Pm and all, this is quite difficult for me, but, below I have pasted the three 'letters' that my Exh left for me to read on our computer before he stole all our money and flew to Thailand to have plentiful sex and lie his way into a new life. Read them and see that - even if they do reveal in my mind that he was no doubt NPD, he was also able to lie totally in them; he did not intend to go off and kill himself. He had more than 20 thousand quid on him and was living with another woman within a month. He lied his way onto a teaching course and is now scuba diving and enjoying himself all over Thailand.
They are shits. Total mind-bending, cruel, self-obsessed weirdos.
PM, I too buckled in the face of his apparent searing honesty and shame-facedness, his sledf-pity and self-discovery.
I wanted to believe him. But I said he would need to prove it by getting himself into serious therapy and until he had helped himself we could not be together.
He agreed and said that even if our marriage did not work out he intended to get help anyway.
Days/hours later he had taken all our money and got on the plane leaving me pennliess, traumatised and with a newborn.
In his last text to me in November he said 'fuck off and die.'
HTH
The three letters:
Dear UA
I?m not going to defend myself at all; that is not what I need to do in this email. It is clear that I got it wrong, very wrong, plain and simple, at the weekend. Not only in washing the car and thus wasting a precious afternoon together, but also in remaining silent when you needed a response from me. It is obvious that the pattern of behaviour which was so stark in France was at play again ? and I did not have the wherewithal to stop myself sinking into the same mire.
That cannot be anything other than deeply hurtful and disappointing to you. For some time now I?ve been thinking that with ds here we had some hope, that things might be looking up for us. But I can see that is just me trying to positively spin the situation to myself and to you. The reality, of course, is that rarely a day has gone by when I have not proved again and again that I?m not coming up with the goods. My pleas that I work so hard are an irrelevance as I?m hardly alone in that. You yourself have always worked very hard, and still do, and yet you manage to maintain functional relationships.
I?ve thought hard about what happened on Sunday. Perhaps it is worth trying to explain, rather than in any way defend, what I think and feel so that you have a picture of what is going on inside me when I fail so totally to respond normally and in a way that might bring something positive to the situation. First, I think you are partly right in saying that there is some aggression there. Yes, my behaviour is passively aggressive, that is true. Yet that is not the whole picture. The question is, why do I shut down so totally and lack the ability to engage as I should with your legitimate thoughts and feelings? I think the answer to that is that I am torn in two. I oscillate between possible responses, and am so stuck in the middle that I can?t move or respond. One response is definitely anger, yes. Defensive anger. It?s a sort of conditioned response to what you have to say. I feel it burning and rising out of humiliation. I want to defend myself from this perceived attack. And yet that is not the whole picture. Even as I feel that anger and shame I know, in my mind, that this is the wrong response. I know that what you say is right, and that it is wrong of me to respond emotionally in this way. So the other side of what I feel is deep self-criticism, self-hatred almost, an acknowledgement that yet again I have not really thought through how I should behave and what I should be doing. Your reaction to that lack of forethought is perfectly natural ? how could it be any other way ? and I have the intelligence to understand this.
What I don?t have, at least all the time, is the intelligence to bloody well not do it in the first place. To see what was necessary on that sunny afternoon and behave accordingly. I am so angry with myself for this repeated fault, especially as I know its effect is, little by little, to erode your love and respect for me.
So what is that all about then? This lack of forethought? I think that it happens when I just get too wrapped up in my own agenda, when I plan things in a bubble and don?t communicate, when I am just being self-centred. I seem to have written out for myself a script of pain and rejection. I?ve painted you into a corner despite your very considerable efforts to keep loving me and thinking well of me. The awful thing about it is that I do love you, utterly, that I know in you I have a person so precious and wonderful, and yet in spite of myself, because of my self, I squander that pricelessness.
Look, I?ve tried to explain in part what I think about this pattern. I know that really, France was such a disaster that there has to be a question about whether our relationship is able to recover. I caused such a trauma for you that I could not blame you if you found it impossible to discover anew the trust and regard that are vital to a functional marriage. The slightest whiff (and Sunday was a strong whiff) of any return to that pattern of behaviour is bound to open up that wound for you. I want you to know, in the strongest possible terms, that you bear no blame or responsibility at all for this situation and that it is my destructive doing entirely.
