Plenty of you know the script. Girl meets guy, he pursues, makes her feel like the centre of his world, peppers conversations with talk of kids, marriage, moving in together and holidays. He’s calling, texting, enailing, IM’ing, and can’t seem to bear to be away from her for too long. It feels like they’re going somewhere special and she dares to believe that this could be ‘it’. Even if she was a little reluctant at first or not even all that interested, all the attention makes her feel on top of the world and special. She starts to believe that he’s ‘The One’. A year goes by and despite the hot out the gate start, the proclamations, and the big plans, things seem to have gone in an entirely different direction.
There are no plans being made. When she mentions that he said stuff about kids and marriage, he gets all arsey with her so she feels reluctant to bring them up again. She’s confused because he was the one that instigated these conversations and had her believe that these were a big priority and had to happen asap. Now that she thinks about it, he’s reluctant to make even small plans, often leaving it right up until the weekend before he’ll confirm that he wants to do something. She remembers when she knew what she was doing before the week had barely started.
The level of contact has fizzled dramatically and now she feels like she’s ‘bothering’ him when she calls and has taken to texting him so that she doesn’t feel so needy. She doesn’t like to ask too many questions about why he won’t pick up calls, why he texts so long to respond to texts, or why he disappears for small chunks of time.
She’s confused and she knows she feels bad but doesn’t know what to do. She feels she’s invested a lot of herself in this relationship and he’s said things. Why would someone say these things and initiate these conversations about serious stuff like marriage and kids if they were not serious?
Obviously, she decides, she has done something to ‘scare him away’.
Deep down she suspects this is not the case but when she thinks about leaving and starting over, she gets nostalgic for how things were at the beginning. I know this could be good. We had such an amazing time together and we were so happy! We have so much in common! She wants to recapture that feeling and get him to go back to his ‘old self’.
When you find yourself wishing for someone to get back to how they were in the beginning, you’re like a disgruntled customer who has started out believing that she has purchased a product with a particular package, that has subsequently expired. When you ask for it to be reinstated, nothing happens and now you’re left with the pared down version. You’re p*ssed off! You wonder why the product has stopped being what you thought it was and fondly remember the good times. You don’t want a refund – you just want what you thought you were paying for.
For most relationships, they start out ‘hot’ with a honeymoon phase where good times abound, you’re looking hot to trot, in good underwear all the time, and you’re both putting forward your best selves.
During this crucial time when you’re dating, which is that period of time where you’re supposed to be discovering one another (not just shagging), many people are asleep on the job with rose tinted glasses.
The things that frustrate you about the person or prove your incompatibility, more often than not, are revealed in the early stages of the relationship, but if we are not aware about red flags, boundaries, and values, we miss key signals that we need to adjust our perceptions and check that this person and what is on offer is still good for us.
A person is not just about the beginning of the relationship and in actual fact, they’re not just about the good times, so you need to see them as a whole person, but you also need to see the relationship in context.
I’ve had women ask me why he can’t go back to the guy he was at the beginning when they’ve been with him for eight years and struggling for 7.5 of them! You do the maths on that one – it’s not good! You need more than ‘good times’ and ‘moments’ to justify sticking in a relationship that has been consistently struggling for longer than it’s been consistently good.
Why can’t he ‘go back’ to being that guy? Because he’s not that guy all the time. The guy he is, is the one he consistently shows you over a longer period of time – trouble is, that’s not the one you want.
Let’s call him Fun Bobby (remember the good time guy from friends that Monica dated?) or even Love Bobby.
At the beginning, probably after a good ‘ole press of The Reset Button (a license many people use to erase time and start over afresh), Love Bobby ‘genuinely’ believed that things could be different this time. He felt excited, horny, affectionate, loving, jealous, possessive, out of control, or whatever it was he felt, and he correlated that with his level of interest and believed that things could be different and started talking up a good game, making plans, and being a Future Faker.
Unfortunately, Love Bobby overestimates his level of interest and capacity for a relationship.
Note that if you or anybody told him that he was less interested than he was or incapable of delivering on promises, he’d deny it and become defensive…and then under-deliver. He gives himself far too much credit and doesn’t understand what he feels and so after he’s gone and made big promises that he can’t keep, he starts blowing hot and cold and being a general pain in the ass, in the hope that your expectations get managed down and you stop expecting to the level that he initially taught you to expect at.
If someone has to ‘go back’ to or ‘become’ something, it is a major sign that you are stuck in the past or betting on potential, and either way, it’s not good, you’re not being real, and you’re denying the reality of that person.
Unless you’re planning to somehow trap yourself in Groundhog day and play out the beginning of your relationship over and over again, it is impossible to maintain that feeling of newness that someone with the attention span of a gnat like this guy needs. If you’re looking for commitment and consistency, you need someone who is actually more than OK with the relationship growing and settling – this is not ‘that guy’.
He can’t go back to being ‘that guy’ because he isn’t and wasn’t that guy in the first place – you had him on temporary hire and your loan key has expired.
Your thoughts?
