Gaslighting par excellence

E-mails sent when we thought he had AS (I came across them today when clearing out some messages from my inbox):

From me:
"I am sorry for all my texts this morning.

I just get so upset when you accuse me of making your life a misery. I wasn't always nice to you but I worried about you and tried to help you more than you will ever know.

I think that when you get some CBT you will be able to recognise the causes of your stress and will be able to deal with them much better (I hope anyway). I talked to NF once about the CBT a friend of his was having and it sounded like something that will really help you.

When I was reading up about AS, and about couples where one partner was mild AS and the other NT, it seemed that the problems we'd had were fairly typical. It might depress you to know that and that's not my intention at all in mentioning it. I think it's a really helpful thing to know for both you and me."

His response:

"Do you see that these conversations are very one-sided in terms of allocating blame?

Do you acknowledge that that might annoy me?

Do you think there’s anything else you could have done (accepting that your thoughts were always pure, apparently, but some action may have been misdirected given what you know now)?

Direct answers please."


Then I found others where he'd be saying in one e-mail that he didn't want to speak to me again and that he had to move on, then almost straight after that he would be sending me messages that totally contradicted the previous message. For example, he had arranged a therapist's appointment for the following Tuesday and had said he would ring me after that, despite telling me he wanted to move on.

Another:
"Hi N
I know we are moving on. My e-mail was about how to do that. I can't keep having these phone calls with you. They stress me out and make me late for work! I think that if we have to stuff to say we should say it in person but you don't want to meet up, for reasons that I understand and that are probably entirely sensible. On one hand you can make me open up to you, and on the other I end up stressed out and frustrated. I never had one conversation with A [previous partner] in 7 years that approached the level of intimacy that we've had [XN had always claimed we weren't intimate].

Why do you want to ring me on Tuesday? Please don't come back with a kneejerk reaction of 'I won't ring you then'. It's a serious question. Perhaps you don't know yourself. Is it because you value my support but don't want a relationship with me? I'm not being accusatory. I don't understand what I'm doing here.
Jess"

His response:

"I offered to call because I couldn’t just say goodbye – I find this hard too. Maybe its best we don’t talk from now on. We have to move on."

The previous week he'd been to the doctor's and had said he would ring me when he got out. When I said, well, actually I'm going out in a minute (he'd broken up with me a few weeks before, and I was living in a new place, so I was trying to make another life for myself), he told me that I had to stay in because "this was important".

Stupid me did as well.

Gaslighting, ensuring N supply par excellence.

He should get a certificate or something.