Note: images on this post are not AI generated this time.
There are two ways of “living in the past” – the sad kind; memories of pain, loss, sorrow, trauma. And the good kind; nostalgia, happy memories, first kiss…
From all these years, and all sorts of trauma I’ve learned one thing. It’s not the pain, the betrayal, sexual, physical, verbal and emotional abuse that causes so much trauma or pain that we couldn’t heal from it.
It’s all the people invalidating, gaslighting and ignoring what happened to us. It hurts because it makes you feel invisible, worthless.
When I revisit my own past, the childhood memories, teenage years, becoming father for the first time. There are lots and lots of very nice and good memories there.
As I was growing up, I learned to face the traumatic memories, and my past as much as I could on my own. That being said, I also was curious enough to try and find out what was “wrong” with me, and how to heal if it’s possible.
That meant that once I didn’t find the answers I needed from psychologists, or medical diagnosis – at the end of the day they said everything was normal, especially considering the past, and often current circumstances. When it comes to general medical experts they’re usually stunned at my level of fitness given everything else.
I also learned to be grateful for everything in my life, including pain. It was a great survival mentor. I developed so many skills, learned how highly intuitive I am. Learning to trust that inner voice was the hardest part.
Every relationship that had a major, and rather negative impact on me and my life. Whether it was fake friend, and girlfriend screwing behind my back. Whether it was the silent treatments, using sex for emotional manipulation and what I know now to be traits of a covert narcissist – my first ex wife, mother of my oldest son – the most important person in my life.
Or the last relationship (video link at the bottom):
When I was watching a video talking about 10 different types of toxic women good men should avoid.
After the video was finished, I leaned back in my chair, grabbed my head with both hands and said; “How the fugg do I get so LUCKY to have found all ten of these women in one?!?”
I could figure out how to break out of poverty, make my dreams come true and do anything I wanted. I could figure out how to fix, and do stuff I’ve never seen, read about, or tried before and still be good at it. I can learn anything I want, often just on the spot when I need it. Fast.
But I could not, for the love of my life, figure out why do I keep attracting such people who’re essentially just predators in my life. I consider hypocrites like the one I spent 1/4 of my life living with pretty much on the same level as any scammer. They’re con artists, master manipulators.
We don’t attract them, they find us.
Or if they happen to bump into us, “fall in love” with us – in fact they make you fall in love with them with all the love bombing, and saying all the right things at the beginning – mirroring you. Some are very talented and smart, and figure it out really early.
One expert really explained it, why narcissistic disorder traits are essentially not just psychological – much like survival mode, stress, burnout etc. It’s neurological, and in NPD cases their developmental stage got stuck at the childhood level, and their rewards mechanism was switched and stayed switched before age of 7. They were rewarded for negative behaviour, and ignored or neglected otherwise which made them feel small when they displayed good behaviour.
We can all display narcissistic traits under immense pressure. Upset codependent will be angry demanding explanation and truth. Narcissist gets angry, denying, gaslighting, blame shifting and deflecting. I know because when it comes to conflicts with people who are like that, I used to act avoidant.
It was against my own character, because I am the one who solves conflicts. Finds solutions others couldn’t. I’m the one capable, and willing to fix things. Starting to avoid conflicts meant that before it didn’t matter whether I was honest, or hiding the truth about something. Ultimately, the reaction, disgust and/or aggression from the other person would be the same.
Having seen, and done both sides of the spectrum, I was anxious, I was avoidant. I was confused. Now I do know how it slowly grew from one small argument into a full blown mindf**k for years. On top of that, when you spend some time with the same person, when you’re physically close to them, both brains basically synchronise their waves together.
That synchronicity is completely natural, subconscious and you can only become aware of it enough to learn to distinguish between your own “self”, and all the electromagnetic frequencies noise around you from other people.
Someone so hyper sensitive and intuitive as I am… Well that’s almost like a global coverage transmitter and receiver.
With a lot better reception on bad weather days because all radio waves are bouncing back around Earth easier and faster when it’s cloudy.
Honestly, you can research all these things, and start observing yourself.
Just don’t blame me for how fugging scary it can get.
I was trying to escape the summer shower storm today. I’ve been thinking on my way back to the temporary shelter offered to me by a new friend I met last year (I can’t stay here much longer, as much as I’d like to just not give a damn).
