what did this mean?

[higgyhog]

I'm having counselling at the moment, one of the things we are doing is looking at a former partners behaviour towards me and what it meant.

I was having a look through some old emails while I was thinking about ths week's session. I've noticed that ex p never said "I'm sorry" "I'm sorry I hurt you" or give an apology and say he wouldn't do it again. He always said "I'm ashamed I behaved that way" "I'm so cross with myself" "I'm mortified that I didn't think" The wording was all about him, never about me. It is very odd, we typically had an argument every 12 months or so for something about which he tried to make it seem like my fault and on each occasion used this sort of language.

I wouldn't worry about it too much; it says more about him than it does about you! He sounds like a narcissist!

I had this with an ex who wrote me a really long-winded email about why we broke up. I didn't even realise it, but when I showed it to me sister she immediately picked up on the fact he mentioned himself 18 times and me only once!

My ex never apologised for his behaviour either - his language was always along the lines of " I'm sorry you are upset" or " It's a shame that this is bothering you". Like he was always putting the responsibility back on to me when he did something wrong.

I wouldn't dwell on it - plenty of people are like that. This guy is an "ex" now so you've moved on. Good for you.

There are more aspects of his behaviour that indicate narcissism. We have really more than covered him in our sessions but he keeps popping up again in relation to other problem areas in my life ( I mean in the counselling, not in reality) I hadn't noticed it before but it really leapt out at me when I read the emails again. I'd already noticed that everything that went wrong was my fault, I was always expecting that, but this strange method of not actually ever saying sorry now stands out as very odd.