The ending of my relationship

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Originally Posted by Have Hope I did not reply to his last text and I don’t plan on it.

Good for this one....what about the next or the next? I personally would box up all his things left in your apartment & put them at a location of your choosing & send one final text telling him where he can get them, then immediately block him from any farther communication. That is what would truly make the statement you keep saying but not enforcing. Know that final blow is tough but if you don't do something truly forceful he will continue this even after the divorce.

Dang, I had just an acquaintance from high school & college that reconnected a few years ago on messenger/FB. He was actually annoying & I really didn't want to block, I just said I didn't want to communicate any more. He couldn't take that & kept trying. I ended up blocking him. Another acquaintance from high school sent me a happy birthday wish from the guy & encouraged me to reconnect with that guy. I said to tell him thank you but I would not open back up communication. Said NO with absolutely no remorseful feelings. Sometimes we have to get tough to make our own feelings known when they refuse to listen & end the insanity. Not easy but it actually has been getting easier the more practice at doing it I get. For me it came down to not being willing to tolerate certain behaviors & not being beholden to them for nice things they might have done in the past because NOW is all that really matters in reality.

Keep working on building your strength. It doesn't just happen overnight....takes time to develop along with the mind set that goes with it.

My "tolerance" mind set has become: "I will tolerate you having your thoughts & behaviors but I will not tolerate them infringing on MY life.....so GO, be however you want to be.....but not around me".

I can try. I also don't want him to retaliate. I am trying to be socially political out of self protection. If I end things more nicely with him, he may not bad mouth me to our circle of friends. That's the last thing I want to deal with.

He can badmouth you regardless. You can’t win with people like this. You have no control of what he does or says to people. It doesn’t matter if you are nice to him. He’ll do what he’ll do. Blocking or at least never ever responding to him is the one and only option. I had an ex making up a story of how he is dying on cancer in hopes I’ll come back, I won’t repeat the story as I already posted about it. But the only way to stop him was to block him. These people don’t stop at anything especially if they post or message this junk intoxicated, which your husband might be doing

File for divorce. Cut all communication. You’ve been separated since November. You could stop communication now. It will stop if you fully disengage.

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Originally Posted by Have Hope I can try. I also don't want him to retaliate. I am trying to be socially political out of self protection. If I end things more nicely with him, he may not bad mouth me to our circle of friends. That's the last thing I want to deal with.

There just is no nice way of ending things with people like that. If your "circle of friends" are truly worth their salt as friends, they will want to hear both sides & make up their own minds or just stay neutral. If not, they are NOT real friends in the first place. Sometimes it is good to find out peoples TRUE COLORS instead of hiding under the masks of not knowing. That just causes stress in life.

There’s always the chance they won’t take his bad mouthing seriously, especially if they know how things have gone between you. I understand wanting to control this narrative and deflect his negative energy away from your friendships, because it feels like he’s trying to steal even more from you. Bottom line is, trying to control what he does/says is a waste of your precious energy. You can’t gag him (sadly) but your true friends will see his bad mouthing for what it is - a big bunch of sour grapes!

You said it very accurately - he only gets to steal even more of my spirit away if he gets to our friends circle. It will kill me just that much more, and I am already half dead because of him.

I wish I could gag him, LOL.

But, as you said, friends will see he is only just spreading negativity, if it goes that way.

Sorry to butt in but i was reading through posts and saw Paul's comment which made me laugh. Thank you for the laugh Paul, I haven't laughed in ages haha. Dawn I hope all things work out for you. I seperated from abusive husband a year ago. Stay strong. You can do this. Keep taking slow deep breathes when stressed/anxious etc. Take care.

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This group of people I am speaking of are my music-going friends. Only a few of them are my closer friends, and they know the truth about him. Others don't know much. I suppose I just cannot worry about this anymore. What will be will be - and those who know me best won't judge me. IF he does speak negatively, they will probably all think he's just being sour. I think that's how this group operates - they're a very loving and positive energy group, so it will just create negativity which they don't like.

I am going to call Dial a Lawyer tomorrow to see what my options are for filing on my own.

I did disengage yesterday, and I heard nothing back from him. Maybe I shut him up - at least for now.

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I suppose I just cannot worry about this anymore. What will be will be - and those who know me best won't judge me.

Wise thinking. When we put too much value into what others MAY think we usually make not so good choices for what is best for ourself.

Hey, I'm back on the forum after a few months and like I said in my response to your earlier post, I was going to check out your thread ...So I've read some of your newer thread here. I'm sorry to hear this guy is still giving you a hard time. And that's an understatement. I think you are getting good advice here But I wanted to say that the post I quoted above is familiar to me. This is the state that I was left in after that guy I talked of in my thread (where we talked before).

I think you said you weren't this low before with other guys. Maybe it is with it being your first marriage at your age. Maybe it's why it went so deep and that is why it's so hard to get past it all and maybe you are also ready to really learn about some deep patterns from it all. I don't know, these are just my thoughts after reading your threads. I am just trying to say, I understand it's hard and well-meaning outsiders may see the full situation correctly from the outside but while we are inside it all, in the "bubble" and in all the unprocessed details and patterns of the experience it's very different than for outsiders. It's very different acutally having to go through all that and having to find our way through it all and out of the whole bubble and the situation.

I wish you luck with getting through it all and getting out of it in time before he possibly gets you even lower with all his extreme and remorseless emotional manipulations. And I said remorseless, yes, I still feel like he's a psychopath with how far he's willing to go with the emotional manipulations. I felt that before and I still have that feeling. Psychopaths do suck people dry and make them low like that, too. I saw your thread on the hospital (though I didn't have time to read it all yet). So things like that also make me think of how bad his emotional manipulations must be.

