Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com.
We can begin by noting something that both narcissists and psychopaths share: a tendency to regard others as objects more than persons. Immediately this raises concerns: you don’t have to empathize with objects; objects don’t have feelings worth recognizing. You can toy with objects; manipulate and exploit them for your own gratification, with a paucity of guilt.
Welcome to the world of the narcissist and psychopath. Theirs is a mindset of immediate, demanded gratification, with a view of others as expected—indeed existing—to serve their agendas. Frustrate their agendas, and you can expect repercussions, ranging from the disruptive to ruinous.
Distinct explanations for their actions
The behaviors of narcissists and psychopaths can look very similar in their staggering disregard and abuse of others. Distinctions arise, however, in the explanation of their actions. The narcissist will crave recognition and validation. He will demand that others notice and appreciate his special qualities; his special qualities make his needs special, which leaves him feeling entitled to their satisfaction. He demands all this as if his inner self is at stake, and it is. Disappointment leaves him feeling unappreciated, neglected. Anger and rage then surface in aggressive and passive-aggressive displays, often in proportion to the hurt and vulnerability he can’t own.
The psychopath is less obsessed than the narcissist with validation. Indeed, his inner world seems to lack much of anything to validate: it is barren, with nothing in it that would even be responsive to validation. An emotional cipher, the psychopath’s exploitation of others is more predatory than the narcissist’s. For the psychopath, who may be paranoid, the world is something like a gigantic hunt, populated by personified-objects to be mined to his advantage.
Example: narcissists and psychopaths as cheaters
As an example, let’s take a hypothetical narcissist and psychopath: Both males (females can be narcissists and psychopaths), both married, with families; and both compulsively conducting extra-marital affairs. Both have managed to avoid exposure principally due to the ease and remarkable skill with which they routinely lie and dissemble. They are equally persuasive in declaiming their fidelity to their wives as they are at contriving their unmarried status to their mistresses. Nevertheless, from time to time, their wives may approach them with uneasy suspicions, to which they’ll respond not with accountability, but as with outrage to have to deign to address their wives’ anxieties. They will impugn their wives for raising doubts about them, leaving the latter feeling defensive, guilty, and perhaps ashamed.
Narcissist is insecure
To this point, there is little on the surface to distinguish them. But going deeper, we discover that our narcissist is actually terribly insecure and needy. For him, having affairs validates his masculinity. His seductive abilities reassure him of his manhood. If he can no longer seduce and sleep with women, he is nothing; he has “lost it.” Feeling his nothingness/worthlessness, he grows depressed, despairing. He might even feel like killing himself. To salvage his collapsing self-image, he needs an infusion of reassurance, sought in a new affair. In the narcissist’s world, the more his psychic welfare is threatened, the more hers is disposable.
The narcissist will rationalize his actions with his greatest defenses—blame and contempt: My wife has been nasty to me for a long time, and doesn’t remotely appreciate me anymore. She’s lucky all I do is cheat; I could leave her instead, with nothing. The fact that I’ve stayed is almost charitable. And these women I cheat with”¦sure, they all think I’m unmarried, and you know what, I basically am.
Our narcissist, as you see, has a dim notion of ethics; but his ethics are corrupted by alarming rationalizations. He is expert at furnishing these rationalizations seamlessly, leaving him as if with the untroubled conscience of the psychopath.
Psychopath plays a game
Our psychopath, meanwhile, has no ethics, and thus no need for rationalizations. He has affairs because he wants to. Life, for him, is a game. The game is about figuring out how to get what he wants now, by whatever stratagems necessary. And it’s a game without rules. Without rules, there is no violation, no exploitation; and even if there is, it’s part of the game. So our psychopath makes up the rules as he goes along, duping this individual and that, lying like a shameless child as he improvises his way in and out of his schemes, sometimes smoothly, sometimes not—but always heedless of, and absolutely indifferent to, the damage he causes.
