I could use some support, I guess.

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

I've been on these boards for years now, and I have a lot of posts, and I guess I would have liked to be father along in my "healing" or whatever by now, but I am doing my best, and at the moment I find myself at a kind of crossroads. I feel like it could either mark a step forward or a step back.

I started another thread about the fact that my ex has recently published a story that is quite obviously based on our relationship. That's fine-he's free to write whatever he wants, and it was actually quite a good story in some ways, but reading it was a heavy experience for me. One thing that was so hard for me in the breakup, and really in the whole relationship, was that I never felt heard. He got to speak copiously and eloquently about his pain, and how our difficult relationship--an affair on both sides, though he left his wife--put him in a state of trauma and triggered his childhood memories of abuse. This was really one of the great topics of our relationship. And then the r/s ended with him secretly taking up with someone else, me learning this and deciding finally to leave my BF and ask him to take me back, and then him ghosting after a rocky few months of low contact.

Well, I kind of felt like I was talking to myself in that other thread, so I am starting another one. I hope that's not too obnoxious.

So, I read this story that my ex published, years later, and it is one-sided, naturally, and it minimizes the woman in the story to where she is kind of just a projection of the man's needs, which is maybe not so far from my ex's emotional reality. But anyhow, I reconnected with a deep pain of feeling invisible and not mattering. It's a pain that, not surprisingly, has been with me since childhood (for various reasons), and I had a few fitful nights and read the story over again a few times and finally sat down and wrote a long response to it. I was thinking of it as one of those letters you write and don't send.

I showed the letter to my T today, and I was surprised to hear that she thought sending it might actually be a good idea. It might help me to feel I'd had my say. That is with the caveat that I might get a very hostile response, or a cold response or no response at all. But, as my T said, this would be information, and maybe it would be helpful to me.

I don't know what I'm asking. I guess for opinions?

Or just support, even though I should be so much farther along?

Or for someone to bear witness--i.e. read my letter--so that I might feel heard even if I don't send it to him?

I have worked on the letter a bit since I posted it in the other thread, so I will copy it below in another post.

Thank you.

-steelwork

[steelwork]

I've been on these boards for years now, and I have a lot of posts, and I guess I would have liked to be father along in my "healing" or whatever by now, but I am doing my best, and at the moment I find myself at a kind of crossroads. I feel like it could either mark a step forward or a step back.

I started another thread about the fact that my ex has recently published a story that is quite obviously based on our relationship. That's fine-he's free to write whatever he wants, and it was actually quite a good story in some ways, but reading it was a heavy experience for me. One thing that was so hard for me in the breakup, and really in the whole relationship, was that I never felt heard. He got to speak copiously and eloquently about his pain, and how our difficult relationship--an affair on both sides, though he left his wife--put him in a state of trauma and triggered his childhood memories of abuse. This was really one of the great topics of our relationship. And then the r/s ended with him secretly taking up with someone else, me learning this and deciding finally to leave my BF and ask him to take me back, and then him ghosting after a rocky few months of low contact.

Well, I kind of felt like I was talking to myself in that other thread, so I am starting another one. I hope that's not too obnoxious.

So, I read this story that my ex published, years later, and it is one-sided, naturally, and it minimizes the woman in the story to where she is kind of just a projection of the man's needs, which is maybe not so far from my ex's emotional reality. But anyhow, I reconnected with a deep pain of feeling invisible and not mattering. It's a pain that, not surprisingly, has been with me since childhood (for various reasons), and I had a few fitful nights and read the story over again a few times and finally sat down and wrote a long response to it. I was thinking of it as one of those letters you write and don't send.

I showed the letter to my T today, and I was surprised to hear that she thought sending it might actually be a good idea. It might help me to feel I'd had my say. That is with the caveat that I might get a very hostile response, or a cold response or no response at all. But, as my T said, this would be information, and maybe it would be helpful to me.

I don't know what I'm asking. I guess for opinions?

Or just support, even though I should be so much farther along?

Or for someone to bear witness--i.e. read my letter--so that I might feel heard even if I don't send it to him?

