Hi
I'm sure you will remember me. I was doing ok. My name is slightly different now as I think my last account was erased despite pleas to reinstate it. I am being totally visible about that - I'm the same person.
You may remember my Heartbroken post from last year. I have been in intensive and ongoing therapy over my ex, who I have been told by numerous therapists, is narcissistic and abusive and that the version of him that I fell for, wasn't actually real. This is the man who, without going over all the dreaded detail again, entered into a relationship with me, has the two ex wives and travels back and forward to Vietnam. His children have no relationship with him either, and have disowned him. I am now 50 and this man is 54.
For reference I absolutely adored this man, we weren't together very long and at the start it was all new exciting, thrilling lots of contact and intimacy. But it soon turned very sour and as we worked together, I had to move departments due to his childish and irregular behaviour. He began hiding from me in the toilets at work - for the one reason that I had borrowed his coffee cup - telling my colleagues and called a meeting with our boss in which he told me that our intimacy wasn't love making - it was f - and my boss did nothing. During one of his regular trips to Vietnam, I moved departments. On the odd occasions when I do see him now, he will deviate between complete ignorance, and joking. Just last week as he told me he was returning to Vietnam, he asked me if the bag I was carrying contained a 'sexual item' and asked was it a 'rubber vagina'. This from the man who once said I made him so uncomfortable that he had to hide in the toilets. He then proudly announced he was going to Vietnam this week.
As if that wasn't enough, he completely stuck the knife in by announcing, 'I have a girlfriend, she's 38, beautiful, and I love her, I'm happy. I know in my heart it's right'. He then took out a picture of her and thrust it in my face. He said they 'facetime every night'. He claims he is now a Buddhist and has quit smoking and drugs. He was on a lot of cocaine for years.
This was a week and a half ago and I have struggled ever since. My therapist maintains he is a narcissist but what is making it worse for me is the current rumour that he may be getting married to this woman. He has met her in person once. The photo has him with his head on her shoulder and she is on his knee, they are holding hands. He was in no way kind in how he chose to tell me.
I feel absolutely devastated. He was brutally cruel to me for the time I was with him, blowing hot and cold but always saying 'just give me time' and I believed him. He said I was his soulmate and wanted me to meet his family. He asked me to move into my Mum's room with him knowing she had only died a few years previous to that. Then he pulled the rug, with me struggling to understand since then (3 years ago) what I've done wrong.
I've tried to get help and am doing things like going to the gym and yoga. But this has really set me back to the point my therapist told me today that she is insistent that I ring my GP as my 'core scores' were through the roof. I feel exhausted, even walking the short distance to the bus stop, I'm on edge, I feel sick and the reason is I am desperately wondering why she seems to be getting the better version of him. I loved him with my whole heart, I was patient, supportive, understanding and kind. I don't know why he is throwing it in my face that he loves her and if he does marry her, to me, in my mind, it will sort of highlight that I was the problem all along. This would be his third marriage - his second to a Vietnamese woman. He is just moving on as if I didn't exist and I'm struggling so badly to heal. My own mind is frightening me as I feel so deeply and I feel like something is wrong with me? I spoke to a mutual friend who says he is like a child, always chasing after the next shiny thing but even that makes me wonder why I wasn't shiny enough to keep.
I'm sorry to contact you all again, but do you really think he could be different with her? When his own kids won't talk to him? What the hell is so special about Vietnam? His last wife was from there and dumped him when she got her citizenship to the UK.
Thanks again, for listening to me.