Thanks a lot Anita, yes that makes sense but the way I’m thinking just seems crazy to me. I mean its not like I want him back, he came back, I then refused to take him back, a fact that very frankly I’m very proud of. Some days when I feel low, the only thing that makes me feel good is that for the first time in 5 years I put my self-value and self-love and respect above my love and want for him. So its not exactly that I want the nest to be there. I am also open to building another nest, my mind’s open to the idea at least, but its like I also don’t want to forget that nest, end that nest’s sanctity. But then i fear that this will just make me miserable, hanging between the past and present like this.

I think I just need to accept that that nest is gone and completely open my heart and mind to building a new nest without wanting to hold a piece of the old nest within me and that is what I’m having a problem with. I mean sometimes I feel angry, angry with myself over wanting to remember fondly a man who only hurt me. I don’t know if this makes sense, maybe I’ll think a little more about your perspective, sleep over it and get back to you. Thank you so much for taking out the time, it’s like i was just fighting with myself all this while and I now I have a few people who can help me do this better.

I thought about it Anita. I think it’s not just not wanting to move on, there are a lot of things, conflicting thoughts rather that are going in my head. Maybe because usually i discuss or vent with my girlfriends, but he’s just left so many times that now I don’t even feel comfortable bothering my closed ones with the same things about the same man so maybe all the pent up thoughts keep messing with my head. I’ll try and put it out to the best of my abilities and it’ll be great if you could help me find a solution.

1. I’ve read up all that I could on narcissism and he showed and continues to show many traits. He never apologized, even in the last months that he contacted, his way of talking was rude and gas lighting, questioning me for not begging him to stay again. Even when we were together, he was emotionally unavailable, said things like ‘I’m like this only, but you are sensible, you should know better’ in every conflict, would switch off his phone for hours when I would break down in a fight, by the end of it even if i expressed a mere polite displeasure over the way he spoke to me or something trivial, he’d say I’m fighting and avoid me etc. So, in my head I am convinced but then again, since I haven’t seen him with another girl ever since, a small voice in my head also sometimes thinks what if just something works with the other girl and he has the happily ever after with someone that I emotionally invested towards for 5 years. What if he is not narcissistic or just changes or something on the same lines. It’s twisted really, a part of me wants him to be happy wherever he is but then again I can’t help thinking about him being better to another girl.  I feel really evil for even having this thought but believing that he will be the same narcissistic way he was with me with even his next gf or wife, makes me feel better.

2. I’m just very hurt by the post-breakup interaction between us, its like I’ve accepted the narcissism but seeing it unfold is hurting. When it’d ended, I’d literally begged him for a week for even an explanation for he’d just randomly said he’s going amid an argument, he’d blocked me from every contact and even up till now, he hasn’t once apologized. Every time that I have answered his calls, he’s only talked rudely and called me childish and stupid for not answering each of his calls and for not wanting to speak to him. The  last conversation, where i told him that I don’t want to speak to him because it hurts me and I don’t want anymore hurt and then wished him well for his life ahead, he began calling me names and ended with saying that he also has no interest in speaking to me now and that I will always be a stupid and immature girl and hung up saying ‘get lost’. I mean I know i should have expected it by now but I’m still appalled. Here i was thinking that maybe 1% regret, maybe something, maybe he realized something, maybe at least he’ll ask me how have I been holding up but no, it seemed that all he was interested in was to just get me to say that I’m glad that he called and initiate getting back together from my side only. It’s making me feel as if these 5 years were a lie, as if it meant nothing to him, as if he’s not the man at all that i fell in love with and I hate that feeling. My head keeps questioning that did he never love me at all, does he really think that bad of me, and i feel angry that he after leaving me so brutally on a phone call, he has the audacity to still turn it around at me.