I have worked on the letter a bit since I posted it in the other thread, so I will copy it below in another post.

Thank you.

-steelwork

[steelwork]

The letter:

I read your story in the [redacted] Review. I read it several times, actually. I’m writing after a few days of debating the wisdom of addressing this or anything else to you, but I don’t have to send it, so I guess I will not worry for now.
 
I felt very proud of you—not just for writing a good, honest, at times very beautiful story and getting it published, but for writing it at all. I am going on the assumption that the story was about or inspired by what I think it was about or inspired by, and for my part, I don’t think I could wrestle the feelings onto the page like that. I don’t think I could have found a through-line. I remember a lot of details—a lot of scenes and conversations and long-deleted emails—but they don’t add up to a clean story. Maybe that’s because of the kind of person I am: a person who makes everything more complicated than it needs to be.
 
Then again, I see that you accomplished what you did by tossing out the details and building a narrative out of what seem to be invented parts. And yet I recognize the emotional outlines of the story, which means you succeeded. But it sent me down a rabbit hole of wondering. How much should I read into the choices you made? There’s a difference between your story and my experience of our relationship—I mean, there has to be—but how much of that difference is a result of the requirements of narrative, of privacy, etc, and how much is an artifact of the difference between your perspective and mine? Where license was taken, what meaning should I impute?
 
Quote: “You don’t love that fat ___,” F- said. Pulled her halfway down the hall. Said he needed her. She didn’t know, would never know, how he needed her. He needed her to know everything.
 
When I read that, I remembered you saying you’d never felt so viscerally understood as you did by me. I wondered: have you forgotten feeling that way? Or did you change your mind later? Or were those lines one of the story’s inventions?

I found myself in conversation with the story. Who is R-? The woman you describe is made up of practical obligations and mild aggravations. She’s short and dark and smells like hay and lavender. We know the active relationship between F- and R-, unlike ours, is a one-or-two-week fling.
 
“Maybe it wasn’t love between them, but the start was there, something heavy about to tip over at the slightest touch.”
 
Why didn’t it tip over? Because F- yelled at her a few times? Is that enough to explain why their relationship didn't grow into something more?
 
What if R- was already involved with that fat ___, that bald old C-, when she met F-? What if C- cried and begged whenever she tried to leave him, and it broke her heart?
 
What if F- got impatient, or scared, and responded by lecturing R-, and periodically going silent?
 
What if those silences terrorized R-?

I guess if I have a criticism, it's this: the story has heart, a lot of empathy, but it's all for F-.
 
What if R- was afraid of what she was doing to F-? He told her all the time how loving her caused him pain. What if she began holding herself back because she didn’t want to do more damage than she already had?
 
What if F- kept going away and then coming back, and R- was so relieved every time he returned, but she didn’t know when it would happen again?
 
What if it scared R- to be put on a pedestal by F- and then knocked off and put on and knocked off? What if it made her feel like she wasn’t real to F-? What if being understood was as important for R- as it was for F-?
 
What if, to speak a forbidden truth, R- had a deep bond with C-, that fat bald ___—one that didn't make her heart pound when he was near or fill her with longing when they were apart, but that was real and not so simple to undo?
 
Now we are really in literary territory.
 
What if, among other things, C- had been the closest thing R- had ever had to a loving parent who would never abandon her?
 
What if R- was a veteran of her own war?
 
What if choosing between F- and C- felt to R- like choosing between love and family? Like being handed a cleaver and told to cut off her right hand or her left hand?
 
Of course, there is always another story you could have written, right? You always have to omit and change and emphasize and deemphasize—and not just in fiction, as I’ve learned over the long years of writing my book. You wrote the story that made sense to you, that was accessible to you, and it's a good true honest story. Some of the choices you made brought me to tears, because they were in their way truer than fact. Like making F- a veteran, with all that trauma only six months in the past. That made me think how your childhood was with you, doing its damage, controlling the way you felt and perceived.
 
