Heartbroken all over - will he be different with her?

[TigerIsHome]

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.

You don’t he isn’t being abusive to his new wife - he would hardly tell you that would he?

One of the hallmarks of abusive relationships is the faking it to the outside world that all is well and rosy and perfect when the reality is something different.

Or he may well just be in the love bombing first phase of abuse before he’s let his true colours come out and he’s just getting her on the hook, attached and obsessed with him before beginning the same cycle again.

He abused you, you’re well shot of him and the status of his relationship with anyone else is just not capable of being truly known by you, so you should really try and let go. You don’t want him, he’s awful so just be glad you’re not with him anymore rather than obsessing about the minutiae of his current relationship.

You need to breakup with your therapist. The very first thing mine said when I came to her after the breakup was "this session is not about him, it's about you" and we have never spoken about him in two months I've been seeing her.
If your therapist diagnosed someone without ever setting their eyes on them - they are crap.
If they keep feeding your obsession by continuing to talk about him - they are crap.
Find someone who actually knows what they are doing if you ever want rid of this obsession because, ultimately, whether he is or isn't different with her makes absolutely no difference to your life.

I have adhd. 😔you think I’m a narcissist? I lost my whole family and fell in love with a man who made me promises, asked to sleep with me in mums bed and meet his family…told me he wanted to help me financially and in my home and take me to my mum’s holiday home as I was too upset to go alone, then took it all back and said IN FRONT OF MY BOSS WHO LET HIM, that I was just a fuck. Feel free to read my original post, including how his own kids have disowned him. I just fell in love.

But you think it’s my fault? And what’s wrong with how I use forums? 😕

But you keep saying yourself it's your fault, you deserve abuse etc etc. this is why these threads aren't helping you - there's no answer anyone can give that you will accept

Because it appeals to their sense of drama to sweep someone off their feet, lovebomb, move fast into commitment. And he seems to marry women from overseas who he probably has a load of gross racial stereotypes about.

If he basically has a fetish for Vietnamese women, it has nothing to say about you, but it's pretty grim.

You're loveable, you just won't find love from him, because he's got the depth of a spoon.

Ok thanks x

I was signposted there. She’s a specialist in abuse. I thought I was doing the right thing.

Also, he came and went from my life at least 5 times between 2021 and 2023. His exact words? “I’ve given you a year”. Including 5 hour phone calls that I wasn’t expecting, nude photos and masturbation videos. Oh and recently spying on me and being caught doing so on cctv by some of the team.

But yeah, I’m the problem.

I thought our sex life was good. Why fetishes?

Actually. I think it wouldn't hurt to accept some responsibility. For example, the only reason he was able to call you and send you nudes is because you haven't blocked him. Accepting responsibility (not blame) is quite empowering and could help you move on. Something your therapist should also have told you, to be honest.

This was during our time together. I thought it was normal and exciting. The spying on me on cctv was a few weeks ago.

This thread is going the same way as your previous ones. You get the same advice every time, but you don’t actually WANT to listen to it. You want to wallow, ruminate and feel sorry for yourself.

**

If you understand that his abuse of you was about him and not you, then what exactly do you hope to achieve by posting here? Is it just so that you can bite people's heads off when their sympathy doesn't measure up to your anger?

No. Not at all. Someone said I was a narcissist and I provided examples of his behaviour many of them recent. 😥

I don’t. But thanks for that. 💔 it must be great to have a family to run things by. A supportive family that are alive. I don’t have that. Mine are all passed away. I just needed to talk. 😪💔 never mind.

That's irrelevant to the subthread I quoted. Tap "Show quote history".

QED

Do you know that poster has lots of supportive family? Christ tiger all my family are dead or demented.

You should feel sympathy for this 38yo he's marrying, not jealously. You need to discuss with your therapist about your 'nice guy's syndrome - you can't make someone love or care about you by loving them and doing stuff for them.

You thought it was normal and exciting that he sent you nudes of other women?

Edit: Ah, I see, different nudes. Please disregard.

Yes I think the way your behaving at 50 years old indicates you have a problem seperate from him. You dont seem honest with us or yourself. And this situation can spiral you need to get help. Nothing you said about your relationship with him. Indicates, but it was a committed relationship. He may have been saying things to you. But at no point, have you said you were an exclusive long-term? Relationship, you seem to have been just having sex. And he was saying things at the edge. You are now, you should be able to distinguish between a committed relationship and not and whatever was going on in your relationship. Should not have been brought to the office. There seems to be escalating behaviour, but it seems that if your workplace didn't look into it. The arrived didn't see fault on either side or something else is going on. I would step away from this forum and get some help but definitively. The problem is you and that doesn't excuse any bad behaviours on his part. But you do have some agency, and it seems that you are desperate for this situation to have a different outcome. From what you have been repeatedly told by him. It'll be, you should take the marriages and opportunity for you to move on.That doesn't matter what reasons there are for people getting married completely irrelevant.It's just something that happens if you want to happen for yourself.You need to look elsewhere.

Sorry that you feel very alone.

I don't understand why you're staying in a job where apparently they know he spies on you but nothing is done?

It sounds like there have been problems in the workplace and it's mostly how you're still linked to him and how you're hearing about & from him.

Are you looking for another job?

It seems to me that your best way forward would be to take yourself out of his orbit.

She's clearly not in the mental headspace to change jobs.

Whether you are narcissistic or not surely you can see that your behaviour is damaging and problematic too. That is what everyone is trying to say to you. Shift the focus away from him and look at what you can actually change yourself. Your thinking patterns are clearly a problem they are deeply affecting how you view yourself and him, your obsessiveness, your denial of the reality you are in which is that you were willing to accept an abusive relationship over again, you see yourself quite correctly as a victim but you are failing to recognise even victims are responsible for protecting themselves.

But seeing him and hearing about him keeps her in that headspace - it keeps it an open wound.

This has been going on years and doesn't appear to be getting better.

Sometimes you need to change your situation.

I am a similar age to you.
I remember your last threads.
The details absolutely turned my stomach.
This man targets vulnerable women.
Hence trips to Vietnam. I am not suggesting all women there are vulnerable but there are many living in absolute poverty.
This man will never turn up and say well I’ve met the love of my life on a weekend to London.
Being a fully fledged narcissist means you don’t have normal human feelings. They trample through life without a single care for who they hurt or what they do.
I am going to be brutally honest here as I have been to therapy. If the therapist suggests your GP then you need to go. The therapist will be as stuck as you are because your mind is stuck in a groove.
You are 50. You may have no family and be vulnerable. You have been abused by this man. But you are not incompetent. Do you want to live like this, mulling over every detail of what this man does?
He used you, and now he’s found a new victim, not his person.
His own children don’t speak to him - that means you don’t either.
Move heaven and earth to get a new job.
You don’t want to be sat at 60 reliving every minute detail about this guy.
He didn’t love you, he won’t love this new one, he’s not capable. He is only capable of using and hurting people.
Go to the GP, get signed off work for a bit, have a rest from being near this man and get a new job. Being in that place where terrible things happened is not helping.
Ask your GP about EMDR trauma therapy - it will help if you push for it.
Choose yourself and deal with the brutal facts.
He is not capable of normal human feelings but you can be, if you give yourself a chance. But you have to choose the chance.