Dear Candice88,

I am sorry you feel like a big loss happened in your life and that what happened is unfair.

I can imagine your stress and anxiety when you were in Japan, and S was out drinking every night (or often) with his female friends. It sort of gave the perfect setting for you thinking the worst – that he would cheat again, when drunk. You asked him to let you know when he comes home from those parties, but he never did. That caused you even more stress and anxiety, i.e. panic attacks.

It’s like he didn’t care about you, he didn’t have understanding for your concerns, on the contrary he behaved in a way that tortured you. And he told you it’s your fault and to pull yourself together.

Your only fault was that you tolerated it and stayed with him (perhaps your hopes got up when he mentioned engagement rings?). I guess his behavior was the same when you returned from Japan and came to live with him? It culminated in him breaking up with you just before he was to transfer to a different city for a new job. You needed to pack up and leave his place within 2 days, causing you great stress and financial losses.

Yes, this guy was an a**hole, and it’s good you’ve moved on. What’s not so good is that you’ve met with him again. Now you say he has matured and has more compassion. Has he apologized for treating you like he did – for partying with his female friends, and then accusing you of being paranoid? Has he realized what exactly he has done wrong?

He told me he still loves me too. How we are both on each other’s minds, how we are each other’s “big ex”, the relationship we always wanted to work out.

Well, he didn’t love you back then. His behavior wasn’t love. And I don’t think he wanted the relationship to work out, because he kept accusing you of being too sensitive, when in fact he was too insensitive. He made it all to be your fault. I wonder if he’s realized that now?

He said “it should be you with me”, and “I never thought I would see you again and NOT be with you”.

I am sorry but this doesn’t sound sincere to me. It’s like he is putting up a front of this mature, considerate guy and white-washing his past actions. Unless he actually apologized for his past behavior?

S has grown so much, seems like a much more emotionally intelligent and sensitive partner. But it’s unfair that I didn’t dodge the bullet – I got shot.

You did get shot, but you can recover. There are ways to treat PTSD. You don’t need to suffer for life, and you don’t need to suffer because of him, because I don’t think he’s so irreplaceable…

Dear Candice88,

you’re welcome. It appears he really did change and is much more considerate now. How did this change come about – what motivated him?

I have a hard time letting go of love. I want to explore every avenue before I throw in the towel on relationships, even bad ones

I understand. That’s why now you’re giving a chance to M too… With S, he was completely closed off at the time and unwilling to even consider that he might need to change. And yet, you stayed with him until he broke up with you. Perhaps you believed him at the time that it was your fault, and that you’re the one to blame?

I always wanted him to mature and change for the sake of girls who came after me,

This is interesting what you’ve said. It means you sort of knew he was to blame, or at least that he too was to blame, but you’ve stayed with him anyway. Have you hoped that he would still change at some point? That you would “save” him, so to speak?

Dear Candice88,

He told me that he changed from reflecting on what I may have gone through, and never wanting to make someone feel that again.

Maybe I making bold assumptions here, but I don’t think he spontaneously started contemplating about you and your suffering, realizing how badly he treated you. To me it seems more likely that something triggered his change, e.g. that he went through a similar experience himself, of being mistreated and manipulated, and maybe that’s when he sought therapy? Has he been to therapy btw?

Yes, I had massive self esteem issues from him, a very successful, ambitious person who I was supposed to trust, telling me over and over how I should get “over it” and that I was embarrassing. I definitely absorbed that.

And it seems to me that your self-esteem issues didn’t start with him, but earlier, only perhaps they weren’t so strong? You might have been attracted to very self-confident, ambitious people because you yourself didn’t feel that way?

I may have a follow-up question (sorry for bombarding you): you say M is an addict, and he presented himself as a “whole and healed person”. Could it be that he is on cocaine or a similar drug, and also looks like an ambitious, self-confident person on the outside?

Dear Candice88,

He hasn’t been to therapy. A mutual friend confirmed that he regretted the break up months after it happened, and that she told him how he messed up. According to him he hasn’t been hurt by anyone after me, so I think this is what started the contemplation for him.

It’s interesting that he didn’t need therapy or some sort of a crisis to realize those things, but okay, everybody is different…

Yes, I’ve had depression since childhood. But as an adult I was able to be truly happy, until the cheating with S and Japan. The self esteem issues that came at that time definitely harkened back to my childhood issues. However, I was very stable and happy before S and I even got together, and I also lived with confidence and ambition before then.

Right… it seems that due to depression in your childhood, S’ cheating and his behavior afterwards really hurt you badly, so much so that you developed panic attacks and PTSD symptoms. It sort of pushed you back into the old trauma…  Would you like to talk some more about the reasons of your depression in childhood?

No, with M it’s not cocaine, but similar. He seemed down to earth, sympathetic, calm, and generally wholesome when we first got together. He and S actually have very little in common.

Is there anything in common between S and M? Or perhaps M seemed like the opposite of S (calm and humble, as opposed to ambitious, self-confident and high-energy?), and this is what attracted you to him?

Dear Candice:

Maybe I do not understand: are you saying that before this man came into your life, you never experienced significant anxiety or depression: that you had a good childhood, enjoyed good mental health as a child, and a teenager, all the way to adulthood, and then you (a mentally healthy adult woman with no history of mental health issues) discovered after the fact that a boyfriend cheated on you on one occasion, and as a result of that discovery- your mental health turned upside down, catastrophically destroyed, and therefore he indeed single handedly ruined your life?

*Complex PTSD, (C-PTSD) is “a response to prolonged, repeated experience of interpersonal trauma in a context in which the individual has little or no chance of escape” (Wikipedia), and it applies to children who, stuck with parent/s they couldn’t escape, suffered prolonged, repeated trauma inflicted on them by their parent/s. An adult suffering from C-PTSD originated in childhood is more likely to react severely to events in adult life, such as in the context of romantic relationships.

anita