Hi all,
I'm new to this site and I guess I'm just here for some support and clarity. I'll just dive right in... A little over a year ago I met a handsome and charming man on an online dating site. We chatted for about a week and then I agreed to meet him for dinner. We had an amazing time and dove head first into a relationship. There were red flags from the start and I won't say that I wasn't cautious as I had been in a relationship a few years prior with an NPD, so I wasn't completely oblivious to this behavior. However, he was always kind and thoughtful and empathetic (the first 2 months anyways) so I ignored the red flags and my gut... because I thought that I was being too critical. He wasn't narcissistic, so it must be in my head. I caught him in lies from the beginning, but he always had a story to explain it away and back them up and made me feel like a
PLEASE READ person for questioning him. He proposed within 4 months. I said yes. I knew it was too soon, but things were still going relatively well so I didn't want to decline and ruin what I thought could be something great, I just figured long engagement. Everything happened quickly and in hind sight I don't know what I was thinking. He has 3 kids ages 4-10 and a 20 y/o daughter that abruptly moved across the country to live with him 3 weeks after we started dating. I believe she also has BPD among some other issues. I have 2 teenagers. So we blended families, and I moved in with him at his urging. I still had an apartment, as my lease wasn't up for a few more months. Then Covid happened. I was laid off and my landlord was able to rent my place and let me out of my lease. So I was "all in". I thought that this would ease some of his fears of me leaving him while he was at work (because that fear had started happening). But things only got worse. There were countless lies, accusations, and oh the stories he would tell! The first really awful fight we had, he told me that he regretted ever meeting me and that I had ruined my kids lives (because their father and I had divorced). He told me to pack my
PLEASE READ and get out or he would start throwing my stuff into the yard. This is literally 2 weeks after re-leasing my place. As I sit here writing this, I have no idea how this particular argument had even started. I somehow talked him down and we went back to "normal". But that had left a scar that I tried to get passed, but was always lingering in the back of my mind. Like when were my kids and I going to get thrown out next? The mood swings got progressively worse and his resentment towards me for "taking over his house". After begging me to be there 24/7 and to make it my own... I know having your house clean, laundry, cooking, and loving your kids like they were my own must have been horrible for him.And should we talk about sex? If we went more than 24 hours without any sex...look out, you would have thought it had been 3 months, and there comes the silent treatment. We are both in our mid 40's and when I said that I thought it was pretty normal for us to go from having sex 2-3 times a day in the beginning to every day or every other day, he was convinced that was the beginning of the end. So at the 11 month mark we go on a family trip, myself him and his 3 little kids and my 15 y/o daughter. Everything is fine the first 3 days. The last day he is giving me the silent treatment all day, when I ask about dinner plans all hell broke loose. He calls me a whore and I retaliate by telling him his ex is so much happier now that she isn't with him (his daughter had said this to me earlier in the day when she could see he was in a mood). That was a trigger and it ended with him trying to take the ring off from my finger. I was on the balcony and I said "I will give you this ring back when I can prove I've given it to you". He continued to try and get it off from my finger so I said I was going to throw it over the balcony if he didn't stop. He said "if you throw that ring over, you're going with it". At that point I believed him, and gave him the stupid ring. (Mind you, our kids are all in the condo). He packed his kids up and left me and my daughter there, 6 hours from home. My 18 y/o son had to come get us.
I got home the following evening, stayed with my best friend and her and her husband came and moved me out the next morning. Put everything in storage and couch surfed for 2 weeks until I could find and move into a new place. We didn't communicate for 3 weeks and then he text me in a rage because one of my sons friends had seen him out and gave him the finger. I text him back and then he ended up calling after he had calmed down. We ended up on the phone for hours. I just wanted to know how and why he would do that to us. He said that he thought I was going to leave him so he was going to do it first...we reconciled for a couple of weeks and then he went into a rage and I left his house. Another 2 weeks passed and we talked a few times, but at that point he had replaced me already, denying it for a while. But when I pressed (because I knew he had) he split me black and told me he couldn't talk to me anymore. All the while telling me he still loves me and I'll always have his heart. That was 2 weeks ago and we are still NC.
There are a million other details, but this is too long as it is. I actually feel a little bit better just writing all of this out. I have been romanticizing this relationship , but why? When we had our last few weeks of conversation, he was clearly blaming me for most of the issues in our relationship. He did take some blame and would say he's sick of being so angry all of the time.
He told his co-workers (and I'm sure his mother and brother) that I punched him in the head on the balcony...A) that didn't happen. And B) I'm sure he didn't mention threatening to throw me over the balcony in that story.
I don't know what I'm looking for in this board, just to vent, I guess. My brain knows I shouldn't miss him, but my heart is still stuck in the honeymoon stage. It's hard to accept that I could be replaced so quickly and even harder to think that he could have had her lined up while we were still together.
And the more I read, the more I think if I had only known what I was dealing with, maybe I could have helped him, or known how to react or not react. Should I be thankful that I only lost a year of my life ?