The question remains, how to go forward. It cannot really be a question of what I want here. Few would have put up with what you?ve had to put with over the years or even more recently. You have kept the wellbeing of us and our family in mind always, in everything that you have done, in everything you?ve said. You have, I know, always worked so hard for our benefit. I can?t, in my sheer stupidity, say the same of myself. The only thing I will say is that, after reflecting on the various issues that have confronted us, virtually all of which I have given rise to, I have wanted to heal and not hurt. I?ve tried hard to change a lot of things and have had partial success.
It?s only been partial though. It?s not really been enough thus far, not to change the dynamic that sees me sitting there, unresponsive to your need for communication.
The bottom line is do you have the will to let me try and make amends? I wouldn?t blame you if you didn?t, after all that you have suffered at my hands, however little I have meant to hurt you. I have wanted to make you happy, to give you the things that you, and everyone, need from a relationship. But I have much to do to fulfil that desire.
There is ds, of course. I want so much to be a good father to him that it hurts. He has been, for both of us, sheer joy and wonder. I watch you with him and I know that he is what you have always wanted and needed, that he has brought to you the role of motherhood ? something you were simply born for and are brilliant at. It is awe-inspiring, how fantastic you are with him.
Is there any possibility that we could ? that I could ? ensure that we become the close, loving family that he needs? He must have a living, breathing example of rightness to look up to and learn from. You have always given him that, yet in my treatment of you I know that I have not, at least not always (and most significantly, not at crucially important times). Yet I desperately want to make this family work and be functional.
It hinges on your happiness. Could you be happy with us as a unit?
I?ve tried to write things straight in this email. This is really only the first instalment. I know I will want to add more to what I?ve said here. You don?t need to get back to me about it. But thankyou for reading it, and don?t forget that my bottom line is that I love you, and us. However hollow that sounds to you now, it?s true.
Exh
Letter 2:
UA
Over the last couple of days I?ve been thinking a lot about where all this has come from and about the end point that we and I have reached right now. I?ve been researching on the internet to try and make some sense of myself; again. I said to you the other night that I just can?t understand why I am like I am, and that is true to a large extent. I just feel that I am adrift on a sea that is featureless for me. I have a life that is not really of my own making. I?ve behaved almost as if I have no power over my own life or actions.
I have to really go back a long way to get to the source. I?ve been thinking about my childhood, trying to trace the feelings I have and the personality I have. And there are lots of incidents, lots of clues lying about there in the past, though I just don?t know how they all fit together yet. It?s a big landscape and there are lots of factors. I don?t really know where to begin.
Why, for example, do I not have any friends? I never had any real problems making friends at school. I was never friendless then, or at University even. I know that I?ve said to you that I?ve always been fussy about my friends, and to a certain extent that has been true, and yet how do I end up with friends such as A? Sometimes I think that I?ve defined myself so much by my relationships with women that I have just lost contact with my friends as a result. You?ve always been good at keeping in contact with people; I?ve been terrible. As the years have gone on I?ve found it ever harder to make friends; for example when I used to hang out with J I met a lot of people. He had a wide circle of acquaintances and a number of friends. Yet I never really got on with any of them. There was always this double-edged thing going on. On the one hand, I would be paranoid that they thought I was too aloof, too arrogant maybe, or that they simply didn?t like me much and took me a little on sufferance. I was never good at communicating with them just on an ordinary level. On the other hand, I actually think I was aloof, critical and proud. I?d find fault with them. Now, was that a defence on my part, a reaction to their luke-warmness in relation to me? Or was it a causal factor? I just don?t know.
On the other hand, I?ve always been plagued by a niggling worry at the back of my mind that friends such as D for example, would find me out for a fraud somehow, that I wasn?t really good enough. That?s been the case with many others, too numerous to mention.
I?m picking out examples, but they are part of a larger pattern. I start off in my potential friendships really wanting approval, yet end up having critical thoughts about people ? why? To protect myself from rejection? The thing is that I don?t really feel that arrogant in myself. I can?t make sense of it.
