Hey Life - give me a break.

@soul I think following him to another country is a pretty big last chance

If he is saying he doesn't know why you would block him it is a pretty big indication that there is no acknowledgement of anything he has done 😔

Really feel for you at the moment, that must be so hard .

If he really cared asking what you had been up to would have been the first thing he wanted to know before letting you know what he needed (aka wanted)

I uprooted my life a couple of times for him and yes we did live overseas for a year and a half. The isolation, different culture, not knowing anyone, lack of support services all makes for a less than ideal situation @Determined.

It's always been about his needs. I felt that I could never talk about any problems I had because they would cause him stress and often it would become a case of his problems were greater than mine so I shouldn't be complaining. He would continually take on the victim of circumstances role. Nothing was his fault.

I did what I have done all my life - put other people's needs before mine. In this case, when I didn't live up to his perfect ideal, I got smashed.

That is an amazing commitment @soul, and to have your commitment and contribution minimised or discounted must really hurt... and thats without the violence. That would just add injury to insult. 😟

@soul

Hello @soul

reading your story is almost like reading a chapter out of my own life.

the attempting to have you on his side. All of the reasons why he needs you back are all about his needs. The undying professed love a channel that reeled you back in the past.

then complete turnaround to how are you, as a final attempt to hook you.

his statement of could we at least be friends.

sorry if upsetting for you to read but all of the above I experienced when I had a break of 6months from narcissistic former partner of 8 years whom a part of me still cares for. How can I be that naïve after all of the abandonments, blaming, belittling, abuse? My psychologist met him once for a matter of a few minutes when she asked him a question. He left without responding. She told me to leave him straight away, not go home unaccompanied. My life was in danger. To this day I struggle believing those words. This was a person who was hurting. She had said he is very good at this. It is not my failing it is his mastering manipulation, cleverly weaving the web.

I don't know if this helps at all. I have only written all of this for you to see if there are any parallels.

I did not think that I could leave him and have a life. He had masterfully worn me Down to a person who I did not recognise.

Your former self is still there Soul. Look for her and ask her the question. "If you were meeting him for the first time, knowing how narcissism works, would you still want him in your life? He has no others as he can only be with people who he has total control over and they become helpless.

Hi everyone .... 💕

@Former-Member .... I think you're talking about "the hook"..... when you meet they present to you as your ideal boyfriend ... if not tall, dark and handsome, at least with their best foot forward physically .... charming, generous, attentive .... seemingly smitten with you ....

I had seen this in someone I thought was too good to be true when I was 16. He was 16 too, going on 25, with stunning cover-boy looks. I was right. He was too good to be true. I had met a baby one .... "hook 'em, love 'em ..... switch .... push 'em away until they eventually leave you, broken-hearted and insecure." He toyed with me. I saw the pattern. I wondered whether I was "the one" who he would fall for .... then came to my senses and walked away.

Scroll forward a couple of years. Met my WH. He was trying to be one of these, copying his older brother, with younger brother coming up behind both of them, but it wasn't natural to WH. And I was "the one" .... we fell for each other. From that proximity I saw his brothers using and abusing, fuelled by their mother to whom everything was a sarcastic joke. My WH was different ....

Well ... aybe not so different .... the closer we got to marriage, the more the leash began to tighten .... not so much from WH, but the family applied pressure in ways that forced a response from him that was either to "side" with them, or "side" with me and he was caught between, sometimes choosing me, but sometimes choosing them. Our wedding plans, put together hurriedly by today's standards, got repeatedly trashed, so even the day of the wedding I was wondering whether I was doing the right thing in marrying him - not because I didn't love him, because I did. Because it was becoming too hard for us to be a couple in our own right, as though we weren't allowed to be .....

I was right about that. Marrying did provide me with a stronger overall position, but that also began 30-odd years of being constantly undermined, and what I thought were environmental pressures being applied to my husband in that push-pull pattern.

He worked with his family. Now I can see that their culture of narcissism or whatever it is flourished in their microcosm under a business banner. As a workaholic, he was hardly ever home, so I steered our home life while he steered at work. That is probably what kept us married .... over-extension and having to pull together to get through. When we hit speed bumps, we talked (shouted ?) it out, but could find our working compromises and we achieved amazing things in life, business, the raisingof our kids.

Then the business was sold. Biinge-eating had been his emotional crutch through all this, and I thought it was through the pressures of the long hours he had needed to put in to make our business in a savage industry survive. In hindsight, it's the other way around, that industry attracts and rewards workaholics. The e.d. was probably as much there in response to the incongruity in his relationships. When the business sold and he "came home", his two worlds collided and the workaholism and e.d. jumped tracks, and continued .....

I now have a husband who has made a business out of being eating disordered .... at the opposite extreme but so cunningly represented as a sea-change that it is still obscured from view .... and guess what else ? It triggered the family patterns of behaviour in him, now diagnosed by a pdoc (treating our son) as ocpd .... intense need to control.

Why am I seeing NPD in the mix too ? Can a whole Pandora's Box get triggered here ?

I have retreated within the relationship and battened down to ride out the storm as we are sent to family counselling, couples counselling and whatever-else counselling as they try to work us out .... with privacy laws preventing me from screaming from the rooftops that he has a hidden doozy of an EDNOS eating disorder .....

