Anyone recover from something they never thought they could?

[SusansLove]

Thanks to anyone who listens or answers, and before starting you should know that I have been to endless counselling, read books, talked it over a billion times, repeated positive mantras but I just can't seem to heal myself and wanted to know if anyone has ever recovered from something they could not imagine ever recovering from?

I know there is a lot of "affairs" and crappy men on here, but I think what mine did to me and put me through was at the top end of the scale - made a lot worse to my psyche because until it happenned I honestly thought we had the best relationship ever, the most loving partnership and I trusted him probably more than I can actually comprehend or explain.

What he did to me was sudden, prolonged, intentional and designed to cause me maximum possible suferring. He had no mercy and seemed to enjoy it. I knew him for years. As close as people can be.

I was just here tonight looking for a little hope. A hope that after someone you love and trust and have known for years like family does stuff to you that you can't understand or come to terms with - do you ever get better?

I feel like I pretend to, but it never goes away.

[DoTheDuckFace]

I don't know what happened with you so just may be far wide of the mark but I my ex husband turned abusive. Our marriage ended and for a time I didn't know how I was going to make it through.
What I did was pretend I was OK, paint on the smile and get through one day at a time, until I realised that actually I wasn't just pretending to be happy any more, I really was. I didn't know when it happened, there was no definitive moment, I just realised one day.

Fake it till you make it. Might not work for everyone but time is a great healer and it worked for me.

[kittybiscuits]

From the little bit you have said, it sounds horrendous. I doubt I've experienced anything like it. But things do fade and it helps when you fully accept that it wasn't your fault. Nasty bastards are okay doing terrible things to people who think it's their own fault x

[Kleptronic]

You can get through it. I did not think I would, but I did, and I'm alright now. Took 5 years and was the hardest road. I walked it, as do many. It can be done. You were born and grew up without him, you don't need anyone to live. Harsh but true.

[SusansLove]

No, that's not the part. Of course I can live without him.

What I find hard to live with is what he did to me. Why he did it to me. How he did it to me. What I did to make him do that to me. How I did not know all those years he was such an evil fucker when I thought he was perfect. How I ever trust anyone again. How I feel clean again. How I stop repeating it over and over. How I make sense of those years.

There's the bit I don't get over. I stopped missing him long ago. You can't miss someone who did that to you. I don't even remember him, even if I try really hard

[SusansLove]

Or how I ever feel lovable or worth anything. That's probably the main part I can't do.

[Molly333]

Yes my ex did something awful,he got hidiously drunk one night and totally lost it ( bare in mind we live in a nice area, nice kids , nice jobs yes it happens here! ) . He beat me so bad ( not normal) I lost my eyesight temporarily, and had a bleed on the brain, this was while the children were in the house . He was arrested. Given a caution and then spent the next four years trying to destroy me emotionally . We now hv nothing to do with him and thanks to bucket loads of counselling , 2 years worth I am finally free , get support as soon as you can stick with it and shut him out or you will not recover x

[FortyCoats]

I can't comment on the time element because I've thankfully never been in that situation and also, I'm getting the impression it was an assault but I'm afraid I'm wrong so don't want to venture to far.

What I do want to say is, I believe we are much stronger than we ever give ourselves credit for. Whatever it was, it's over but you made it. It sounds like the worst thing ever but you're here because you're stronger than you think. You're in the middle of the aftermath nightmare trying to erase something that will, in all probability, leave scars that you will never fully erase. Emotional scars that serve as a reminder of something painful, devastating, destroying but you will reach a time when you look at or feel those scars and realise they're the mark of a survivor. A survivor of whatever happened and a survivor of the aftermath.

Keep trying. Keep reading. Continue counselling.

Best of luck

[SusansLove]

forty coats that had tears streaming down my face.

Thanksto the other posters and to anyone else who has suferred.

[hollieberrie]

I really needed this thread, so relevant for me too OP.

In a nutshell, this time last year my mum dropped dead out of the blue. A week later my fiancé, who I fully trusted and felt blissfully happy with, cheated and left me. As a parting shot he told our mutual friends a pack of lies about me.

