MrsDilber I don't know if his wife knows but I think she might have because there were a couple of things he said that make me think she might have had suspicions at least...looking back now I was stupid to not realise but I thought he didn't want to hurt her feelings by showing off about a new relationship. I remember the first time I told somebody about me and him. I was really excited about us. I told him that I'd told this person and his reaction was "why did you tell him? It's our private business." I realise how stupid I was now but he's quite shy and I thought he just didn't want the attention as well as wanting to protect his wife's feelings. And it wasn't a complete secret. There were a few people who knew, like the friend who texted me yesterday when he saw the picture. But he was keen on keeping it quiet. I'm so stupid, I don't know how I could have been so blind to it.
I was talking to another friend for a long time last night. My friend said she has been worried about me being with him. Not because of his wife..she also was shocked at hearing about them being back together(or possibly always together). She was worried because she said my confidence had got so low. And the more I spoke to her I realised things, like how he had been putting me down a lot. This is before the cheating accusations started. One of the things he used to say was that I was too clever (seeing as I fell for him, obviously I'm not that clever). Once he said I'd never be able to find anyone else who would put up with me. One time I told him the reason I have PTSD, until then my counsellor was the only person who knew the details. I told him the story one night and his initial reaction was anger that this was the first he had heard about it. He wasn't sympathetic or supportive at all. I wasn't looking for sympathy...we had been talking about things and the counselling came up (he already knew I saw the counsellor and that it was because of PTSD) and so I told him about it, and then he got angry and turned kind of cold. I was really upset by his reaction and we spoke by text the next day and he said sorry and that he hadn't known what to say and that was why he reacted that way.
But there was more than that. He started saying I was copying him. It was stupid things. Really stupid, minor things, but he would say I had copied him by doing them when I honestly hadn't. My mind has gone blank, it was a late night last night talking to my friend, and I can't think of an example of something he said I'd copied him over, but at one point I remember thinking to myself "is this what it feels like to be bullied? Am I being bullied by my partner?" And I had never had this feeling before. And the picking up on words that I used and sort of tearing into me for using the wrong word, I mentioned that in my last post but thinking last night I realised that actually was happening long before the cheating accusations started up. Actually there were a couple of times he ignored me for a few days (wouldn't answer the phone, return texts or anything) and it would turn out to be because he was annoyed at something I had said. Nothing I had ever meant to be bad but he would take it badly. Things so insignificant that I can't remember them. I really don't go around accidentally offending people all the time... I don't think. I certainly don't say things to intentionally cause offence. I do have Asperger's and maybe am a little too blunt sometimes, but even when I would find out what it was I had done wrong, and thought really hard about how he might have seen it, I still could not understand why it annoyed him. And I definitely could not understand him giving me the "cold shoulder" treatment rather than saying what the problem was...I spent a lot of time googling about that and trying to learn how to manage it. He didn't speak to me for a nearly a week once because my auto-correct had changed a word to "Armenia". As usual I had no idea why he wasn't talking to me though I was getting used to him reacting that way. When he did speak to me again he brought up "Armenia"...I had no idea what he was talking about, had forgotten the autocorrect, and it was all because he thought I had actually sent him a text that was meant for an Armenian man. I don't even know anyone from Armenia. That was also before the cheating accusations started.
I am glad my friend told me she was worried about me. I sort of wish she'd said something before, but I can understand why she didn't and I probably wouldn't have listened anyway. Last night I realised it was like a repeat pattern, at the start he was so nice, he made me feel so special. Then the first time I saw the angry/moody/mean side to him it was a total shock. It was like a completely different person. When he apologised and blamed it on other life stresses I let it go and he would return to being really, really nice. Then slowly the put downs would start up, and it would build up to him being really horrible again. We'd end up having a big fight, he'd blame other things and eventually apologise. And repeat. I think it really did chip away at my confidence a bit...I hadn't realised it was bad enough for my friend to notice...I hadn't noticed it myself until she said.