The psychopath will sit back, reflecting on his infidelities, and laughing, think, “I’ve still got it.” He will mean, “I’ve still got the ability to maneuver these women like a puppeteer.” This will amuse him. The narcissist will sit back, and likewise think, “I’ve still got it.” But he will mean, “I’m still attractive. Women still find me irresistible. I’m okay, for now.”
Commonly, the psychopath is upheld as the incarnation of the murderous bogeyman. While it’s true that many cold-blooded killers are psychopaths, most psychopaths are not killers. The majority of psychopaths would find a messy murder too inconvenient and personally unpleasant a task to assume. This—the personal inconvenience and unpleasantness, not empathy for the slaughtered victim—explains why a great many more psychopaths than not, with chilling non-compunction, are more likely to target your life’s savings than butcher you, and dispose of your remains in several industrial-strength Hefty bags.
This doesn’t make the non-murderous psychopath “less psychopathic,” or “more sensitive” than the murderous psychopath; it merely reflects the calculus psychopaths apply in their decision-making: how can I get, or take what I want, for maximum instant gain, at minimum personal inconvenience?
Dear Sorrow, your grief and pain are coming across loud and clear in your writing. I cannot say whether he is a Psychopath or a player, but it is very clear that he has drawn you in and messed with your heart and your soul. Your doubts were there from the start, but we often accommodate and bend ourselves out of shape. He has led you on appallingly but he is not worth losing your life over. They have this ability to make their relationships into such an appalling mess. I did get the feeling in your writing that he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and that he has been keeping some kind of other option open in the background, whilst keeping you on the merry-go-round. My exNarcissist went off sex too, and some of the scenarios you describe are clearly those of a man who has no intention of committing to you, his behaviour is erratic and inconsistent, but I guess you know that and have known all along. He could also be a dating site predator, hence his reluctance to take his profile off.
Dear Sorrow, you sound such a nice person, please hang in there and get some support whilst going through this difficult time and presumably your son has an inkling that you are in distress, but eventually you will piece it all together and you will come out all the better, even if it is to learn to avoid cheaters and players in the future.
Dear Beverly and dear Free
Thank you for your answers. When I read my own story I can easily see all the red flags. What I am not able to bring across to anyone is all the other impressions of him and of us together. I felt such peace within myself when he was around, or when I was alone in his house. I opened up and a lot of beautiful choildhood memories tht I’d forgotten came to me. I felt that I was coming back to life again after having been in several hard relationships throughout the years. I recall the warmth of his body, the way he’d turn to me, smiling, reaching for my hand. How he’d call me out into the yard at night so I could see how beautifull the moon was. When the first snow was falling this past winter we were standing side by side in the woods surrounding his house and looking up into the dark sky. We needed no words on such occations. We simply were, if you know what I mean.
As I told him once, he seemed to me to part of this beautifull landscape in which he grew up, and he carried it around with him. The soft hills, the tall trees, the smell of wod and green plants, the light shifting over the fields during the day. It was such little things we pointed out to one another when we spent time together. And then we’d read poetry to one another infront of the fireplace, and we’d talk about literature, writers, society, politics, our past. He seemed so tender – and at times somewhat troubled. I did not see any “ice” or “coldnesss” in his behaviour, when we were together, eventhough at times he would seem a bit introvert.
He did not use big words, he did not fill my rooms with roses. But when we rose in the morning and I tried to hide my messy hair and teart eyes he’d tell me, how much he liked the way I looked in the morning. When I came to bed at night wearing my white nightgown he’d call me “the white lady”.
Since I wrote my last post here I have continued surfing the internet for more answers. Last night I found this page: http://www.bpdcentral.com/resources/basics/indicators.shtml
And I recognize so much in him, so I can’t stop wondering if he has a borderline personality disorder, which to me would explain why I have felt this as being for real. I mean: If he does suffer from BPD then he has probably not been faking his feelings – but it would mean that his feelings are ambivalent and his moods shifting.
I do believe that he has a pretty good idea himself about what is wrong with him – perhaps he has even been diagnozed at some point. It seems to me that he has been trying to give some hints now and again. But I do not think that he is having any treatment for such a disorder. I also think that his sister and her daughter might know about it and that might be the reason why they looked sad and worried when we met. Mental illness is, at leat in Denmark, still a large taboo, so perhaps that is why neither he nor his family has told me anything.
