Julia]

Hm, well I certainly sound detached from my XN, and I certainly am, NOW, six years later.

Here are some confessions of my own about the early years:

Went to his psychiatric hospital (he was insisting that he had never loved me at the time), and gave him oral sex. 

Told him he should divorce me if I was so horrible for him.

Lied for him to help him get out of the psychiatric hospital because it was what he wanted.

Took care of his every need, worked 5-7 hours a day on all the needed care and communications with his family who were all believing that his MLC was a result of a "bad marriage" . I.e. "me".

I agreed to "go out on a date" with him, so that he could compare me to the other women he was dating.

After he had asked for a divorce and started dating, about 9 months later, I asked him what I would need to do for him to even consider getting back together.

I was willing to talk to  him on the phone for hours, all about him, urging him to get better, listening to whatever he said, loving him still. I did this for about 2.5 years.

I was willing to take him back for about 2.5 years after the MLC.

This is hard to think about, and there are smaller examples... but you get the point that I was crazed and desperate and had horrible obsessions about him for years. Not saying that anyone else will be this stuck on their XN for this long. Rather, hoping that someone else can see some hope in their situation knowing that I was severely obsessed and yet got over it. I text him weekly and do not even think about him or it other than as a thing I have to do to arrange a visit with my kids.


Julia

[daisyk9292]

Wow Julia. Thanks for sharing those things with me.

I think for me, I read your story along with many others on here, and it makes sense to me that YOU would be obsessed, have a difficult time coming to terms with it all, the ending of your marriage etc. Because you were/are MARRIED and the N is the father of your children. It's perfectly understandable for any of you to be freaking out over what's happening.

In my case, I dated this guy for about 3 years when we were just kids.  Then 20 years later and after just 3 months, I'm now stuck on obsessing over the whole relationship. He was never really MINE to begin with. 

I guess I'm lucky compared to his wife. He rejected me AGAIN, but at the same time I feel I dodged a bullet twice. I don't know if I'm making any sense here. In fact my therapist said something that NEVER made any sense to me. That he didn't reject me, that I rejected him. The only thing I can figure on that one was I didn't go along with his "plan" whatever that was, I went rogue and confessed to my H. So to him that was the rejection.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I believe I should be having an easier time moving on from it compared with many on here, because we were never married, we don't share children, or a great deal of history. I have no "life" to untangle from him. For that I should be nothing but grateful.

But I'm thinking maybe it's just not the experience I had with him, it's that it lead me to re-experience all the bad moments, repressed memories and relationships in my life that lead me into an EA with the N to begin with.

Thanks again. 

[Legs]

I like to read those articles that compare being involved with an n to having Stockholm Syndrome. I can totally see how *I* would twist stuff around in my head and jump down, spin around a pick a bale of cotton for someone if I thought they had control over my life or death, and I knew they were a psychopath.


How much MORE likely am I to do all kinds of crazy chit for someone when I think I have loved them for a hundred years and am afraid of losing the only life I have? I did a bunch of crazy things when I was attempting to reconcile with lucifer...I won't even say *he* was attempting because he wasn't.

I thought I had to make it work but there was no way it could once the scales had fallen off my eyes. I didn't even know 99% of what I know now when I left the marriage, but I knew enough to know I had to get out or one of us was going to die....and if I was the one that did the killing, I'd kill myself too and maybe some other people as well.


I think they have a criminal mindset in a way and that's why they get away with all the stuff they do.......Jumt my opinion. But don't fauly yourself for not understanding the hideous lengths that they will go to.....you couldn't possibly have expected that nor can you ever understand it because you are a different kind of creature.


They went after us because we were sympathetic to them or we awakened something in them or they thought we could fill a place inside of them or they thought we could make them happy....whatever..it was never about who we were, but how we made them feel, at least temporarily, and when we didn't anymore......we were gone from their hard little hearts. I like to think that lucifer has a chicken heart..the size of my fingertip...a nasty looking little thing that you could swallow i one bite if you were so inclined.

Take heart, my lovely Chix and Dudes......you walked away from the P.O.S. at least in spitit in not in actual fact. There is no crime in staying with the monster if that's the best thing for you. Do whatever you need to do..if that means checking Facebook, then check it. We are all different and what works for one, doesn't necessarily work for another.

