I was in tears reading this. U are spot on. My heart is bleeding it is so painful that all is a fake. We are not talking about a one nite stand. Its months and years of invested feelings! Its like u faithfully save your money in this bank put every dime u have in this bank and u wokeup 1 morning n realise the bank was a sham!! And dealing with the N we are talking abt investing our heart n soul! My heart is bleeding.....
I understand how painful and hard it is to accept. I really do, but once you really embrace it and see what it really was, outlining all his traits that affected you, all the bad things he did to hurt you...you will heal. you will find yourself again and the bond with him will be broken. It is VERY freeing once the pain has passed. Everytime, the last several days, I had even ONE passing good thought I replaced it with one of his pathological traits that hurt me. This has been a TREMENDOUS help with the cog/dis. It does take time, but it does work. HIS pathology is not your fault. The fraud he was, was not your fault. Now I completely understand what others say when they say focus on you, but you really can't do that, until you can accept that ALL of it, but particularly the idealization was nothing but a lie.Hang in there.
Thank you I needed that, I'm A very down, it has only been 5 weeks nc , but I was doubting a lot because my ex didn't do some of the things others say they do , but he has lack of empathy,lack of remorse,no quilt what so ever!lying and manipulation is a big one right up there with absolutely no empathy at all!
Part of understanding the pathology is being able to check his behavior against psychopathic traits. Listen to Thomas Sheridan. Read books on the subject. women who love psychopaths is an excellent resource. Because they are made of flesh and blood and all of us exhibit certain quirks within our personalities, an effect as to our environmental upbringing, this is where it stops for psychopaths. Mine was brought up in an extremely rigid, religious environment, in the middle of the desert in AZ. Therefore, his pathology manifests according to his upbringing. How they manifest their pathology is dependent upon many elements and factors, but overall, the bottom line traits are STILL the same, no matter what. THAT is what you need to know to validate your experience. Write down all the things that line up with the traits you saw that fit the bill. Even going over your posts here, you can review and see a pattern evolve in what your ex did that makes it clear he had those traits. We can share experiences here, and they will ALL be very different, but what is uncanny is the bottom line traits that are seen over and over, lack of empathy, guilt, remorse, pathological lying and the ever present fake persona/mask presented with the love bombing during the idealization phase. Every stinking time, it is a sign of pathology. EVERY time. If you can work on what your ex said and did that lines up with those traits and embrace that it was all fake, beginning to end, you will find healing!
Evidence every stinking time -yes, absolutely. His last conversation with me (a month ago, when he came - at my insistence - to pick up the rest of his stuff) was so normal and he seemed so normal and said all the 'right' things, that after he left that I started to doubt all over again whether he was a narc/psych. When he left I had to write out for myself once more for the umpteenth time the factual evidence of his disorder, including things others had witnessed (on first meeting my friends and family - the bragging, the name-dropping, the full-on impressing people about who he was and what he had done - God, he even did it to strangers) to be sure it wasn't just my misinterpretation.
He had once again put on a great 'good guy' performance for me, that was all, saying how something had 'just not been right about our relationship'which was meant to excuse how he cheated on me.
Yeah, right. The something not right was him.The physical description of high testosterone in a male in Sheridan's book clinched it for me. I had already had experience of the other 4 key psychopathic traits, but the sheer physical evidence had been there all along! If I had only known when I first met him ....! Good upper body strength, low brow, fast growing facial/body hair, longer ring finger than index - mine fits the bill exactly. And the eyes - and the false smile ... it wasn't until I copied and pasted different pics of his face together on one page that the full horror was evident.
Having said that, and despite everyone who has understood (I'm lucky - everyone who I've confided in has fully agreed with me that he is a sick, distorted, pathological freak who doesn't deserve to live with the rest of society) my heart has not yet caught up with my head and I'm still suffering CD and obsessing and crying most of the time. Hope the time comes soon when that switch is flicked and every part of me feels revulsion.
In 7 years. mine never introduced me to his family! He told me he didn't want them to scare me off!And when they asked him why he didn't bring me to meet them , he told them he didn't want them to scare me off! I wonder what they would have told me
I was in tears reading this.
Sea
I wish I wrote this!
Thank you I needed that, I'm
Needing2know
Evidence every stinking time
In 7 years. mine never