Editor’s note: The following was posted as a comment by the Lovefraud reader “Zootowngirl.” She eloquently expressed ideas that many other readers can certainly understand.
I read the articles and comments posted on Lovefraud.com and I see my life, or parts of it, described over and over again. I see things my ex did (or didn’t do) written in the words of other people. I see myself in their stories. Often I find myself thinking, “Thank God my experience wasn’t that bad or that long,” and other times I nod my head in silent, humiliated understanding that comes with first hand knowledge of the horror stories people share.
My ex has the most beautiful soul. He is kind and compassionate and loving. He is the most thrilling person I’ve ever known. Until he’s not. When he’s upset or inconvenienced or, God forbid, angry, he turns into someone cold and hostile. His comments are scathing, filled with razor sharp words that open veins in my heart and leave me gasping at the pain. He is a master at flaying open my emotions and then disavowing any responsibility or ill intent. He used to tell me that I didn’t understand what he meant, that I was hysterical, or that I twisted his meaning for my own passive aggressive purposes. Maybe I was passive aggressive. Never mind the “maybe.” I was passive aggressive. That’s what happens when I can’t ask for what I need without being rejected or ridiculed or told that I am selfish for expecting something from him. I’d like to blame him for it but I’m the boss of me. I’m the one who made the choice to be passive aggressive. I have to own that. And I have to own that I still don’t fully fathom the impact he’s had on me.
I’m an addict.
I’m addicted to him.
I’m addicted to the way I feel when I’m with him the good, not the bad, though sometimes I believe I would accept the bad in order to also have the good. Maybe, possibly, if I’m just good enough and try hard enough and all the stars are aligned then maybe I’ll get some of the good. He’s so misunderstood, you see? He tells me so and so I have to believe that I’m just not giving him enough credit or being fair or being realistic. And he has ”legitimate excuses” for everything he does or doesn’t do. He was depressed. Then there was the physical pain: his elbow, his back, his guts. Then there was the dizziness that came and went, sometimes confining him to bed with the remote and sometimes miraculously disappearing just when something entertaining was planned. Then there was the encroachment of his privacy after we had to get roommates in order to help pay the rent because we only had my disability income to live on and all the money left to me by my father was gone at last. Then there were the accusations of flirting and disloyalty on my part that made him sad and sent him back into that depression. Then there was the day he called me a “stupid f*cking c*nt” and told me that he “deserved better from the woman who supposedly loved him.” Except I wasn’t supposed to internalize those words because he was just processing his thoughts about the anger he’d felt over something trivial and thought he could share that processing with me. But he didn’t explain that he was recalling his thoughts or just processing them and wondering why he’d thought and felt those things. He just said the words aloud and left me to sit with them for 2 weeks and then, when I finally broke down in tears over them said, “What?! Oh God! I was just describing what I felt at the time! Not what I think of you!” and the logic of that escaped me because the words had had 2 weeks to sit inside of me, carving themselves into my cells. Eight months later, they still echo in my head almost every hour of every day. But I’m not allowed to be hurt or be upset by them because, of course, they’re not true. He was just processing his feelings. I’m supposed to be glad he did that, right? That’s what women want, right? A man who will process his feelings with her.
I’m addicted to the memory of him when he was in a good mood and loved me.
I’m addicted to the energy and space he took up in every place we were together.
I was addicted to the constant texting and phone calls that happened before we lived together and the roller coaster drama of trying to prove that he should choose me and not that other woman because she’s a liar and a cheat while I’m faithful and devoted and loyal and dedicated no matter what he does or says or what promises he broke in the 3 years before we lived together.
I was addicted to proving that I’m good enough and that I can accept and forgive and love him unconditionally while he spent time trying to decide between us, despite having gone back on his assurance that he was going to give her up and come be with me a half dozen times or more.
I was addicted to putting him back together after she chewed him up and spit him out and to being his best friend while he agonized over how much she hurt him and to being the woman he turned at last to because he suddenly realized that I’m the right choice and I’m the perfect person for him.
I was addicted to riding out his struggle with commitment and his inability to plan for the future because so many other women have hurt him and left him and devastated him.
