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My ex got his dad to end the relationship for him (his dad later told me he offered to make the phone call for him…I was < (detail removed by Moderator) away from moving my life over to be with him). I feel distressed because his family and the friends I’ve spoken to seem to believe he has deceived me because he is unwell / depressed / suicidal. His dad said he is supporting him on his long road to recovery…is it possible that he can change?
I remember a few months ago I was very close to letting him go. I said I would cancel the plans as it was quite clear to me he wasn’t participating in the relationship equally and with genuine commitment. He broke down and more or less begged me not to; now he has let me go and has gone no contact with me. I feel this takes that power away from me, like I have to wait for some unspecified time for him to explain himself.
A friend has said that therapy might not help him, as the traits he has displayed might be too deeply ingrained now. I’m very confused.
Is it possible this is a blip in his life, or could he really recover from compulsively / pathologically lying? It might seem like a silly question, but honesty and respect shouldn’t depend on how romantically interested or committed a person is to you, should it? And there were other things too…like he would act differently around other people, and when I was very distressed sometimes I felt like I had to explain basic empathy to get him to feel for me. And he’d apologise in words but never make up for anything in action, just keep making the same mistakes.
I’ve been told by a friend of his that this current situation is a “mistake”, and that they’re confident he’s on the right track…but to what? To being the good, decent person I thought he was? It doesn’t seem fair that he should mess up so badly and almost break me in the process. Can this kind of behaviour really be altered for the better?
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He wanted to be the one to end it. He wanted that power.
He talked you round before because he didn’t want to be the one to be dumped.
In a relationship where the love of power eclipses everything, you are so much better off out.
I read your other post, and getting his dad to end it and not contacting you is very cowardly and cruel. He’s also making a cruel statement that everything is in his terms- his way or the highway. Well, that’s not a equal relationship. That’s a power game.
Don’t wait for a time when he will explain and give you closure. He’s neither kind nor reasonable: he’s a typical abuser in that he wants to leave you hanging, blaming yourself.
I know how distressing it must be for him to have done this, but take your power back by setting your own limits and firm boundaries. Decide that you don’t want contact, and set up ways of putting yourself at a distance.
Bear in mind that these abusers don’t like it when you stop pleading with them as they like the attention. He might even try to hoover you up again at a later date. Make sure he can’t reach you. Go No Contact, however hard it is, and spend your time and energy breaking your trauma bond and building yourself up- counselling, support group, etc.
Spend time getting back to your core self, who you were before you met that toxic man. Promise yourself you will never give up your peace and happiness for anyone.
Healing isn’t an overnight thing- it takes will power. But the end results are fantastic.
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Thank you Serenity. It sounds terrible but in my gut I don’t fully believe the severity of his current state (and usually I never dismiss mental health problems; it’s my area!). Yet I feel I am being asked to respect and/or believe it to give him space until such time he comes to me to straighten things out. It feels just like all of his other silent treatments but to the most extreme degree, as he is actively involving other people to participate in it.
It’s all so strange to me because he honestly came across (to me, at least, as my family and friends never liked him) as a nice guy, but I feel suspicious he was using a mask for me. I’ve really lost myself, I feel like I’ve been all sucked up. Thank you for your support xx
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This exactly mirrors what I went through. I want to let you know that as the time goes along, as long as you maintain FULL no contact you can get through this better & stronger.when I split up I had months & months of continuous trauma & emotional distress the main cause of which was because he had taken control away from me. I did not really understand why I felt so awful, he was far from a quality partner & i had made my mind up to end it as it was so dysfunctional.I think as serenity says for them to be dumped goes against the grain of their acceptability, we have controlled events when that happens. It is possible they will not allow that ,they have to control events not us, so they will manoeuvre the end. I would have loved so much for us to end in an open,respectful & kind way & to talk,we were in a long term committed relationship. I got none of that just dumped by text (after he got wind of me cooling off & about to end it),then 100% no contact by him since then. Time is a healer, I no longer have such a strong feeling of being controlled by him & i have never regretted breaking up though I wish he were more decent at the end.
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“Controlling events” – this makes so much sense to me. I can only assume the purpose of his lies was to maintain a state of affairs, and thereby anticipate / control the reactions of others?
I don’t fully accept that he was trying to build up the courage to tell me the truth (don’t even know what that truth is now)…but in my mind, it takes more courage to spin so many lies over a long period of time, and continue to take from me, be intimate with me, watch me turn down promotions and quit my job, etc. I think it would take guts to do something like that, as opposed to sitting down with me and saying he wasn’t ready, didn’t want the relationship and so on.
