Clueless Until Now's Story

First off thank you for providing a place to share our stories. Very few people know mine and it has been a somewhat fearful and yet freeing process writing and sharing mine.

We met a couple of months before my wedding to someone else. My relationship was already on the rocks though I was too young and too inexperienced to realize I should probably not be getting married. My xN and I worked together and one night we ended up at his house at an after party. He was sweet, quiet and attentive and the chemistry was undeniable.He asked me to stay the night. I finally could not resist his charms and I did. The next two months was spent with him wooing me, adoring me, loving me, and trying to get me to call off my wedding. I fell in love with him. Right before the wedding I broke it off with him because I had only known him a short time and told him I was committed to getting married. On my wedding day he called me several times, begging me not to go through with it.

Then right after the wedding I had a very bad incident with my new husband and I realized I should not have gotten married (for many reasons not related to my XN). I called my XN and said I knew I had made a mistake and I was coming back to him. We started seeing each other immediately again and he asked me to move back to the town we had lived in to be with him. I said I needed a couple weeks to get some money together and deal with what would now be a divorce. We continued to see each other and make plans for our future, moving, etc.. all the while he was supportive of me and very loving though there were a few signs that looking back I should have heeded (pouting, brooding, silent treatment, and angry tantrums) .And then it happened-I got pregnant. The moment I told him he became cold as ice. He said “it’s not mine, you need to deal with it, I can’t deal with this and by the way I am going to start seeing someone and you know her”. He went from “let’s get married and I want you to be the mother of my children” to completely D&D and seeing someone else.

And then the hell began. Over the next three years it was a lonely, devastating journey: having the baby ( calling to tell him and him not caring his child had been born), paternity tests (the baby of course was his), my very messy divorce, losing all my friends, ending up taking welfare assistance ( I was working two jobs and still could not make it), his complete abandonment and ostracizing of myself and our child, the utter devastation of the loss of him, my life, my reputation, etc.. . I was young, scared, alone, and heartbroken. And through it all (during my pregnancy on) he would still call me and try to see me to have sex or at least have phone sex with him. At one point he was sneaking out of the house he shared with his soon to be wife, to call me to see if I would have phone sex with him all the while wanting nothing to do with our child. Our child did not exist in his mind and only recently has he told people he has child with me. Secrecy is his M.O. So devoid of conscience, the day he told me I would only ever see the requisite child support check and he would never participate in any way with our child, he tried to have sex with me in his car to finish off the deal. This happened weeks before his wedding to his current wife. I almost did not survive the chaos and heartbreak. Some mornings the only reason I got out of bed was that I knew my child needed me and had already been abandoned by one parent. I had to love our child for both of us.

I finally met someone wonderful when my child was a toddler and we got married and he adopted my child. XN was more than happy to not have the obligation of child support and happily gave his child up. And I moved on and never even spoke his name. We have built a good and happy life. And for 15 years not a word from him, when one Monday morning (it’s always Monday mornings!) I received e-mails from him asking if I was surprised to hear from him and saying he wanted to ask me a question about our child. It felt like I had been struck by lighting and Pandora’s box flew open at the same moment. I had forgotten so much and the sound of his voice triggered a tidal wave of feelings I had forgotten and didn’t know I even had. I wonder now if I had episodic amnesia because my wiping out of him from my memory had been so complete.

So, let’s just say that I have heard it all in the past 18 months; how he hates me and will never apologize in this lifetime, how much he wanted to go to a hotel with me, asking if I would I join him on his business trip (he's married), how he is 100 percent in love with his wife, how it was all my fault he left, how sorry he was for everything, how our child is not really his child (wtf? wishing does not make it so), how he hates everything about my life ( where I live, my career, the food I eat, my politics, my car), how he hates his life (full of “burdens” i.e. wife, kids, financially), to how I did an amazing job raising our child, how much he wants to sleep with me, how I piss him off completely, texting me drunk in the middle of the night (reminder I am married), saying things like “you would have divorced me”, “talk dirty to me”, “I am sorry for the pain I have caused”, all the while d&d-ing off and on while we are trying to figure out how to deal with him reappearing in our child’s life. Every time things go well, he does something completely mean and/or disappears.

He describes himself as a shallow, ruthless, soulless SOB. His life has all the trappings of the image conscious N ( executive job, big house, luxury cars, toys, vacation homes, etc…). He is very concerned with his physical appearance around me. He mocks me as idealistic and caring and asked me when I was going to grow up and realize everyone is out for themselves. At most he has gone 3 weeks NC but he always breaks it. His wife threw him out of the house this year for getting “busted” for texting his close friend’s wife (of course she took him right back). He said he was texting the OW because dealing with ME had been so stressful and she was a good listener. Of course it was all “innocent”. And to top it all off he is a self-professed alcoholic.

Hmmm… did I miss anything. I guess the last thing I could say is that it completely has turned me inside out and upside down since he came back. I have cried several rivers, been completely stressed, felt like I had a ton of bricks on my chest ( for months it literally felt like I could not breathe) and am so shocked that after all these years his presence in my life could do this to me. He pulls me in with moments of reason and clarity and projects a cooperative and conciliatory attitude, then freaks out, acts like he is 5, is awful and banishes me. I actually used the word “banished” for the first time ever because it perfectly describes his actions. I have felt utterly and completely blindsided and wondered what in God’s name motivated him after 15 years to call and then behave like this??? Until I Googled “men with no conscience” and discovered narcissism I thought I was losing my mind. I have resisted believing that he is a N because I have always held out hope that he would change and that it was all just a youthful mistake. I held out hope for our child so he could have some resolution. And even though it seems pretty obvious that he is a N, I keep thinking could I be reading this wrong?

In closing one of his favorite things to say to me when I express the devastation he left in his wake by his choices (abandoning his child, me, etc…) he says “ it’s not like you were in the gutter all this time. I don’t know what your issue is.”