Karma

I was chatting with a friend tonight whose wife works for social services. Her department has to liaise with XN who works in the health service.

She phoned him a couple of weeks about a case they were working on (it's to do with children's services and their work is cross-organisational).

She came home that evening and complained to her husband (an ex colleague of mine) that XN was incredibly rude and spoke to her with an "how dare you call me" tone in his voice. She said that she thinks he's an arrogant pr*ck and that the rest of her department in social services can't stand him because of a couple of other arrogant and rude things he's done.

She knew I was with XN but knows nothing about the abuse that I suffered so she isn't prejudiced by any previous knowledge. In fact, the 4 of us did go out socially twice so she thought he might be more friendly when she called than he would have been ordinarily.

Twelve months ago, XN won a £15k leadership award for being brilliant.

In the last few months, he was moved out of the office he shared on some pretext whilst he was away on a course and into an open plan office which he will have found incredibly humiliating. And the (very senior) woman he shared an office with has said that she thinks he has a personality disorder.

I have also heard from another source that he's not very well liked at the organisation and that he's shown poor anger management at work towards his colleagues.

My therapist thinks that his organisation have a problem employee on their hands but are avoiding facing up to him because they moved him out of the office whilst he was away rather than waiting til he got back.

I know some of you will say, who cares, let him go, what does it matter, and you're right. It doesn't matter, I am letting him go and I don't care all that much (I'd be lying if I said I didn't care at all).

However, it is rather gratifying to hear that he's p!ssing people off left, right and centre. I can see that eventually they'll either force him out or he'll have to leave because he won't have any friends left there.

Part of me feels a little sorry for him but part of me is thinking...the karma is coming...

All that therapy is clearly paying off...not.

How to resolve that XN never loved me

What has helped me come to terms with that (and I actually read in XN's "anxiety book" back in May that he'd "never really loved anyone") is that I believe he wanted to love me. I think he wanted to have a normal relationship with me and settle down and do the things that normal people do.

However, he wasn't able to control his emotions or his impulses and that led him to destroy our relationship.

I had a therapy appointment this evening and my therapist said that she thinks XN has got worse since I went NC (based on the information about his behaviour from my friend who works with him) and that I provided some stability in his life. She said that she thinks he will rue the day that he lost me.

It has occurred to me that he will but I wondered if he would actually ever let himself think that.

She said that she thinks he will realise it one day even if it's just for a second and that it's unlikely that he'll admit that to anyone.

Anyway, XN did have moments of lucidity and normality when he would talk about wanting normal stuff out of life. I genuinely believe that there was a part of him that did want the normal relationship and that did want me.

He may not have been able to get the normal stuff out of life or have been able to truly love me but I think he did want to. XN didn't cheat on me and my therapist pointed out that he'd still be with me now had I not broken it off. So I think I was the closest he's ever got to an intimate, stable relationship and he cared about me as much as he was able to.

To me, my belief that he wanted it to work counts for something. He just didn't know how to.

I was too good for my N

When XN D&D'd me horribly last year, I wrote to him, out of love, and told him that I thought he needed professional help.

I thought that, for my own sake, I should stay away but I felt I could help him and didn't want to walk away without trying at least.

I am a nice, kind, giving, understanding, compassionate person. I hated to think that I could help someone and yet was choosing to walk away. So I chose not to walk away but to make one last ditch attempt to help him instead and it worked.

He took my advice and went to see his doctor. I supported him for 3 months from a distance (we didn't see each other in that time) whilst he saw his doctor, a psychologist, and a therapist.

How many other women would have stuck around and encouraged their XN to get help after being screamed and shouted at and let down on a regular basis? Most would have told him to get lost long ago and would not have done all they could do to get him some help instead.

Thanks to me, he is now getting help. Whether he chooses to put the work in himself is up to him. I, at least, got him going down that path - it wasn't easy - and for that I am proud of myself.

During our relationship I gave him everything I had - my thoughts, my support, my love, my empathy. I bought him thoughtful gifts, things he will want to keep and use; I looked after him; cared about him; and I saw through his horrible treatment of me to the pain he had underneath.