The way F- misses the mountains where it all happened (and the way you deftly placed that ending in a paragraph about the Michigan roadside)--that sang out to me. Over the last couple of years, I’ve gained a new appreciation of how my childhood materializes in the present, in unbidden fear and plummeting sadness, how I yearn for it, how it colors my perceptions and makes me comfortable with some things and extremely uncomfortable with others. Of course, in my case, the hard parts of growing up are more difficult to name and thus easier to bury. No one beat me or told me I was possessed by the devil. It was a lot less direct than that, and hidden even (maybe especially) from me—which is maybe why I’m not good at trusting summaries, or the surface of things.
  
Anyhow. I’m guessing that writing that story was healthy for you. Maybe taming the messy details helped you turn the corner, or back away—like F- backs away from the window of R-'s trailer—and never look in again. I wish I could change what you saw when you looked in the trailer window, but then I don’t begrudge you any healing you can give yourself.

Here’s my stab at stripping things down to the things I’m certain of.

We were in love—not about to tip, and not for a week or two. But you needed me to be free before I was able to be free (and, incidentally, before you were free), and that started a bad feedback loop: you trying to pull me in and then getting frustrated and angry and going away and coming back; me increasingly paralyzed and skittish, wondering what you were capable of and, really, who you were. Trust was eroded on both sides, a bit at a time, even though the feelings never were. If the feelings had died out, it would have been simple. The situation became intolerable to you, and you needed it to stop, so you changed the story. "I decided it wouldn't work" is what you told me. By then, you had made yourself irreversibly angry with me. "I finally see it for what it is," you said. "If you think you're any kind of victim, you can go ___ yourself." I guess that did the job, but I wish you could have been kinder to me at the end, and less contemptuous. It was a very rough landing for me, and I guess I survived it by giving myself the understanding I needed.
 
The last thing I want to say about your story: R- may have been a stock player in a bit part, but at least F- knows she isn't what broke him so badly. I hope that means you’ve forgiven me, just as I’ve forgiven you.[/size]

[Veryconfuseduk32]

It must have been very difficult to read that story and it sounds like writing the letter must have really helped you to deal with some of the pain you felt. It's so difficult to know whether or not you should send the letter - but at least you have been able to get your feelings out in some way. Maybe that is more important than whether or not you choose to send it.

I don't think I can be of any help with this but I hope that at least knowing that someone is listening can be of some comfort.

[steelwork]

Thank you, veryconfused. It does help to hear from you.

At the risk of continuing to talk to myself, I wanted to share something that came up in therapy today. My T challenged me on the idea that my ex's habit of shaping the narrative was healthy. What I mean is that he seems to be able to shave the edges off things, make people into types, shape the story of what happened in a way that makes it tolerable to him. I feel like that has helped him move on, whereas I am forever stuck in a world of ambiguity and messy details that don't yield to easy understanding.

Her opinion was that he is not necessarily healing any better than I am. He's just scarring over. She cited (not that it describes us, but more as an analogy) the classic opposition between psychosis and psychopathy. With psychosis (she said, for instance, in a person with schizophrenia), there is a total lack of control, a vulnerability to the environment, whereas psychopathy implies an imposition of control on the environment.

I'm still not convinced my ex, with his ability to rewrite the script, is not in a better position than I am. After all, who is happier--a psychotic or a psychopath?

[Skip]

That’s the last thing I want to say about your story. R-may have been reduced to a stock player in a bit part

This sounds like a short story about his relationship with the neighbor - and he took liberties with the backstory to make it support the main theme. It's fiction, right?

If this is the case, is it reasonable to dissect the backstory or draw any conclusions from it about your relationship with him or his feelings about you?  For example, he characterized his PTSD as being a war injury - does that suggest that he has forgiven the abuse in his childhood? It probably suggests nothing.

Is it reasonable to hold his accountable to any standard for the backstory?

This incident is not unlike a member discovering a love letter to an SO's affair partner and reading what was being said about them... .those are always written to advance the affair, not provide an accurate historical accounting.

Or being a fly on the way in a someones therapy session... .where we can also be the backstory.