I was addicted to proving to him that I’ll stand by him always, no matter the hardship, no matter the tests he throws my way, no matter the pain he causes.
I was addicted to martyring myself to his cause, to being the true blue girl in his life.
I’m addicted to him the way a child is perversely compelled to continuing to love the father that abused her and the mother that abandoned her, always going back for more, always desperate to prove she is worthy of their love because she thinks that if she just loves well enough or loves the right way then love won’t continue to hurt her the way it does now.
I’m addicted to continuing to send messages to his phone from my email. He makes unfair statements and I get angry and find myself glad that I broke up with him and just when I start to think I did the right thing he lifts me up with loving words and apologies and I sob over the fact that I’m the horrible person who “destroyed his life”
I’m addicted to the way he says, “It was my fault for not loving you well enough baby,” as if somehow that love will seep into me from the computer screen and make it possible for me to trust myself again ”¦ after so many do-overs and so many 2nd chances that the idea of it only being a “second” chance is laughable. More like a 30th or 40th chance.
I’m addicted to being able to tell him exactly how much pain he caused me without any immediate consequence and watching his apologies and regret appear in my chat window ”¦ knowing that he’ll manage to turn things around so they become guilt trips rather than accountability ”¦ and praying that it won’t happen because that might be a sign from God that he’s sincerely sorry and things would be different this time. This 41st second chance.
I’m addicted to apologizing ”¦ to feeling guilty ”¦ to punishing myself ”¦ to hating myself for ending our relationship ”¦ for ending my dream ”¦ so that he’ll understand that I really did love him. I just have to love him from a distance now because I can’t live in a home where both of us hate me. It’s painful enough that I hate myself for not being good enough for him, that I hate my inadequacy and my inability to live up to even his most basic expectations.
I’m addicted to reminding myself that he almost punched me in the face once, to reminding myself that that is reason enough to have left him. And I’m addicted to being angry at him because he says, “But I didn’t actually hit you!” I’m angry at him for that because it’s the lamest response I can think of to an act of aggression that could have turned into an act of violence. And I’m angry because I’m addicted to telling myself, “It could have been worse. So many people have it so much worse. Just let it go. He didn’t actually hit you.”
I’m addicted to trying to take less responsibility for the way my life turned out ”¦ to blaming him for what hurts me. And I’m addicted to being angry at myself for the way my life turned out ”¦ and angry at myself for blaming him for what hurts me. I’m addicted to that anger because I’m accountable for myself and my life and for what I allow ”¦ and no matter how much I felt like I loved him ”¦ I was supposed to love myself first and best and I didn’t.
I’m addicted to my new reality ”¦ the reality in which nothing seems right without that drama and chaos even though this calm, quiet, peaceful life is healthier and safer and more trustworthy. Even though this life is beautiful. And I’m angry at myself for this particular addiction more than anything else.
That’s how I know I’m an addict. I’m a co-dependent, enabling, door mat of an addict.
Because when I say that I miss the way I felt when I was with him ”¦ I know that’s my addiction doing the talking.
Because when I’m honest with myself I can say that most days I felt desperate to prove to him that I was worthy of his notice.
Most days I felt like a piece of worthless garbage.
Most days I felt like I was a stupid f*cking c*nt and that he deserved better than me.
And that may not be entirely his fault ”¦ because I participated.
But most days I felt incapable of being anything other than that worthless piece of garbage and I don’t know how someone who “supposedly” loved me could not see that there was something wrong.
I know I’m an addict ”¦ because I was willingly living on scraps ”¦”¦ and I was starving ”¦ and it was killing me ”¦ and I miss that feeling of dying.
Bravengirl……all I can say is that I relate to exactly what you said. It’s such a push pull thing. I will say that the push side is far outweighing the pull side for me at this point. Something has dramatically changed for me like that over the last two weeks. I really couldn’t go back at this point. I’ve seen him for the lying POS that he is and I will never expose myself the the filth of him again. As far as the longing, I try my best to catch myself earl in that false thought process and replace it with the dismal reality of what he really is. Puke!
Good Morning Everyone.
I’m not sure what made me come here today. Maybe I just needed to be “near” people who understand.
