Here’s more proof that total No Contact is the way to recovery. A new study finds that continuing to follow a former romantic partner on Facebook after breaking up makes it harder to move on. Read:
Study: Stalking your ex on Facebook is bad for you, on ZDNet.com.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
skylar:
Yikes! I think we have it all figured out!
I DID respond when he became more attentive, but I still don’t think it was in the way he wanted. And push me away he did.
Yep, he told me he didn’t need a “wife replacement.” For him to even use the word “wife” led me to believe that he saw me as marriage material and not some easy plaything. It was in a very short time he started pursuing OW again. They do avoid intimacy this way and another way they do this is by masturbating (being a bit graphic here). But I think he did that a lot and it makes sense since by doing this, he avoided intimacy. I think it’s easier.
I would have never thought about the inheritance if it wasn’t for my ex husband clueing me in on that one. Very interesting. Well, if being with him would mean no sex, I wouldn’t want that.
Thanks so much once again for making things more clear.
skylar:
An afterthought: I obviously didn’t know or couldn’t figure out what he really wanted from me…how he wanted me to act. I was just being me and it’s not what he was looking for.
Louise
I usually learn a lot from your questions and posts.
I read this thread, and I can’t figure out what it is that you learned or figured out.
Help!
Athena
Athena:
I figured out, with the help of Skylar, that he did become attentive to me, but he was looking for a certain something from me in return and Skylar thinks it is drama. I did respond, but not with the drama he wanted. I was just me.
I have also figured out once and for all that he viewed me more as marriage material and not just as an easy plaything, therefore, I was discarded because he already had a wife.
He has been married for 20 years, but the majority of that time has been having affairs. I also learned with the help of Kim, that he has intimacy issues (which I always suspected). By having affairs, he keeps his wife at arms length, but he also can never be truly intimate with the mistresses because he is not “free” to commit to them. This way, he is never fully committed intimately to anyone.
I don’t know…on the other hand, some people will say that because he is a spath, he has NO feelings and therefore couldn’t have viewed me as wife material or had any of those type of feelings for me. Who knows. I guess if it makes me feel better by believing that, why not?
Hmmm, Louise,
Regarding the intimacy: it’s the egg and chicken question really. Spaths make oxytocine, but the receptors are defunct and don’t do a thing with it. So they don’t bond. If they don’t bond, they don’t have intimacy fear, and then they can handle mutliple women all at once without a problem.
The question then is “why don’t the receptors work?” Is there a psychological blockage (fear of intimacy) causing the oxytocine receptor disfunction? Or is it purely physical cause?
Sky,
He once called me in December from a bar, thus his midnight and thus my (late) morning and told me to call back. He had been out of touch for 2-3 weeks then, getting close to Christmas, after his father had died and he had returned to his village, instead of looking for a job in San Jose in Costa Rica while living with his cousin. I expected he was calling me for myself, probably a bit drunk and then having me speak to total strangers whom he used to tell I was his gf. Understanding it was cheaper for me to call him (I used international phone cards for that) I called him, but my expectations were wrong. He wanted me to agree to send money to the bar owner for the money I owed her (10$).
Why was that? When I had been in Nicaragua months before, on one of the last evenings there he had taken/conned me out of my last money and had asked the woman to open a tab for me for that evening, so that I wouldn’t have to go get money out of the ATM in the middle of the night for myself, while he was away for drugs probably. Anyway, I would have paid the tab anyhow while I was there, but ex always prevented me from settling that, plus the day after I had designed band night posters for her per her request, which I then printed and copied, and I even gave her a digital file copy to alter the dates in the future…. all free of charge.
Anyhow, byt the time he called about it, the euro had dropped so much and the money sending fees were so expensive, that it would cost me more to send it than the bill was. And since he blew 1000$ the night after his father died from his inheritance and had been living on my expense for way too long already before, I told him “No. I’m not sending that money. You can settle the bill for me for once.” He then asked me, “So, you’re not gonna wire the money?” Me: “Nope”. And he hung up the phone then. Didn’t hear from him until at least a weak after.
That’s when he had the affair with a young Norwegian student tourist passing through for two weeks. He tried to get her into a long distance relationship afterwards, but got no positive response then. His fish didn’t bite. He probably searched for a new hook, line and sinker in January and February, until he found in March.
Louise,
I don’t know your whole story. When Ifirst started researching my spath Ithought he had intim8acy issues. I read lots of books on that.
But then I realized that his life was an open book and Iooked. I realized that he is an equal opportunity liar. I met him when he was single. He lied to his ex wife about me. He lied to me about her. He lied to me about other women. He lied to me about himself. It was unending. if he discriminates in terms of “marriage material” it has to be a very shallow differentiation. Does she have more money? Does she let him get away w murder? Does she provide a better beard? YOU are on LF and she is not. Maybe she is naive and you are wise. Anyway my point is its arbitrary and you should thank your lucky stars.
Does it take so much time and effort for victims of domestic violence to recover? Or victims of drug or alcohol addicts? Why is recovering from a spath so damn hard?
I looked at his facebook page one time about a year after the big split. It was a pic of him I had taken on our vacation to Colorado, sitting on a rock with my two wiener dogs. He had cropped the dog’s out but he was still holding on to the leash’s. Ready to leash his next victim I reckon.. At the time I saw this I was upset at how he could just crop me and my dog’s out of his life like we never exsisted. And how cruel of him to use the pic I took of him.
I never looked again, dont care, he’s gone and that’s a good thing. That vacation was horrible~! He was so obviously bored with me, but stuck with me, it was like dating a hostage. I would offer everything to help him move on and be happy, but he said it was me he wanted. What a fucking nitemare that was…I dont have a facebook page..dont want one.
Darwinsmom,
I think, if your spath is like my spath, he was slandering you.
My spath would have done it this way.
“Skylar is a bitch and doesn’t like to pay what she owes. But I can make her do anything I tell her to do. Watch, I’ll call her and get you the ten bucks she owes you.”
Then, if you agree to pay, he looks like the powerful man who can control you from all the way around the world. OTOH, if you refuse to pay, it proves how evil and irresponsible you are.
He had manipulated this way before hand by creating a situation where you would owe money. He was setting his chess pieces in place for the checkmate, long before you ever saw past his mask. Remember, he is the one who always owes and never pays. He wanted you to become like him.
I think that you did the right thing. Never allow a spath to control your actions, no matter what his minions might think. After all, if she was a good person, she would see through him soon enough.
No matter what, he was set on slandering you.
“Marriage material” does not mean the same to a spath as it does to a normal man who can love.
It just means you make a good facade and you won’t be getting sex but you’ll still stick around.
Louise, I think you failed the spath test all the way around. You were not a play thing and you weren’t a woman who marries and sticks around if there isn’t any sex. You just failed to keep a spath, Louise. 🙂
thank your lucky stars.
Darwinsmom,
.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Oxytocin+and+BPD.-a0290294222
I don’t have a lot of bandwidth right now, I’m tethering my droid, so I can’t do much research, but I thought this might interest you. Oxytocin is also related to envy! in some people and under certain circumstances, such as after a competitive event.
That quote is actually funny to me. It makes sense because, as Kim’s linked article described, the BPD becomes an asshole AFTER he/she gets his/her love reward. Being loved turns them into distrusting jerks. And it’s the oxytocin that tells they they are loved. So interesting.
There’s never an easy answer. I was hoping a simple blood test for oxytocin would be able to reveal which men are marriage material and which are not. lol.