On the other hand, both he and they might only have an idea that something is wrong and they might be denying that.
I know that it sounds as if I am only trying to make up excuses for him but I do love him so much that if I could only get him to consult a doctor and a therapist (it is said that BPD’s can get better when treated), then I could stay his friend and in time – perhaps – we could be together again. I mean: What if he is a BPD who is using sex, alchohol and gambling (he hasn’t been gambling while I’ve known him but he has told me that he has been an internet pokerplayer earlier on) in order to get the kicks that I read in the article that a BPD is craving for. In that case he might become better when treated with medicine and therapy.
Mind you, he has not ever harmed me physically (apart from the threathening or “teasing” with the cigarette, that I mentioned in my post above). He has never yelled at me or anything like that. It is true (I’m certain) that he has been lying to me about where he was and with whom. It is also true that he has been using porn (most men do, I’m told) and that for a period of time he drank too much.
I would like to try to get him into treatment but I do not know how to approach the issue in a proper and intelligent manner. I would also like to talk to his sister about him but I have only met her once and I do not know if she’d be appalled by me calling her on this subject, or if she’d reject to any knowledge about him – or if she’d go straight to him and tell him. Of cause one would automatically try to protect one’s own family thinking that everybody ells must be loony. I understand that.
I’m pretty sure that you’ll tell me to simply let go and leave him to his own mess. Everybody does. But I do not feel ready to do that. I do not cry each hour of the day any longer. But I do a couole of times each day and I do use sedatives in order to sleep. There’s no joy in my life any longer.
I have no friends to talk to. When I called the two I had, one of them told me that I ought to get a life of my own and that we are all lonely, so what’s the big deal, and the other one told me that the angels had providede this test for me to make me stronger. I do not feel stronger. I have not ever felt stronger after any of the things I have gone through in my life. But I find that I am often ahead of the few therapist I’ve seen over the years. I haven’t been in therapy for long cause first of all I have never had the money to do it for long and secondly I haven’t felt that I received much help. They simply asked me to look inward and do nice things for myself. I am observing my own mind and yes, I know that I might have some degree of dependent personality disorder, and yes I have a wish to help others to recover from their wounds. But all that knowledge doesn’t change the fact that I am as lonely as ever (and I have lived a lot of my life alone) and that I long to be with the man I love.
I do know that it sounds as if I do not want to listen to you or get your help. That is not entirely true. But I need to express how I truely feel and what I think.
I have talked to my ex-husband (not the psychopath) about my situation. It helps a bit as far as he listens to me. But he does not believe in psychological explanations such as antisocials or BPDs.
He tells me over and over again that my ex probably just was too much of a coward to tell me that he wasn’t physically attracted to me – and that he probably kept trying to find it himself because he may have liked me all the same, and finally he discovered that he could not go through with it after all.
He does not see him as evil or manioulating – only as a scared man who might have had the most honourable of intentions.
Am I listening to crap here, or might this truely be the way it is?
I mean: If my ex liked me and respected me, which he insisted that he does, when I asked him about it on the phone after his breaking up, how could he – how can he – treat me this way, leaving me with so many unanswered questions, time and time again sliding off when I try to get him to talk to me?
As I’ve said before: I truely believed he was my soulmate and that he cared about me and that we would solve whatever differences we might have – given time and going slowly on my part.
I do not wish to be a mean, revengefull or bitchy woman. I do not wish to be unjust. But the more I think about the whole thing and the more time that passes without him getting back to me on the subject of my questions, as he promised, the more I feel betrayed.
He has taken the joy and the hope out of my life – just after having provided me with it.
I want him to know how much he has hurt me. I want him to feel the pain I feel. I want him to feel sorry and worry about me and take a long good look inside himself.
But I can not reach him. He has slipped away the few times I have spoken to him. He does not answer his phone and he does not get back to me even when he has promised me he would.