Legs

[pearlsb4swine]

Thanks Julia, for sharing that.  It gives me hope that I will not spend the rest of my life thinking about my xnh. 

pearls

[overwhelmed]

aaahhhh, sweet, self critical daisy!  So much about you stands out and reminds me of me.  Anyway, like others here, I have a list of those things also....like the email you sent where you "held it in".....how many times was I leaving N...then ended up in that mode you were in when you sent the email and just couldn't?  Or how many times since leaving have I thought I had to go back?  How many times have I reacted to those thoughts in the beginning?  well, often. 

3 months, 3 years....9 years, 10 years....kids, no kids...look,being involved with a person like this is difficult to break out of.  The things it plants, in such a short time, are resistent to your typical "pick up, move on, rub some dirt on it."  You lowered your values for this creep..  THAT'S DEVASTATING.  It's hurtful. I did too.  And you don't want to know what a slime you did it for, who would?

Daisy, you are reacting very normal to an abnormal situation.  Like others here who admitted going through it....even CZ and Julia, who you probably think of as very normal, reasonable, healed people....THEY WENT THROUGH IT AND REACTED THAT SAME WAY.  Doesn't that tell you just how normally you are reacting to something super abnormal?

Next,  we end up wearing their shame, their lies, their icky things.....you're outraged at how he gets away with it?  isn't that a reasonable thing?  being outraged by something outrageous....perfectly NORMAL and logical.  Doesn't seem so close to "losing it" to me.  Since when is it "losing it" to be outraged by something outrageous?  His behavior....playing school princiapal, rock star young man at night, girls on the side, wife...blah blah blah....you see what he is, you see him doing it to others, you see others not catching on, IT'S OUTRAGEOUS and when you think of it, you're outraged.  Here's where the trick happens....when you express outrage while with them, they turn it around.  Make up an excuse for it, talk it away, blame it on the person expressing it....and, it works.  So even when he's not there to do such a thing, your mind kinda takes over for him.  You get all outraged and next thing you know, comes those twisted messages.  IT ISN'T YOU DAISY.  What's wrong with you that you could fall for him?  NOTHING.  What's wrong with you that you can't just "get over it?"  NOTHING.  But you want to. 

Like CZ said, it's normal....but, there comes a time where you do have to practice containing your emotions.  Right now, I hear you wanting the obsessive thoughts to go.  If I were you, I'd start there.  I'd work on getting him out of your head.  You won't do it perfectly, it won't happen overnight....but little by little, minute to minute can become hour by hour, then a few hours, then a half a day....then a few days.  I still get in ruts but they pass quicker than they used too. 

Have you tried any mental exercises to help them?  Here's one and it sounds silly but it works.  It feels unnatural at first.  At first, it takes effort.  At first, it only helps for a minute or two....but if you stick with it, it will work.  It's helping your brain develop a new habit.  When a thought of him pops into your head....don't latch onto it.  It's latching onto it that causes you to be distracted and not "there" in the present moment.  So the second you become aware that a thought is popping into your hea and you don't want it to....shake your head and refocus your thought to you....a go to is, "where am I breathing from, my mouth or my nose?"  asking yourself that question makes you think of you and bring it back to center....so figure out the answer?  is it your mouth or nose....if it's your mouth tell yourself, "ok...my mouth, I want to breath in my nose and out my mouth, slowly....I'm going to let that thought pass over my head like a cloud....the thought is a cloud and I am not going to touch it....I'm breathing in my nose, out my mouth...." and take slow breathes...telling yourself "in my nose out my mouth...."  you have to focus on your breathing to do it.  it takes concentration.  your mind will try to distract you to the thoughts consumiong you....stick with it, push them out and get to focusing on answering the question, "where are you breathing from, your nose or mouth."  The point of this exercise is two things, it brings you back from "that distraction" and it calms you because those distractions cause you to be tense and feel bad.  It changes your breathing rate, etc.  That makes it harder to gain focus in your present moment. 

I don't mean to never think about it....or talk about it.  I mean to start practicing some exercise for the times you don't want it consuming you, the times you want to be present in the moment with your daughter or whatever.  I HAD to do this and it did really help.  Slowly and unnaturally at first.  From "this time to this time" I'd tell myself, I will NOT obsess.  Then once the kids are in bed, I can if I want.....I made myself try and try again.  Knowing I wouldn't be perfect at it.  The above exercise (therapist game me) because easier and easier....it ended up becoming automatic except for in those extra high anxiety times.

Another good visual is, thosughts come....as your breathing, think about a BIG, thick, heavy steel door that shuts up and down.  Shut the door.  Shut the door on the thoughts/obsessions when they are unwanted....breath and if you aren't letting them pass with those clouds....shut the damn steel door.

