BlueLime
 Offline
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 10
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« on: December 11, 2016, 02:36:23 PM » |
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It's been over a month since I've last seen my ex, but there have been a lot of messages, emails, and attempts to contact me in between. I've tried to keep a no contact rule but it's hard. I do miss him.
We were together for just over a year after all. I was getting used to having him around.
I was dating for the first time after my husband passed away a couple of years before. He wasn't the first guy I'd dated since husband, but he was the first sticky relationship. I know I was entering from a space of vulnerability now. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.
Our first date was amazing. We met at a restaurant/pub and ended up talking for 7 hours, and not going home until they were closing and kicked us out. It felt like I'd found a kindred spirit, a soul mate. He listened, really listened that night. He cried a little while he was talking about his mom's death and about Robin William's death. He made me laugh so hard that I was sore the next day. I wanted to take it slow, and we set up our second date for several days later. He couldn't wait though, and asked me if we could just hang out sooner. Well, we did, and pretty soon we were spending tons of time with each other.
About a month into our relationship, it became clear that he has a lot of... .bad luck. Just can't get a break, it seemed. He was laid off, and then couldn't pay his apartment rent, or for a vet trip for his cat, or for gas. I'm really ashamed to admit it, but I loaned him money for rent. I made him sign a document and everything. I ended up paying for the bulk of our dates, we spent a lot of time at my place because his roommate situation was volatile, and I really felt like he was just having bad luck.
He got a few different jobs, got fired from them quickly. Got kicked out of his apartment. Started to stay with me and after not long stopped trying to find other sofas to surf. I was not ready to live with him or anyone, and I said so many times. His argument was that he had nowhere else to go. Family had already refused to help him, he'd lost many friends due to disagreements, and he had no money. This just seemed so dysfunctional, but I come from a dysfunctional family too, so I empathized.
I started to panic a little and things became tough. I was taking care of his cat, even though I’d never wanted a cat again (I’m super allergic), letting him store things in my garage, letting him sleep on my sofa or in my bed. My friends were concerned—we’d only known each other for about three months at this point. A day came when I told him he needed to find somewhere else to be for 5 days a week, then I downgraded that to two days a week, then just 24 hours. My boundaries that are normally quite good were all wishy washy.
Well, after about 10 of the 24 hours he wanted to come back. He couldn’t sleep in his car and was getting crabby. I drew the line and said no. That’s when we had our first major fight. He became very very angry and abusive, and I was scared. He wouldn’t even tell his best friend where he was, and he said things like he just needed to see me to show me what I was doing to him. I was so scared, a friend encouraged me to meet the police and get an escort back to my house, so they could make sure he wasn’t there. He wasn’t, but he showed up at my house at 3am, pounded on the door, and really terrified me. I refused to open the door but texted him that he had to go and stay away or I’d call the cops.
His reaction was that I was overreacting, that someone was putting me up to this silly behavior, that I had a blow up—and he blamed that on my not having enough “introvert time.” There were a lot of angry texts and Facebook messages, long voice mails, and he begged his best friend to help him reconcile with me.
I did think I loved him, and so I let his friend arrange a meeting. He acted contrite, understanding, blamed his behavior on not getting enough sleep, he said he didn’t want to lose me, I’m the best thing that ever happened to him, etc. etc. I think he was telling the truth, but again hindsight. He’d found another place to stay and wanted me to give him another chance.
Yeah, I did.
Within a few weeks, he was kicked out of that friend’s house. He was able to go stay with his brother then got himself kicked out of there. And ended up at my place again. I’d like to say he begged to be allowed to stay just for a while, but he didn’t. He just neglected to leave. For a while he’d leave during the day, and stay at a shelter or at his sister’s for a night or two, but then got kicked out of both of those places.
In the meantime, he wasn’t a good houseguest at all. He made messes and didn't respect my property, didn’t want me to go out with other friends or have them over, didn’t like that my friends didn’t like him. But he could be so sincerely loving and we had good times too. Fights were fiery and making up was a relief. It became a cycle that started to spiral faster and faster. Again, my biggest concern was that I didn’t have a choice in his living situation. He wasn’t getting work, so a lot of the financial burden was on me. Over the period of the year he borrowed thousands of dollars and only was able to pay me back a few hundred…and when he paid me back he’d have to borrow again within days. I’d try to talk about my needs, but would be very good and turning my concerns around on me. He’d say things like “how do you think I feel” and “I have nowhere else to go.” He’d cry and talk about how he doesn’t understand why he has such bad luck.
It got so I didn’t want to do the things I like to do—going out, going for walks, etc, because he didn’t want to, and I didn’t want to leave him alone at my house. I also didn’t want to always have to pay for him as well as me, and if we did anything that was necessary for me to pay his way too. His health was bad, and he blamed that on why he couldn’t get or keep a job.
I realized that I couldn’t be his girlfriend anymore, and broke up with him in September, but let him continue to stay on my sofa for another couple of months. Well, I tried to kick him out many times in the past several months, but it never worked. He’d talk his way back. In November, I couldn’t take it any more—we had a huge fight and I told him to go. I didn’t let him come back.
Now he is going back and forth between focusing on a smear campaign on me, on feeling sorry for himself because he got involved with an unstable woman who wasn’t able to commit, to being paranoid and angry that I have no empathy and was out to sabotage our relationship from the beginning. The last month is the subject for another several paragraphs. But I have not let him come back. I have blocked him on social media and blocked his phone calls.
I feel guilty about all of this, and like it was my fault. Maybe I’m throwing away my chance for happiness. My therapist is a great support, and she’s the one who mentioned borderline personality disorder to me. It’s amazing to me how he fits every single one of the symptoms, almost in a cliché way. So now I’m here trying to figure things out for myself and how to heal through all of this. AND how to not let it happen to me again.
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