Right now I want to confront him. If I could just get him to laugh at me or tell me that he’d never cared a bit for me, then I could let out my anger and yell at him and tell everybody what a mean and cold person he is. But he wont even give me that. No, for some reason he is either trying to avoid me yelling at him or he wants me to pitty him. I do not know. But right now I feel hatred and anger one minute and fear and sadness and sorrow the next minute. I remember the way he held me in his arms at the station while waiting for the train. He seemed so committed to me. He looked as if he loved me. That makes me cry again.
I may begin to feel more calm for an hour or two and then it comes back. This is hell. And I feel so lonely. No, I AM lonely!
And yes, he has succeeded in getting to me with his words: “I am not sexually attracted to you.”
I know very well that I do not look like a twenty-something, but I am relatively slender, I do have nice curves – or at least I thought so. I used to wear my best clothes for him. I used to keep a tan and go to the hairdressers. I used to work out, so I could look my best. But now, when I look in the mirror, I see a somewhat masculine elderly woman and she looks pale and teart and depressive and appauling to me. And I blame myself for parading in my underwear infront of him, for having put my body next to his in bed. Sure I tell myself that this was what he wanted: To take away any selfesteem I might have left after four months of not being touched erotically by him. But all the same my body wants to hide away now, and I wish I couldn’t feel a thing.
I do not want to be so alone all the time. I do not want to spent the rest of my life sitting in my one room flat in this city that I know all to well and with no friends and with my mother and my exhusband as the only relatives within reach. Yes, I have my son and my grandson, but my son lives hours away and I do not want to take this out on him anyway. This winter he left his child’s mother who was wearing him down with her screaming and yelling at him, with her flirtations with other men and with her attempts to make alliances with me up to the point when I had to break off the contact with her because she made me cry telling me that I had harmed my son mentally by my many encounters with men during his childhood. Need I say that this could not be true? After I left my son’s father my son and I lived alone for two years and then we lived with the same man for about eight years. When my son was fifteen, I met my psychopath husband, and we moved in with him. After that my son soon moved in to his own apartment and luckily he did not experience my psychopath husband at his worst – and I never told him the whole story, such as his treathening to strangle me, his attempts to hang our dog in its collar or his manic drive for porn and other women. Believe or not: This guy was a police officer. Was I scared when he came around with the gun in his belt? Yes, but I was more scared once when he put on a porn video in the living room, hung carpets before the windows, fixing them to the wall with nails and an axe – because he could not find the hammer – and made me have sex with him on the coach while watching the video. And to some extent I blamed myself then. I had attempted to meet him halfways. Knowing porn was important to him and being told by other women that this was an ordinairy male thing I myself suggested that we watched some of the soft stuff on TV. But then he told me that it had to be this cardcore thing or he wouldn’t do it. I never told my son this. Looking at my story it seems to me as if it must have happened to someone ells. I cannot truely relate to this. Normally I consider myself an educated and intelligent woman but somewhere inside I must still be a small kid without any boundaries.
Well, I may have harmed my own son, since he could get involved and have a child with such a woman. Around Christmas, when he discovered his girlfriend’s affair with another guy and finally moved out of her apartment, he had to start taking sedatives himself and I was so worried about him and had to be there with him when he was taking care of his child, because he was going to pieces. Eventually he decided to go to Norway with her and his child for Christmas to visit her family, and some time after they returned, he found a new girlfriend nad things calmed down somewhat eventhough she kept bathering him for some time.
He invited me to Copenhagen earlier this week, and he looked very well, but I hated the fact that I broke down a few times so he had to take care of me. It should be the other way around.
Besides we can not go on a holiday together as we planned and we have never had a holiday together, because we haven’t been able to afford it. Remember, we were supposed to have our holiday at my ex’s house, and by now no cheap holidayapartments are vacant – and we do not have a car or any money.
I feel devastated. I just sit here all day long not knowing what to do or where to go. Around me there is only the city and a lot of unfamiliar people who look at me as if there’s something wrong with me. Well, there is! And everybody seems to have a loving partner, holding hands in the sunshine, laughing as if the world is still going ’round.
