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Carley

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  • #390476
    Carley
    Participant

    Anita,

    I see the weather has been very hard on us all. I’m glad you’re still here, always ready to listen and give, but at the same time I also hope you’re safe and well offline amidst such extreme circumstances. Do get enough rest, eat well and keep in touch. You deserve a sanctuary instead of all these insanity.

    Thank you for kindly re-reading, summarizing, and relating to my posts. It’s both a relieving and grim surprise for me to know that you also have gone through a similar thing. Children rely a lot on their parent’s reassurance as a solid foundation for growing up. If we’re deprived of such foundation, the adulthood built on top of it may be, in many subtle ways, crooked. I’ve seen it manifest in the silliest and humblest of ways in some of my friends – and at times, in the most destructive of ways. The formula is the same.

    I’m glad you’ve opened up and dissolved that stubborn glue. Is it too farfetched to say you emit a loving motherly-vibe around you despite seemingly having quite the critical mother? I haven’t successfuly passed my test in regards to parental issues, but I imagine it must’ve taken a lot of courage and perseverence to overcome. Fixing the roots is always trickier than trimming the split ends.

    One of the most interesting patterns I’ve seen lately are children who spend their childhood in the least optimal of family circumstances – deprived of love, ignored by society who saw them being oppressed, riddled with emotional turmoils – to later grow up into an adult that is the exact opposite of the adult their parents are. In these cases, it almost looks like it’s their own way of taking revenge to how their parents might’ve mistreated them. Such shedding of childhood trauma is most impressive.

    I’ve digressed. Thank you for sticking with me ’til the end. I must say, though, it’s refreshing to read a story about you after seeing countless threads where you tend to others’ stories.

    Stay safe, Anita!

    #390441
    Carley
    Participant

    Two years since I ‘ve been away. Thank you for your kind response Anita – and hello to those who’ve just stumbled onto this thread now that I’ve bumped it up. I’m here to write the long overdue update since I’ve contemplated the replies here – hopefully to close the thread with a good note as well.

    Since details must’ve waned off after so long, I suppose we don’t have to go through the nails again. Tl;dr, I was a mistress to a married man, and was wondering whether it’s good to tell the wife and how to best deal with the guilt.

    To answer Anita’s latest reply: “I wonder about the nature of your relationship with this man since our March 2017 communication, what you mean by being removed from that environment.” –

    I’ve since cut off contact with him, removed our social media mutuals, and moved from my initial house.

    During my absence on this forum, I met a loving boy who became my boyfriend, to whom I’m also very open with since day one. He knew about this affair and was very supportive of my recovery since I seemed to have an unresolved trauma that manifested in the ways I handled our disagreements.

    Eventually, we decided to meet up with someone who belonged in the religious organization where I met the man in question. He was the head organizer, as well as the lead pastor. There’s this one belief in my religion that if ‘one were to heal, they must first open up.’ And that’s exactly what I did: I came clean. The pastor also shared his views.

    Apparently the entire organization had had their own suspicions of the man’s affair for a long while – just that they didn’t know that one of the girls was me. The wife ALSO had been suspecting the affair – but didn’t confront me, nor divorce the man in question. Their relationship remained intact though the wife had also confessed her worries in the marriage to the same pastor.

    I was fearfully ready to receive repercussions – whatever it might be – but surprisingly the pastor was very fair and accepting. He thanked me for confessing, gave consolation, and reassured that should any further mediation is required for the married couple, he would be the one to mediate – especially since the organization is quite tight-knit, and everyone shares their struggles with the pastor. He would only require me to come should the married couple need a collective resolve, which didn’t happen and I never heard from them afterwards. That night, I cried a lot in front of him and my boyfriend, but also felt the guilt washing off after a long period of it sticking like glue.

    What the pastor said that might’ve rhymed with the replies here was, non-verbatim: “past the mistake, it is most ideal to distance yourself from things or people who might have damaging qualities to others. You do not have to be the villain, nor hero in every story. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone has to hold themselves accountable and better themselves. If you’ve done your responsibilities, confessed your sin and moved on – it is good. Whether or not he repents, it is not up to you, nor his wife, nor anyone else’s – it is entirely his responsibility.

