A few days ago I started a video journal where I explained the relationship end to end. I basically blurted all of the thoughts out that I repeated internally on a daily basis to arrive at the same conclusion. I let myself get upset when I spoke about particularly painful parts of the relationship, or parts that I'd "done wrong". Each journal has been about 20 mins long.
I watched the first one back 3 times. Hearing myself explain what happened, and seeing my own emotional responses to the situations was astounding. It showed me a person that (if I do say so myself) was caring, intelligent, well spoken and put together. It also allowed me to hear the absurdity of the situation repeated back to me and it nudged me along to a point where I could accept what I was saying as fact. Instead of having to arrive to this conclusion dynamically every day, they now feel like more permanent realizations, and they lay the foundation for me to have subsequent more meaningful realizations that enable further progress on top of this.
When I look back at the first video, I'm able to respond to this with thoughts such as "you really went the extra mile there", "she was very ungrateful for what you've done", "wow, that is unacceptable", "those aren't things a girlfriend should do", "yes, I can confirm that this IS NOT normal".
It's the most progress I've made in the shortest amount of time, I wanted to share it in case it works for others. Seeing myself get upset over some of the absurdity that happened made me realize that I've been stuck in a loop for too long, it was pretty shocking. Most of all, it showed that the biggest crime I committed was believing that I wasn't good enough for this person and subsequently trying harder and harder to prove my worth to someone that was clearly incapable of valuing me in any real way. About 2 minutes of content in those video journals were more in depth than any conversation I ever had with my ex.
I also realized that by date THREE and FOUR I'd seen Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde respectively. Date 3 she went home crying, Date 4 I was the best guy in the world and love bombed publicly. Date 5 we spoke about getting into a relationship. Date 6 she withdrew after going home for thanksgiving for 3 days. Date 7 we were in a relationship. Date 8 we planned a holiday on new years. Date 9 she cancelled it. Date 10 we booked it again but for March. Yada yada 6-7 months of this, lots of arguing, lots of surreal situations and hot/cold behaviour and feeling guilty. Somehow I believed all of this was "anxiety"... because she told me it was
It's amazing how date three/four are basically a microcosm of how the entire relationship was going to go.
The insanity started early and hard and was unmissable, this did not creep up on me.
I'm impressed at how much damage was caused and how quickly it happened, and somehow I thought all of this was my fault. She managed to melt my brain. By the fourth date I was done for! I remember thinking about how wrong it all felt at the time but I was already addicted and pursued it and didn't stop. Within 6 months I felt like she had my soul. I'm so glad I had wherewithal to understand that the only way to make this stop was to push her away hard.
It's only been a few days since I started the video journal, and now when I look back at that first video, I see a lost person that seems so unsure about the thoughts they're having and hung up on confirming whether things really were surreal or not. It's a nice bucket of cold water on the fantasy I had and just how distant the fantasy was from the reality.