Rooting for you daisy and I think you are not "losing it."  I think you'
re just wearing a few too many things that are his.  But you?  a reasobale person.  Reasonable people when hurt, have feelings.  And we even have struggles.  Reasonable people are flawed and able to admit it.  Not so crazy to me.  Nothing embarrassing there. 

[daisyk9292]

3 months, 3 years....9 years, 10 years....kids, no kids...look,being involved with a person like this is difficult to break out of.  The things it plants, in such a short time, are resistent to your typical "pick up, move on, rub some dirt on it."  You lowered your values for this creep..  THAT'S DEVASTATING.  It's hurtful. I did too.  And you don't want to know what a slime you did it for, who would?

Yes, and don't even get me started on the "filter" I use every time I meet with my D's principal. I'm always thinking, "What are you up to when nobody is watching slime ball?" That poor dude!! 

Overwhelmed you've ovewhelmed me! 

This is such a wonderful site I can hardly stand it anymore. I want to share that a few years ago, about 2 yrs after it all happened, I was looking for support like this. I went to a "womens" site, and looked at the message boards. I find one about ending an affair. Well let me tell ya, I was re-victimized mercilessly by the members.

I was told, that there is something seriously wrong with me inside that after 2 years, I'm still upset over it. That he has obviously moved on with his life, and I need to do the same. That they didn't believe he was involved with me and felt "nothing" and that I have to look at why I made the choices I've made and I must take responsibility for them.

They also shared too much information about how they met their married partners for sex in cars! At least I didn't make that choice!! lol There are always things to be grateful for!!

I don't know if they intended to help, all I do know is they REALLY didn't seem to get it and it was a VERY bad experience for me.

I think on here, I'm still waiting for an attack. But none ever come. I also don't feel like I'm being "enabled" or encouraged to stay stuck in the misery of my hellish experience without doing any work to heal from it. But it makes it a lot easier to heal, when others don't join in with me on beating myself up over and over.

So thank you very much. I can't tell you how much this all means for me. 

I will try the breathing techniques you've suggested. I have learned transcendental meditation. The thoughts are to be allowed, but when doing it there isn't any reaction I have to them. It's in the day to day moments I get hooked, or before sitting to do a meditation, I get hooked which prevents me from doing the mediation! UGH.

I will be revisting this post to read it when I start "going there"

Daisy

[pearlsb4swine]

Wow Julia. Thanks for sharing those things with me.

I think for me, I read your story along with many others on here, and it makes sense to me that YOU would be obsessed, have a difficult time coming to terms with it all, the ending of your marriage etc. Because you were/are MARRIED and the N is the father of your children. It's perfectly understandable for any of you to be freaking out over what's happening.

In my case, I dated this guy for about 3 years when we were just kids.  Then 20 years later and after just 3 months, I'm now stuck on obsessing over the whole relationship. He was never really MINE to begin with. 
.........................

I guess what I'm trying to say is I believe I should be having an easier time moving on from it compared with many on here, because we were never married, we don't share children, or a great deal of history. I have no "life" to untangle from him. For that I should be nothing but grateful.

But I'm thinking maybe it's just not the experience I had with him, it's that it lead me to re-experience all the bad moments, repressed memories and relationships in my life that lead me into an EA with the N to begin with.

Thanks again. 

Daisy,  I think that memories of relationships we had when we were young can be very powerful.  Maybe especially when they are with an N.  Or someone who is emotionally unavailable, for whatever reason.  First love is a very powerful thing, and when it doesn't end well, or there is not enough closure, and you are a sensitive and caring person, those memories can haunt you.  And then it's easy to fall into the trap of shaming yourself because you have so much emotion tied up with a relationship that was brief, or over a long time ago, or seems to have meant very little to the other person involved.  And when those relationships get rekindled later on in life, they carry so much baggage, in addition to being a tangible link to the past and our younger selves.  They are powerful stuff.

In a way, even though  was married to by N for 30 years, my relationship with my N sounds just like your relationship with your N.  We both loved someone who did not love us back.  We both invested way too much of ourselves and got very little in return, because we were deceived and used and manipulated.   

I think you should have some respect for yourself as someone who was badly hurt by someone who had great power in your life.   Being hurt by an N is being hurt by an N.  Please don't be so hard on yourself.

