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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Did I deal with this "friendly gesture" wrongly?

167 replies

itsnotlight · 11/09/2018 11:01

i've allready had a thread on this but cant seem to work out how to link and got more to add...sorry for re posting.

i was with someone for 2 years. he ended things because he "needed to work on himself" - the relationship was horrible in the end and the best way i can describe it is that i was a complete nervous wreck by the end. among his many behaviours he would give me silent treatment for entire days, tell me he didnt love me then within hours want to make up and then be cross i didnt want sex so soon. regularly commented on how i looked - often nice things but also often with a question like 'why arent you wearing your nice underwear?' a year in i had a message from his ex telling me he was emotionally abusive. i ignored it.

anyway it ended after he said he would continue seeing me exclusively but would not class us as in an official relationship. i said no to that and begged him almost to just stay as a couple while he "worked through things."

i said lets try and be friends in future and i dont like bad feeling. weeks went by and didnt hear from him. then on my birthday he sends flowers and a card with lots of love.

i asked him why and he said i was this great person who was there for him when he had been through a bad time etc and he wanted to surprise me. i said thank you and that i had missed him. he said i shouldnt be talking like that and the flowers and card were a friend statement, and became irritated and wanted to go to sleep and switch off his phone.

i feel like a total idiot. i didnt want him back, i was getting on with my life, he makes this gesture and i say i miss him and he totally belittles what he has done and tells me to "put the flowers and card in the bin if i dont like them." was i being an idiot for reading into this? it wasnt that i expected a relationship to start on the back of it (im not even sure i would want that!) but the second i said anything remotely close like missing him, he does that?

did i react wrongly here? and if the flowers were a gesture of friendship why threaten to switch his phone off like that during a conversation about it?

OP posts:
AnyFucker · 14/09/2018 08:39

What are you pissing around with this idiot for ?

ContessasGulagSpaDay · 14/09/2018 08:50

OP, I would guess that your overly friendly response to his flowers gesture made him feel guilty, and then angry because he felt guilty. You showed that you cared about him and are a nice person, and for him to have dumped you that must make him a bad person. He can't deal wih that being the case and he got angry at you because your behaviour made it an inescapable conclusion.

People who strop off when your kind response makes them look like assholes ARE ASSHOLES. He is awful. PLEASE stop communicating with him; I know you're hurt but this is painful to watch.

DarklyDreamingDexter · 14/09/2018 08:56

What does it matter what he said about the flowers and what his motivations were? He's a manipulative user who left you a 'nervous wreck' in your relationship. You have escaped, thankfully. Block him, ignore him and don't keep over thinking it. He's not a nice person and doesn't deserve your time and attention. Move on and forget about him. Why are you wasting your time and energy with him?

MarthasGinYard · 14/09/2018 08:59

'he was going through a hard time (battle over seeing his children -'

Doesn't surprise me

another20 · 14/09/2018 09:01

Maybe *contessa is correct. Or maybe your over friendly response made him feel back in power - in control enough to wound you again. Or maybe your response was irrelevant and he was going to kick off either way....or maybe, or maybe, or maybe.......

Reality is you will never know, none of us will - and it doesn’t matter.

Just look at the facts he has behaved like a c**t consistently, with his ex, with you in a relationship and with you post relationship. Nothing more to understand.

ciderhouserules · 14/09/2018 09:22

the question of "i just dont get it" is because i kept excusing his behaviour because he was going through a hard time - so, there's always an excuse as to why he is a twat

I think you should face up to the fact that he is a twat at all times, unless he wants something.

Why are you trying to get into his head? Why do you want to understand a twat's thinking?

Ignore. Brush off,. Move on. Replace Twat with a cat, or painting, or TV, or gym, or anything that will stop you going round in circles like this.

Hissy · 14/09/2018 09:49

i suppose i always hoped the real him was in the glimpses outside of his behaviour

And it is this blind faith that makes you the perfect victim for his abuse, and the abuse of others unless you tune up your senses/radar sharpish.

the REAL him IS the arsehole. Trust me (and literally everyone else on this thread), we are ALL saying the same thing, I bet your mates are saying the same things too.