As I re-read the original post I wrote in August (has it really been 5 & 1/2 months?!) I have to laugh. “I’m addicted to him.” It’s clear that I knew what the problem was. It’s clear that I also knew what the solution should be.
So….you know what I’m going to say, right?
My ex and I began talking again a week or so after that post. Just an email here and there – most of them filled with love and regret on his part and a lot of hurt and anger on mine. We graduated to a phone call from time to time. And soon we added texting 40….50…..60 times a day. I was hurt and angry and scared and I told him so — every day. He was apologetic…contrite….and he told me what he’d learned about himself and his behavior in the months since he’d seen me last. He told me that living without me made him miserable. He also said that he’d walk away if that’s what I wanted….that he’d leave me be if it was better for me.
Warning bells were going off in every part of my brain and my body. The fear and anger I felt made me want to never be in that situation…any situation…with him again. I worked hard to keep my head. I promised myself that I wouldn’t beat myself up for talking to him and that I would fight any bitterness I felt by talking clearly and calmly about things…because I did want to talk. I wanted to air some things and to feel better at last. I was tired of wallowing in feelings of guilt and stupidity. I had also promised myself that if the time ever came that I had another relationship, I would be much more mindful about meeting my own needs and communicating my thoughts. I promised myself that I wouldn’t get blindsided by anyone, especially not my ex, ever again. So…with that in mind, we began to talk more.
Sounds good, right?
Except that I’m an addict. My addiction makes me the Queen of Lies.
It wasn’t inadvertent. I knew exactly what I was doing, I just chose not to see. I’d begun to feel that old feeling: the “OMG I love feeling this way….love his passion for me….love heaing about his love for me….love having him back in my life like this” feeling that he used to instill in me when he chose to make the effort. I loved having his love again…..and I eventually told him so.
Want to guess what he said in reply?
If you guessed that he wanted to get back together, I’d say “Right in one!” He asked me to work through my fear; to set it aside and give him another chance. (He was careful, I suppose, not to say “second chance” since we’ve been around about that choice of phrases already.) He said all the right things…..my God….he said *** ALL *** the right things!
Do you see where I’m headed?
A month later we were making plans. I was hesitant and slow. The pain was still very real and it made me a nervous wreck to be talking to him and trying to work things out and trying to come to a place of peace within myself. He asked me to keep telling him how I felt…to keep being brutally honest…and he kept listening and processing with me and sending emails and texts. He was his “old self” again…he was the guy I met so many years ago and I began to feel the return of that self that I was when we met…the open, loving, genuine person…the person I’d wanted back, having felt as if I’d lost her years before. I wasn’t sure how things were going to pan out, but at least we were going to be together.
I paid off my lease, got a temp job painting the interior of someone’s house from top to bottom to put money aside, packed my things. I researched used vans and used RVs so that I could travel across the country. At one point he said “Do you need me to come and get you?” At another point he said, “Don’t worry babygirl. I’m going to take care of you.”
I begain to work 15 hour days to get ready for my trip across the country. My typical insomnia went from the stage where I find it hard to sleep more than 4 hours a night to finding it hard to sleep AT ALL. I was filled with anxiety about the future and having no luck finding a vehicle. This part was really terrifying for me because, once I left my city and began making my way to the part of the country in which My ex lived I would, effectively, have no where to live. (He moved in with his parents when we broke up and his mother wouldn’t allow me to stay with him there because I broke up with her favorite child.) I was couch surfing at my old place because I’d paid off my lease and so my housemates rented my room. Everything hinged on finding a vehicle and then I’d be ready….to be homeless…..by choice…..for him.
I was *volunteering* to be homeless!!!
I didn’t hear from him for a few days in mid October but he showed up enough times, via text, to keep me on the hook. At one point, when I was having a hard time feeling secure and confident, I sent him a very open and honest email telling him that his lack of communication was making me feel as if our plans were a mistake. Suddenly he was all over my email and texting me often. I felt a renewal of the same delight…the same love…the same devotion to which I had become re-accustomed.