Thought diagnosing and treating the e.d. would restore our relationships .... but how do you "untrigger" personality disorders ? Short answer - I can't .... it's going to be up to him to work through it all .... wondering whether being "just friends" around the kids, and separate households will work.

Thanks for your post Faith and Hope,
It must be hard,I know my anxiety makes me overeat, especially of a night,when you feel the problems of your life because at the end of each day,I know it's another day I haven't worked, another day where my future is less promising.
When I said I texted him ,he didn't reply I'm used to him ignoring me.He is a removalist,moved me back from away when I failed last year,then started texting me.He wasn't my type,11years older.He is the only person I communicated with due to my severe depression and anxiety.Yes I was vulnerable but always knew I couldn't commit due to the state of mind.He many times ignored me .If I said the wrong thing and he didn't get my sense of humour.The night he sent abusive txt ,I didn't know that man,had to block him because I was scared of him.But I have a problem,after that I knew the signs of domestic violence were there,the way I was made to feel guilty,his stupid idea of me being his "girlfriend"which at our ages seem ridiculous,yet when I get vulnerable with bouts of my m.h I reach out to him and like yesterday,he ignores it.Any personal problems of mine he can't listen to. Get "the hook",you were talking about, one stage he didn't care I didn't have a job".Yes I was and still am vulnerable.Thats why I texted him while at the doctor's yesterday waiting for my appointment promising I wouldn't txt him again.He has a psychological hold of me which I need to deal with and at the moment I'm struggling with mental health and know I need to cut the cord.I think I just want the hope of a relationship to take away the hopelessness I feel,and to give me something to live for.I know the facts,like many who fall for these guys,as I said to him ,I was never in his heart,I was only in his head.When I tried to give it a go with him,he told me on the phone he loved me.I wasn't impressed,to me that is something I can't say straight away,that takes time.I wish he never put his "feelings"on me as they weren't real and like many of these men aren't genuine and do so much damage.
In regard to your situation I have communicated with you a few times now and I admired how you were the glue there,but sounds like the glues'strength is deteriorating.You need to make that decision because sounds like soul in her post,you are answering your own question in the last paragraph.It affects your health.

And isn't that hook powerful @Faith-and-Hope? My BPD partner presented as such a sensitive, gentle, creative guy who no one would suspect could have done the things he did. After a long loveless marriage where my ex husband and I had been living under the same room but leading different lives for many years, he was a breath of fresh air. Here was someone who shared the same interests that I thought would be a wonderful companion.

In hindsight, his interests were uncanningly similar - too much so as if he had researched that I liked. Once I was well and truly hooked and I had uprooted myself, the cracks started appearing. The cycle of domestic violence became part of my life. And each time, he hooked me back in again. Convincing me that this time it would be different; that he realised that what he did was wrong and he was no longer that person.

After one time too many, I left and it was a miracle that I was able to do so. I still feel the lure now and then but have to remember that no matter what he says, there is that possibility that the violence will resurface. After the last occasion I have the physical scar to remind me each time I look in the mirror even if I try to bury the emotional ones.

And @Former-Member, men like this target your vulnerability. My partner blamed his behaviour on stress and his mental illness yet he knew exactly what he was doing. It is an exertion of power and manipulation, feeling they are entitled to whatever they want. You have seen the signs. Most importantly take note of the ones that say Stop and Turn Back.

@Former-Member ..... I would love you to be able to attend some sort of interest of your own .... a lawn bowls group, an art group, a cooking class ..... something where you are mingling with others but there is a focus beyond socialising, and meet some truly gentle folk .... I npknow that is not the space you are in at the moment, but that would be my wish for you ....

We are in the hands of specialists at the moment, and I have to believe our whole submarine will rise to the surface under their investigations surrounding our son .... I want to reach a point where I am sitting in a room with Drs who know about OCPD, NPD, EDNOS and whateverthehellelse we've got going on here, and have them tell me like it is. This is what you have got now. You can expect this to change. You can't expect that to change. This is what he will have to commit to in order to recover. This is the realistic picture of your future ....

Until then I think I will just remain removed from it all .... engaging with what I have to on a need-to basis to keep our life moving forward, because we have the specialists on board and we are under investigation.

We love our kids. We love the life we have built for ourselves that exists beyond The Regimen. It's WH's changed nature and all the relationship chaos that can't continue that was always going to run us aground in some form or other. The e.d. is not sustainable for us as a family. If WH branched off from us, that would become his own affair, but he wants both - the e.d. and us without understanding a) that he has na e.d. b) that they are mutually exclusive. I was hoping for the gentlest form of running aground, and I hope that is what is happening now so we don't have to keep trying to function in this unhealthy dynamic.

If recovery is possible, I will go with that, but the OCPD dx has changed the prognosis as far as I am concerned. It may become clear to everyone that we need to live apart .... but if we can do it well, then we can still go away together to our family home overseas for short stints, and share family occasions. Because the kids are all adult now, our outcomes will need to be negotiated and the problems fully understood. WH may yet own the problem and accept his limitations, but I can't make that happen. You're absolutely right .... running out of glue .....

Sitting on my hands in the meantime.