This stuff can be infuriating and hurtful - I'm sure it feels very hurtful - but is it something we should take seriously - or take personally?

There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently. ~ Robert Evans

[steelwork]

If this is the case, is it reasonable to dissect the backstory or draw any conclusions from it about your relationship with him or his feelings about you?

Oh yes, true, and that is a maddening ambiguity here. It isn't reasonable, or actionable, there will always be plausible deniability, and there is no way for me to tell where the inspiration ends and the invention begins. And then, where there is invention, there's no way to tell what is intentional, for the purpose of storytelling, and what represents him telling himself a story.

As he has done in real life. As he described it to me. This is his version of cognitive behavioral therapy.

He gave the neighbor some key attributes of me, and made the emotional dynamics recognizable--i.e. they resemble the story he was telling me on one channel: that I was a healing object that disappointed him. He wrote the story in such a way that only the man had a full inner life, and that is how he treated me.

It was a rhetorical device (in my letter, I mean) to fill the gaps in the story with my own never-acknowledged truth.

[steelwork]

For example, he characterized his PTSD as being a war injury - does that suggest that he has forgiven the abuse in his childhood? It probably suggests nothing.

Actually, what it suggests to me is that the trauma from his past is most easily explained to a reader as combat PTSD. It's a powerful metaphor.

[Skip]

there is no way for me to tell where the inspiration ends and the invention begins. And then, where there is invention, there's no way to tell what is intentional, for the purpose of storytelling, and what represents him telling himself a story.

So if you want to have a postmortem discussion about your relationship with him, this is probably the worst possible venue. One, for the reasons your describe. Two, because it will instantly put him (anyone) on the defensive.

Putting this venue aside, do you want to have a postmortem discussion with him? Do you think the two of you can do that constructively?

[steelwork]

No, I guess I don't want a postmortem discussion. Those never worked. His feelings and traumas always dominated. He published this story where he knew I would see it, and I would like to let him know what I think of it and all the easter eggs he put in it, and I would like him to have to hear what it was like for me--all of it--in a way he would never tolerate. (Hence the preemptive blocking and freezing out and ghosting.) I would like to communicate my truth, and to do it with empathy. If he wants to engage on those terms... .well, I'll eat my hat, I guess!

[Skip]

I would like to communicate my truth, and to do it with empathy.

Putting BPD aside, does anyone want to hear the other persons truth after a relationship is scrape-pilled?  Is part of the ending to end the debate over the conflict narrative? After all, if you we couldn't clear it in the relationship when people were motivated, how do we clear it after.

Relationships can end with us feeling unheard or us wanting an answer to something... .it's that lack of closure we all often talk about... .it eats at us and haunts us in dreams. We hold out hope the other person will resolve it or accept our need... .they rarely do in a way that satisfies us.

And many of us have done the same to others in our lives... .we know we can't satisfy what they are looking for.

[steelwork]

Well, my T made some good points in favor of giving myself a voice. As I said, I was a bit surprised.

[Skip]

Will it be a "voice" for you if he rejects it, counters it, or ignores it? Most ex partner would (BPD or not).  Would you be satisfied to just have it in his environment. That he might see that you have a different narrative to his? You're not validating his position?

What was T thinking. Might help others to hear his take.

[steelwork]

What was T thinking. Might help others to hear his take.

One point she made was that any reaction (or no reaction) would be information. If he replied with coldness or hostility, or if he didn't reply at all, that would tell me something.

The tone of the story was very different than the position he had staked out at the end, which was blame and vilification. I've had a lot of aanxiety about whether I was "wrong," I guess, about him, and a lot questions about whether he was right to blame me. I think that's pretty common, right? But this kind of not trusting my memories or my perceptions is an ongoing issue for me. I have a really hard time trusting my own viewpoint.

So that was one point, and it should be said that I'm years out from the events. If this had come up when I was a month out, or a year, her take might be different.