    Looking back to this thread and re-reading my own words, I notice a good amount of self-disgust and guilt through the words. The guilt is well-deserved for what I’ve done remains a mistake, but I no longer feel it creeping back up and gouging me inside-out like it used to. It allowed me to recognize and address my own capabilities to do good and bad things, objectively. I’d like to think that I’ve grown a little bit since then.

    And for this reason, I feel like opening up about one’s struggles is good in order for recovery to safely slid into view (at least for someone like me). Had I not shared my mistakes here on TinyBuddha, and had I not been open to my boyfriend and the pastor, I felt like it might’ve done me much worse by suppressing all of the negative feelings.

    For those who’ve replied to this thread and/or are now reading this, thank you very much. I hope you’re doing especially well, Anita, since I’ve learned a lot from your compassion and understanding. I’ve now just come around to read the recent threads made by others and saw you’re still very much active in writing – something that easily sets you apart from the others. Wish I could send you a gift, if not give a huge warm hug.

    #293811
    Carley
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    “When he loses one person (you), he is not going to change so to win you back- set his life straight, do right by everyone he harmed, come clean with everyone- no, he is going to “win” another woman instead, and still, another. He will make up for the loss of you.”

    Sadly that is the truth. It’s apparent to me now that the responsibility does not lie within me or the other women. If he has no will to change, he will stay the way he is, and I have had quite enough of him blaming others for his own infidelity, for his own lack of morals.

    Over time I’ve learned to treat this kind of problem as a land mine; not really serving any positive purpose other than reflecting on your own sense of awareness. It may look tempting at its best, but it’s not going to do anyone any good in the long run. I’m happy to say I’ve known better during my hiatus, and while I’m actively avoiding such problems now, shall there be anyone with a similar problem like me, I hope they can find the responses to my original post as helpful as it was to me. With this, I would like to thank Inky, Anita and Elisabeth for their insightful responses to my otherwise boring thread.

    I will post an update to how things have turned out for the better, now that I have removed myself from the environment.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Carley.
    #292539
    Carley
    Participant

    Hi Lostcatlady!

    Being an introvert myself, I can’t help but feel very familiar with the things you’re going through.

    I’m 23F, I feel like there’s a lot to be explored, and yet at the same time I feel like I lack the will/power/persistence/hustle/what-you-may-call-it, to pursue what I desire. I crave the winnings, but I lack what I need to get there – or at least I felt like it.

    Passing days with this sort of feeling is uncomfortable and damaging in so many subtle ways. Unfortunately, this also comes with an added pressure of comparing self to others.  On the surface, we may pass as an okay person but under the surface we’re beating ourselves, our ego and self-esteem constantly on the line.
    I’m not at all resourceful enough to determine whether this is slipping into more of a clinical problem or “still in our heads” type of thing, thus I know no absolute fix. However I can put this here for you to determine whether it’s right or wrong: it’s not our life that is bad, but the way we think of it, is.

    I know of a colleague who, according to her, “has had her life practically destroyed within days.” It involved crimes, lack of skills, lack of money, lack of judgement. She claimed she had nothing left; no one to talk to, no family to return to, no money and no skills to earn it. At some point in her life, she was in jail for things she didn’t do. But over time, she learned to let it go, accept how life had bailed out on her, and finally start a brand new page because it had worn her out for too long. She forced herself into rehab, into communities, trying desperately to fit in and be accepted. She may have flaws and unpleasant past, but she accepted herself and tried to live it out. Not so surprisingly, years afterwards, she earned her happiness. Previously she had no family to live with – now she can go day by day knowing she had found a new family in her friends. She had no partner but that’s okay. She had very little money but that’s okay. She may not have everything in her grasp just like everyone else, but that’s okay. She’s still trying to fix herself because she has something to aim for.