Observing my thoughts.
I caught myself “living in the past” for the past week or so again. Not in a judgemental way, just observing.
I’ve replayed, and processed this in my mind many times. Not to get stuck in the loop, but because of that confusion I was living with for over ten years altogether during relationship, and after the breakup too.
How did I let it start? How did I let it continue, and why? How does that affect me right now, not how it did in the past? How do I learn to live with this?
All these questions that I really needed an answer, because otherwise I am stuck in this loop.
It started very simple, from all the love bombing, hanging out, having good time, and deep talks (where I was the one talking a lot, and she was memorising for later) to the moment I had to move to another flat nearby. I didn’t need a flat mate, but saving a little cost while having a good company – potentially romantic and serious for the future, why not?
We moved in together, separate bedrooms. At first she swore she’d never cook for both of us, or do anything for me. I’m fine with that, we’re only friends with benefits at that point anyway – at least for what concerned her.
After about a month, our relationship was seemingly getting deeper. She was sharing about herself, some traumatic bits from her childhood, some not too long ago. Crazy stories about her sexual life – but I’ve heard worse, so nothing really bothers me, and I don’t judge anyone anyway. I love to listen to people’s stories, share with them and connect on a soul-to-soul level. Today I know for fact that those stories she was sharing, it was bread-crumbing pieces of her life that were true. In a way that would often make her look like the victim, and the other person a villain.
Once I told her how I really feel about her.
That’s when it all started:
– saying that what she’s complaining about me is because she cares about me: smoking for example
– my job was often point of arguing with an idiot: avoid at all costs!
Having worked for so long, and learned so much that I could finally afford to “just sit on my ass, talk to people from all over the world – teach them stuff she can’t understand anyway, and doesn’t know what I’m actually doing other than it’s IT but not just IT.” Often I’d do it a couple of hours in the morning, a couple in the evening due to time zones, and just have fun. I was paid a flat rate of 5000 US dollars for it, and it was great. I loved the people there too, it was mutual.
– she would always find something to complain about me, my friends, my past, anyone close to me: isolating
– trying to set some boundaries, keep peace and respect: either rage reactions or later she would manipulate me by trying to make me jealous
How did it all continue:
With those arguments, obviously after 2-3 months I started feeling anxious, and realising this might be a mistake
Whenever there was heat, and she would scream that she has to leave, I’d tell her that the door is open. When I’m not fully committed myself, please pack and go!
Of course, next day after the argument comes the fake apologies and the love bombing again.
She played on my forgiveness, knowing already all my history and how much I have already forgiven all the people in the past, this was the part of em that made an easy target. Indeed, I might call you a massive ignorant c**t when you’re irrational, and use double standards to confuse people.
The best example of the massive hypocrisy and double standard was her saying she wanted an open relationship: before the kids it was about seeing other people in general. After the kids it came to that again, just seeing and having sexual experiences with other women.
Oh, well, once during too, she promised it was all about self exploration.
After she did that, she told me I was one and only man and person in her life for the rest of her life. She promised she didn’t have any feelings for her female friend – she blamed the regular texting and written letters (rather super romantic) on her friend, and kept hiding it all from me (avoidance – remember that about me avoiding conflicts where I was feeling guilty).
When I had one, really, in all the years with her – just one lunch with another woman, intelligent, young, successful, good looking and interesting. A business and introduction lunch after an event where I was a speaker. That made my ex furious, to the point where we had ongoing arguments, and discussions for over a few weeks. I was accused of potentially leaving her with a child for another woman any time one of them would invite me for a lunch, or just mindless tensions and bad mood for days.
There was no other woman or life I had on my mind, even though at that point it was already hell living with her. She blamed pregnancy and hormones, I believed her excuses since I was still getting to know her, and she was displaying (fake) acts of humility, and kindness once she would calm down.
This is how I got confused, stayed confused, all while deep down in my gut the intuition was screaming – look at how she is acting, her victim stories are not consistent with how she acts and what she’s doping in front of my own eyes. Yet she still denies everything when called out. Just get the f**k out!