In the evening it’s even worse because I used to talk to my ex every evening half past eight.
How can he not miss me? How come he doesn’t think about all the suffering and disappointment he has caused in me and in my son – who truely liked him and over and over again told me, how happy he was for me, that I had found such a good guy?
My son told me, that my joy and my improved health radiated from my face and my posture. That’s all gone now.
Dear Sorrow, I think there maybe an element of truth to what your ex husband says and that did cross my mind too, BUT, a decent man would not share his deepest core with you, and lie to you, the two just dont fit together. My exN was very introverted as far as thoughts went, he did a great deal of thinking but never shared his thoughts with me, When someone is not upfront and honest, this covert behaviour can really mess your heart and soul, also you are left guessing (and you are) what has been going through his mind, did he really care for you, what else he may have been up to.
I think that when a part of them doesnt want to let you go, but the other half of them is seeking out other partners or experiences, (they call that Polite Disengagement) and you are not privvy to the reasons for that, then that gives him the upper hand in the control of the relationship and over YOU and it leaves you feeling weaker, needy and its like you have to tolerate one set of behaviour in order to want back the nice experiences you had. I was glowing with my exNarcissist, but they say that when you love someone, the glow you feel is the love you projected to them being projected back to you – in essence it is your own beautiful love that you bask in.
I am aged 55 and I have realised that I HAVE to get a life, not put all my ‘happiness’ eggs in a guy’s basket but have an all round scenery in my life of happy and fulfilling people and experiences, that a guy may or may not want to share, so I am going to exploit the fact that I am now single and use the time to enhance ME and I have decided to try and get a better paid job and travel more, whilst I can. I loved travelling and backpacked all over the place when I was younger and I want to do it again. Find some things that you like that you can do that wont single you out.
What I have found is there are also guys searching for perfection, they like part of you, but they like part of someone else, or they are always going to be searching for that, which may leave you vulnerable to being traded in down the line, sometimes they put you on the back burner, they dont want to lose you, your admiration, but they want to see if someone ‘better’ for them is possible. I think this is always the most hurtful phase, when we sense something is adrift (the purgatory stage) . I would really tune into your gut instincts over this and keep examining it and picking over it (we will mirror back to you), until you can form the experience into something you can understand and work with (or chose not to) as you will. Without him talking to you, you dont know what his thoughts are, is it he doesnt want to talk because he doesnt want to open up to what he has been doing?
Dear Sorrow. I had many nice experiences with my ex Narcissist, but if I am totally honest I had MANY NASTY ones too and I was not prepared to weather one set for the other, because when the bonding (honeymoon) stage wears off, the reality sets in. What would your future long term reality with him honestly be like? Ask yourself these questions. You must act in your own best interests.
Exactly, if he really respected you, he would be open and honourable to you, even at the end. The way they end ther relationships are so indicative of people with BPD. Good website by the way, I answered ‘Yes’ to nearly all of the questions.
sorrow, the guy you have been seeing is aged around 50? What is his history, has he been married? He is no scared puppy at his age, he knows exactly what he is doing. Does he have friends, when you first met, was the dating normal? have you met his friends, what do they say about him. I know you are reluctant to speak to his family, but if you really must make contact you could say that you are bewildered as to what has happen and has this happened before – they may have the key to what is REALLY happening and if they feel compassionate to you, they may reveal some information
Hi Beverly
Yes, “my” guy is 51.
What I know of his story is only what he has told me himself:
I know he had a highschool-sweetheart but his dad made it impossible for them to see eachother during a holiday, because he wanted his son (let’s call my guy U) to stay at the familys’ house in the countryside and work instead. So the girl ditched him. I sense that U has a tremendous hatred against his father but that he rarely lets it out openly. (Ironically, U looks a lot like his father, the same beautiful blue eyes, similar smiles and masculine charm with some sweet softness in their facial features).