    I am in no way comparing your problem to hers, I simply wanted to show you how she fixed her problems. My feedback may be more towards subtly changing the way we think (abstractly), and not the concrete solution to an immediate fix. But I think we can have several key points from there to note:

    – Comparing yourself to others is no-no. Some proceed in their lives much faster than us, and some much slower. What we need to understand is that we all have our own struggles and pace. As I’ve said, you may appear okay on the surface but not many people know what’s going on inside you. The same applies to others – you see them in their grand stature with their positive outcomes in life but no one knows what they’ve gone through to get to that point, what hardships they’ve put up with and how many people were there for them when they’re at their worst. Seeing them as perfect is a flaw in itself. Every one of us may do better without constantly checking our neighbors’s progress and determining where we’re at based on that.

    – We can all agree on at least one thing: accepting and loving yourself do absolutely no harm (unless you’re over-loving yourself and turn narcissistic~). We may have many flaws that we wish to fix, but constantly beating ourselves because of it is rather cruel, isn’t it? One thing I’ve learned from that fellow friend of mine, was that we can try viewing ourselves in third-person POV: see ourselves as a child in distress. You see every other child able to speak, run, and play on their own. Then you see this particular child, the same age, who’s still unable to walk, let alone run or speak. Would you spank her and tell her she’s not good enough? Would you critic her and let her be, all on her own trying to figure things out while not knowing how to do it? I believe not. We would support and encourage her instead so that she can be as advanced as others, and while we’d be able to do that to some random child, certainly we can do that to ourselves too.

    – Do try and start acting things out without thinking too much. I often find it really helpful to imagine myself already winning something – it motivates me to keep on going, and motivations may work differently with different people. Try and see if something stimulates you unlike any other thing has, and figure out the formula. Then don’t think about the consequences of doing the thing you love – just do it.

    – If we’re feeling unaccomplished in the midst of seemingly ‘successful’ people, either we extract ourselves from the surroundings and try no to think of them anymore, or try and be like them. Anyhow, if we’re literally ‘alone’ as we call it, nobody else would care about what we do, right? We can make a fool of ourselves and everyone would still be too busy perfecting their own lives, so we might as well plan a route and make an escape to a better life. Life doesn’t change on its own – if we change, life changes too. My friend asked this question to herself in front of a mirror too many a times: “Does anyone give a f*ck?” and the answer is almost always no, for the better or for the worse. We’re all out here fending for ourselves in our personal fights.

    – People don’t see you the way you see yourself. Whereas we’re the ones who’re living our lives day by day, we know every little flaws that exist in ourselves in detail. Other people, not as much. So we tend to be over-critical about ourselves and mull over it without actually seeing a way to fix it. Let’s say we start crocheting out of hobby, then we stopped before really becoming a pro at it. We think it’s bad, but it doesn’t mean it’s universally bad – in fact, I think it’s actually a good thing because it’s a sign that we have tried doing something, took out an effort and had a new experience unlike any other. Sure we didn’t pursue further more than that, but it doesn’t mean we’re a failure. Seeking help from others means you’re willing to see from other’s eyes that are trying to analyze you and accept the help in order to fix said flaws. And I, for one, believe you may be a little too over-critical for your own good.

    – Our time may be limited, as in we’ll die at some point. But there’s no limit to learning. Literally. I have elder acquaintances that are in their 70s, 80s even. And they only just started doing things that they want to excel at, such as writing stories, playing saxophone, baking pastries – things that they might have missed in their early days and got jealous that other people are able to do it so well. Things may seem to rush you in order to excel at something and be successful, but really, if you’re forcing yourself out of your pace, it often does more harm than good. It would be better if we start seeing our life from another angle, take things more slowly and pat yourself on the back once in a while. Not many people has the luxury of time, and I believe you’re also one of the lucky ones even though you may see yourself not so.

