After a heck of a weepy, angry, weepy, numb week (i.e. confused), while also learning of new things with my uBPDxh and just trying to process it all ... .I happened across this tonight and had a
moment. Sometimes we've got to rip off the rose-colored glasses and see it for what it is. Just wanted to share this with you.
www.gettingpastyourpast.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/discount-it-all-2/#more-5857Discount It AllFebruary 20, 2010 by Susan J. Elliott When I was still married to the mother of all bananaheads, someone told me he was a pathological liar. I just stared at this person, unable to speak. The reason it left me speechless was 1) who SAYS that about your husband? and 2) I feared it was true.
There were so many things he said that were simply untrue and couldn’t be true because if they were true then a second set of things he said could NOT be true. It was head spinning stuff.
Upon our break-up a year or so later, I was so lost. He said I love you and will never love anyone as much as you. Yet, he was seeing someone else. He said I don’t want to hurt you while doing a lot of things that caused me excruciating pain. He said I care about the boys more than anything else in the world while doing many things that hurt them. He was, for a time, obviously sleeping with both her and me. He tried to come back to me and yet never quite gave her up.
He told me lie upon lie upon lie upon lie. Half of it had to be lies because it simply didn’t comport with the other half of anything he said. His words and actions did not match. At all. Ever.
My head was spinning. He keyed into certain things that I believed about us: we were together a long time; we had 3 kids together; we were friends before we were a couple; we had a long term history that went back to high school and no one else was going to match; we just bought a dream home together; didn’t I think he WANTED it to work?
When he said THAT set of stuff I believed him because it MATCHED what I believed and what I fervently wanted to think was true and MOST important.
When he said the second set of things: what was wrong with me; why it would never work out; why I forced him into the arms of someone else; why he was confused about whether or not he really loved her instead of me, I simply ignored it.
I ignored the second set because it WAS NOT WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR.
About 2 months into our separation someone said to me, “The truth shall ring true.” It was as if they had taken a giant gong and just smashed me over the head with it. You know why? Because NOTHING the ex said rang true. It was all a bunch of garbage. The only reason why anything he said ever rang true was because I wanted to fool myself into believing he meant it. But on its face? Nothing rang true.
Liar liar pants on fire.
I said to my therapist, “hoo boy, I don’t know WHAT to believe anymore…”
And she said, simply, “Believe none of it. Discount it all.”
WHAT?
And she repeated, “When you don’t know what to believe because a person is saying two different things or their actions are incongruous with their words, discount it all.”
Instead of trying to tease out the truth (as if there was any) or parse out what he was saying as I had been doing, just throw the whole thing out the window (followed, hopefully, by him).
It was a sad, sad day but that’s what I did in order to keep my sanity. And things got better after that. Once I learned to discount it all, all of it lost its power to upend me.
About a year later I was seeing a guy who was a sweet, funny, charming, exceedingly confused man. We had started seeing each other in a rebound (for both of us) situation. And while we would have fantastic times together and loved each other to death, he would get into these funks where he would be confused about his ex. Should he call her? Should he give it another try? Yes, she was horrible but they were together 3 years. Should he just forget those 3 years? He was getting in deep with me…was it too soon?
He would say “I love you” and “I’m so grateful for you” and “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me…” after a long and intensely wonderful weekend. He’d be smiling and hugging me and kissing me as he walked me out to my car. Telling me I was the very best thing since the folded napkin. We’d had magical and fun weekends whereas he described a relationship with his ex where arguments and misery abounded. He always told me how much fun I was…how funny and fun to be with and how happy I made him.
That night he’d call his ex and an hour later be on the phone to me saying how confused he was and perhaps we shouldn’t see each other any more. My balloon would burst into a million little pieces.
After a few months of this…I would sit with all the wonderful things he said and try to parse it out and tease out the truth…I was sure, very sure, that he DID love me and he WAS grateful for me and he WAS confused about his ex.
How to sort it all out?
Simple. Discount it all.
I had to get to the point where I simply discounted everything.
Guy B was NOT a liar. He was an honestly confused young man. I believed him when he told me whatever it was he told me.
But that didn’t make things any better than if he was lying through his teeth. Because Set A and Set B still did not mesh. Whether they were lies or just a product of his confusion, there was still a lot of stuff that didn’t make sense.
There were too many inconsistencies and incongruence going on there.
I honestly believed he was not lying to me and not playing me. Part of him was torn and part of him was incapable of making a firm decision and sticking with it. And we were a rebound couple, getting together on the heels of both of us breaking up with someone. I had broken off a 6 month romance that I was completely done with. He had broken off a 3 year relationship that he wasn’t quite done with. There was a difference.
To move on from him, I had to discount it all. It hurt and it was hard but it made no sense. And trying to live with the nonsense was causing my head and my heart to ache.
Breaking it off with him (or rather resisting contact later on) was one of the hardest things I ever had to do because it was so good between us…but I couldn’t live with the ex confusion and his dips into “What do I do now?” It drove me crazy that he could not or would not make a decision.
So I used the “discount it all” method with him. It was hard but it worked. I had to discount all the wonderful stuff he said because it did not jibe with the non-wonderful stuff. He wasn’t a liar. He just didn’t know what he wanted, his words and actions were not consistent and therefore, I had to discount it all.
If someones words do not match their other words or if their words and actions are not consistent, discount it all.
Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to figure which end is up. Discount it all.
Don’t feed your own denial by trying to hang on the parts you WANT to hear, listen for all of it and then, discount it all.
If someone does something that makes NO sense whatsoever, discount it all.
It hurts and its hard but in the end, it makes for an easier time of moving on once and for all.
Be good to you today. Discount it all.