I’m actually baffled at some of the things he told me in the beginning. Looking at our old messages is such an eye opener, and yet I still have that niggling doubt like, am I over reacting here? Yet he told me things like “the me you saw was not the me I cultivated for you” and saying he has poor social empathy… do you reckon it’s possible to read too much into statements like these, or could they have been red flags?
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My ex dropped some statements into the time that we were together, i’ve always wondered about the statements and about him.
“& all of the sexual abuse” (this was a comment he said completely out of the blue hinting there was sexual abuse in his family, he said no more than that one short statement.
He told me massive, really embarrassing secrets about his close friends and family, they would be horrified if they knew.
He referred to 2 or 3 women who were either stalking him or he had broken up with on bad terms.
These things are just a very small % of what went on with us. It is not good news that for the whole first year of a relationship you are researching con men, protecting your assets and desperately protecting your legal position as I was. The first year you should be getting to know each other, having loads of fun, enjoying each others company. I suspected within weeks he was after me for an easy buck. I have had two abusive partners during the past (detail removed by Moderator) years, the other one was very easy to identity his tactics were obvious, punching the wall and being overly possessive, it was easy for me to recognize and manage. With the man that I am on here for, his abuse was so subtle, hard to see clearly and explain, but I believe it was deadly and I possibly only scratched the surface. I came away from that completely mentally turned inside out due to subtle but calculated mind games and coercive control. i’m alot better now than I was when we first split up, I see my life now rather than being consumed by feeling controlled and helpless. It helped when I changed all of my contact details though I had to wait until I was ready to do that.
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The subtlety of it is what’s putting my mind round the bend. He comes off so confident, intelligent, self-assured, and friendly. But I can’t comprehend these different faces because I don’t know which one is real. It goes beyond for example, altering behaviour around friends as opposed to a boss.
The thing about breaking up on bad terms with others…in an early exchange between us he says he had a very bad break-up with a girl he suspected had borderline personality disorder. He says he hurt her (didn’t elaborate on that), but that she milked it. Then a couple of years later, we must have been on the topic of it, he denied they had a romantic relationship and were just friends – that she liked him, but the feeling wasn’t mutual.
I believe he’s lied to me a lot from the beginning. In his earlier messages he just sounds so obnoxious now. He was definitely playing some kind of game with me under the guise of it being novel or quirky. He’s also withheld information from me several times; I know that for a fact. I’ve accused him before of lying by omission. I think he was really disordered when I met him but I was either too naive or (stupidly) blinded by his attention to notice…like I completely forgot he mentioned being suicidal in the months before he met me but had made a full recovery?
One of the most bizarre things is that parts of my memory seem to be rushing back to me.
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I was with my ex for quite a while in a serious committed long term relationship. When we split up I realized that I didn’t know who he was, I never really knew him as a person. He told me himself that he was like a chameleon who would adapt a personality to suit whichever women he was with at the time. It was very strange. I think that he was wearing a mask all of the time that we were together. There were one or two glimpses I had when he let the mask slip, I could use the words devious, disrespectful and rude, he was also calculated and put long term effort in if he saw good rewards at the end. They normally slip up if you listen and watch out for it. When I first split up I was so confused & foggy minded, my mental health had take the biggest battering it had ever taken due to months/years of subtle mind games, lying, withholding, stealing from me etc. I read and researched all that I could on the internet and in books about covert emotional abuse. There is so much information, often free to read which totally hits the nail on the head. This reading got me through the break up, together with constantly being on here, I learnt the tools to cope with it all and gained a huge understanding about the tactics of emotional abuse. X*X (time is truly a healer, I feel hugely better than I did at first).
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I’m feeling exactly as you did, as I’m deeply confused about who he is exactly. I can’t pinpoint which version of him is the real one. You’re right though, they will leave massive clues; sometimes I’m not sure if they’re aware they’re slipping up. I think because, as a decent person, you want to believe and trust in their inherent goodness, that these clues will fly under the radar (especially if they’re around you 24/7, showering you with attention etc).
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There is quite a lot on this forum about gas lighting, which is basically one of their abuse tactics to confuse and cloud your thinking. You might find it helpful to look at this thread, its called ‘Can anybody give any examples of gas lighting’. I never have mind fogginess or confusion now. Well possibly still some confusion about whether he was even a fraction genuine but on the whole i’m much more clear thinking than when I knew him.
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