He will do it again, right?

I really could not agree more with these posts. If it is any consolation, I have battled with the same cancerous thought for the last (nearly) 10 months since we split. It hurts like no other pain to believe we were somehow the agents of our own misfortune but unfortunately, they are masters at creating that belief in our heads and the disconnect in our brains. I look back now at my relationship and - for all of the flowery, sweet nothings at the start - the signs were all there. He got jealous at a club one evening, got drunk, threatened to go and "pull" other girls, punched a doorframe when he got back to the hotel, but hated admitting to his foul behaviour the next day and all but sulked about it. He once described himself as an "oasis of calm" and that "I don't know what it is but I seem to get really angry around you" - thereby pinning the blame entirely at my door for his poor conduct. (On this occasion, he got drunk again, lost his temper and smashed his cell phone into the ground and then walked off.). When I went after him he had this gleeful look of supreme delight on his face, like "she's come after me again after all." This, coming from a man who said to me in a text "I often told X (ex wife) to fuck off. Too often I lost my rag at her and we had blazing screaming matches.." Right - an oasis of calm and it's just me that brings out the badness? This also coming from a man who said at the very start in a drunken phone call "I hurt people, it's what I do…" (in a whiny, pity-me voice..). I'm sorry but what you see with these people if what you get. If they aren't abusive by nature, it will not BE in their nature to abuse, to be scathing, to belittle, to tell somebody to fuck off, to walk off, to give the silent treatment. It simply wouldn't be there, but it is - because they ARE abusive. Trying to get them to see how awful they are is like pissing into the wind - they will not thank you for holding the mirror up for them and it does their self-esteem critical damage. They actually resent us for being the source of their guilt because, deep deep down, they know they are not good enough and they resent us for putting up with them. It is so twisted. I am really battling with these demons daily - still - and he ended it 4 months ago for the second time. I am asking myself again and again - why can't I get past this? It is because I keep racking my brain to question if I did something to cause it all but in my heart, I know he was abusive. He described his ex wife as lazy and negative and she never wanted to do anything, but in the next breath he felt guilty about her and is still friends with her. She divorced him for being cold and self-righteous etc etc. The only reason she tolerated it for as long as she did was because they were childhood sweethearts and they just "grew apart." I hate to think that I was just used by him to feed his ego - I embarked on an affair with him and part of me wonders if for him it was all about 'winning' me away from my husband to pacify his ego. What I have not understood is why he tried to keep the door open for 5 months after I ditched him last year, came dashing back like a puppy with 3 tails when we reconciled, but had by date 2 changed his mind entirely and was filled with "fear" and "doubts". I am convinced that what he wanted was to luxuriate in the power of being the dumped one, reconciling on the one hand but holding me at arm's length until it suited him and seeing me push for intimacy, but my wariness and lack of enthusiasm burst that particular bubble. He wanted me to grovel and say to him "take as much time as you need" and I didn't because he had been a turd the first time and deserved to be ditched. I was not going to apologise for that or fall right back into his lap after that and he knew it. Rather than being kind, considerate and mature and saying to me "take as much time as you need, I love you and I want to work through this and be better for you", he said in fact "I need more time. If you're saying to me it's now or never then I'm going to have to say it's never" and then he dumped me a week and a half after that by voicemail. The excuses were plentiful; "I think we've lost our spark or whatever…" "you said you don't want to get hurt and I think that will happen if we get back together and I don't want to hurt you…" Then in a follow up text "clearly it's just me but there are too many doubts….I am sorry and we can't be friends but agree no regrets." It was all BS excuses just to get in there first because he feared being ditched a second time. And he feared being ditched because he *KNEW* his character and he *KNEW* he was abusive. He clearly took the view 'it's not me, it's us together' and yet he fucked up the one thing he said was "the best thing" to ever happen to him. So it was us, was it?? Or, more specifically, me? Cowardice and selfishness. They fuck with your head, and then like a hit and run, off they go to lick their wounds and find somebody else who will tell them they are wonderful and faultless and take all the blame for them. Try as hard as you can not to get sucked in - he WILL do it again to somebody else because that is how they are wired. XXXX

I found out my N called the OW the same pet names too!!! Gahhhh...that's terrible. That they don't even have the slighest emotion to connect even a LITTLE BIT of emotion to the nicknames they had for us...

My exN also uses the same pet names - one I know was used with at least three of us.