    – Define what you truly want in your life. What do you define with happiness? What do you identify with an ideal life? Do you really want a partner, like your friends? Do you really want to have a stable job, a circle of close friends, a pursued hobby that turns fruitful? If so, why do you want it? Then, once we’ve defined what we truly want, we can focus on what needs to be done in order for it to be achieved. If what you wanted was something else, start deciding whether you need to just settle with what you have currently, or move forward and start doing things to achieve it.

    While going through this mental crisis, I realised I have literally no one I can confide in.” I’m really sorry you have to undergo all this without anyone to help you. It’s good now that you’ve finally reached out to Tinybuddha and boldly write out some of your troubles –  in fact, this is one of the ways you can fix your problems!

    I hope you feel the relief I’m having now because you’ve finally decided to open up and let people (like me and you) know that we’re not totally alone in this world. Please do know that you’re not alone – thousands, countless people are also feeling insecure, facing the same dilemma we’re having right about now.. and it’s certainly not fun trying to find a leeway through it.

    Oh and, if you ever needed someone to talk to, you can always reach out to people here, as I’ve known Tinybuddha to be a very friendly and open community to engage in.

    Let me know what you think. I hope you’re able to see a positive way out of this soon!

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by Carley.
    #286153
    Carley
    Participant

    Hello Elaine!

    First of all, I am sorry you have to feel this way. I understand the need to filter toxic people out to prevent more harm coming to you.

    I find myself facing the same situation as you. I consequently shut my friends out because I feel like some of their behaviors are ‘unpleasant to me’ and I needed a clean slate as a space for the new healthy people to come in. Over time I question myself whether what I’m doing is right and if there is going to be a healthy cycle produced after I get rid of the ‘unwanted weed’. Needless to say, I faced some difficulties, primarily because I am not ready in any sort of way to face the consequence of my shutting people out – which is sometimes, feeling lonely and left out. I am also in no way more experienced in social interactions. So! Here I am after destroying the many rickety bridges, facing into the abyss without preparing beforehand the proper bridges to cross it.

    I acknowledge that what I have been doing is counter-productive for myself, seeing as what I needed really is just ‘attention’ without regarding from who it came from, and I realize there’s only 2 ways to get this solved: (a) start to focus inwardly and on determining what my true need was and (b) start approaching new people and get acquainted with them to fulfill my need of getting solid connections.

    I try to find comfort within myself first, asking inwardly whether I really need the attention, whether I need more loving. Can I love myself enough to acknowledge that I’m lacking in this certain social division? And to believe that it’s fine for me if there’s no one that can truly be there with me? This world is full of individuals who are busy with their own stories and I need to understand that I am not alone in facing these things. I find that most of the time people do not care unless you started to show care for them. Then I started slowly accepting everything, trying to welcome new people into my life and get acquainted with them, get close to them. I started getting into my workplace circle, I joined several new communities. I feel strange at times especially when no one’s being nice and openly welcoming about my presence, but that’s fine. It is my own need and I need to fulfill it myself, so I try to penetrate into those circles slowly by paying attention and helping out here and there. It’s a difficult and tedious process (not to mention it takes forever for me), but with an open-mind and positive attitude, I tried getting through it. It always pays off.

    Your cause for filtering people out is because they have done things that hurt you. I believe it is also one of the causes as to why you view yourself in such a negative way (you are afraid that people think you are whining, you feel like you are being needy)

    I think it is important to re-evaluate this and build stronger defense mechanism in you, which is actually not to shut people out, but to be more open to people, as well as being more careful of the bad traits they may exhibit. From what you said, I gathered that your need is to build new and better connections – those that are healthy and provide positive supports for you. We need to look at this as a sort of rational goal for your mental and emotional health, then start working our way through it.

    How long have you been acquainted with these social groups? Real and mature friendships usually take time to develop.

    I would love to hear more from you and understand why you feel like this is happening to you. In the meantime, have you considered having pets like dogs or cats? Or is it not possible?

    I find that in most of my colleague’s cases, having a pet companion can surprisingly help – tremendously, even – with your well-being.