It nearly destroyed me and a year later I am only just functioning. Like you its the callousness and the lack of any kind of remorse and empathy that have really scarred me. I can't remember him either, it's like our brains block out the trauma, but the hurt and cruelty haunt me daily.

No advice to give really OP, sorry, other than time and being very very kind to yourself. Surround yourself with kind, positive people and slowly, slowly I think we will get there.

[springydaffs]

You've got to look away from this or it will destroy you. Obsessing on this, focussing on it, retraumatises. Have a look at Melanie Tonya Evan's site - she specialises in recovery from narcissistic abuse. Your ex is a narcissist.

You've done the work, now it's time to live. I am just coming out of something I never thought it was possible to recover from - long story. Admittedly, it took a massive wake-up call to reboot me. Duckface makes a very good point about faking it till you make it. What have you got to lose? Choose LIFE even though you feel hollowed out.

I recognise your craving for release. Have you had any prayer? We need everything we can get tbf. I'll prayer for you, anyway (if you don't mind?)

You may benefit from reading up on narcissistic personality disorder... But then again you may not, bcs you'll just focus on it all again - and it's heavy stuff. I'm so sorry you have experienced something so harrowing . I pray the back of this foul thing is broken and you begin to live xxx

[SusansLove]

HollieBerrie...almost identical to what he did to me. Everyone assumes he hit me, but there are other ways to break someone.

Almost identical but he took my stepkids I'd raised from little and never let me see them again and did it when I was sick. I was away, and one minute it was texts he missed and loved me and could not wait for me to get home and the next was another text to say our house was gone and he lived somewhere else now without me and my stuff had been packed into boxes and was in storage. That cold. No apology or explanation. No empathy, no remorse.

He then spent six months sytematically destroying me psychologically. the cruelty of the thinsg he said and did almost impossible to express but my counsellor winced when I told her and I am sure she hears some weird stuff. He was always telling me how and why it was all my fault, he got friends and his family to cut me off by saying things about me. I never knew what he said, but people stopped talking to me.

The person I knew was honestly the nicest person I ever met and I have no idea why he did that or wanted to we had no problems between us and despite the counselling I was not able to really understand any of it and I can't file it in my brain to move on.

Who was he? the man I knew all those years and changed nappies with and laughed with or the evil satan?

Like you, my brain can't handle it. I block it out, but it's always with me at the same time and never seems to go away.

[springydaffs]

I found a book recently called Breaking Through Betrayal which sounds interesting because she recognises how debilitating betrayal can be.

[springydaffs]

What happened to me is very similar to what happened to you

(Group hug)

[SusansLove]

Thanks Springy. I have read a lot of narcissists. He behaved exactly like one after it all started, but never before. No, it was like two diferrent people.

I DO fake it. I swear. At times I even feel total joy and love the sun, seeing friends and enjoying life. It's difficult to explain though beause I know a bit of me isn't normal or right. I can't feel love the same way. Can't see life or other people the same way. It's like I am a percentage of the Susan that once was.

I do pray, thank you, all the time. I talk to God a lot like a crazy person late at night. I wish it helped me more than it does but being brutally honest...I am religious....but since this have even found it hard to connect to God.

[SusansLove]

I'm so sorry for you Springy....I will look up that book.

[springydaffs]

I'm sorry for you too Susan

[minkGrundy]

I am sure counselling told you all this but

It is not your fault. None of it. How could you have known? You couldn't.

How can you understand? You can't.

You can't because you are not a despicable twunt. It is impossible to understand why someone would do something you would never do. Because you are a nice person. He is scum.

You are not wrong to trust, to love, to hope. You didn't make a mistake, he did

The fault was all his. Sorry. he is a monumental prick. There is no explanation for it other than that.

Because what he did was inexcusable he was unable to own it so he tried to retrispectively make it your fault. He's a dick.

Fake it till you make it is excellent advice.
Also put down the stick. Be kind to yourself.