I finished with the house painting and had saved enough, between my disability check and the money I earned to buy a modest vehicle. I sent him a message telling him that I needed to know that he was still on the same page…that we were going to be together….telling him that I was still afraid but that I would keep working on it, with his help. I apologized for “Putting us through this,” because I had begun to feel as if I was terribly lucky that he loved and wanted me again. I sought reassurance from him…told him he could change his mind right now…that we could talk about it and I’d accept it….I just needed to know before I took the last step in my plan. He did away with the last of my hesitation by sending me me an email in which he wrote, “I love you so much [my name]. I won’t ever walk away from you again. I’m never going to let you fall. I don’t want a life without you in it.”
I was his….hook, line and sinker.
He disappeared for 5 days. Nothing. No communication. On the 6th day he sent me my “Dear Jane” letter. He loved me, he said, but had realized that he had some unprocessed feelings about the fact that I’d left him…and he no longer felt that we were right for one another. At some point he said that he felt I was untrustworthy because, by breaking up with him last Spring, I had “rejected and abandoned him.” Three weeks of back and forth ensued and, in the end, he told me that I needed to heal and move on……and that he forgave me.
He…..forgave…..*ME*
I thought, long before this happened, that I’d reached bottom. I thought, when we broke up last April, that it was finally, actually over.. I thought that I’d been hurt enough….broken enough….used enough. But apparently I am still “the eternal hope girl.” I believed him. I believed in him. And I believed that his love was real.
Again.
After a few weeks of struggling, I gave up. He repeatedly told me we needed space to heal. He said he hoped we could be friends one day but that he could not talk to me now because it was too painful for him to talk to me after the pain I’d inflicted on him and the way I had ruined his life by leaving him last April. Despite the fact that this was the 8th time…THE EIGHTH TIME….that he walked away from me and his promise to begin a life with me, HE was devastated that I’d broken up with him. It was him….all of it…..it was all about him. Suddenly, I was the bad guy. Suddenly, I was the one who was to blame. Did he plan it? Did he work for 3 months just to get me to that spot? Is he really THAT good or was it just my dumb luck that he doesn’t understand his feelings until it was too late to take back all that he had offered? Even today, I find myself saying “He’s not a bad person, he just got lost.” Or did he?
After he walked away again I became more depressed than I’ve been in my entire life. I was, quite literally, despondent I became suicidal. I made a plan to end my life and began taking the first steps of that plan.. I tied up my loose ends and made arrangements for my dog to be taken care of. Then, one day, I remembered something I’d begun to tell myself a long time ago, “If you plant potatos, you’re going to have potatos, not daisies.” In other words: “If you do what you always do, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” I don’t know why it struck me that day….why it sounded exactly the way it did in my ear and resonated with me for days to come.
So…I called my doctor and made an appointment to see her. Because of that visit I got some of the help I needed. I am medicated for Major Depressive Disorder now – something that I struggle with but acknowledge without shame 90% of the time. I’m also going to therapy, and there’s now a social worker who helps me with things I can no longer manage on my own because of my circumstances (I am disabled). Nothing is perfect…but it’s getting better.
I don’t want him as part of my life anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I want him. I’m an addict, remember? But I don’t want him as part of my life. Every time he’s a part of my life I end up much worse for the experience and that’s not how love is supposed to work. It *is*, however, how addiction works. We go back, over and over and over, again to the thing that robs from us our autonomy and self-respect. If I hadn’t had the wherewithal to face my addiction, to call my doctor to begin medication and find a therapist in order to address my addiction, things would be very different today.
I would be dead.
My childhood (abusive on multiple levels and rife with examples of abandonment) taught me that love equals suffering. I don’t believe that in my logical mind but in my emotional mind, the one driven by those formative years, I do. I’m going to therapy to change my paradigms because it’s my current brand of wrong thinking that will either encourage me to wait for my ex to change his mind (for the ninth time) or will lead me to the next wrong person. I’m invested, 100%, in changing the way I think. I feel, without any intended drama, that it is a matter of life or death.