Later, when U was in his twenties, he had a relationship with a young woman. She got pregnant but had a miscarrige. When U was just around thirty he went from Denmark to Texas to work there, returning home during the summerholidays. At that time he was in a serious relationship with a woman in Denmark but when he came home to visit he found out that she had had an affair with another guy. (I’m not sure but as I understood it, he may actually have walked in on them:) He told me that his friends in Texas had said to him that he seemed changed after that. In other words: It showed in his face.
While he was in Texas he came to know a danish woman there. They had a somewhat difficult relationship because she had been abused by her father for several years. So the relationship ended.
When U moved back to Denmark he met another woman. They moved in together too early, he told me, so he did not know about her periodic drinkingproblem untill it was too late. Apparently she’d hang around in bars for weeks at a time – then return home and work hard for some weeks or months, before she went out again. She also got pregnant but U told this girlfriend that she ought to get an abortion as he would not foster the child of an alchoholic not even knowing for certain that it was his own child. They broke up.
Five years ago U got in touch with the danish woman whom he’d met in Texas. Just when he returned home from some journey and thought they were about to make serious commitments to one another he learned that she’d committed suicide while he was away.
He told me that he’d been meeting with about four women from the datingsite before getting to know me. I think he said that he’d been with one of them for about four months. (Perhaps she was the one calling that time while I was visiting?)
I have considered if U has been sexually molested as a child. He has several times asked me if I thought there might be such a thing as a “happy incestuous relation”. I found that to be an odd question to ask but then again: His former girlfriend, the one with the suicide, had been molested rather badly I guess, and he also knew that my brother in law had had his hands in the wrong places when I was anbout nine years old. However, I have been wondering about U’s relationship to his parents. He hasn’t said much about his mother, but I do believe that I look somewhat like her. I’ve seen some photos, and in the photos U is always sitting close to his mum even as an adult and listening carefully, it seems. His father appears to have been somewhat of a charming tyrant, the way he has been described to me and the way he looks in the pictures. There were some photos that U would not show me when we went through the albums. At least not yet, he said. That was around Christmas.
Both of his parents died from cancer. U’s mother was only in her early fifties when she died.
His friends: They are few. He has a friend who calls quite often at odd hours. They went to school together, I was told. This friend has had a drug and alchohol abuse since he was young. He has some diagnosis unknown to me and is on some kind of pension. U calls him “my best friend”, eventhough U once in a while gets a little tired of his friends many old stories about “once when we were young”. I have spoken to him once on the phone and he invited U and me over for dinner some time in the future but we never got around to it.
Apart from that I have been told about two other guys from his youth, whom U has only seen a few times while I’ve known him. They are academics as well but both of them have settled down with wives and children and nice houses in the city. U speaks of this with some strange mixture of envy and contempt.
I have never met any of his friends – only an elderly couple living at a farm nearby. A farm that used to belong to U’s family (two generations). U is very mad at his father who sold the place when he grew old instead of signing it over to his children. (U has his big sister, whom I met at Christmas, and then there is a brother who lives with his wife in South America.) This was the farm where U spent his childhood and his youth working with impovements on the house and in the garden. He now lives in a small cottage close to the farm. A cottage that his father build as a summerresidense for the family and later occupied up untill his own death.
It seems to me that U is a little afraid or overly respectfull when it comes to his sister. At the same time it seems that he loves her very much. She appears to me as a somewhat more introspective or slightly more sad and worrying copy of Lauren Bacall. (Just to give an impression.) I liked her but I felt that I could not get close to her. When U visited me during Easter – while his sister and niece were staying at U’s house – he brought me a box of chokolates with kind regards from his sister.
U is extremely fond of the two little boys that his niece has. And they look almost exactly like him. Same features. I once told him that they might as well have been his children.
I think it is a strange story: The family relating to this one geographic place in generations (you hear about that in the movies but it is rather unusual in Denmark). The harshness of his father. The mother whom nobody speaks about. The strict big sister. The brother who went away. And U, the youngest of them, who says that this is the only place on Earth where he feels at home.
Well, it is a particulary beautiful place and it is known to be one of the most spectacular and idyllic places in Denmark. I myself called it Eden.