And even back to my earliest friendships in primary school, I was weak. I befriended, and was befriended by, inappropriate people, and got into trouble. In turn I caused my parents a lot of anxiety.
One thought I have had is that, looking back to my childhood, this approval/withdrawal pattern is there in my familial relationships, especially with my father, of course. Early on, I reckon I was desperate for his approval, yet when I received all the brickbats and the beatings, I withdrew ? and found that the only way I could manage my feelings was by imagining I was superior. There was that whole tussle with him for years, when I believed him to be ignorant, when I was certain that I had the answers, and he was a (political) ingénue, who didn?t know what was really going on. Have I taken that pattern into my other relationships?
I wonder if I suffer from arrested development, whether the extremity of my relationship with my father ingrained an experience to such a depth that I can?t break out of it.
God, there is so much to consider.
Perhaps that is the source of conflict I described in my last email. I mean, with my emotional reaction of anger at being so misunderstood, at being so unjustly criticised, while at the same time my adult mind recognises the fault in me.
Letter 3:
UA
It?s now Saturday and after last night I get the message very clearly. Why bother beating around the bush? One of the things I?ve been researching in the last few days is a discovery I made quite by accident while desperately searching for some sense on the net. I think I have some, though not all, of the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. You?re bound to look that up and you?ll see what I mean. In fact, here?s a link with lots of information on it: www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/sdm-iv.html. I can?t quite work out why I have only some of them and not all (for example I don?t fly off the handle ? I make sure you do that), but maybe the answer rests in the fact that I always had to sublimate my anger when dealing with my father as he was unpredictable and violent. He was a strange mix too - showing many of the traits of the disorder, but not always aloof and arrogant; quite the opposite in fact ? with working class people. He had a common touch with them.
Anyway, it?s clear that I make you utterly miserable and of course I can?t blame you for that. I?ve always made people miserable. I don?t know about this personality disorder but I suspect that something?s going on in that area, so it?s not like I can move on and survive a mutually destructive relationship and rebuild my life, because this is not a mutually destructive relationship. In any case, I don?t have a life. I don?t have friends. I don?t have any real empathy; people think (with justification) that I?m weird, including you, who know me pretty well. If you detect a note of self-pity here, you?re dead wrong. I loathe myself, hate myself and want to destroy myself ? and shall. I don?t have any pity for myself at all. I recognise what I am, and you are completely right. It would be selfish in the extreme (and typical of me) to try and wheedle my way back into your affections, to try and smooth things over once more, so I could carry on as normal (normal as in fucked up of course). I really don?t want to do that, because, tragically, I do actually love you, in so far as I am capable of it, and I know full well what a lovely, understanding and caring woman you are. And, as you say so rightly, I am poison to you. By the way, just to reemphasise a point, I think you are wrong when you say we are poison to each other. That?s not right. The simple fact is that I am poison to anyone. I don?t really think you?ve brought anything negative to the table at all. You?re simply a good woman. So please don?t be in the slightest bit self-critical about any of this.
Why not level with each other? What if you?re reading this and saying to yourself ?this is typical of H, he?s just exaggerating; it?s classic behaviour from him as he?s just wallowing in self-pity?? In that case, what you are also saying is that there isn?t anything significantly wrong with me, that it?s a ?little local difficulty? that, in my self-aggrandising way, I?m making out to be much bigger than it actually is. And if you believe that, then why say all those things about me? That I suck you dry, that I?m weird, that I?m abusive, and all the rest of it? Because if you think I?m making a mountain out of a molehill, then you must be the one blowing this out of all proportion, flagellating me, a pretty ordinary bloke with some faults, and putting brine in all the wounds.
Yet you?re not wrong. You?re spot on, because you always have been spot on. You have the answers, not me. I don?t think deeply enough to come up with them.
So here?s what I propose to do. As the houses are in your name it?s not really a problem with splitting the assets as I won?t need them anyway. I want you and Ds to have the best possible chance at happiness. And how can you have that if I?m around at all? Dropping by with my miserable face every other Saturday to pick him up and take him to the park? Do you think I want that, let alone you?
It?s simply absurd to think that any of this will play out okay, except for one solution. And that is for me to just disappear.