    #135519
    Carley
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    I appreciate it. I’m still striving to become said woman, however I’m happy that you actually see that in me. I have quite learned a lot from you; I respect the way you think and the way you break it down through words, writing in such fashion so as to make it easier to be understood by others, especially those who are in need of perhaps easy answers and quick resolutions, as well as a way to show you cared + respected them.

    Your first paragraph made me smile, and as I read down the rest, I couldn’t help but nod with every paragraph.

    I had been feeling the slightest pint of uneasiness ever since he told me his first few stories; how he sounded very lucky yet unlucky at the same time, how he said that he was very open to criticism yet would immediately fight anyone who gave it to him, and how he seemed to rely on praises to LIVE but would also keep saying that he was unworthy of them in (what I thought at the moment was) a humble manner. Overtime, the uneasy feeling grew worse.

    For me, this statement of yours:
    “There are people, and he is one of them, whose verbal output is a MIX of truths and lies.”
    has finally confirmed and explained that uneasy feeling I have towards him.

    Having chocolate-mud-cake as an analogy is very clever – it certainly helped lighten up some more pathways in my mind. I will quote several sentences you’ve written after, that strikes me the strongest:

    “He didn’t have an answer because he didn’t have a way at the time to present to you a reconciliation between his true and false statements.”
    “You asked a woman, it reads to me, who doesn’t know the difference between chocolate and mud. She has been eating both, not knowing the difference. She probably makes-believe the mud is chocolate.”
    “When people are presented with too many lies, they fill in the gaps, the contradictions, with their own cognitive creativity. And so, it is of no relevance to me, looking for the truth.”

    I agree. (x3)
    There are times when he ‘slipped’ while trying to find reconciliation between his true and false statements. The amount of time he ‘slipped’ increased significantly after about 4 months into the relationship, given that his interest in my critical thinking had also decreased. Often, he would simply point that my questions were ignorant, that I “could never understand him”, so that he could successfully avoid the question and save him energy that was needed to make the next chocolate-mud-cake mix.

    There are times when I am also led to believe that once he had gotten hold of a woman long enough, he would feel like he already has her caged, uncapable and unwilling to go elsewhere under his pressuring ‘love’. If she ever tries to leave, he will immediately rage and began to take his past pains and dump it all over her, even if it had nothing to do with her.
    The “supermodel girl”, I believe, has fallen to said cage, and just like you said, “makes-believe the mud is chocolate.” At one point, I tried to poke a bit of sense into her through indicative questions, but I later found out the brainwash was irreversible.

    “You (or I, or anyone) has no chance to help in the healing of a person who knowingly lies so much.”
    I have finally come to accept this. But then, do you think there is any way, any chance for such stubborn person to change his own self for the better without anyone’s help?

    …my fogged mind is now becoming significantly clearer. I feel refreshed.
    I guess what I have been craving all along is a definite confirmation to validate my own feelings. I had my feelings and thoughts shot down so many times by him that I almost could not believe if someone ever sees me valid.

    Anita, thanks again for your reply~
    I appreciate your specific advice. I will keep this in mind in my process of figuring whether it’s a good idea to tell his wife or not. I will very likely try inquiring her thoughts first regarding the matter in the way you suggested.

    I have said this in my update note to you but I will say it again: you don’t know how great of an impact your writings have made on me.

    #133661
    Carley
    Participant

    Ellie, thank you very much for your understanding.

    You are right; I have been suffering for quite some time. Having this kind of relationship is nowhere near healthy for anyone – it’s wrong in many ways. That much knowledge in this relationship was, unfortunately, paired with my poor sense of self-worth, and I was too afraid to let his wife or anyone else know about our relationship at that time. I was afraid of being cast out, afraid of guilt itself, so I turned a blind eye to it.. Now that I’ve finally opened up my eyes again, I finally left him without saying any word. Partly because I was afraid that hearing his reactions and words will somehow affect me negatively, and partly because I just believe I have to put this to end… now. (about damn time!)