I couldn’t. The one card she knew well what to play is the abandonment card: I would never forgive myself for abandoning my own child. But that’s exactly what she was putting on me from the begging of her motherhood. Of course she was afraid, with all that baggage, so many masks, and lies hiding in the closet of her whole family, I’d feel ashamed and afraid to admit anything too. However, at the point of being a parent of not one, but already three children, and going through therapies together with your partner: a healthy, and normal person must accept that it’s time to grow up, stop being that 7 year old girl – hiding behind your mother every time there’s a problem, not seeing that the problem started exactly there to begin with – the lies, confusion, gaslighting and deceit that you can fell in your gut but cannot explain.
We can all sense when someone is lying to us, we can all feel it. The problem is, when you’re the person who’s been lied to all your life (my ex wife finding out truth about her own mother’s darks past), and you have learned to lie, fake, and manipulate to survive. Eventually you’re going to start believing your own lies, rejecting the truth even when it’s good, healing and helpful. Those lies then become a reality because a delusion can indeed influence everything around you so much, that no facts, no rationale can change what you see and do about that, about how you respond.
Narcissists often get exactly what they want, and really easy. It’s because in the public, they’re the most charming, well behaved and nice people you’ve ever met.
They won’t raise their voice outside at you, if you do, they will scream for help and cry – they look for attention from audience. Or some people already know that they might be in the battle they can’t win, so they just give them what they want, and walk away – that’s my case but not all by choice anymore, I was coerced.
For the conclusion.
How does this all affect me now?
Well, clearly one is being dragged through multiple phases and stages in with at least 3 different government organisations just revolving around child safety, and domestic abuse. Not even counting in the police.
Being dragged through 1 year of wasted couple’s therapy with her.
Another year not too badly wasted therapy for myself – the guy was actually the best therapist I’ve had like this in my life, but also far from as good as he thinks he is.
Very unprofessional when it comes to patient privacy, respect, and first hearing out before projecting and gaslighting your own patient. Doing that in the same way that it creates a very negative, unrealistic picture about the person based on a snippet of his life. And the worst emotional, physical state at that time.
I would love to move on, just be happy with what I have now, build my own new life. Now being better informed, experienced and better educated about relationships, knowing there’s always a lot of work we need to after so many years of eating human shit every day – I prefer to stay alone, I have always preferred that even when loneliness itself sucks. That sucks more when you’re under the same roof with such a living nightmare that refuses to leave you, but you also have no place to go to be by yourself – that is the worst kind of loneliness.
Men are often very lonely, afraid to admit that themselves. Afraid to talk to another man about such issues when we should. Also talking to healthy, respectful women must help – the good ones would have slapped me to wake me up. I’d kiss them, and their ass for it.
However, this is much easier done when there are no children involved. Or maybe also just one that you know from the day one has a very strong character, and once he grows old enough to understand, you might get a chance to reconnect again. And I did.
But doing that, waiting another 10-15 years three more times for each other child, that’s the kind of burden, and pain I already know from before. That’s not living in the past, that’s knowing what’s possibly coming. I don’t just possibly know, I have predicted quite a lot about how this will go, how it will continue to go.
Just as I know now, how stable, calm, clear and generally happy I was with myself. Not totally happy, my own perfectionist habits and trying to achieve enough to have time for more peace and self care, that kept me chasing more while forgetting I needed a break, and rest. That was my own fault, the body burnout and thinking I can keep moving mountains and not pass out.
I also know now why I was so easily confused, deep down I know something was really off, way off. When I had those kind of sensations years ago, it was bout that girl and my wannabe best friend shagging each other behind my back. I knew it, for months before they both came clean. I sensed it.
I had the same knots, and heavy dark weight in my stomach around my ex. She could sense it too, read it like I was reading her. One thing is true, the connection between us is something bigger than me and her together. That shit is spiritual, and some past life karma stuff, even my rejecting ego knows that – it just silently stomps the feet in the corner.
The connection that no one can really explain with science, or science egos still refuse it themselves – remote viewing and communication through “telepathy”: we had that stuff on a scale that scared both of us: sharing same thoughts, exactly same feelings at a certain moment or even bigger ones, it was a real mirror connection beyond neural mirroring itself.
Without that connection, and my deep emotional attachment to kids – to protect them, to love them, and support and watch them grow into the persons they want, are meant to be. That’s my love, my dream, my grief. The happy image, and the sad image, they’re both about this.
