Can anyone analyse my breakup and tell me what I should think?

[NinjaHearts]

This might sound a strange question, but I think the biggest breakup of my life from the most serious relationship of my life has left me very deeply affected and I have not fully acklowleged how bad it was that he behaved.

I have turned it on myself, and been left feeling fundamentally unlovable and unworthy in ways that have meant I have issues being close with anyone and I am coming to terms with the fact that I am now drawn to men who don't love me.

Can I ask, presuming that you were with a man that you had a loving, supportive, close and happy relationship that was filled with mutual kindness and no arguing or affairs or difficulties and you shared a home with that person, over years, and were due to marry them - and they decided they did not want to be with you anymore...what would you expect that to look like?

How it looked for me was him disappearing without ever telling me there was a problem.

Being cut off without a penny, although he was the wage earner in our home and he had told me to quit my job to move city to be with him.

Being left without a home very suddenly and him not caring he had put me in that situation.

Losing all my possessions because I was too blindsided / had no money to move them.

Refusing to talk to me at all until about three months after he had left, only sending me cruel messages or very cold phonecalls to tell me how awful I was and he could not live another day with me because I was so awful.

Never letting me ever see or say goodbye to my stepkids, that I'd been raising for years and telling me by text it was better if they just forgot me.

Telling everyone else it was over before he ever spoke to me to know we had a problem - creating (lies) a story of us having problems that made me look bad and like I was lying and turning many people against me.

Him making up things that made me feel like I'd gone absolutely mad.

Him going from my best friend and most trusted person overnight to basically hating me and doing everything he could to destroy my mental wellbeing.

Him going from saying every day that I was the best partner in the world to flipping overnight to saying very cruel things to me, like "no one could live with you" and things like that which made me believe he was the victim.

Him just honestly showing no care or feeling for me ever again from the day he disappeared and never being sorry or caring about me ever again - after years of the opposite.

I feel this has left me completely unable to get close to anyone. I don't understand at all what it was about me that caused any of it because he only ever spoke in generalisations and told me it was all my fault and I had forced him to do it. I never had any idea what he was talking about because all he'd ever done was to tell me I was incredible and perfect so it's left me terrified of intimacy just in case the next person sees whatever he saw.

I think you can take something from this thread... He's not the only guy to have turned dick. Therefore - evidence it's not you! Evidence that it is sometimes something people (sadly) do.

Surely you can see tho that a man who uses prostitutes is deeply flawed.

Ok, you didn't realise that at the time, but that alone says to me that it's not you, it's him.

My ex said some terrible things to me too and they will always be with me, but I'll be darned if he gets to affect how the rest of my life turns out.

I find it very, very difficult to see him in a bad light.

It creates some mental discomfort. Almost like a very difficult maths question that hurts your brain. That's how it feels.

How something can be black and yet white at the same time. I think cognitive dissonance of a sort.

I do know he was a dick.

And yet he wasn't.

I now accepting strange things is sometimes part of life. I just wish I could get to a point of not letting it affect me

it's very difficult to say "he was an arsehole" because that's a contradiction to every bit of evidence you have in your mind

I think it's quite likely that he found someone else, and had already moved on emotionally. So in his mind it was a question of getting rid of you. He then rewrote the history of the relationship in his mind to make out it wasn't working and you were the bad guy, thus easing his guilt.

The apparent character change you describe is common in guys who've been having an affair. Your shocked disbelief that the man you thought you knew so well could behave like that, is word for word what I've heard other cheated on women say.

I don't think 2 months or so of depression is enough to account for a character change so fundamental. And it may be that he became depressed because he was cheating on you as it's quite stressful.

No, he was never with anyone else and never has been. It'd be easier if he was. He said he could never live with anyone after me :( this was the kind of mind fuck stuff he said to me.

His depression came on after work and financial pressure but he said it was my fault. He had multiple stressors on him, very big ones, but he said it was me.

He still has depression and this all happenned three years ago now and I have bene made to feel like I took aperfeclty normal man and was so awful that he had a complete breakdown and has never been the same since.

That is how I have had the story sold to me.

He wasn't cheating, he never left the house.

OW would have been the easiest explanation, I wish, wish, wish it had been that!!!