The other point is kind of hard to communicate. T and I have a kind of shorthand at this stage. She mentioned a story I wrote when I was about 7. There's a drawing of a cat, and off to one side, a cross-looking face of a person. The story goes:

Once ther was a cat her owner didint like her he only want her to catch mice. She liked mice and

Forget it

That was so me. I was always so pessimistic about getting my feelings across, and there are a lot of boring biographical reasons for that. I had a really really weird childhood, with a couple of iconoclastic parents who did not acknowledge that children had different needs than adults, and one effect was to make me feel like a lot of my emotions were not welcome. So I think T felt it might be empowering for me, in this case, to NOT say "Forget it."

Incidentally, there's a website called voicelessness.com, owned by a psychologist named Richard Grossman, which is dedicated to the plight of children of narcissists, and one of his ideas is that we become "little voices"--that we don't expect to be heard, or feel we deserve to be heard. His essays might be helpful to people if that rings a bell.

www.voicelessness.com/essay.html

So I don't know if other members can take much from that, unless they have the same issues with voicelessness.

Anyhow, does that answer the question, Skip?

[nuthereggsheller]

A post-mortum discussion might not do any good, but you do write well... .how about writing your own private sequel of sorts?  He wrote his version, why not write yours?  Then later, you can decide if you want to keep it to yourself, or if it would be at all productive to think about publishing. It might feel to retaliatory to your ex to publish, but just writing it might be therapeutic for you.  What do you think?

[steelwork]

A post-mortum discussion might not do any good, but you do write well... .how about writing your own private sequel of sorts?  He wrote his version, why not write yours?  

Thank you for saying so, nothereggsheller.

I meant it when I said I was impressed with my ex's ability to wrestle all those feelings into a story. Maybe I don't have the energy for that, or the mindset to stylize things in the way he did, which to some degree is necessary for a story. (The way I feel about what happened, it would take novel at minimum to do it justice.) So my little rhetorical swing with the list of hypotheticals about Rhonda--that was my version of a sequel. It wouldn't mean much to another audience, but it would to him if I sent it.

[steelwork]

All of a sudden I'm feeling pretty angry about this. He writes this story about a traumatized man seeking comfort from a woman and then taking his gentle leave from her. Meanwhile, he was absolutely brutal to me. Abominable. He knew I would see this story. He could not reach out and warn me? This story makes it seem like he's seen the light and stopped blaming me for his pain, and het he has not done a single thing to make things right with me. Or am I supposed to take this as his cowardly peace offering, OR WHAT?

[kc sunshine]

I agree with nuthereggsheller-- write your own story! Perhaps it can even be about reading his story and the complexity of your response. I for one would love to read it!

[steelwork]

Thanks, guys. I really don't want to write that story--or not now, anyhow. I have way too much on my plate, and nothing to gain from it.

[patientandclear]

Hey there SW. I hear a lot of pain and I relate.

A friend of mine once counseled me about the end of my BPD r/ship that I would need to give up the hope that my ex would have the same story as I do about what happened and why. That's just not how the end of a dysfunctional relationship goes.  They ARE telling a distorted story to themselves and it is for a reason. They don't have an interest in sharing a different version that places more blame and responsibility on them and most importantly, makes what happened feel like a huge unbearable loss.

I hear you about claiming your voice. But picking up on Skip's comments, it seems to me your draft is a blend of your own voice, and your interpretation of what he wrote, which might be off or he may find it off. I think the latter detracts from the former. Writing him your own version of the r/ship and its ending isn't you messing around in his voice, it's you using yours. Whereas comments on what he wrote nearly inevitably will cause him to feel you missed the mark at least somewhat on what he actually thinks and feels.

If you choose to write and send, maybe it could just jump off from
"I read your story. It caused me to reflect and I find there are things I'd like to tell you about what happened and what it meant to me." Then you could go to your voice without essentially editing his.

[Sunfl0wer]

Idk, seems pretty common for our ex's to have a different reality.

Sometimes they are saying we were abusive, to police, when in fact, they were.
Sometimes they are spreading rumors on social media to anyone who will listen, of things unbelievable or just plain untrue.

The story is fictional.
You seem attached to giving it meaning to you.
Sounds like you want to mean something to him.