 
Pearls

[loved2much]

[OVERWHELMING URGE TO EMAIL N'S SCHOOL DISTRICT AND RANT LIKE A CRAZY WOMAN OVER THIS HORRID HORRID MONSTER!!! ]

I have that urge too!
When the NX could not get a job...I redid his resume several times...I suggested that he teach what he loved...guitar!  I helped him apply at Cabrillo college and also at UCSC and several recreation departments.  He put a program together and has been teaching now for 3 years.  Of course his money was his money and mine was to support 'us'!   The reason I want to contact the schools is that this is how he is now getting his N supply...his students...in particular women students.  His latest victim has 2 kids...what a snake.  He has no honor or integrity and only knows how to charm people so that he can use them. 

As for Facebook.  I immediately unfriended him and his friends and family because I do not want to know what's going on in his life and I am certain that I do not want him to know what's going on in mine. 

I still feel sorry for his victims...women like me who sing and play guitar and have dreams...who take a guitar class at a local college or recreation class...his next prey!

[MoreMyself]

It's easy to understand that one of the reasons for our continuing pain and anger is that there was never any resolution.  No 'grown-up' talks where we could discuss issues.  The Hobbit, like a 3 year old, just basically stuck his tongue out at me and ran away.  But lately I've understood another important reason why the anger and pain and even rage at them continues for so long.  For the 3 decades of my life that I was with the Hobbit, I was in a stage of arrested emotional development.  I was in chaos.  I wasn't attending to my own emotional, spiritual or even physical needs.  Certainly not looking after myself as I should.  Before I met him I was on a journey that involved interest in eastern religions, meditation, building solid friendships and trying to help others.  But with him, my life became so entangled with helping him, with investing in his goals that mine kept getting pushed away and trampled on by him.  I consider my marriage in many ways 30 lost years. 

And that's what normal people don't get when you try to talk to them about the pain of an ended relationship with an N.  Part of my 'getting over him' was accepting that I'll never really get over him, not fully.  And I'm okay with that.  The hardest part is not being able to talk to my friends and family about it anymore because they will judge me (six years on) as being fixated and stuck.  That's what makes this site such a necessary part of the healing process.  No judgement, no time limits. 

[overwhelmed]

No judgement or time limits. However, there are tools to limit the obsessing. Limiting it doesn't make it less painful or faster or the digust less but it does make more space for rest from the chaos.

[daisyk9292]

love2much - I'd like to take a guitar and smash his ugly, pathetic N face in!!! 

It's easy to understand that one of the reasons for our continuing pain and anger is that there was never any resolution. 

YESSSSSS! THAT'S IT!!!!!! The lack of closure. I can't believe he came back into my life and got me to feel all these feelings for him again, and then just left me hanging as if it never happened. That's what boggles my mind. I mean I understand now completely this is what they do. Like you said, stick their tongue out and leave, go pick another toy to play with, because heck, we just stopped being any fun! I think my last email to him was one more attempt to get closure. Even though I had been told it will NEVER, EVER happen. I just refused to believe this.

They're as deep as a freakin puddle. Even decades with another person is brushed off as meaningless.

But the "normal" mind has a very tough time trying to just file it away in "It will never make sense" pile and let it go.

I have to reach acceptance that I am forever changed by this, but I don't have to be defined by it.

A physical attack such a being beaten or raped leaves traces that something happened. Something you can see, and show, that matches your horrific experience. The scars of our abuse are all on the inside.  The damage is just as severe if not more so because it's less known, or less accepted for what it really is. It's unnpunishable and that fact fills me with rage sometimes. Because they can and will damage again, and again, and again.

I sometimes wish I were completely out of my mind crazy, like one of those women on a lifetime movie and just go run his ass over and get it done with!! Crazy Daisy!!!! But he's not worth the god damn gas for the trip across town.

They're all just a bunch of 

I just pictured a chocolate Easter bunny, some are solid, some are hollow. That's what they are, they look like the solid ones, but once you dig in, you realize they aren't like the solid ones, they're completely empty inside.

Who knew there were humans walking around the same way? 

[JennyWren]

Plus...all the time we think they are solid.....they think we are hollow like them.

Only one thing to do with a hollow chocolate bunny.....bite it`s head off.

(Except they probably aren`t hollow...but filled with ear wax.  )
Crazy Daisy eh?....join the club! I am still turning myself inside out trying to make sense of the innocent looking hollow choccy bunnies...who smile innocently as they gently crumple the deepest recesses of your soul without you ever noticing...in the cruelest and most accomplished display of psychological Sleight-of-hand.

Ns are the most damaging of creatures. Because...unlike a fist in your face...you can`t see what they`re up to. Of course...if/when you do see what they`re up to...some are quite handy with their fists too. 