3. The last thing is that despite it all, I keep thinking of him, sometimes with anger, sometimes with all the what-ifs, I’m 28 so I was thinking of marriage with him, he also would in words at least talk about marriage and now to think I would have to have all that with someone else and this relation will just get lost in obscurity is a bad feeling. its that case, like you know, when a close one dies, some of us mourn and learn to move on and just be happy, while some of us mourn and then get on with life but always carry them and remember them almost daily, as if keeping them alive within them. I think I’m the second kind of mourner by default but i just don’t want to because he clearly doesn’t care and i need to stop caring about maintaining the sanctity and respect of my past. I think I’m not scared that the love will be lost, the bird will die if the nest is lost, I know in my head that i will love any person that i end up with totally, i know there are good men out there, but the end of all my dreams with this particular person and the thought of us in particular never having anything in life anymore ever, is something that makes me feel bad and thus, i feel i tend to hold on.

I think that is all. Gosh, I actually feel better by even writing it all down.

Dear Peter,

There’s so much gold in those thoughts. Thank you so much. I definitely attached my sense of self and identity to him and my feelings towards him, no doubt about that and you’re right that my true detachment would be discovering my true self independent of him as well as my ego and not repressing this experience. You’re right and that seems like one uphill task. But I’ll surely get on to that now that i have a little direction. Maybe in discovering my independent self, I’ll automatically let go the want of holding on to him. The day I actually reach there would be one nice day. Thanks so much.

We met Anita. We were a part of the same circle though there wasn’t much interaction. i had been told by common friends tho that he likes me. Then around 6 years ago, we just happened to start talking and it escalated pretty quickly, in 4 months he’d asked me out and 2 months after that he’d to move for his work (his shift had been finalized before we got together and we were sure that we’ll see through it).
I just remember that before we began talking regularly, I used to think of him as very rude, based on his way of talking. His friends also always teased him that he’s very rude to people in general but can do anything for those he loves. I definitely chose to see the latter part of it.
I don’t know Anita, I never really felt too loved by him, like there were moments of sheer ecstasy and times when his words and actions made me feel really loved but they were extremely far and few in between and almost non-existent once the honeymoon phases after every reconciliation ended. Most often than not, his words and actions just did not match, he’d be like you’re my everything, my no. 1 and then regularly cancel dates with me to have drinks with friends whom he would anyways regularly meet. I feel that he liked me and so initiated a conversation with me but then I ended up falling far more for him and he’s just loved me enough to want to keep me around but never enough to make me even one of his priorities, at least sometimes.

Like very early on in the relation, when we had one of out first arguments on the phone, he just randomly switched off his phone and went off to sleep, and only switched it on next morning and said a sorry but continued switching off the phone after every argument. I just wish I’d taken a stand then. Later, When we were together, he would just walk away amid arguments or just shout at me and ask me to shut up. I told him that small arguments that can be sorted turn up into big ones because we don’t talk about them. He just leaves midway and when he comes back, he just says leave it I’m sorry and asks me not to start again, making me feel as if i’m dragging the issue and so I let it be until the same issue comes up again.  We fought about the same thing Anita, about him not having time for me and by the end of it i ended up feeling so inferior that even up till now I feel I’m the argumentative one. By the end of it, I felt like I couldn’t express my displeasure without him saying ‘again you go’, the moment i would say something that he didn’t like, he would just snap at me and ask me to shut up. I didn’t realize how inferior I’d begun feeling until when my mother came to stay with me for 6 months towards the end of the relation. She literally told me that all i see you do is cry and plead with him in an argument, you don’t even talk at an equal level or take a stand.
I never really felt pampered by him Anita, like obviously I don’t want to be put on a pedestal or be treated like a princess but I never felt like he was my safe place or someone on whom i could let my vulnerability flow. It was like I have to always be prim and proper, always stay happy and keep smiling and say yes to all he says because if I’m low or felt bad about something, either he’ll leave me alone to deal with it or just snap at me. he didn’t even let me in during his issues. If he were dealing with professional or personal problem, I would check in on him and tell him that I’m here and try whatever I knew to comfort him but he’d just shut me out. I’d be like okay, he wants his alone time, Maybe that was his way of dealing with it but then i’d see he would still be talking to and going out with his friends and family but would shut me out, not even speak properly and ask me to just understand. If i would say you can tell me, we’re in this together, why are you shutting only me out, he would be like you don’t understand anything and I’d feel like such a failure.  Basically as long as my life is perfect, his is perfect, and there are no issues between us, everything was good but if any of these had problems, he would just shut me out and I would just feel so alone. And how long can everything be perfect, so mostly, I would feel like just someone that he likes talking to in his free and happy times and likes being physically close with. That’s it.  I didn’t feel like his partner. When i tried explaining all this to me, he just said that it is the other way round,  i don’t understand anything and I’m never there for him and when I’d tell him that I’m literally sitting here for you, waiting for you to ever need me for anything, he’d be like Really? and would mock me and then leave the room. Plus it was like he always saw the negative things about me in the smallest of things. If we’re eating in  a plate and i end up pouring more sauce than he’d like, he’ll just be what is this and get annoyed, once I’d planned something for his birthday and i was driving him to that place at 12 and got a little lost with the GPS and he began lecturing me that when you’re with me, everything should be planned, you should have done this properly or not done it at all and i felt so hurt anita that he can’t see that i’m doing something for his happiness but can only see the negative in even this, if we’re about to leave a restaurant and i want to use the washroom, he’d be like no lets go, we’ll reach my place in a few minutes because he doesn’t want to wait, when he’d ever tell me to book a cab and its happening a little slowly, he’ll get irritated, even if he’s lovingly asked me to button up his shirt and i’m doing it not as fast as he wants, he’ll get irritated and start doing it himself. It was like I was just never good enough and all i did wrong was all he saw.

