Seeing Through the Fairy Tale

August 2013

      I always told myself I’d never be one of those women that allow a man to rule over her, controlling her actions and emotions.  But here I am.  Looking back, I can see how I let you make me feel guilty for my feelings.  Every time I had questions or doubts you would throw my “jealousy” in my face and remind me of how unacceptable it was to you, making yourself out to be a saint.  I bought into your shit, even as I saw you being jealous of me, of other musicians, of your ex’s new boyfriend, of your brother.  You were just projecting your shit onto me, and I bought into all of it. 

     You trained me to doubt, not to question.  Then you trained me to not even ask for your time or company.  You needed your freedom and space.  You were grieving.  It was hard to be with a new girl.  We’d go out together and you’d leave my side for most of the evening.  You’d promise we’d go out together and show up at my house and tell me you feel too sick to go.  You’d have sex with me and leave immediately after because you had “other things to do.”  I’d tell you it was alright, that I understood.  You were busy, and were barely able to make that small bit of time for me.  I was thankful to you for bothering to show up at all.  All this time, I thought it was MY idea.  I thought I knew what you needed and was trying to provide it.  Now I see how you were laying out the cards from the beginning. 

     I believed you were so much better than me.  I thought you were so empathetic, kind, spiritual and insightful.  I felt like I had to be a great artist to deserve you.  Being myself was not enough.  Now I believe you are just a skilled liar with a memory like a steel trap.  Only once did I catch you messing up your story. 

***

     Today I backslid a little bit.  I saw his new primary relationship partner show up on Instagram and I clicked over to see what was new.  I had been actively avoiding doing any such thing for the sake of no contact, but for some reason I succumbed to temptation.  I saw that she had been on a recent trip to Mexico and immediately wondered if M had accompanied her.  I clicked over to M’s Instagram feed where I saw exactly what I had feared: he was also posting photos from Mexico.  I immediately felt jealous as it sunk in that here they were a year and a half later, still together and traveling the world in tandem.  For a moment I felt that familiar doubt that maybe he really was just too broken from his last relationship to take me seriously and that now he is in good, healthy relationship with someone else.  I’ve spent the better part of the day reminding myself of a few key things: 

• He was already working on this girl when things ended with me.
• He used me to triangulate with her on more than one occasion at public events.
• He acts exactly the same towards her as he did with me when out in public, distant and cool.
• She is friends with A (the other woman when I was dating him) and still chose to date this doofus knowing how shitty he treated her.

     I can only conclude that she is only the primary relationship that he puts forward as his public relationship and lord knows what else is going on behind the scenes.  I never would have suspected his shitty behavior had I not been confronted with very damning evidence and it is likely he has stepped up his secrecy since that PR disaster.  He has been denying his relationship with that girl since day one so I doubt he would even acknowledge it to me now if confronted.

     The bottom line is this: I finally can acknowledge that it does not matter what is going on with this girl.  I personally, do not ever want this word-twisting evil person back into my life.  I have no room for emotional mind-fuckery and vague communications that make me feel insignificant and undeserving.  Chances are good that the other people in M’s life have not learned this about themselves yet, and hopefully M will be the catalyst for great personal change for them at some point, if he doesn’t manage to destroy them completely.

     Reading through this, I’m tempted to laugh at statements like “I felt like I had to be a great artist to deserve you.”  Now that I understand more about how Narcissists pick their targets, I realize that my artistic ability (or lack thereof) played absolutely no role in how much I was “loved” by M.  My art was just another way to control me.  By heaping on praise about my work, he would ensure that he was getting that much deeper into my good graces and trust.  I’m fairly sure it would not matter what I was actually creating, his praise would be the same, with the same intended result. 

     Now I am with a true artist who understands that the act of creating must be the purpose of art, because the glory of fame is fleeting as fans move on to the next great thing.  Never once have I felt that I needed to be better than I am to deserve his love.  Through this whole ordeal with M, I have learned exactly what my strengths and weaknesses are.  I do not need my relationship to define me.

Old Habits Die Hard

March 3, 2013

M,

     Today I long to reach out to you in love.  I have always done my best to listen to you, to hear you.  I want to hear you now, but my fear is so great that you will only take the opportunity to mislead me, feeding me the story you want to believe, forever hiding behind a mask of deceit.  There is a part of me that believes that we have enough love for each other to heal this hurt.  I’m so used to loving you and understanding you.  I’m having the hardest time getting used to hating you and feeling confused by you.  Everything always felt so clear as I tried to meet your needs to the best of my ability, giving you space and not prying into your life. 

     But then, maybe you never really wanted to know me, nor for me to know you.  It hurts me so much when I realize how much of your life you were hiding from me.  I truly believed I was special that you had let me in at all.  Oh, how the truth burns!  There were so many moments when I felt we truly understood each other.  Don’t you miss that?