It would be sort of easier if he'd moaned to me or told me something I did bothered him but just so fucking difficult for someone to say "wow, you are so amazing you make me so happy" and the next day "you are so awful you ruined my life" and not really explain.

He did phone me once, about 18 months ago when he was drunk, when he said that i had been a wonderful partner and had never done anything to hurt him or to deserve what he did to me but that he had just snapped in his head. It wasn't much, but it was at least an acknowledgement. He never spoke to me nicely every again after that.

I totally understand the difficult maths feeling. I searched for answers for ages and didn't get any. The only thing that eventually helped was writing it all down. I felt once I'd written it down I was done with it. It helped me process even if I didn't get an answer.

I think people re- write and there may also be stuff you don't know about. Looking back despite not really wanting sex with me I'm sure my ex was using a lot of porn and possibly chat rooms or something of that nature.

Are you sure he wasn't using prostitutes when you were together? It seems a massive leap to suddenly use them only when he left.

Well it could be a breakdown and I've seen people turn against their partner when they crack up under pressure.

But if there was another woman involved you'd be the last to know. He didn't talk to you for 3 months...

I don't think he was using them when we were together. We had sex every day anyway. He always was home or accountd for. But how would I know I guess? He obviously had no conscience.

No, he wasn't with another woman. During those three months he was at home, on suicide watch really. He cried all the time, didn't get out of bed, lost loads of weight and was really unstable. He was signed off work, his parents flew home to his rescue.

HE was the victim and I was to blame for all of it yet without knowing why. everyone was dead worried about HIM and were lookign at me like I;d done something.

As far I was concerned I was his loving partner who'd do anything for him, yet he made me fele like his killer and I'd had no idea anything was wrong with him. I didn't even know he was depressed. He kept saying he was fine.

I really can't think of anything I did wrong. I really loved him, would have done anything for him so that was the mind fuck

NinjaHearts this may not apply to your situation but a sudden and inexplicable change from a loving present ideal partner to cold, unpleasant and gone from your life is a typical symptom of a narcissist.

Google naracissistic personality disorder, devaluation and "devaluation and discard" for more on this and see if it fits.

Also "splitting" (ie. seeing people in black and white terms - "my ideal woman" or "a bitch I am done with") is a feature of a number of other personality disorders including borderline personality disorder.

People who are prone to "splitting" will have that sudden change. It's like a lightswitch flipping - one minute the partner is perfect and idealised, then once they do something to trigger "splitting", it is all over and the partner is seen as bad/not worthy and discarded.

There are big red flags for me in your OP.

You gave up your job to go and live with him in a different city and you didn't get a new job in your new home. You also say he 'told' you to move.

It transpires you were looking after his kids for him. And you thought you were going to marry him.

So it sounds like he's in charge and you do what he tells you. He brought you in as a housekeeper and nanny, and then he dumped you when he got fed up, or found someone new, or before he had to marry you and became financially liable to you, whatever. You were totally dependent on him financially and emotionally.

A very key lesson going forward is never to give up a job for a man and have no source of income ever again. Don't look after someone else's kids when you don't have the security of marriage. Those years that you spent not working, not saving, not contributing to a pension, you'll never get them back.

This man is nothing like as nice as you thought he was, ever. You were just very naïve and trusting.

Sorry I meant to say that anyone who goes straight to sleeping with prostitutes was always an arsehole. He may well have been doing it when you were together. And he would definitely have done it before.

Agree with selfloathing and twinklestein.

His behaviour does fit with narcissistic/borderline traits.

Good advice from Twinkle.

He's definitely not as nice as you think.

I'll look up that narc stuff. I have read it before but didn't really fit with the man I knew for 25 years before the incident, but certainly fitted afterwards. He was like in a narcissistic rage, was very like that.

It wasn't like that Twinkle. We got together, we wanted to marry, he couldn't move because of his kids so i was the one who moved. People do that all the time. Doesn't usually mean this will happen. We were a team and a family. Nothing was sinister and he didn't expect me to do anything. He wasn't like that at all. He wasn't bossy or mean, just a normal partner. I could do whatever I liked. I'd worked a bit, but right efore this happenned had just started my own business (lifelong dream) and he left me right up shit creek at a time I had no income of my own.