I don’t know Anita. One time I discussed it with a friend, he told me that not all of us are the same. He was like not all of us can be emotional support to others and not all of us have the same definition of a love relationship. He said that maybe my partner’s definition of a relationship is more casual and easy breezy while mine is about emotional bonding. That he wants a partner who he can have fun with but then lead his independent life without having to be there emotionally for her. Sometimes I question if i am too emotionally needy. I know I am a little, I know I am more emotional than the average and so maybe need more love in relations but then the fact is that I have not felt emotionally starved in any other relation of mine. I don’t feel emotionally starved by my parents, siblings or friends. I know they all love me immensely and i know that if i need them, they all will be there and they all have been and they all acknowledge how loved i also make them feel so then am i really emotionally clingy? One thing that I have figured as something that I have to work on is definitely my emotional attachment, why did i need that time from him, why was i so dependent on him that i needed him to talk to me, why could i not be like okay, he doesn’t want to talk, let me go and have my own fun, that is how i should have been right, I should have not been that attached to him, hurting myself and maybe also burdening him in the process.

As for the last part about him never doubting him, yes i don’t think he ever genuinely did because his actions never changed or were never even a tad bit more considerate, they only worsened over time. In fact, and I haven’t shared this with anyone, in the last year of our relationship, he had begun verbally abusing me really bad. So if its an argument, apart from shouting, he’ll start hurling all kinds of abuses at me. the first time it happened, i was shocked Anita, i literally couldn’t say anything more, half of the abuses were so bad i hadn’t even heard of them nor have i heard anyone in my circle say those things and nor did i ever think in my wildest dreams also that he could say those because he always said how he hates people who use abuses. I thought maybe i angered him to that extent but then i was like what if he had angered me, would i ever abuse my partner like this even if i’m utterly angered, even if i consider that he got really enraged, does that justify abusing. we are young now with lesser issues, There will be more trying times in life when a person will be utterly frustrated but then does that justify abusing. what if he hits tomorrow in the name of anger? My parents also had few fights, a couple of them did become pretty nasty but not once did my father abuse my mother or vice versa in any way. Sorry i digressed. Coming back to your point, no i don’t think he ever truly doubted his actions, he would say sorry but frankly after a time they felt like words thrown at me to just shut me up than actual apologizing because he’ll be like ‘sorry sorry now lets leave this’ and never follow it up in actions. Plus, he would always be like ‘I know I’m bad but I’m like this only but you are the sensible one, you should know better’ as if its all my responsibility. He’d be like ‘you know its all in your hands, everything about the relation is in your hands’ and at that time for some weird reason i’d be like yes i can handle it but now I’m like this is total shirking of responsibility.

I’ve never written all this out and now writing this I’m literally questioning why was i in this and can’t believe that a part of me still feels for this person. I definitely have to work on my self-esteem.
That’s all it was Anita. Thank you so much for caring to ask, I know, I’ve written a lot of extra stuff but it feels so much lighter to have it all out