When I am intoxicated by my addiction, it tells me that I need my ex despite what’s happened in the past. It tells me that I need my ex in a voice much louder than the one used by my common sense and reason. My addiction tells me that I am in love with my ex and, to be brutally honest, I don’t know the truth of that. I like to tell myself that I feel love for him because of the addictive qualities of the dynamic between us. When I can remind myself of that, I can say, “You want him because you want “the feeling” back” You know “the feeling”, right? The feeling when your stomach is loopy on adrenaline and butterflies and you’re high on the attention of the s’path (or narcissist in my case – according to my therapist anyway). I miss the high of him…the feeling of desire….the memory of when times were good. But I keep reminding myself to take things one breath at a time. I remind myself of something I read recently that seems to help a little: “Pain is inevitable in life. Suffering, however, can be optional.”
I’m going to be 50 in a few months. I’d like to believe I was done volunteering to suffer.
Take care everyone.
~ Z ~
Imara,
Thanks for sharing. Yes me too. Alcoholic, abusive and a weak mother who kept moving us out and back to him.
I remember thinking that I just wanted someone to love who would love me for me…Now I think, what am idiot I have been. Thank God I got out alive. As my son says, it must really piss him off that you didn’t die.
Love that too, I was so open minded…LMAO!
Zootowngirl, welcome home.
((((((HUGS))))) You’re home and you’re going to be okay.
Brightest blessings
Damn Truth…you just made me cry.
There goes my “Ice Queen” disguise.
:p
Zootowngirl,
You write with exceptional eloquence and clarity. I feel exactly as you do, I was with my P for 31 years, and if I am honest with myself, I want to be back with him…..
But then my brain catches up with my heart. He gave me herpes, he cheated on me with at least 3 other women I can name. He takes “gifts” at work (unethical – illegal). He poisoned me and gaslighted me…. I think Z that you need a list. When I get those feelings, I start with the reality list…
You deserve better, I deserve better, all of us here deserve better….
Thankfully you found the strenght to get help from your dr.
Maybe you should consider writing as a new profession….
I like the idea of a “Reality List” Discovering! Thanks for the idea. I’m going to start one today.
I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had a doctor to talk to. Okay. Actually. Yes I do. And it seems a little too final to me, from this perspective anyway. I am hesitant to take pills of any sort because I already take so many but, in this case, I would have agreed to daily enemas if it would have helped with the utter helplessness and self-loathing. I am grateful to all that is sacred that I had 90 seconds of clarity and was able to call the doctor. That’s all it took. I walked out of her office with a prescription in hand and was using it by the next day. There are some side effects for which I don’t care but, for the most part, I really see no reason to complain. I’m alive. It’s good enough for me, at this point. Even in the height of my despondency I can acknowledge that I don’t actually prefer the idea of being dead. I just want something to change. Well….now I’m back on track
Thank you for sharing part of your story with me.
As for the idea of writing as my profession: I suppose now would be the time to mention….
Betrayal is one act that should have its extra hot space you know where!!!!
Discovering, I do not want him back. while we were married I loved him with all my heart..but I also longed for a “normal” give and take kind of relationship that my parents had!! I fought the control and the hurtfulness…. culturally divorce is not something that I ever entertained as an option. What I do want back are the feelings of security, financial independence and love!!!!! because MY experience and my filter allowed me to feel that caring and nurturing.
Zootown, Ive had to use medication for insomnia too!!! Otherwise I’d seriously be pacing the house like a mad woman for five nights in a row!!!!
I an 53 this year and a renter for the first time since graduate school 30 years ago!! I’m not addicted to him!!! I just want him out of my head!! I try to do all the work you guys suggest here…waiting for him to vacate!!!
Zootowngirl, a very moving post and lots of great insight into what makes us do what we do. Keep on the healing path, it sounds to me like you are doing things right and I know it is difficult to take medication for your depression, and it isn’t like it makes life turn up roses, but it does knock the edge off of the dark moods that can keep us from being able to stay on the road toward healing.
Good job!
Z
was that a literary ploy……keeping us in suspense?
Imarra- I understand. Maybe you feel as I do that my dreams and future have been ripped from me. that my hope of a secure retirement backed by a warm committed realtionship has been trashed. Betrayal on the first order- I get it and it sucks. Imarra, perhaps it is less him that I miss than the things our marriage represented to me- love and security (he took from me what I wanted the most).
Huggs to you ((Imarra))