It is human nature to struggle to make sense of your experiences. What a task to make sense of N-ish experiences. Some day....our brains will know ENOUGH to satisfy the yearning to make sense of the senseless.

[Proud2B]

 

For the 3 decades of my life that I was with the Hobbit, I was in a stage of arrested emotional development.  I was in chaos.  I wasn't attending to my own emotional, spiritual or even physical needs.  Certainly not looking after myself as I should.  Before I met him I was on a journey that involved interest in eastern religions, meditation, building solid friendships and trying to help others.  But with him, my life became so entangled with helping him, with investing in his goals that mine kept getting pushed away and trampled on by him.  I consider my marriage in many ways 30 lost years. - MoreMySelf 

MMS,
What a sad, but poignant comment.  I think most of us suffer arrested emotional, physical or spiritual growth on some level when we get tangled up with an N.  Their demands do serious damage to our ability for self-care - so vital to us as humans and caregivers.  Personally, any time I did anything remotely related to self-care, it was almost as if I had to justify treating myself well, of taking time out.  The longer the relationship went on, the more demanding he became.  He devoured me, he almost destroyed me.

People don't get that - how they can chew you up and spit you out, and leave you in a wet, weepy heap on the sidewalk with nowhere to go, no one to turn to.             

I understand why you might think 30 years was wasted, but on the other hand, if you had not survived it (and you did), you would not be who you are today.  I know for me, if it hadn't been for the devastation at the hands of an N that continues to this day (by way of the work environment), I would not be who I am.  I have been through the fire.  It's a process.  My life situation is very different, and I'm less secure financially, but I am a stronger person, and I LIKE who I am.  I do not mean to diminish your suffering in any way.  Just as I would never wish suffering at the hands of an N on anyone (except maybe another N), I guess I just want to point out that even life with an N isn't a total waste of time.  We learn and grow, and we will be something they will never be - ALIVE!!!!! 

[MoreMyself]

Proud, thanks for your comment.  I didn't mean to imply that I am not stronger for it, and in many ways glad for the marriage.  I have my sons and I was lucky to be financially independent when it was over.  At least the Hobbit didn't spit me out and leave me in poverty, which I know a lot of Ns do if they can get away with it.  The marriage and the Hobbit's treatment of me made me rebel for once and for all.  It made me come to the realisation that I've been put down and judged and criticised since the day I was born, and I never deserved it.  I'm doing a lot of catching up with friendships and interests and self care. I'm in a good place right now, strong and calm without the chaos that the Hobbit could so easily inflict on a daily basis.  And without those stress hormones I've lost weight and got healthier.

And my best revenge is to that I plan to look after myself so well that I will outlive him!  My revenge fantasy is that 20 years from now he's in an aged care home, probably in a wheelchair after a stroke (if he follows in the path of his father and grandfather).  I might go to visit him.  He might be surly, pitiful, angry...I won't care.  I'll pat his hand and lean over and whisper "You got what you deserve.  I'm off to enjoy life".  Then I'll walk away and never look back.

Yeah, it's just a fantasy, but it gets me through the dark days.

[alatariel]

For the 3 decades of my life that I was with the Hobbit, I was in a stage of arrested emotional development.  I was in chaos.  I wasn't attending to my own emotional, spiritual or even physical needs.  Certainly not looking after myself as I should.  Before I met him I was on a journey that involved interest in eastern religions, meditation, building solid friendships and trying to help others.  But with him, my life became so entangled with helping him, with investing in his goals that mine kept getting pushed away and trampled on by him.  I consider my marriage in many ways 30 lost years. - MoreMySelf

I just have to copy this, too.  I was with dickhead for nearly 2 decades.  Wow, it's a long time when you say it like that.  I met him when I was a teenager, my first day of college.  My life at that time included "interest in eastern religions, meditation, building solid friendships and trying to help others," not to mention a major in elementary ed. and a brand-new sense of myself as an attractive, friendly, outgoing, crazy-in-a-good-way girl.  Sheeeeeeesh, did my relationship with him sure derail that.  I got fat, drank a lot, flunked out of college, pizzed off my FOO, and devoted everything to him. I wasted the "best years of my life" on him.

Fortunately, I had some internal resistance that pushed me to go back to college, go through with having my kids, and finally GTFO, despite all his attempts to derail it all.

Then, along came troll, to derail my new sense of myself as a single woman, trying to get my life back.  But I'm actually glad she did, b/c if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have found WoN, and I never would've realized that dickhead is an N, and I'd continue to defer to him, feel sorry for him, feel all the guilt and shame for raising my kids in a "broken home".