Hand hold please

[CM97]

Feeling so sad today. I was dumped unexpectedly 3 weeks ago and am still reeling. Our relationship had been a rollercoaster... together for 11 months and I thought we were so in love. I was so insecure with him. I thought it was because I'd come off my antidepressants but now I'm not so sure. Im wondering if he was the reason I became insecure and anxious.

What do you think about the following?

1. I once added a few of his friends on Facebook after they had liked a post. He made me unfriend them. He said it was weird. He didn't want me talking to his family.

1. He would be so affectionate and loving, very attentive and kind, until there was any stress. Then he would threaten to break up with me, or he would actually do it. Then I would persuade him to carry on, and the loving would return. The stresses that caused this were invariably me having any type of emotion that wasn't happy or me being a bit grumpy that he had changed plans. This cycle happened every 2-4 weeks.

1. The constant fear of him leaving meant I became so insecure. This annoyed him because he felt I pressured him into seeing me etc.

1. We were planning a future together, we both have kids but when my youngest had left home in 2 years we planned that I would move in.

1. If I tried to talk to him, he would say I was being difficult/hard work/over reacting/picking a fight. All he ever wanted was happiness and fun.

1. I just wish I could have been different with him, I wish I had learned how to avoid causing these issues. I wish I could have stayed the happy, secure and independent 52 year old that I was when we met. Then we would still be together. 💔

He sounds really abusive if you ask me.

I would not add people on social media personally, but his reaction is a tad OTT.

Him threatening to break off the relationship if things did not go his way is a classic abuser tactic where he is conditioning you into submission.

The reason why you are still feeling lost is due to the fact he was pulling on your emotions with his emotional abuse.

He was not a nice person, end off. men like him will mirror you in order for you to fall for them, then when they know they have managed that that is when the manipulation and mental abuse starts.

I am sure he will be in contact at some point, tell you all the things he knows he needs to say in order to hoover you in again, and its important that you know the tactics so that he does not get to play with your life like that again. He will never change. And whatever you say to him will never change him.

I would thank my lucky starts he is out of your way.

I’d recommend that you read up about love bombing in abusive relationships. Sounds like he was wonderful..until he isn’t. Happy relationships don’t leave you feeling insecure and questioning everything, begging someone to stay with you. Take this as a gift. Read up a bit on abusive relationships to help you recover. Abusers are clever. They don’t start off being abusive or no-one would get involved with them…it’s a drip feed. But you’ve got away so do yourself a favour and keep it that way!

It was so good though, I just couldn't keep it that way. I keep thinking I should have dealt with my insecurities on my own rather than turning to him for reassurance

He didn't control me into submission though. I didn't learn, I just kept bringing stuff up and then it went wrong again.

You haven’t realised yet that you cannot win with people like that. He would find any excuse to treat you badly at some point just because he could. It’s okay to raise things that bother you in a healthy relationship. It can be an adult discussion. I had this with my current DP a few months into our relationship. He did something that pissed me off. I said to him that I wanted to discuss something and it would be awkward because I struggled to raise things after my marriage. I said what had bothered me. He apologised and said he hadn’t really thought about it but he wouldn’t do it again and he hasn’t. This was about a year ago.
My XH was the same as your X. I would say I was quite fiery and argumentative when we met and after years I became submissive and just stopped raising things and started treading on eggshells. I was a shadow of my former self by the time we split (15 years!). People who only knew me with him started to say I seemed like a different person. People who knew me before said I seemed like myself again. They look for a reason to argue with you and if you were raising things and the consequence was a row or he broke up with you every time, it’s on him!

It’s him not you.
Classic abusive behaviour- reeling you in with lots of loving behaviour at the start then eroding all your boundaries one by one, whilst managing to make you think it’s your fault.
There is no nice man. He’s an illusion.

I used to start the fights... I'm not sure how. I just wanted a conversation. 😔

He was loving until the end. It was interspersed with him pulling back though.

A rollercoaster of a relationship is one with deep lows and massive highs, it was never stable nor sustainable. He tore down your boundaries systematically.

What did you learn about relationships when you were growing up?.

What he showed you throughout this relationship of unequals was the nice/nasty cycle of abuse which is a continuous one. Abusive men like this can and do further damage perhaps already weakened boundaries (this being due to poor previous relationships and or life experiences). He targeted you deliberately, of that I have no doubt at all.

He was never loving and his actions were not loving, all this man ever cared about was his own self and getting his needs met.

Love your own self for a change and enrol yourself onto the Freedom programme as part of your recovery from his abuses of you.

Surely though you only kept bringing stuff up because he was making you feel you needed to? Because everything you've said about him makes him sound like an utter tosser of whom you are well rid.

Stop blaming yourself that you didn’t fit in, entirely, with the narrative he alone dictated to you.
You’re much better off without him.

Of course you couldn't keep it that way. He didn't want you to keep it that way, if you had done, he would have lost "control".

Nothing, repeat nothing, you could have done would have kept the good times rolling. You have had a lucky escape OP in my opinion.

Sounds to me that controlling you into submission is exactly what he was doing.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat I don't know anymore, I can't remember what it was that I brought up. It was stuff like leaving my WhatsApp messages on read, him not coming to my house but me always going up to his, but it wasn't often.

@IvorTheEngineDriver I am sure there was something I could have done. How can it go from being so good to him withdrawing and saying the relationship wasn't working, over something like me being a bit fed up?

I think he might have had a narrative. I was his first relationship after his wife died.

I've remembered something else we fell out over. He wouldn't share his location with me, but wanted me to share mine. I should have just accepted it. Or not shared mine.

He sounds like The Dictator from Why does he do that? By Lundy Bancroft.

Everything was fine so long as you didn’t show upset or annoyance over anything he did that hurt you, didn’t ever question him. That’s no way to live. Suppressing your emotions all the time and putting on a fake happy facade isn’t healthy.

It sounds like you were just asking for a bit of care and consideration - the bare minimum really.

I think that sums it up. I was last in the list of his priorities... always. I didn't want to be first, if he'd put me above his kids needs I'd have been mortified, I just wanted to feel secure and not disposable

Read your own words, OP! As you say, How can it go from being so good to him withdrawing and saying the relationship wasn't working, over something like me being a bit fed up?

The answer is that he is totally unreasonable. Therefore, no, there wasn’t something you could have done.

As PP said: You haven’t realised yet that you cannot win with people like that. He would find any excuse to treat you badly at some point just because he could.

I think that whatever you did this was still going to be a miserable relationship with a very manipulative unpleasant man. It sounds awful to me and living must have been really awful.

He was utterly charming and charismatic

They always are…until the mask slips. The nasty, critical man is his true self.

I wish I could have stayed the happy, secure and independent 52 year old that I was when we met.

Sorry you went through that. Fuck him off out of your life and find that strong inner woman who you were back then.

I just can't get past thinking it was my fault. If I'd been different... tried harder etc. I so wanted it to work. The feeling when it was good was amazing.