Maybe he wasn't as nice as I thought he was - but everyone else we knew thought the same of him. Everyone was as shocked as I had - even his own friends.

Even his family members actually wrote to me and told me they could not beleve it, that they had never seen him happier and that they thouht he had a mental problem.

I don't think I was naive or anything. We were just normal people living a normal life.

Sure one partner moves when the other can't, but they don't usually give up work to look after the other's kids. You were never a team or a family because you were never married and they weren't your kids. You thought you were that's all.

The fact that he dumped just after you'd set up your own business and had no income simply underlines how much of an arsehole he is.

I didnt give up work to look after his children, I gave up work to move. I looked after his kids sometimes, but all the time as it was a 50 / 50 arrangement and he mostly played with them himself - great Dad - but I loved them too.

That's what I mean about how much of an arsehole he was. It was just evil, really was.

You are placing too much emphasis on the time he was nice.

The thing that makes him an arsehole is how he flipped from nice to truly awful.

Look at the whole picture, don't focus overly on him having been lovely up until he wasn't.

Yes - you keep saying he's nice, but clearly not. A nice man doesn't do what he did.

He was nice for a while, while it suited him to be so.

Well you gave up work to do both. It makes even less sense that you didn't find a new job, given that you only had the children 50% of the time.

And you did all this without any legal and financial protection. A decent man would have wanted you to have it.

He was nice and then he wasn't. So it turns out you didn't know him as well as you thought.

How well does anyone know anyone?

My mum's best friend's XH buggered off with a prostitute after 30 years of marriage. He was public-school-Oxbridge-educated, super-bright, intellectual and cultured, very wealthy and successful. Everyone, his wife, my mum, all their friends were totally shocked. He seemed to have become a different person.

But he got up to all kinds of shenanigans after that - marrying two more much younger women. Being pushed off the board of the company he set up for his sexual antics. The upshot is that nobody knew him as well as they thought they did, not his wife not his friends, no-one.

I'm sorry you've been through this. We doubt ourselves, don't we. I am in a relationship mess and I doubt myself. But clearly he has his own issues. He abused your trust and left you emotionally wounded.

Don't doubt yourself, it was not you, it was him. The way he treated you was no way for one person to treat another.

Hopefully in time your trust in others will come back. Have faith in yourself though.

It sounds like he did have a serious mental breakdown but instead of addressing his own painful issues he made you take the blame and responsibility for his illness so that he didn't have to .

Most people with depression feel terrible guilt about the burden that their illness places on their loved ones and are appreciative for their care. He could not face his own fear and cast about for a scapegoat.

His response to his own issues and subsequent treatment of you shows clearly that, deep down, he is a flawed, troubled emotionally immature and selfish person.

Nothing you could have said or done could alter that and you are not responsible for it.

Thank you for all replying.

Can I just ask, as you know, it's not really why he left or whatever that bothers me anymore but more that I did something wrong.

Can I ask.

If I loved him, you know, tried very hard every day to make him happy, listened to him, cuddled him, talked to him, just was nice to him all the time and gave him a lot of love and never screamed or demanded things or was violent or was dismissive or closed off and I was just being the best I knew how and feeling like I was doing a really good job of making him happy.

Does that mean I did nothing wrong?

I mean, I wonder a lot if I did something wrong and didn't know it. I mean, he never said.

I wonder about the things that maybe I did. Like I have picked myself apart a lot for my flaws and I know I gained a bit of weight when we got together, I was a bit bad at making new friends where we lived, I maybe relied on him too much? I don't remember ever being nasty or selfish or cold or not getting on with him ever. We just held hands a lot and laughed like normal people but I'd just like to know it wasn't may fault.

That was my only time living with a man...with the kids and the family...and I thought I was really good at it. He said I was, he used to say I was all the time and send me cards to tell me so I have been worried about becoming that again (you know...wife...mother) in case I am not good at it.

I worry that I made him depressed and that i would do the same to someone else.

It doesn't sound to me like you did anything wrong. I don't see what more you could have done to try to make it work. If anything you may have been too nice, too accommodating - that can sometimes make people take you for granted.

It sounds like he had an agenda you have no idea of.

D'you know why he split up with his kids' mum?