The reason why these people are the perfect beings they are when we first meet them is because they have to pretend to be nice, so they throw everything at it to sucker you in. For abusive people being nice is as difficult and exhausting to them as us being nasty for the rest of us. So after a while, they let things slip a little, because they can't keep up the pretence. I believe that the more abusive they are, the earlier that slip comes, and the more rapid the descent into real evil.

On average it takes 2 years for an abusive person to show their true colours, any sooner and to me, it shows far a more dangerous and abusive nature, and that's when one needs to consider that this person could actually represent a threat to the life of their victim.

You have been shown what he is doing, breadcrumbing, keeping you hooked for his own entertainment/emotional hard on. You have been told that people like him do this because they know you allow it somehow, it's an itch they need scratched and you deliver.

So... NC, and a rigorously enforced one too.

You are better than this, even dying alone is better than dying in a relationship where someone makes you feel worse about yourself and who does so for fun.

You are free of him, the space he took up in your life needs to be filled with love, first and foremost your own love for yourself, then you will be ready to receive real love and have a decent partner by your side. If you want.

today is the first day of the rest of your life, today you have hope and power - so crack on and make up for the time this man stole from you.

Hissy · 14/09/2018 09:50

You will never truly understand WHY, and that's OK. You have bigger fish to fry.

Original poster
itsnotlight · 14/09/2018 10:15

thank you for the posts.

hissy i have considered everything everyone has said and obviously i cant ignore that almost everyone has said the same thing.

i don't think i dispute that he had some abusive qualities. i think my problem and difficulty lies in thinking i am to blame for it in some way/maybe he was struggling with life and i didnt appreciate that enough.

towards the end i probably wasnt easy myself...i was seeking validation from him and felt very needy (which isnt me at all in usual life!). whats ridiculous is i am really independent, have a good job and my own home and friends and life...i cant really believe all this has happened. i genuinely think nobody on this thread would believe it if they knew me in real life.

i was a nervous wreck at the end because i didnt know where i stood with him. i KNOW analysing it is ultimately futile but i am needing to talk it over to try and make sense with why it happened. and part of that is wondering if it was me.

with the flowers...i believed he had sent them because he wanted to get back together (not immediately but a sign of wanting more - i didnt know how i felt at that moment, thats the truth!) OR he genuinely wanted to embrace a friendship. when he reared up in the messages because i said i missed him it just shook everything up because if he was sincere about a friendship, well then you dont treat a friend like that. hence leaving me to wonder why he would even bother with the gesture in the first place and making me feel like i had messed up. in fact he said i had "messed up the conversation."

while i can see my posts here look like i am trying to work him out because i want him, that isnt true. i just feel like i lost "me" throughout all this and feel responsible.

OP posts:
MarthasGinYard · 14/09/2018 10:20

He did a real number on you

I walked on Egg shells years ago with a similar type

Controlling
E A

Didn't recognise myself after 6 months

Thanks this isn't you

Trust us

Original poster
itsnotlight · 14/09/2018 10:22

marthas how come he could be so nice? bought me things, turned up unexpectedly? who does that if they are abusive?

i feel like he was perfect for 6 months then it all went wrong and i must have caused it. otherwise how would he have been so great initially - something must have caused that change.

OP posts:
NonaGrey · 14/09/2018 10:26

who does that if they are abusive?

An abusive person who wants to have sex.

Read your way through some other threads on the relationship board. This isn’t unusual, it’s a common script:

Be nice, reel her in.
Start being horrible but occasionally lovely so she doesn’t leave
Start being horrible all the time but tell her it’s her fault.

Original poster
itsnotlight · 14/09/2018 10:28

why though?

he actually once said to me he was a horrible person and the mask was slipping. also heard from his sister that he was incredibly difficult and she asked if i was robust enough to handle all of that.

i clearly have had no respect for myself and wanted the love more than i wanted my own boundaries. feel so ashamed.

OP posts:
BackInTheRoom · 14/09/2018 10:28

Google 'Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissists' and see if it resonates with you.

I think you're still struggling with this is because you were with someone who is 'disordered' and therefore none of it makes sense. It's as clear as day to me after researching it.

