I think I am being completely head ducked

[Thingsneedtochange000]

Please tell me what you think of this kind of behaviour.

Last day of holiday with boyfriend. He is 50 I am 40. We are having a great time, out for lunch, by the beach, we have two separate flights to catch in the evening. We’ve spent four days together no problems.

we finish a bottle of wine at lunch, feeling a bit tipsy, I ask him to kiss me. Just a kiss on the lips not a snog. He says no. Okay. We go to the beach, hang out, laugh some more, swim in the sea. Literally leaning against each other, holding hands, making jokes. I ask him again to give me a kiss on the lips. Just a peck. He says no again. It becomes a bit of a joke. Me begging and him refusing, although I really did want to just be able to kiss him on the lips.

As we are waiting for the taxi and getting into the taxi to go to the airport the joke continues. I said please now we are about to go our separate ways I just want you to kiss me. He was very assertive, the tone completely changed and said “no sorry I really don’t want to.” I asked why. He said I just don’t want to and I have a right to not do something i don’t want to do.”

I am ashamed to say I cried because it was the last time I would see him for a while and he was talking to me as if I was forcing myself on him and he was some kind of victim of my sexual advances (bear in mind this is a three year long, emotional and sexual relationship we are in.)

as soon as I started crying (I was also a bit pissed) he sat back and said “my god, you are so pathetic.” This made me feel 100x worse I said why, why won’t you kiss me? Why is that pathetic we have done it thousands of times before? He said it’s completely pathetic I shouldn’t have to explain why.

I then got out of the taxi and stormed off with my bag and caught another taxi to the airport. He sent a series of texts saying again how my reaction is pathetic then told me he was turning off his phone and would not be checking messages. I got on the plane crying. And the same thing happens every time (the same thing but different has happened before,) I start to panic that I have done something stupid, that actually i am an awful, chaotic crazy person, who cannot respect other people’s boundaries and that I have fallen I to the trap of his stereotype of me. As this crazy, unhinged person who loses it and storms off over something small. So I send a view texts apologising for over reacting and saying how sorry I am and how I will respect his boundaries in the future. This is so confusing to me because I don’t feel I crossed his boundaries, just wanted something we normally do in the course of our relationship.

this is increasingly happening in our relationship. He will take a stand over something or over a principle. Something we usually do as matter or course or have done for several years already: like kissing, holding hands, talking about a certain topic. He will suddenly act like I am crossing a boundary and become formal with me , almost like he wants to see my reaction. The jarring nature of jovial and loving to formal, cold and spontaneous boundaries catches me off guard and I find it very upsetting and will often cry or beg him to tell me why he has suddenly become like that. He then has carte Blanche to say I am over emotional, over sensitive, getting upset over nothing. It’s just a boundary why can’t I respect that? Have I ever heard of #meetoo? He is a person who wants to respect his own principles and live by them. Why can’t I respect that?

why does he do this?

I am walking on eggshells, waiting for the next surprise or boundary, starting to fear getting it wrong. It has also created a physiological sense of heightened anxiety in me where I feel like I could lose him any second and I feel desperate to keep him. The time before when this happened, he blocked me on his phone for four days. It was hell and it was because I had caught him Out in a small white lie about his work. I wanted to understand why he did not tell the truth and was asking him gently. He accused me of being abusive and systematically abusing him over years.

please help what is going on?

🚩🚩Red flags, red flags everywhere. Get out. No one should make you feel this miserable.

😂😂😂

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

He let you believe you had a wonderful time then deliberately ruined it for you. Getting off no doubt in the knowledge you are hurt and confused on your journey home

He likes you vulnerable he gets a kick out of it

Leave him op he's a viscous human being, he will ruin your mental and physical health

This is about power and control and manipulation. He decided to hurt you. Understand that. He's been gaslighting you like this for 3 years. Please do not continue with this relationship.

Ditch him. Life is too short to be with this complete head fuck.

Someone you are with should want to kiss you. He is an arsehole. You deserve better.

He’s a nasty, malicious little dickweed. He wants to jerk the strings and make you dance and he obviously does not care about you. Your OP was hard to read, the abusive manipulation he employed was so gross and blatant. Please end this charade immediately. He is making you emotionally ill.

He's a narcissist. Get rid quick or he will destroy you x

He does it because he is a really nasty piece of work who enjoys making you suffer.

There isn't any other explanation than this. I wish you hadn't messaged him but from now on I wouldn't message him again. Ever. If you have anything of his, put it in a parcel and send it to him, preferably at a time when he has to go to the post office to collect it.

You know exactly what this is, you articulated it perfectly. You now feel you’ve got to jump to give him all the attention and do anything to keep him onside. just follow the thought to the natural conclusion, he’s being horrible to you and your partner shouldn’t be horrible to you so he can’t be your partner anymore.

also I’m a petty fucker and wouldn’t block him but I’d never reply to another message just to enjoy the annoyance he’ll get at being left on read.

I actually had an Italian bf a bit like that. I never cried, though, as we were both young then (mid-twenties) and I didn't really care that much about him 😉
I wouldn't accept this nowadays!

Being on your own and minus this person is significantly more preferential to being with him sadistically playing mind games with you making you doubt everything about yourself.

He is a serious narcissistic head fudger. You deserve better and he deserves to be left alone because NO WOMAN deserves him. Evil personified. Get out.

You are stuck in a relationship where you have become
trauma-bonded to someone who is fucking with your head.

