Dumped by 16 min rambling voice note

[StartingAgain33]

I'm so angry, mostly with myself, as a big part of me has felt this guy is full of red flags, even from the beginning, but I didn't listen to myself and instead got swayed by friends and even my therapist saying he sounded nice!! I have let this go on for NINE MONTHS. I was going to dump him tomorrow after a couple of weeks of terrible, one sided communication on his part but I wanted to do in person or on the phone so it could be friendly, dignified and equal. However he has got in early and, as ever, not given me a chance to have a voice. I'm not sure I have energy to reply, but I also feel like saying some really nasty things.

Reasons I should have ended this sooner:

• love bombed me at beginning, I felt pushed into being sexual too early and also his declarations were intense and way too soon
• he hadn't had a relationship in over 10 years and said his exes had done / said terrible things to him including insults that he was 'weird' and 'didn't listen to them
• he backtracked four months in and said we needed to put on the breaks as was moving too fast. When I pointed out it was HIM making these statements (he had suggested getting a flat together the previous week and I'd said no!) he gaslit me and said I had led the commitment conversations (I definitely had not, though I did let myself get swept away which I feel stupid about)
• he was generally emotionally unstable, swinging from one mood to the next, I want to be with you for the rest of my life one minute and then saying he's struggling with the idea of ever moving to my part of London the next (not that I'd asked him to!!). Also, the past few weeks he has gone from streams of angry texts about nothing to then voice notes where he acts like everything is normal and he would 'love to see me' that Saturday for his friends birthday?!
• he seemed obsessed with idea I was controlling him. If I had an emotion, and was upset, and explained it in an adult way, this was 'controlling' him and I was drawing him 'into my emotional playground'
• he was very insensitive and terrible at any kind of emotional validation. He was shit when my uncle died for instance, just changed the subject as made him feel unconfy
• apparently I am too emotional and he can't give me what I need, yet he stores up grievances, has big angry outbursts and can't resolve a disagreement without huge statements/ hours and hours of talking at me till I'm so exhausted I can't do anything but sit back and take it (this is unlike me, I'm usually good at being assertive)

Does he have bpd or something?

He made me feel insecure, like I was going mad with all the gaslighting and like I had done something really wrong for him to back off when he was keen on me at first. I know these are classic signs, so why did I stay? I even convinced myself he was autistic to make his behaviour ok (I do actually this he is). He didn't seem very narcissistic as he had poor self esteem. He reeled me in with his self pity and sob stories about his controlling mother and cruel exes (despite the fact he is Cambridge educated, earns £100k+ and is very good looking).

Now ex could probably tell I was going to end things in person today so got in first. The voice note was about how he just 'can't meet my needs' and 'no one he's ever been out with has had so many needs' for 'emotional validation'. It has made me feel like I am 'too much' and like shit, despite knowing he is a knob.

This is the latest in a string of knobs where I am ignoring gut instinct and trying to make things work. I find it hard to tell what is acceptable or not (although this guy massively takes the biscuit - none of my exes were like this and I have always had amicable respectful breakups).

I am starting to panic as I am almost 37 and want kids. So feel I should get back on dating scene, but just don't have the energy and I know I need to take some time out after this. I have frozen 28 eggs at 35 (apparently over 90% chance of a live birth with todays technology) so potentially have a backup plan.

Any advice, and also hand holding, welcome. Please not too much telling off. I am feeling like such an idiot as it is.

He being the covert narcissist not you. Sorry my pp wasn't clear.

It's interesting about the covert narciccism stuff. I think he genuinely does want a nice relationship, but he cannot take any criticism without it seriously damaging him and he turns it back on the other person.

For instance, he said 'I made him feel ashamed' really aggressively once (and went on for like 2 hours, making me feel like shit) because I dared say that the time he 'blacked up' (horrible expression, sorry) for a party would be really frowned on nowadays (it was about 15 years ago) and he said that 'he couldn't share any of his past with me because I will twist it and make it out that he is racist'. I couldn't understand why he took that one comment and made it about his whole life and past. It was a real Jekyll and Hyde moment, he kept just repeating 'you make me feel ashamed' etc until ironically I felt very ashamed myself!

I had deliberately not called him racist, because I knew there would be a scene and we were in a restaurant (very worrying that I chose to forget my own principles here - that in itself is a bad sign something was terribly wrong as I've dumped someone before for a semi-racist comment).

I tried to get him to see reason; that I hadn't directly said he was racist, that I was allowed to be uncomfortable with the idea of him blacking up, that it didn't mean that he couldn't share any of his past with me.

He then went into a massive spiel about how he was also so offended because I'd dared to call a waiter dopey (he was bloody dopey) and 'he knew he was like that at that age and it takes him three times as much time to learn anything as other people and he will never be as clever as me' etc etc, so it actually turned into a conversation where I ended up comforting him that he is clever, that there are different types of intelligence, that I'm less practically minded than he is, etc, etc,

It was exhausting.

But I still have the feeling I did something wrong in all this :(

He did have real problems with learning and bad behaviour etc when he was younger, got very bad grades, would hit himself and do 'stimming' behaviours, hence thinking he is autistic, and that a lot of this stems from that - from the sense there is something wrong with him from a young age - which seemed far more forgiveable than the narciccism stuff but even so, I guess it had the same effect on me.

I don't know why but I still feel pity for him even tho I know I should be angry

Ah bless you! Best off out of there

Three weeks later and still feeling sad and crap about our breakup. I can't believe he said I had too many 'emotional validation needs'. I know he said it because I told him I needed him to be better at emotional validation, and he was just parroting it back repetitively, like he did with everything that made him unhappy, but its my one insecurity that 'I'm too much' and this breakup seemed to confirm it. Ugh.

3 weeks is still not long. You are doing well. It's hard.

Don't make any sort response. That winds people up the most.

I would either not reply because silence speaks volumes or reply with "who is this?" And then block.

He sounds unhinged and thank god he has gone.