I would start looking there.
Give yourself the care and recognition, and acceptance you seek.
Radically Accept that he has his perception, you have yours, and seek RA over this.

Depending on another's perception of you in order to feel ok is likely going to lead to frustration.

Just my .02 cent.

[Sunfl0wer]

Just felt like saying... .

I was mute for a huge portion of my life growing up.  Without a voice, or anyone who cared about it.  Having a voice is a really huge thing for me.

However, it is not reliant on anyone.  
Others can still have their reality and me mine.
Just cause I have a voice and speak it does not mean others will necessarily share my reality, or agree with my words/version.

So like atm, am sharing my voice here, my reality.

You do not have to agree, that is ok, have your own perception.
I still had my voice, nothing is diminished or strengthened for me if you leave this info or take it.  I'm not dependent on you sharing my reality.  Yet, still used my voice.

[Skip]

it seems to me your draft is a blend of your own voice, and your interpretation of what he wrote, which might be off or he may find it off. I think the latter detracts from the former. Writing him your own version of the r/ship and its ending isn't you messing around in his voice, it's you using yours.

I think this is a very good observation.

I remember reading some years ago that in broken relationships of any type, it is not productive to go back with the person you had conflict with and try to reconcile history - in large part because the "different realities" are part of the old struggle and its not constructive to relitigate something you couldn't resolve during the relationship.  

patientandclear's point, that you need a clinical and balanced narrative for this relationship in order to have peace in your heart makes sense.  I know that I have drafted narratives of what I thought the reality was and have kept them on the computer and upedited them as I learned and grew after the relationship.  I have shared them with my support network and at times have been told to dial something back (either about myself or my ex).

The point is, that I have collected a very balanced narrative of the relationship in time that paints a pretty accurate picture of the relationship, its failings, my ex, and me. It helped me immensely in choosing a new partner, and in adjusting my expectations in  relationships and examining my own level of differentiation.

[steelwork]

Yes--I really did write that letter for me, the same way I've written dozens of letters. I've always in the end been glad I didn't send them as a "last word" or parting message, because they are never the last word. My feelings and thoughts evolve.

I am once again leaning back toward not sending, thanks to this discussion--even though my expectations are at this point so close to nil (they will never be absolute nil) that the risks are tolerable, I think.

One thing I do want to say: the letter was not literary criticism. I think I made it clear that a good, honest story (literature) can be written from a variety of perspectives and can and must diverge from (themselves necessarily subjective) "real" accounts. Still, as a wise friend once observed to me (she is a novelist and a creative writing teacher): "What's wrong with your writing is what's wrong with you." In his story there is a lot of empathy and compassion, but only for the man. This is bad for a story, and bad for a person.

At the same time, I'm not holding him "accountable" for what he wrote or or what it suggested (what would that even mean?), nor am I insisting on my version of events. I used what he wrote as a jumping-off point for supplying another dimension, a voice that never got heard in the relationship or after--a rhetorical device, as I said. He would have understood that in a way that I don't think I am able to get across in a forum like this, because of our history.

Sunflower: thank you for your reply. A voice is still a voice, even if no one hears it but you. You know how, when a loved one dies, sometimes you might write them a letter and float it down the river? Maybe this idea was something like that. Like a ritual with just enough materiality to give it some extra magic.

But I think the important thing is that I've had some time to think about WHY I want my voice heard. I'm so glad I opened this discussion with you all.

[steelwork]

Any Hüsker Dü fans here? I keep thinking of that song, "Never Talking To You Again":


There are things that I'd like to say
But I'm never talking to you again
There's things I'd like to phrase some way
But I'm never talking to you again

I'm never talking to you again
I'm never talking to you
I'm tired of wasting all my time
Trying to talk to you

I'd put you down where you belong
But I'm never talking to you again
I'd show you everywhere you're wrong
But I'm never talking to you again

I'm never talking to you again
I'm never talking to you
I'm tired of wasting all my time
Trying to talk to you
Talking to you

[Etc]

[kc sunshine]

That song is PERFECT!