Seeing reality for the first time in a long time.

[Relieved]

Things are very recent for me and I am so grateful to have found this forum. Coming out of the daze now following realization of where I have been (with HPD wife)and it's helped to just write things down. Hope it's ok to put it here. I know it's helped me seeing other posts, but like everyone else I do wish it wasn't necessary. Here goes.

The Monster
The Monster. Dramatic, isn't it. Well I'll tell you this, it actually is dramatic, and it's scary, and it's hard to believe. But, it is real and I have had a 37 year encounter, mostly on a daily basis with such a creature. So what is the dictionary definition of such a thing?

Here is one, from the Merriam Webster Dictionary.

'a person of unnatural or extreme ugliness, deformity, wickedness, or cruelty'

This is the Monster described very well though frankly the use of 'or' should be replaced with 'and' in both cases, and note too - none of this was or is visible to the naked eye nor will it ever be.

The Monster is of course a human, a human female with whom I have spent the majority of my life, and I am 67 years old, the Monster 60 and it is June 2025 that I write. I first laid eyes on this creature when I was 30 years old, and she was 23 and what a marvel she was to see. Tall, elegant, well spoken and the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes upon, just stunning, when she moved it was as if she floated and in that moment everything else in my world vanished, it was just her and nothing else mattered. I knew right there, right then, she had to be mine and she had to be mine forever.

For my part, tall, handsome, well spoken, intelligent, educated, amiable, confident, well liked with good friends. Successful in business, successful in life in general.

What I did not know then, and never could have, was that the very moment I first saw this wonderful, beautiful woman would be the moment that would propel me into a life where self doubt, depression, sadness, misery, thoughts of suicide, and longing for affection and love would ensue. Misery writ large was mine and I was in full possession of it, ownership guaranteed with full warranty.

Until 4 days ago, when I saw, for the first time, the Monster revealed for what it truly was, not the hazy picture I sometimes saw but could not decipher, and would not believe, but in sharp detail and it was horrific. It was worse than horrific. It stopped me breathing, I was gasping and then I wasn't. My mind caught up. What I now saw was real, raw, real. And I believed what I saw, and it was the first thing that I had seen for nearly 4 decades that was something certain and I could hold on to it and tomorrow it would still be there as a fixed thing. It was reality, and I could see it and it was the second thing in my life that I had seen and knew it must be mine and, it must be mine forever.

[bloomie]

Relieved - I think what you describe is a kind of shape shifting? Holding on to what lies beneath and has been revealed in such a way your heart and mind cannot deny it is transformative work. And for me, has been a painful work.

I have found the work of Dr. George Simon, who writes and teaches in depth about character disturbances, to be helpful in grounding the revelations I have experienced in my own relationship about the true nature of another.

Here is a link to an article I found insightful that may be of help to you too: https://www.drgeorgesimon.com/attractive-and-repulsive-narcissism/