Hi there - a hopefully abbreviated version of my journey (tw: brief SA mention)

[Autodidact]

I'm Autodidact, I'm a writer from the New England area and I'm super happy to have found a community of likeminded people on their healing journey. I'm at what is hopefully a turning point in my long journey. I've finally discovered some things that make sense about what my life has been like, namely CPTSD and being surrounded by people with narcissistic tendencies if not straight up NPD because...well, that was what was modeled for me.

I just went through a pretty horrific cycle with a partner. He was a slightly different flavor of NPD than I was used to so while I clocked some of his behavior the rest I was absolutely blindsided with. For being 6 months long it was absolutely packed with the most bizarre behavior. It's a little different because we're polyamorous but...you'll recognize some of the patterns, probably.

It started with lovebombing so intense I realized what was happening and talked with him about it, about how I wanted to have a relationship with him, not the idealized version of us then when he didn't stop I walked away from him for a month. This turned into him stalking me, I'm a community moderator so there are places I have to be and he told me that for a month he would search my handle on every platform we share every 15 minutes to find me just to casually be where I was - which was usually somewhere I had checked that he wasn't, because I was avoiding contact.

I didn't see it for what it was, or maybe I did and the thing inside me that wants someone to desire me found it flattering (augh, yuck), and when he reinitiated contact again I apologized for "being distant". What ensued was a whirlwind relationship where...he ignored or flagrantly crossed all of my boundaries (including several instances of SA after which he made me comfort him), including ones put in place to keep my other relationships safe, cultivated other relationships to the detriment of ours, moved from FL to New England ostensibly for me just to ignore me and spend time with his other partners. When we did spend time together it would be great until he would reveal that essentially he hadn't been holding any boundaries and there were new things he knew would upset me to tell me. The future he'd faked melted away in a matter of days even before he moved, suddenly it was a different future involving someone else.

Every time I tried to bring up something I was worried about or wanted he'd literally curl into the fetal position and start crying about how I must be so miserable and 'he's not a terrible partner is he?' and how he hasn't been fair to me - and the entire thing would turn from being about how I'd prefer if maybe he didn't text continuously with his other partners while he was with me to a referendum on our relationship and me convincing him I was happy, that I saw him trying, and bargaining down my boundaries.

The entirety of our relationship was fully triangulated, first by his initial partner, then by the person he disposed of me for. He was always just responding to impossible situations that he was put in. Which were really him not having any desire to hold boundaries for anyone else or do anything other than what felt good in the moment. Eventually he even proxy recruited me to do his dirty work both in breaking up with his original partner (who he claimed was a bad partner and was encouraging him to break up with me constantly, which made me uncomfortable - and was probably not true) and then instigated our breakup by baiting me and saying some excessively cruel things, things I couldn't ignore without self abandoning and so he proxy recruited me to abandon myself. He wouldn't break up with me, just say hurtful, invalidating things until I left.

And he lied. He lied all the time. About everything. Right up until the day he told me he wasn't going to break up with me, that we were fine, and had me drive home thinking everything was okay only for him to discard me hours later.

I've been in bad relationships before, with narcissists even. But I've never had someone successfully warp reality for this many people right up until the end.

There's a lot more there but...this is all that I really have the courage to look at right now. A lot of this is sort of...softened because it's really hard to look at but...does any of this sound familiar? This was abuse, right?

[xredshoesx]

welcome to the group.  i am glad you found our tribe.

regardless of the relationship structure or configuration, abuse is abuse.  as someone who was groomed as a child to be codependent by my uPD biological mother, i felt like any relationship i was in before i became aware of the patterns of abuse i was recreating as an adult trying to heal that parent bond were doomed to fail because i just didn't have the tools or understanding how to see those red flags.  working with the group here has been life changing to say the least- as i sit across from my husband who i met shortly after i started getting out of my own fog and working on my boundaries.

you get to write a new ending to this story.  where is the next chapter going to take you?