Did I deal with this "friendly gesture" wrongly?

[itsnotlight]

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?

this thread has made me consider all other aspects of the relationship that i hadnt considered were even that wrong before.

one time after we'd been away for a night i had borrowed his phone charger. we had got in late so went straight to bed. in bed he asked where the charger was and i said i think in my handbag downstairs. he called me selfish and dependant on him and it was disrespectful of me to not have given the charger back or know precisely which bag it was in. i apologised and with that he went into a mood while in bed and woudnt speak. he eventually told me to shut the fuck up and i said do you even want this - his response was "let's see in the morning." i was in tears at this point and remember waking up the following morning with a feeling of total dread in my stomach as to whether we were even in a relationship anymore.

now i look at that and think even if i had lost his fucking charger (i hadnt, it was packed), then it wouldnt have warranted that sort of treatment. am i right?

No, it did not merit that treatment, OP. I'm glad that you are starting to process all the other unkind/avusive/boundary crossing actions your ex did to you.

I expect that new ones will continue to pop into your head as you unpack this relationship - it can be very destabilising to realise how much of the relationship was disfunctional and how soon the bad treatment started.

i remember that night i excused it because he was having this battle with his ex.

he never apologised. and as he proudly told me one time, his mother never apologised to anyone. makes me feel sick

I am still quite concerned about you saying that you couldn't understand why someone would play mind games unless they loved you and wanted to be close to you.

Do you really think that someone who is manipulating you is doing it out of love?

i dont think i ever saw any of it as manipulation. he did do nice things and the hard part is knowing that him as a whole has the ability to be very nasty and understanding that THAT is him. the bad bits cant be carved out or excused.

is it manipulative to do what he did in that scenario about the charger? i just see it as being nasty and cruel. if i had ever had a sincere apology for any times he behaved like that, i would have seen it differently too i think.

He’s a bully.

I think the penny is finally dropping for you OP. It did for me and I was shocked that my life was a lie. I eventually went back to the origin, the root of my dysfunction and looked at Attachment Theory which was quite a revelation tbh. Have you looked at this?

He is a manipulative bullying shite and you need to tell yourself that every time you think of him til you've changed your narrative of your relationship with him.

The flowers and card were breadcrumbs; a typical habit of manipulators to see if you're still dangling on that thread. You were. You need to cut that thread, delete and block him in every way possible and repeat to yourself that you no longer tolerate manipulative games.

Ugh

This is giving me flashbacks of my own ex relationship with an EA

That sinking pit stomach feeling and walking on eggshells.

Awful

'he told me one of the reasons he wanted me was because i was independent and ambitious whereas his ex was needy and had mental health problems.'

This is word for word what my ex said to me.

Thing is, he thinks he wants that but actually can't cope with these qualities at all, so he mentally beats you into a shadow of your former self and then casts you to one side. He will begin the cycle again then.

It's a form of control you see.

Op the 'ex' was probably similar to you when he met her. He would describe you as her now, most likely.

I think these abusers are actually really dangerous as they chip away gradually.

It was many years ago but I will always remember how I was reduced to a shell of my former self.

marthas i actually thought it was odd when he said it. as if he wanted an accessory to represent a lifestyle or version of how he saw himself.

apparently i turned into a mess towards the end. you know, when he was ignoring me for hours at a time and being in a mood.

Lundy Bancroft would be good to read.

Cut him out totally. Its the only way. No being friends bollocks it doesn't work

Hearing antipathy now.... good, keep going. Get good and angry, it'll protect you in future!

@itsnotlight

My ex was/is like yours. The charger story - I could have told the same thing with countless other objects. He once sulked for a week because I had taken pity on an older man in a pub who couldn't get service and got the barmaids attention on his behalf. "You're so disrespectful" ok buddy. It was just total nonsense but like you, I felt he must be reasonable somehow, I tried so hard to understand it.

It's only in hindsight that I see he really loved seeing me on edge. He loved when I begged and pleaded. It made him feel like God.

If he ever did go too far and I started to pull back and go "wait this isn't on, this is a bridge too far", he was very sensitive to that and knew when it was time to be nice so that I'd be comforted and come back for more.

He got to know me very well, he knew exactly how to extract these huge ego boost from me, by making me beg and cry. And he knew exactly how to turn on the healing powers, where I'd be so desperate for things to get better that I would greet his new kindness with relief.

I don't think abusers consciously know that they use these cycles (possibly some do) - I'm sure they simply watch their parents do this, and it's just normal to them. It's how relationships work, to them. And it is a good technique. It hooks people and keeps them weak... Which keeps them close, makes the abuser feel incredibly safe and powerful.

What you experienced with the flowers was him checking in to ensure he's still safe and powerful. And you showed him that he was. Not your fault - you were responding honestly to what he was doing.

The issue is you imagine he's like you. He isn't. He's like himself. It might help to begin thinking critically about other people, to actually watch them to find out who they are. How they make others feel. Etc.

Never assume another person is just like you. There are billions of people in this world and they all have unique ways of dealing with others.

You may also want to read up on "tend and befriend". It may explain to you why you reacted so naively to this man when he was mean to you.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tend_and_befriend

The upshot is - it seems many women may not experience"fight or flight" when they are stressed. They may release oxytocin (cuddle hormone), causing them to try to befriend others in order to find allies to defeat the threat. Your ex possibly was able to use this against you... He'd abuse you, and you'd try to tend and befriend him.

If you identify with this, it's possible for you to become conscious that you have that response to stress, and you can develop ways to maintain boundaries during stress so that you don't inadvertently cozy up to the next person who stresses you.

thank you all so much for helping me deal with this. it is a long road i think to accepting it and it really does take a while to recognise how wrong the treatment was.

the biggest question i have for myself is why did i let someone behave like that when they didnt even apologise. for me that's strangely the part that i question most - i actually excused someone's shitty behaviour over and over when they hadnt even acknowledged how shitty it was themselves - they'd not even said they were sorry. he wasnt!

thinking about the flowers and the card i can see now that it wasnt based on caring about a friendship. if it was he'd have actually asked how i was, been interested in my life, which he never truly was. instead it just opened a forum for him to disregard and dismiss me. im genuinely not sure he knows how to have deeper and genuine relationships with people, it's all just an act.

one thing that always struck me about him was his inconsistency. i dread to think what he would have been like with a child.

Sounds like he needs help, what a bully