To be through all that while you paid for everything, worked, came home, cooked, helped as best as you knew around the house. Spent time with kids, sacrificed your own material wants, reduced hobbies and time spent with them. Changed the way the person treats you, tolerated their own toxicity just to keep some peace. Still chose love, compassion, forgiveness, still chose to fight, wake up, live and keep going. Not just for my own sake or to hug the kids again. To also support, give love, and healing to those like me that need to step out of their own hell hole. Get rid of their own baggage, or get out of the abuser’s grip.
To really stick to your own values, not give anyone the satisfaction to keep calling you a suicidal, uncooperative person with psychiatric problems that I’ve already tried to establish any diagnosis with experts in the past, and no one can actually say anything but stay impressed.
To be someone with my story, feel the way I do. And yet, still being faced with zero correction of the false allegations. Of the projections of diagnoses that don’t exist, of the claims of my instability, or self harming tendencies, when I am still here. When I fought for my own life, when I could just give up long ago.
Facts speak for themselves, I don’t, and shouldn’t have to explain myself, and be supervised in any sense. Yet I am still facing these things. No end in sight. Kids are suffering from missing his dad, and living with a version of him that isn’t real, already being confused, and rewarded with wrong patterns still being repeated in that family circle.
This is the pain, and the kind of loop that someone else creates, you trap yourself inside without a chance to walk away, or defend yourself.
I’m not living in the past, people that are trying to erase, rewrite it to avoid their own accountability in life or at work are the ones who are forcing me to relive my past over and over again. Repeat it, knowing that each time they will only make an even worse spin on it.
I’m not living in my past, I’m trying to leave it behind because for once, having a good memory is not serving me at all. If it did, it would be worth revisiting it all, and maybe even hoping someone can actually prove to the world that I was the insane one, that I’m making everything up, and she was only the victim of my own reactions, and anger.
If I was wrong, I’d happily go to prison, or mental health institutions to test some heavy dope on myself.
But at the end of the day, this is not about my own feelings, and clearing my own name.
It’s about what wounds will that leave on my own kids. It’s about other people who aren’t as lucky as I am, don’t make it out alive or with their mind still functional. It’s about a much bigger picture than I am alone. It’s about men who are silenced, broken by injustice, they are the ones you see laying on the streets. Not the heavy drunks, but they drink, they behave well. They’re intelligent. You will be surprised about their stories, just like I am about theirs, or they are about mine. But after a certain age, with that beaten face, a sour smile if any at all – people call you lazy, a loser, and avoid contact with you.
That’s how my current reality looks like. I feel like those poor homeless guys who have already given up on themselves long ago. Only that I refuse to give up, but I’m also prevented from moving on and being free from this trap.
Not just by lies, and people within system promising one, doing another. Not just because I’m low on energy all the time. I was able to find several offers at once before deciding where to work.
Now, it feels like people are doping crimes to survive, because I don’t know anymore how people really get back on track after all this. Even willing to maybe grab and shitty job and work the way up again.Totally unnecessary with my level of skills but fine, if I really can’t get anything better. In just won’t stay over three months. I’m not a slave, and you thick head is none of my concern.
The money I do earn, try to invest… it’s too little to make it meaningful and start slow, with minimum risks. I’m trying to stay afloat with it, but the market volatility itself is too much for someone starting to trade and invest. It’s a really different era out there. Having the right information, good support and network is the key to stable life today. Not rich, just stable.
I’m just a lone wolf, who has almost no hope left. The only thing that keeps him up now is his own sheer survival will, not kids, not anyone at all. Not future prospects, investments, or ideas brewing in head or already playing our here as we speak. Nothing motivates me, I feel no joy, I can laugh at a joke, but it feels just that. A joke.
At my worst I can at least feel happy that for whatever reason, when I’m already depleted like a sliced old tire, something still makes me keep rolling the wheels.
Life is f**ked, so please don’t tell someone who was traumatised to not live in their past. They were alone, unheard, shut the f**k up, and just listen to them. Don’t judge, don’t give advice or play the devil’s advocate role. Respond to relate, connect but give them your full attention. They might hear themselves saying something new that will heal them, and you’re the person they needed at that moment to hear themselves.
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