***

     Note that this was written one day after the previous letter.  I suppose that is quite indicative of what was going on in my brain at the time.  From one moment to the next I was swinging wildly back and forth between love and hate for this person who had proven to be a lying manipulator.  He had admitted to his treachery, yet I still wanted to believe in the illusion of love and confidence he had created.  This was when I was still deeply suffering from cognitive dissonance.  I believed in two M’s.  One was the man that I had a deep and spiritual connection with and the other was a traitor and a liar who had never loved me and had only been using me for sex on the side of his primary relationship.  One minute I would be in love with the soul-mate, but the next minute I would hate the traitor.  This flip-flopping was extreme for months after I had made the discovery that I was the other woman.  I started coming to the realization that speaking to him would deepen the illusion and that the more time I spent away from him, the clearer things became.  If I was not being fed lies, I could examine the evidence without interference and see the truth of things. 

     This realization became the motivation for ultimately committing to “no contact” with M.  The more I communicated with him, the more pain and turmoil I would experience as my brain futilely attempted to reconcile these two personas.  In a sense, even my own personality was splitting as one part of me was still playing the part of the understanding lover that wanted to work things out and fix whatever was causing him to act out, and the other part of me was an angry victim of an emotionally abusive man.  It helped me greatly to start communicating with others that had been through similar drama with their Narcissistic partners. 

     I stumbled across a forum entitled Psychopath Free where hundreds of members share stories and support every day.  As I begin reading so many stories that sounded similar to mine, I began feeling anger towards these abusive partners I had never met, and felt empathy for the victims of their mind games.  Eventually I was able to direct that same anger towards my abuser and give myself the empathy I had been withholding from myself.  Only then was true healing able to begin as I accepted that I was not stupid for being a loyal enabler to an abusive partner for so long. 

     After reading story after story of the fairytale courtship turning into a psychological nightmare, I began to understand how so many victims are duped by practiced Sociopaths.  Until you have been drawn in by one, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to see them coming.  Because they take such care to present themselves as that perfect partner you have been looking for your whole life, it’s much easier to take things at face value than to approach with skepticism.  It also appears that they hone in on people that are especially susceptible to falling for their act.  In my case, M targeted women in their 30s that had been single for some time.  Seemingly they had dated enough jerks and were holding out for someone truly special to come along.  When M walks in on the scene pretending to have all those characteristics that we have been holding out for, it’s all too easy to fall for the deception.  I thought “finally, here is the person I am meant to be with.  This is why I have been single for years.  I know this is the right person for me,” etc. etc.  It makes the revelation that I was duped by a con artist that much harder to swallow.  I was so sure that this person was someone special, yet in the end he did not have the slightest regard for me. 

     Ultimately I chose the route of no contact and have successfully avoided speaking to him for the past nine months.  I have only run into him once in that time, and I have been able to keep myself from checking up on him via Facebook or any other social media.  I finally realize that every time I see, speak to, or read about him I get thrown right back into cognitive dissonance as I begin mourning the loss of a partner I never truly had.  Strict no contact has allowed me to slowly regain my sanity and peace of mind.  That process was not easy.  By far, M was the hardest addiction I have ever had to break.  Through the process I learned how much intimate relationships truly mean to me and how much of myself I was sacrificing for the sake of maintaining this deeply flawed one.  I’m hoping to take this knowledge and apply it to all my future relationships, ensuring that I treat others with the respect they deserve, while demanding they do the same for me.  Never again will I let someone abuse my trust so thoroughly.

No Turning Back

March 2, 2013

M,

     The other day I told you I would feel calm for a week or so, but that no longer seems to be true.  I used to be able to buy into your words and seek comfort in them, but this time I realized that the very words you were trying to comfort me with are the very same ones you used on me last time, right before you met A and for the duration of time you were dating her.  Those words have begun to sound hollow and over used.  It has been almost three months and my heart still feels raw.  The most random things will trigger me.  I attended a crystal bowl meditation at the yoga studio the other night.  I didn’t really know what to expect.  When he started sounding the bowl linked to the root chakra, I was astounded by the penetration of the sound into my body and mind, the way it filled the entire space leaving no room for anything else.  My body panicked as I sat cross-legged with my back rigid against the wall and my head pressing back into its firmness.  Chest heaving, I sobbed silently with my eyes closed, my posture constant.  I had a tremendous urge to flee but at the same time I was paralyzed.  As soon as the sound ceased, my mind instantly calmed.  None of the other bowls had that effect.  Today however, I ran into A and was fine.

     Later I went to a play about love and it felt like every other scene was wrenching my heart around.  I could feel the heart break of every character, the unrequited love.  It’s exhausting to watch a play like that.  The happy ending even caused me pain.  I wasn’t happy when the lead character looked to be the only one ending up sad and alone, but at least I had company for a moment. 