I know it’s all tangled up inside me. I loved this man, I’d go anywhere with him. But I also loved his surroundings and I liked this idea of “one family – one place”. I felt at home the instant I arrived at his house (one cold and windy evening in October). I felt at home in his arms. We have never had a quarrell, I have been more patient and nice around him than with any other man I’ve known. I just don’t get it!
As I wrote in a previous post above I have tried to contemplate whether my ex might in fact not be a P but might suffer from BPD instead. I haven’t been able to fully believe that my ex could have faked his feelings for me.
I called a psychiatric helpline today and told them the whole story. Then I asked what they thought most likely could be the reason to his behaviour. I had convinced myself during the last 24 hours that he must be BPD or perhaps bipolar. I wanted him to get some treatment, I felt sorry for him as weel as I do for myself. I asked how I should approach the subject when speaking to him?
The woman at the other end of the line found it likely, she said, that he might be suffering from anxiety in some form and perhaps he might indeed suffer from some mental illness which he was afraid to let me know about. I felt glad, she said that. She advices me to approach the matter directly instead of just hinting at it.
So I called my ex. He sounded surprised at first that it was me. He’s not used to me calling in the afternoon. He sounded fine. (Which hurt me – but I tried to stay witty and ok myself.)
Then I asked him if he’d received my mail? (I have written about that mail in a previous post above. It was a mail I’d told him that I’d been reluctant to send him because I were afraid how he’d react to it. He’d urged me to sent to him telling me that he’d really like to know my thoughts on this breaking up. He also promised me by then that he’d get back to me on that one and offer me his thoughts in return.)
Well, yes, he said, he had received my mail. I then asked him if he’d comment on it. Oh, he answered reluctantly and drawing back, it is difficult to talk about.
I tried to push him a little bit. I told him that I had only hinted at some things in my mail but by now I’d tell him straight forward that I had considered whether or not he might have a mental disorder as I could not comprehend his behaviour these past weeks when I compared it to the way we were only five weeks ago. I asked him if he had ever been diagnozed with something and if he had been to afraid to tell me.
He calmly told me no to all these questions. Neither had he himself considered that he might have any kind of mental disorder. I told him what signs I could see when I looked back at our relationship and I held them up against the symptoms of a BPD.
Then he started telling me a bit more about his parents and his father’s parents. Apparently his grandfather had been a charming outgoing man “with some dark sides”. His grandmother had been very religious and she’d held her husband on a short leach. U (my ex) thought that his father had been caught in the middle and that this had somehow influenced the father so that he, when he was a grown man, became very shorttempered and bullying towards his own wife and kids. “My mother tried to protect us as best she could” he said. But she did not always succeed. I have not been beaten or sexually molested, however, he said. But I have spoken a lot to my sister on this subject.
I told him that if he should at some point find, when he thought more about it, that he might have some kind of mental disorder and if he wanted to go into therapy he should know that I’d be there for him. (The psychiatrisk whom I’d spoken to had agreed with me that it was important to let him know that I cared about him and would not disregard him due to possible mental illness).
U did not fall into a rage or seem in any way disturbed by my asking these questions. But I do imagine that I sensed a small hesitation in his breath when I told him I’d be there for him. Then he asked me how I was doing and what I was doing. Ordinairy social converwsation it would have been five or six weeks ago, but now it seemed almost offending to me. I told him calmly that I had begun to apply for jobs again. I haven’t been able to do that for the past four weeks, I told him. This is extremely hard on me, I miss us and I miss our friendship.
He only said “yes” in a meak tone of voice and then he wanted to break off our conversation as he had some work to do. I got annoyed, and I said: Does it bather you that I call you?
No, not at all, he said. And then he said “well, we’ll talk sometime, bye!” His goodbyes has some high pitch to them since we broke up that they have never had before.
After that I sat starring into the wall again. He had given me something by revealing more about his familybackground, but apart from that I only felt as if he didn’t give a damn about me or my feelings. Well, that’s not entirely true. I felt that he was uncomfortable with me calling and telling me about the way I feel – how much he has hurt me. I almost seems like he feels a bit embarassed. It would probably be too strong a word if I said ‘ashamed’.
