Quote:
Originally Posted by DoroMona
To me it sounds like you were both pretty bad, so figuring out who was worse or who shouldn't have done what may be a waste of your time at this point. Your partner sounds like someone far from perfect (cold, cheating on you, etc.), so I wouldn't overthink your behavior, except maybe in the context of a new relationship in which hopefully the person will deserve better.
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It's not a matter of who was worse and was he worse than me, so am I off the hook. I absolutely know I'm not off the hook for the mean things I said to him, or for choosing to continue with my visit when I knew I didn't really want to, and then being miserable the whole time. The man likely has NPD and, in the week since we explosively ended things and I found out he was cheating (and likely lying to me in 2016 about other women when he was chatting me up, too) I'm struggling with the belief that I caused this behavior. It doesn't matter how much I know about NPD, I'm pushing away thoughts like, "If I'd only not texted him so much (even in good ways), if I'd only not stressed him out, if I'd only done this, if I'd only done that." At this point, I have no idea what I did to cause his behavior, or
if I did. And I struggle going forward to trust that someone isn't going to do this to me again if I choose to be in another relationship because what if there was nothing wrong with him except what he told me--bipolar disorder--and I'm just that horrible and hard to live with?
When someone says that I was bad and tells me not to do it again in another relationship, it reinforces everything I'm trying very hard not to believe about myself. I don't believe I'm bad, and I don't believe it was all my fault. Not rationally. But the self-doubt is so insidious.
I did what I could to treat this man the best I could; I'd cared deeply for him for years. I put up with him cutting out on me in 2016 because he had just gone through a tough breakup (likely untrue) and I was still there this fall when he came back. His emotional abandonment and manipulation began...heck, I don't even know when. I was depressed, my self-esteem pretty much gone by the end. Literally none of my emotional needs were being met, but I was doing what I could with an empty vessel to meet all of his. But maybe you're right; the next guy deserves better.
I am not sure if that was supposed to be encouraging or supportive, but I found it to be incredibly insensitive. What about what I deserved out of this relationship? What about the next?