    Telling this to his wife, and hoping for her to see my side as well as alleviate my guilty feelings, I think, is just a bonus for me.
    I am aware of what I have done and what I might cause. And I don’t expect a positive reaction entirely from her – she could be head-splitting angry at me, or believe in her husband more than me, or think what I’m saying is a joke or that I’m lying just to cause a ruckus, etc. I am nowhere near wanting her to be that way, nor do I want to break their relationship and the likes.
    I am simply seeking a resolution, a way to tell her the truth simply because I believe a wife deserves to know the truth from her own husband, whether it’s good or not. When I saw that he is in no way changing his behavior soon and he is also in no way going to tell her wife about it (and no one else is certainly going to), I thought that I should. Otherwise it would just go on until probably at some point he would hurt somebody again.

    However, I totally see where you are coming from.
    I might have intervened them too much now or caused too many pain already. I really have to re-consider many things before actually doing, or not doing, something that has a chance to affect a relationship strongly. For now, certainly, I’ll remove myself from his reach and will not get close to him any more.

    I really, really appreciate your input. Thanks so much Ellie!

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Carley.
    #133499
    Carley
    Participant

    Dear Anita, thank you for breaking it all down for me to easily understand. Your words are always so well-contructed!

    I would like to clarify that what I wrote on my initial post might have been affected with my knowledge of him now, and that might make most things, such as “him taking unfair advantage of women” , appear much more obvious in the early paragraphs. I should have written it better (is there no option to edit initial post or am I missing something?), as before the time that I deduced him to be “a well respected man among women”, the facts I heard from him in the past were spoken in very delicate and well-constructed words, even delivered in a positive tone, making me believe in him to be a a man with pure intentions.

    I admit, I got very deluded back then and I believed in him more than I believed myself. He also gifted me a lot of material things, which in turn made me feel like I was in debt to him, like I’m responsible to also make him happy in some other ways. It is also partly because of how he had struck me down every single time I tried to give him a feedback that was out of his expectation, good or not.

    “So he presented his behavior to you as charity.” Exactly.

    “What he told you reveal to me his childhood experiences and how they affected who he became…”
    The words following that sentence of yours are…very true.
    To add to that: he did tell me about how life has been unfair to him. He lived in a poor family, ate just rice and salt everyday (he likes to somehow brag about this often, implying he was a tough boy who had known all the hardships in life from a very young age) and had a very strict father. He claimed to have taken some of those strict and sensitive traits from his father, while he got his loving side from his mother.
    Further more, he would also love to tell me about how lucky he was after growing up and going to college: getting to know said 5 girlfriends, having a lot of beautiful girls begging him for sex, making a lot of money from mere online gaming, having a lot of people support him and much more.
    He would, afterwards, tell me that his life wasn’t so lucky at all because of the people who “had done an irreversible damage to his heart.” He had lent a lot of money to friends that ran away afterwards, he had “invested” and helped accommodate a single mother only to be lied and left behind, then many other similar cases which involve him helping people only to be betrayed.

    Over time, I began to understand the reason he saw me out; he told me I appeared to be gentle and kind. He was trying to find a person who wouldn’t leave him behind, that would stay by his side no matter what and love him no matter how good or bad he is. But what he failed to realize, is that he already has it. She’s already there with him in bed every night, the very woman he proposed to 5 years ago. He also has the supermodel girl for him as his best friend slash love affair. When I asked him why he didn’t marry the supermodel girl (because they have known and loved each other longer than he does his current wife, and she has flawless looks and as he said to me, she always “treated him like a king”), he answered with just:

    “No. I just don’t.”