And in my case, it's taken more than 3 years to be decently over it (still not 100% over it but much better), after I went No Contact and that was with No Contact remaining in place, not breaking it, I got lucky with making him go away like he must have been so offended that he would never try and come back and pull me in again. That saved me because if I had got pushed lower then I'd have been def even more weakened than I was and I was very weakened and I still feel a lot of it even tho I got better.

I don't know how well I am reading your situation overall in an objective way but I just feel like I relate in a subjective way. So yes, I wish you luck very much. I'll hope I'll be able to be on the forum more and follow your thread again.

And I so wanted to post to this one too. I have exactly the same problem. I am establishing boundaries around all these people now, one by one. It's been so painful figuring this out and establishing the boundaries. You remember my thread is titled about vampires? These people are sorta all like vampires even if they don't all do it intentionally, even if they are not always psychopaths.

And again, I find it shocking how similar all this is again with me, how much I can relate to your posts with all that. And I think of this other person who I used to know (she's very busy now and I was too), she was exploited and traumatised deeply by a psychopath, she got very bad PTSD from it. I am thinking of her here because she was also a strong person and that's why the guy wanted to take advantage of her. She, even years later, still was being manipulated by the psychopath. And she still thought nice things about that guy. It wasn't easy for her also because they did live together. I didn't live together with that guy. That was my luck really. But I still had intrusive thoughts years later too about how he had nice stuff. Even if my common sense, sane brain, all that knew that that is b*******. It was why it was so intrusive. But it's possible to move on. The intrusiveness stopped for me eventually and I started healing more and more. Just an incredibly slow process. The guy in my case may not even have been a psychopath but manipulative definitely. Yours sounds like a psychopath alright. I would say, please focus on completely removing him, complete No Contact, and then you can truly start healing.

I again wish you luck with that, with No Contact and then healing without further hindrances. And yes, setting up those new boundaries!! With your friends or "friends". That is completely part of healing is what I'm finding.

Perhaps try "regular" listening lines such as:

Caring Contact - We're Here To Listen

@Alive99, thank you, and yes, when you're in it, it's a very different situation than when looking at it from the outside.

I don't know if he's a psychopath, but he's certainly narcissistic and he's sucking me dry. HIs manipulations are quite extreme!

Thank you, again. I have trouble with boundaries because I am a people pleaser and I don't like to create conflict.

I am having trouble right now at work because of one woman with whom I must create strong boundaries - it's very challenging and draining for me.

I am drained all around. It's hard for me to write at length right now in reply because I am SO drained in general.

Here's to our healing process.

Thanks for this, @Bill3.

A difficulty I face and which I described to my abuse advocate last night: I am conflicted about asking my husband about his failing father's health from time to time. If I don't, then I look like a calloused a-hole to all our friends, and if I do, it invites more contact between us. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.

So, I reached out last night to ask, and he said his father is now supposed to move out of the hospital to a rehab facility, but no rehab facility wants to take him. They say it takes too much "man power" to take care of him. The truth is his father is very abusive to staff, and I suspect this is also a reason why they won't take him.

Anyways, I feel I must do the right thing here - and the right thing to do is to check on his dying father and to show compassion from time to time.

I know people here say don't worry about what my friends think - but it's important to me to not be more isolated and alone than I already am... I don't want any judgements right now in my life. What matters most to me is what I think and what I need in my life. And I need my friends.

Oh these boundary issues yeah...I'm thinking, if you are able to focus on just doing exactly that and no more, what you decided in advance, in this case it's checking up on what's going on with the dying father,... then that is a way to keep boundaries and not get sucked into more contact and manipulative emotions. But I think it definitely means it's going to a burden, requiring lots of efforts to keep up the boundaries in the face of all that, and you would have to calculate the costs of this burden in your life. This is what I am realising myself about keeping boundaries around the people who try to drain me by default.


To respond to your other post, I thought of this guy as a psychopath because of the irresponsible and parasitic life style on top of the shallow emotions & manipulations.

Nothing wrong with asking how the father is doing but the reasoning behind it is confusing. How do you appear callous to your friends? How would they even know what you ask your husband? They are not omnipotent mind readers. My or my husbands friends wouldn’t know if I ask him this or that. Even my very best friend doesn’t know what I tell or ask my husband. Even if you ask how his father is doing he could still tell your friends that you didn’t ask.

I think if you want to maintain good friendships you should ask how their parents are doing and be good friends for them, I don’t see how asking your husband questions ensures that they keep you as a friend. It’s not their business what you talk to him about.

21 Tips to Stop Being a People-Pleaser

I think this is a good resource.

If I were your friend in real life, I’d be understanding if I knew you didn’t ask about your husband’s father - on paper, it’s not a situation I’d want to keep any ties to myself. They likely would be understanding too, if they knew.
I think it is like you said before, it is different when you’re still in the situation rather than outside looking in, so I can also understand why you’re trying to manage these boundaries rather than just go no contact. I’d still say going NC would help you more in the long term.
I do get a sense that the light at the end of this tunnel is getting closer, though.

I agree too that going NC would help Have Hope more. But since they haven't completed the official divorce process yet I can understand if that's hard. Though the option of only communicating through the lawyer would work too...?

You said it, on a couple of fronts. He is parasitic and irresponsible! So far, I've been able to maintain the boundaries pretty well, but it is burdensome. I just feel asking about his father periodically is the humane thing to do.

Because he could retaliate if I piss him off and tell everyone that he supported me for two months through several crises, then I broke up with him and never asked him about his dying father. It matters to me.

@divine1966, thanks for this!