***

     I recently was reading about the way that Narcissists bond their victims.  To paraphrase: the Narcissist will create a fear environment by hinting at abandonment as they emotionally detach and distance themselves from the victim after an intense love bombing stage.  They will then periodically swoop back in and use sex and flattery to calm the victim down.  The endorphins released by sex create a sense of peace and well-being in the victim, taking the place of their normal fear state that has been cultivated by the Narcissist.  Therefore, the victim comes to equate the Narcissist, their abuser, with peace and well-being even though quite the opposite is true.  I think this is what I was referring to in the first few sentences of this letter.  I would always turn to M when I was feeling at wit’s end, after weeks of being blown off by him.  During these conversations, M would go back to flattering me, telling me how much he had missed me and how special our connection was.  All the days of him avoiding me would dissipate into thin air as I let myself be calmed by his empty words.  After I learned the truth of his other relationship, he would still try and calm me down using the same lines about how he was single and just learning to be alone (even though I kept seeing him out with a new girl time and time again).  Now that I understood that he could say these things to me, straight-faced WHILE he had a girlfriend, I stopped being able to believe them.  He sounded so sincere as he reassured me of his commitment to bettering himself and his intention to seek counseling.  I had to tell myself again and again that these were the same things he had been saying in order to deceive me the first time.  I would be an idiot to believe them now.  Sure enough, over one year later, he is STILL always hanging out with that same new girl that he was so reluctant to acknowledge.  I bet if I asked him tomorrow, he would still deny that he was even dating her.  Part of me would still want to believe him.

     This realization was one of the biggest things that has allowed me to finally move on.  Once I realized that he would just feed lies to me, our interactions became completely meaningless.  The illusion of the soul mate had been irreparably shattered.  I had no choice but to see him as the shallow liar that he was.  I knew that by attempting to remain friends with him, I would only be giving him permission to continue lying to my face.  Every conversation with him left me in agony as the depth of his betrayal sunk in.  He had always lied to me.  I could not trust a single thing that had ever come out of his mouth.  Our friendship had been based on lies.  My love for him had been based on lies.  This man who I had thought to be my soul mate was someone I did not know at all. 

     At this point, I had begun attending group counseling sessions at the college.  I had a tremendous amount of anxiety about attending the first session as I was emotionally distraught over M,  and I did not think it would be fair to start things off by hysterically freaking out for an hour in front of college kids ten years younger than me.  I attended an emergency counseling session prior to the group meeting, where I was able to have my hyperventilating, sobbing freak-out so I could go to the first group meeting and calmly introduce myself like a non-crazy person.  The counselor was a middle-aged man I had never met before.  My regular counselor was in a session and this man was the one available for emergency needs.  He barely said a word as I poured out all my fears and insecurities, gasping for breath as I told him the whole horrible story about M.  In all honesty, I didn’t get much from that counselor, but that session did prevent me from going into hysterics at group, so it served its purpose.  I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt much crazier than I did in that counseling office.  Here I was, a grown woman, having an epic meltdown over a man.  One of the things I have learned through this entire ordeal is that human relationships are sacred and imperative to our well-being.  Betrayal is a huge deal and can rip a hole in one’s psyche.  To my knowledge, I had never been cheated on or otherwise betrayed in my past so all of this was new territory for me.  Additionally, in the time I had spent with M, he had managed down my expectations about what relationships should be like.  We only hung out once every two to three weeks and rarely spoke on the phone.  Most of our interactions were in the form of sexual text messages.  I kept telling myself that this was good enough and that I was glad to have all that time to myself so I could pursue my own goals.  In reality, I was starving for attention and becoming depressed from his lack of time for me. 

     I must say that it has been quite a relief to finally be able to watch movies and TV shows again without feeling every ounce of pain experienced by these fictional characters.  For the better part of a year, I just avoided watching anything but food and music documentaries, for fear that any dramas or romantic comedies would be too emotionally triggering.  I was in so much pain that I felt it best to avoid most media, including listening to music, for fear that it would trigger more pain.  I found that meditation music was the only genre that did not bring up jarring emotions.  Even classical music was too emotionally loaded.  I have always loved reading, both novels and non-fiction, but with the PTSD symptoms I was experiencing, my ability to concentrate was completely shattered.  I could not stay focused on the page.  Increasingly frustrated, I began dropping these activities out of my life rather than try and force myself to enjoy them.  This past week marks my first successful attempt to read a work of fiction for pleasure since the ordeal with M. began.  I was able to read two novels in a week, both with sad endings, and not be reduced to tears, nor forced to put it down prematurely due to an inability to concentrate.  This past weekend marks two years since the initial D&D (devaluation and discard), so this has been a long time coming.  It has felt very empowering to begin reintroducing activities that had meant so much to me in the past as I slowly heal and feel less triggered by them.