There will be some kind of reason he does this, like he probably had an abusive childhood that has caused him to develop a narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder but it will take an enormous amount of educating yourself and reflecting on your interactions with him to figure it all out, and he will be very unlikely to help you understand it by being honest with you about his inner world. You will need to do this at some stage but first, get out of the relationship immediately.

The most important thing for you to see and accept right now is that he is not treating you in a loving way, and he is not treating you the way he is because of anything you have done or failed to do. He is doing it because his own thinking is twisted and dysfunctional.

Whenever someone says or does something that makes no real sense in the context of a normal loving relationship (like refusing to kiss you), it’s a giant red flag of disordered thinking. He can’t give you a reason that makes sense as to why he doesn’t want to kiss you because there is no reason that would make sense to normal people. There may be a reason that doesn’t make sense to normal people, like he enjoys the feeling of power that comes from denying you something you want, and then making you apologise for wanting it. Of course, he is not going to say this to you and will deny it if you accuse him of it, and it’s so repellent to think that someone who claims to love you would actually enjoy hurting you that you may not even want to consider this as a possibility. But it is probably what is really going on.

Another giant red flag is when someone refuses to explain themselves to you and in a superior way suggests that you should understand perfectly what the reasons are for their actions. The truth is they don’t explain themselves because at some level they know they can’t explain themselves without revealing twisted thinking, or they actually don’t understand themself what they’re doing, they just have a cloudy sense of self-righteousness and entitlement to treat you like shit.

For now, just leave. Once you are out from under his spell, things will become clearer.

Manipulative sadist.

He’s doing it because he can. He’s a fucker.

it’s nothing personal, he’ll do it to his next victim.

don’t be his victim.

Why on earth did you apologise? He enjoys watching you break, he enjoys watching you cry, he enjoys being in control, he’s playing some kind of sick game with you to build himself and his ego up, he’s FEEDING off your distress!

He is a terrible man, absolutely awful. I never shout narcissist (gets banded around WAY too much) but I’m going to do it here!

Cut the hold he had over you, you will be happier!

Thank you

i feel so sad. I agree he is a narcissist
if I cut him off I’ll get accused of being angry and dramatic and like a “spoilt child.” He will then start sending threats like “if you don’t stop doing this I will do X.”

but then I fear if I block him completely (perhaps it’s the trauma bonding talking) I feel like I am losing something awful, like I will experience a terrible loss. Or he’ll find someone else very quickly, I’m sure he will

our communities are so interlinked we see each other a lot locally and at work, I would still have to continue seeing him while he hated / targeted me or made me out to be the crazy one

Better to have to see him daily thinking 'thank goodness I escaped that' than living with this emotional abuse. Obviously, it'll take time to get to that place but you will.
Yes it is likely that he'll tell you're you're mad. Yes, he'll probably find someone else ridiculously quickly. Yes, he will try to minimise his behaviour and make out that you're overreacting.
But, you will get through it and move on to a peaceful life where you're not having to put up with these mind games.

He has cut you down for three years to feed his ego. You have to put these fears aside. This is him inside your brain making you feel like you need him, he’s an absolute monster.

Of course it’s going to hurt. You’re a 40 year old woman, you know the drill, break ups are rubbish and they hurt, but you also know that you’ll get over it. You know that you’ll move on.

He will need another supply very soon, so of course he will meet someone and it will look as though he’s ‘oh so different’ for them, but he won’t be because his level of crazy won’t change.

This man does not have your safety and well-being, so you have to exercise your personal agency and get the hell out.

And who cares what he says, the more distance you gain the more clearly you’ll see it all and the more you’ll be able to praise yourself for getting out of there.

You can and must do this!

He's just waiting for a barrage of begging texts from you.

Take back control and just block him. No messages at all.

Maybe it's a headfuck, maybe it's not.

The question is why do you engage? If I asked dh for a kiss and he said he didn't want one, I just wouldn't ask him again.

You didn't need a kiss, you just kept asking because he had said no. It doesn't matter if he's done it before, if he doesn't want to now he doesn't have to. It is actually out of order to keep asking. If you hadn't made a thing of it, it would never have become a thing.

If dh wanted a kiss, I didn't and he kept asking, I would want it even less. I would feel that what I wanted was secondary to what he wanted, and that would put me off.

It takes two to tango on things like this. If you refuse to engage, he can't headfuck you. And whether in this relationship or in the next, the ability to accept that someone may not want something you want at a particular moment (even if they'd wanted it before) will serve you in good stead.

Just don't contact him. Let him be the one to get in touch.

Read what you have written again, are you seriously considering staying with someone because you are terrified of how they will behave if you break it off? That in ITSELF tells you that you should break it off.

Who bloody cares if he gets annoyed or whatever.
Come on get this relationship finished, he's horrible to you.

What an entitled little boy wanker. How can you allow another person who is meant to treasure you, treat you like nothing.

You are not nothing!!!!!

I agree.
And nobody will think you’re the crazy one, whatever he says, if you just keep a dignified distance/silence and don’t react. They’ll start to see this is him. You can’t keep putting yourself through this. Don’t let him abuse you. And definitely don’t apologise.

It doesn’t matter why he does it.

All that matters is that he does and it makes you miserable.

Don’t torture yourself trying to figuring out why. Even if you knew, he’d still do it and you would still be miserable. So you’d still be where you are now.

More worthwhile would be employing a really good therapist to work out why you are ‘desperate’ to keep someone who treats you like this and is making you miserable.