[hollieberrie]

Oh gosh that is so similar. It's like a switch flipped overnight with mine - the loving, kind person I'd been with for several years was gone and he became this terrifying evil man..

Mine also set about humiliating and destroying me and it's cost me a lot both in terms of work and friendships. It's like he enjoyed it to be honest. And all this at the time in my life when I was the most vulnerable and needed him the most. And the same for you, doing that when you were ill. I'm so sorry about your stepkids.

Agree with Springydaffs that narcissism makes a lot of sense, people like this seem to follow a certain pattern of behaviour.
I've read a lot about it online and it helped me to understand although sometimes I think know I dwell on it too much and I should be concentrating on trying to move forward.

I really sympathise. It's such a headfuck.

[hollieberrie]

Group hug back - so sorry for both of you Susan and Springy

[SusansLove]

Thank you Mink. I am going to read and read that.

Sorry Hollie. yes exctly. It was like a switch. Night and day. One minute white, the next minute black and one extreme to the other and it was so prolonged.

I lost all faith in myself. If I can't tell the man next to me in bed every night is capable of this, what the fuck do I ever know again?

He also humiliated me in any way he could and I lost friends, his family cut me off completely and I was left wondering what I had done. for months I actually thought I HAD done something and was trying to figure it out. There was just no way I could believe he could be that cruel, or even a little bit cruel. He used to not be able to satnd it if I was even a tiny bit upset or hurt over something and yet there he was doing these things. And yes, the same here...I was sick...the most vulnerable I had ever been.

I read all that stuff too. Scoured the internet for a year. runaway Husbands. Narcissists.

All of it reads like my life....but it still doesn't and can't ever truly make sense.

[minkGrundy]

I know you will probably say ah but he wasn't a dick, he wasn't a twunt before.

He probably wasn't but he ckearly met someone and because a sirdid affair nehind your back didn't fit with his idea of himself and he dudn't fancy iwning up and beung the bad guy, he took the cowardly root, ran off then tried to make you into the bad guy.

You have done nothing wrong.
He has. He is gaslighting you and scapegoating you. He will be making out it was some grand passion when in fact it was just selfish.

Was he good at admittjng when he was wrong? Or did he just try to never be in the wrong?

It sounds a bit like the family annihilator profile. They try to be the perfect family man. When they fail they have to destroy everyone rather than be seen as a failure.

Have you tried the Freedom Programme?

[minkGrundy]

Sorry for typos
X post also.

[SusansLove]

No he was always the first to say sorry. Always wnated to talk everything through. Always kind. Always thoughtful about others feelings (not just me but other people) and if he had even a small run in with someone at work or whatever it would keep him up at night because he was always concerned with doing the right thing. He was, as you say, the absolut perfect family man.

Only thing I ever noticed is that he would lie a bit if caught in the wrong, but he'd cry a lot and say he had done it to protect me. Just tiny things...like watching porn. Never did anything big. Always very considerate and his general motto was that he was the luckiest man in the world to have me. I just spent years feeling so loved and special!

It was like he changed into a diferrent person. No history of this behavior. People who knew him all his life could not believe it. No one could believe it. They thought it must have been me!

I know it would be so easy to say "other woman" but there never was one. Never appeared. He's still single. He just decided, for reasons unknown to do this to me.

[minkGrundy]

I assumed wrongly, sorry, when he moved out suddenly there was an OW. Maybe there was and she rejected him. Or an OM.

Pethsps it was a simple as you were ill and he had no right way or perfect way to deal with it. He didn't want to admit that it was something he didn't want to ddeal with. So he lost it

But whatever. It matters not. It isn't your job to understand him. There is no excuse. No explaining him. His behaviour is inexplicable and inexcuseable.

It really does sound like his problem was with himself. He failed.

You didn't. You are not to blame. Think of a the people in your life who you have trusted who are trustworthy. Part of you is saying never to trust again but in reality your faith is not gone, just sorely tested and a bit dented.

[SusansLove]

Yes, I think he didn't want to deal with it when I wasn't "fun" or like normal. Thank you Mink, you words of support mean a lot.