I put in more effort and sensitivity than 99% of women would. He used to tell me that I was too sensitive but I would reply that it was my sensitivity that saw that he had big problems and caused me not to dismiss him as just a b*stard.

I am intelligent, classy, passionate, dignified, caring, thoughtful and warm. I was willing to make sacrifices to make this man happy. He will never get anyone like me again, particularly now that he has become a caricature of the shallow "friends" that he is hanging out with now

A glimpse into the mind of an N

At the beginning of the year, I persuaded XN to get some professional help so he went to see his doctor. Before he went (and it took some persuading) he made a list, at my suggestion, of his symptoms so that he didn't get sidetracked or fobbed off by his doctor.

I'd known him for 5.5 years at this point yet, when he read me the list down the phone, I was in shock.

The list must have been 2 to 3 pages of A4 long.

He described:
-always feeling empty
-his mind being a swirl of stress most of the time
-inability to sleep because of his stress
-when he was stressed, he would sweat, sometimes so much that he would be embarrassed to take his jacket off in work or shake anyone's hand.
-never feeling relaxed, ever
-when he was stressed, he would feel his face burning up
-he could feel his heart beating really fast
-often (again when under stress) his mind would just go blank
-an inability to visualise things
-he had trouble understanding people

The list went on with similar things.

I had no idea that the guy I'd been seeing all this time felt like this *most of the time*.

I remember lying next to him in bed one night and he was so stressed, for no obvious reason, that he was practically hyperventilating.

I remember lying on his chest some nights and hearing his heart thumping away very fast, again for no obvious reason.

He has since gone on beta blockers for the stress and antidepressants for the depression.

Both helped him. After he went on the beta blockers, he would tell me things like he'd enjoyed the shower he had that morning because, normally, he wouldn't even take pleasure in a shower because he was in this constant state of stress.

I think mine was NPD/BPD so this may not be true for all of your's but I do think this must be a horrible way to live; to have your mind in this state of swirling cortisol all the time; to not be able to sleep or relax or enjoy anything.

I wouldn't want to swop places with him for anything.

I have been thinking about XN in the abstract for a while. It's easier to cope with that way and I'm lucky enough to be 150 miles away from him, to not have him try to hoover after the 3rd day I went NC, and not to have any ties with him other than a friend who works with him.

There's been a fair bit of talk about N dipping lately on the board I belong to and I used to get real urges to dip by seeing what he was up to on Facebook (I can't see his page but could see his friends list and stuff he'd posted on other friends pages). Today though I thought that I'm not really interested in what he's up to.

The XN I knew really is dead to me.

The guy that has replaced him is not someone I would be attracted to. He has regressed to his early 20s, is spending a fortune on clothes (claimed he was rediscovering his "normal" self when he started therapy and hence needed a new image...), will no doubt will chasing around after lots of young women now to boost his ego, has friends who are about 10 years younger than him. He is obsessed with work and will be going out and getting his kicks from taking drugs and flirting with women he'll regard as objects.

When he was in his early 20s he lived like that but then went travelling and discarded all the friends he had then because he said they made him feel bad. Now we're not together, he's repeating exactly the same cycle of doing a job he doesn't like (because he has no direction) and falling in with a group of 'convenient' friends (in this case, people from work).

Just before I went NC, I asked him if he would like me to leave him alone and if was happy with these new friends of his. In response, he told me angrily that he wasn't happy and that these people fulfilled about 20% of what he would like in terms of genuine friendships.

The guy I fell in love with wasn't like this (which was part how he presented himself and in part a construct in my mind).

The guy I fell in love with has reinvented himself to mirror the young friends he has now. This reinvention no longer resembles the guy I fell for in the beginning - the guy who, I believed, had similar values to me. And I'm not interested in his new reinvented self - the self he claimed was him just "growing up and being normal" now that he was in therapy.

I want someone with substance and similar values to me, not a shallow fake who has so little personality or originality that he has to copy a 25 year old idiot that he works with for his style and personality.

He is dead to me now.