    Then when I asked the same thing to the supermodel girl, she said that “he was insecure. The thought of dating and marrying a woman that is too attractive and too rich scared him. Even if I had treated him like a king with all my fortune, it still wouldn’t get rid of the fear of him dragging me down with him along the unfortunate, poor family road. Isn’t he such the nicest guy in the world for worrying about my future? Yes he is, and I still haven’t found one single guy that is just like him. *Love emoji*” (actual literal translation) (and the supermodel girl is still not married, still hot for him)

    Anita, your following statements and suggestions after that opened up my eyes. I genuinely agree with the idea of stopping the harm to others first.
    I initially believed that I also have as strong responsibility as to help him heal. I thought that me being the only one to learn a positive lesson from this is not exactly right.
    But I now I’ve become more able to distinguish the things I can’t and shouldn’t do, from the things I can and should actually do. I will definitely re-sort my priorities and regroup every bit of me, completely removing myself from this abusive relationship as well.. It has taken quite its toll on me. Thank you very much!

    And as for my relationship with his wife;
    we hung out a couple times whenever convenient, most of the time his husband being around. We have talked for quite a long time, gave each other small gifts and often talked about the books we love. We liked to hang out in book shops, mostly.
    I find her to be a quiet, reserved, cool and collected girl. A woman who’s ALWAYS there whenever her husband needs her emotionally. I can sense that her and him both cared for each other deeply. The thing that always low-key bugged me is how secretive he can be in front of his wife, particularly regarding his romantic pursuits and the likes; I’ve witnessed more lies than I think I should in a supposedly healthy married couple.

    What do you think?

    Once again, I really appreciate your reply. Thanks, Anita!

    #133449
    Carley
    Participant

    Hello, Inky! Thank you for actually listing every one of them down.

    If I were still 2-3 months into this relationship, I would have a come back for everything you had pointed out, simply because I didn’t believe any single bad thing about him back then, indicating I was deluded and tricked into believing he’s a deity~

    You are right. He’s a very insecure man. He tends to react badly to people who disagree the slightest with him, making him appear strict in front of others and that is also the cause why he has very little amount of friends. These little amount of friends he has, he most probably earned through doing the very same tactic that he’s done to me to make me his friend.

    “I bet he was telling you about all those GFs to make him seem like everyone wants him. Half of them are probably exaggerated.” Can’t be any truer.
    I kept going back and forth on this thought alone, because everytime I showed the slight discomfort in him, he would pull me back with his convincing words. As I’ve posted, he was an intelligent man that knows his words and acts. He was well aware of what women likes and not, in turn actually making him a good flirt. But I often find him texting me randomly, when he was out somewhere by his own or to pick his wife from work, saying “a girl is looking directly at me atm and it’s been 10 minutes now. Every time I looked back at her, she turned away.” Despite me being skeptical about his way of perceiving, 80% of the time I would have to react the way he expected me to otherwise he flips out, and that is to say along the lines of “ooh, everyone’s all over you. They don’t know how lucky the girls who get to be close to him are,” (I, now, despise those demented forced words very deeply).

    The rest of the numbers I believe hold true statements. Number 6 where you stated “he has me competing with the super model girl and her competing with me” is also what I’ve been guessing for a long time. It is as if he had made a realm where every girl is out, and needs, to compete for him. As far as I’m concerned, he would go as far as making “hall of fame” and “hall of shame”. What I think is the worst part of it all: him and that supermodel girl thought there’s nothing wrong with it.

    In contrary, I was seen wrong by not “abiding the rules”. I have been somewhat bullied into my position. I foolishly thought they were right because I thought I was so young compared to them that I wouldn’t know half a thing they do. I was insecure and had no faith in myself at the moment, it felt as though I couldn’t live without him, being the way he is: convincing, loving and giving. Which, obviously, is just insane given what I know of him over time.

    Thank you again for listing your thoughts, I find them to be very revealing!
    I will take some time and really contemplate your suggestion deeply before ultimately making (and/or not making) an act.

    And it IS the season of Lent! You don’t know how reading your words have lifted me up so much.
    I will definitely use the time to repent and better myself.

    Once again, thanks so much Inky!

    #128011
    Carley
    Participant

    1. Finding this community and realizing how it has helped not just me but many people.
    2. Being able to live up to this day and witness the ever-growing world and everything in it.

    I love this thread. Keep it going guys.

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