Thinking about this conversation and feeling so “hung up upon” I once again started to change my thoughts about him. Right now I’m probably most inclined to say that he must be a narcissist. I’m not certain he is intentionally evil towards me or other people (and that may have triggered my thoguhts). On the other hand it seems that even if he may have enjoyed my company at some point he has become bored with me and by now he has indeed – as my sons’s father told me – moved on. He simply does not seem to give me a second thought. I’m sure that he will not ever call me again. He’ll leave it open to me and sometimes he might pick up the phone and sometimes not. I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt when I called him. I actually wanted him to tell me that yes, he had at some point had a diagnozis. That would have been so much easier for me to relate to. Then I might have excused him, I could have kept feeling that he needed me and wanted me somewhere behind all his passive-aggression and withdrawel.
Now – once again I feel left with nothing but emptiness. My Paradise was – if not a painted world – then merely an enigma, something as fragile and shortlived as a soapbobble. His feelings for me may well have been there – for those few hours and days while I was present, but as soon as I was gone, he must have forgotten all about me. This also accounts for the strangeness in the fact that he came home three hours too late from work one day while I was visiting without calling to notify me. By then, when he saw my tears of relief that he had not been in a car accident as I’d imagined, he just said: “Well, I’m not used to have anyone to think about except myself, you see”. At that time we’d been a couple for six months allthough we did not live together.
I feel alone. I cannot communicate this to anyone around me. Nobody has experienced such a thing. I come out to them as hysterical, obsessed, overly dependent (well, I might be), naive and a bit stupid. Therefore they cannot take my grief seriously. Besides I have been involved with at least one psychopath (more likely three) and one narcissist before. My red flags should have alearted me earlier on. And you know, I even went into therapy at one time, and the therapist told me to not be so distrustfull in the future. I had to take chances, she said. I should listen to my feelings and not to those suspicious voices inside my head. Even if I’d gone wrong before this did not mean I’d continue walking down the wrong alleys. It’s a laugh. Or it would be if it wasn’t so tragic.
I believed in this guy. I’ve said it before. Noone had ever treated me this nice before. I’d never had such a close friendship with any man before. Right up until the time when he dumped me changing his moods over night it seems.
I do not know how to recover from this. Yes, I’ve read about NC. But I still feel that I need to ask him these questions: Why did it take you six months to end it, if you knew for the past three that you were “not erotically attracted” to me?
Why can we not keep our friendship the way it has been for the last three months?
When did you start pretending, and why did you do it?
I want him to acknowledge that he has behaved very badly. If he’s a bastard, he should admit to it.
And if he’s not a bastard, then he should start showing some kind of true affection and concern for me in this breaking up process.
But he doesn’t, does he?
He’ s calm, clever and ‘kind’ – keeping his distance. Nad whatever issues I bring up – evn so politely – it is “difficult for him to talk about”.
Dear Sorrow, When I read your posting, I felt that there are explanations missing that he doesnt want to share with you, particularly around his family.
My exNarcissist had been badly abused by his father as a child, and he refused point blank to talk about any of it, infact he sent me to see his sister for her to tell me about two incidents that happened to him when he was a boy, and when she told me I cried for two days, my heart was bleeding. Even in his family they do not talk about things, especially the past and we can only take at face value what they tell us and of course they may leave our important information.
When I met my ex I was flavour of the month, but then he started hijacking the relationship, looking back I am almost convinced that he either read the Art of Seduction or was certainly carrying out some of the ploys suggested therein. I went from being the most gorgeous creature on earth to someone he would barely cross the road to speak to, and of course they often dont share their inner thoughts, which makes things so much more difficult. I think most people can eventually accept a breakup if explanations are available. He told me at one point I was his soulmate (but I never believed it), but as soon as he realised that I was too much work for him, he flirted with other women. I also felt with my ex and with your partner that he has given you a round up of reasons concerning his past partners that you have no way of checking on. Take good care of yourself Sorrow.