BackInTheRoom · 14/09/2018 10:30

i feel like he was perfect for 6 months then it all went wrong and i must have caused it. otherwise how would he have been so great initially - something must have caused that change.

Lovebombing.

BackInTheRoom · 14/09/2018 10:33

i don't think i dispute that he had some abusive qualities. i think my problem and difficulty lies in thinking i am to blame for it in some way/maybe he was struggling with life and i didnt appreciate that enough.

Q. So If you were such a bad girlfriend, why would he be sending you flowers?A. Because you weren't!

MyRelationshipIsWeird · 14/09/2018 10:34

Sending you flowers or a card on your birthday is a well known tactic of emotional abusers. It isn’t a ‘friendly gesture’ or something nice for you - it’s essentially a way of making sure he sticks his oar in on your special day so you can’t forget about him and move on. He may as well have posted you a photo of himself with the words ME ME ME written on it. It was a selfish gesture designed to fuck with your head on your birthday. Your reaction proved that it had he desired effect to him, so he shut you down to put you back in your box.

Don’t try to apply normal people’s reasoning to someone like him. You will never understand what makes him tick - you are just fodder to him. You serve a purpose in his life, whether that’s sexually or emotionally, but it doesn’t matter to him how you actually feel about any of it. This latest gesture was to show him as ‘the most important person’, ‘the romantic and forgiving ex’ etc. You could be anyone for the purpose of his story. You’re basically a cartoon outline of a woman for him to project his self image onto.

Original poster
itsnotlight · 14/09/2018 10:34

he could show empathy though. with other people's pets and babies for instance, he was very understanding and caring...almost scarily so, wanting to check a baby was ok in a car seat or a dog had water in a pub, that sort of thing.

OP posts:
ContessasGulagSpaDay · 14/09/2018 10:34

You didn't cause this behaviour op. All this headspace you're giving him; I can give you a cast-iron guarantee that he has never given that much consideration to you or anyone else he's ever slept with. It is all about him, in his head.

NonaGrey · 14/09/2018 10:35

Don’t waste time feeling ashamed for someone else’s bad behaviour.

Get up dust yourself off and accept it as a lesson for the future.

Stop wallowing. Take positive action.

ContessasGulagSpaDay · 14/09/2018 10:36

I bet he cared about the comfort of creatures that were small enough and powerless enough to not exert any actual demands on him, op. There's no ongoing cost to him for such occasional kindness. Bet he'd have done less well with ongoing parenting or pet ownership....

badgeronabicycle · 14/09/2018 10:36

I lost years in an EA relationship. It left me a shell of my former self with rock bottom self esteem. Of course you feel like it was your fault it didn't work out and you're struggling to make sense of everything. That's how they work. There is no sense, just their twisted logic. I'm not surprised his ex wants to move away with his kids, in her position I would too. He's most likely a toxic influence.
You deserve better. Only once he realises he can't control or manipulate you he'll leave you alone. You need to make that happen. Block him. It's you're only chance of being free and finding yourself again. If you don't he'll pick you apart and ultimately destroy you.
I wish I'd left sooner, but I'm very happy with someone else now who is nothing like my ex. A tough lesson learned.

BackInTheRoom · 14/09/2018 10:37

he could show empathy though. with other people's pets and babies for instance, he was very understanding and caring...almost scarily so, wanting to check a baby was ok in a car seat or a dog had water in a pub, that sort of thing.

Yes I experienced this too but did he show YOU empathy in your relationship?

Original poster
itsnotlight · 14/09/2018 10:38

myrelationshipisweird - if i accept what you say and he wanted to get into my head etc...then WHY treat me so offhand afterwards? that is what is beyond me. surely the entire point of getting into someone's life/head is because you care for them and want to either build bridges or want something more. whatever the reason, surely to then be offhand an awful when that persons says something nice to them defeats the object?!

OP posts:
ContessasGulagSpaDay · 14/09/2018 10:38

Similarly, he got impatient at the first sign that you might need emotional support from him and told you you'd got the conversation wrong. He doesn't do ongoing emotional support for others, you see; maybe the occasional one-off, but not ongoing. His self-absorption can't handle ongoing.

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