Dear Shepard Moan:

I am sorry that you are going through this difficult time and I hope that you will be feeling much better soon. I want to place what you shared into categories that I will name. I will be adding the boldface feature selectively to the quotes in this post.:

1) His Wrongdoings, Apologies and Promises:

“Early in our relationship, my ex was sleeping with someone else. He confessed that to me and I forgave him… One day, I found out that he has been shitty talking about me to his female best friend and I also found out that he was still chatting with the girl he slept with, despite of him promised not to do it. He apologized and promised not to overshare our relationship to his best friend and to cut off this girl…My ex apologized to me for telling an incomplete stories to his female best friend.. He kicked me out from his flat mid night… few days after that he apologized …”-

– His apologies and promises do not indicate that he thinks that he did something wrong and intends to correct his wrongdoings. His apologies and promises are dishonestly manipulative, meant to resume the part of the relationship that he wanted to resume, with no consideration of what is true and what is untrue.

2) His Lies and Gaslighting of you:

“One day, when we were working together, I saw a chat from a girl name ‘A’ (different girl he slept with) with a flirty chat from him that he said it was not flirty and she just a friend… He called me insecure and I blamed myself at that moment to not trust him… every time I expressed my feeling to my ex, he just said that I was insecure. Many times when I communicated my insecurity, he dismiss my feeling… I felt like I was crazy for asking a bare minimum… He blamed me for looking at that video in his computer…Many times when I communicated my insecurity, he…  said that he didn’t want to help, he said I need to go to my therapist not him… The worst thing was his best friend asked him if the video was real and my ex said that I was a liar, they both called me ‘mental’. Meanwhile, I could swear that the video was real and I have many proofs of that. I was so broken to be called mental…I self blamed myself thinking that the reason why we broke up was because I checked his computer“-

– Gaslighting is  form of dishonest manipulation where he (the gaslighter) tells you  (the gaslit) that what you CLEARLY saw or heard, didn’t really happen: that what you saw, you didn’t see, that what you heard, you didn’t hear, that what you clearly understood, you understood wrong… that you are insecure, therefore only imagined that he did something wrong. Or that you were wrong about the way you found out the information about his wrongdoing, therefore .. there was no wrongdoing on his part.

The gaslighter leads the gaslit to doubt her own sanity, and to feel confused, guilty, broken, crazy and mental. And/ or a liar.

3) His gossiping and talking negatively about you behind your back:

“I found out that he has been shitty talk about me to his female best friend… My ex apologized to me for telling incomplete stories to his female best friend…”.

4) His cruelty (in addition to the above):

“he kicked me out from his flat mid night, he throw my clothes from his window. I was alone in a foreign country“.

5) His words: “All of his words calling me unattractive, moron, bitch, useless were dancing in my brain until now”.

6) Your Love:

“I really love him and I was doing everything I can to understand him. I just wanted to support him and made him happy. He was my first love and he came from a very difficult childhood and I just wanted to be there with him… I love him but I don’t like myself in our relationship… I feel really stupid for still loving someone who has been treating me that way… I feel so broken. But, I find it is hard to hate him.”-

– your first love story was a success in terms of your love for him: you felt empathy for him for having had a difficult childhood, you supported him emotionally and practically, you repeatedly forgave him, and more. You are a loving person: you have it within you to truly love another person.

Take this knowing with you as you move on and meet a man who will love you back: a man who will have empathy for you and treat you honestly, fairly and kindly, a man with whom you will like yourself and feel really smart for still  loving him. It can happen and it will.

nita