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This is so timely for me. I’ve just come off of a weekend at a place that reminds me of my ex, it’s close to the two-year anniversary of when we first got together (it happened at this place) and the one-year anniversary of the first of our two break-ups. I’d been feeling wistful and nostalgic about old times. I needed this reminder that the guy he REALLY is, is the guy he showed himself to be over a longer span of time, NOT that guy he was in the beginning.
Thank you! I just recently discovered your blog, and it’s been such an eye-opener for me. I find myself relating to something in every single post, and it’s been the kick in the pants I’ve needed. It’s been seven months since the last and final break-up with my ex and I’d kind of plateaued in my moving-on process. But it’s going in the right direction again now.
Great post! This describes my last relationship to a T. So glad I’m no longer in it and am maintaining NC.
“For most relationships, they start out ‘hot’ with a honeymoon phase where good times abound, you’re looking hot to trot, in good underwear all the time, and you’re both putting forward your best selves”. This statement is so true. When I hear of people being so happy cuz they met such a great guy and things are going well…I often ask how long has it been? They usually tell me it is a few months or even weeks into the relationship. I’m not believing that things won’t work out but just that all relationships start out like a honeymoon until the dust settles and you get to really be yourself and see your partner as his true self and not his best self.
Ouch! This is so true. Excellent!
This really hits home….I would like a refund, seriously, for all the tears, energy and effort I invested in the ultimate faker/ user. I was such a fool !!! He was NEVER as fully invested as I. What a good laugh he must have had over me !!!
All I can say is…. NO S***!
I still can’t get my recent A/C out of my heart. I keep wishing he would just “snap out” and be the guy I met. My brain keeps saying, “not gonna happen” but my heart still wishes it. Well, I can console myself by saying, “he will treat other women that way, too.”
Coming up on the anniversary of when I met him. That will be hard.
In my experience this is perfectly normal. Not sure there is much else to do but keep on keepin on when you feel like that. ( and read BR of course :- )
My brain said aha the first time I landed on this website. But it took a year and a half for my heart to understand and truly believe that the AC was a faker and a liar.
Once the heart gets on board it’s another beautiful level of freedom. Think all you can do is make sure you are at the right place and wait for that train.
aphrogirl, yes, you are right. My friends want me to go out to clubs and meet guys, but I say NO, gotta wait for my heart to heal.
Yep – exactly it! Describes it to a T. Again you are right on Nat.
This says it all for me “Why can’t he ‘go back’ to being that guy? Because he’s not that guy all the time. The guy he is, is the one he consistently shows you over a longer period of time – trouble is, that’s not the one you want.”
I think I am slowly realizing that he is all talk. He tells me he loves me with all his heart, gave me an engagement ring (even though he is currently married) and we plan on getting married some day. As you mentioned in your article, he is showing who he really is. I want to be with him, but I don’t like it, that after 3 years of telling me I am the only one for him, he still hasn’t left his wife.
We have a great time when we get away for a weekend at a hotel, but then he goes right back to his wife. Why, if he loves me so much, won’t he leave his wife. I guess I am seeing him for who he really is…a liar. I guess I don’t really want to believe that he is lying, but he is lying to his wife to be with me, so maybe he is lying to me also.
But, I can’t leave him because I rely on him for my living expenses. I couldn’t afford my place now. He promised to always care for me, but is this a lie too?
Maybe the fog of our relationship is finally lifting and I am seeing him for who he really is. I hope I have the strength to do the right thing and end this nightmare.
Why leave his wife if you accept things as they are now? You may want to start thinking about finding a place you can afford on your own and move out. Ask for friends and family for help if you need to. Surely the people who love you don’t want half a man for you and you shouldn’t either. I don’t know your man, maybe he will leave his wife. However, you risk him keeping you around until he meets a woman who he wants so bad he is willing to really risk it all for and the odds of it being you frankly are slim at this point if he hasn’t done it already. If he does leave, the financing of your living space may be an issue at the divorce if she finds out, and this money being spent and apartment will be found by a lawyer. So if I were you, I’d get a back up plan and your own place at least You don’t have to mention to him what you are doing, but this is not a good place for you to be in. Once you are secure and on your own ask him to make good on this engagement ring, if that’s what you want and be prepared to move on. Remember he promised to always take care of his wife too, first and as long as he is not your husband you can’t rely on that. Looks like you have some decisions to make, and from how you write, you are fed up. 3 years is a long time, don’t make it 10 or 15 and miss the other possibilities out there and they are out there. Good luck to you!
Oh, naples gal,
You and I are one and the same. Check out my screen name. Yep, I spent the last 3 yrs of my life with a MM too, and now am not fully over it. And guess what? He still hasn’t left the wife, despite 3 yrs of promises and 3 years of giving him every single thing I had.
I’ve implemented no contact (Day 51, thank god), and am still trying to recover from this disaster, that I came to realize I willingly put myself in (sad realization). I am only now realizing how badly this has damaged me, since I was too afraid to face the pain of ‘losing’ him before and just kept going back, or taking him back. (But how can you ‘lose’ someone you never really had? Food for thought.)
I am very concerned about you and your situation, and recommend you read everything you can get your hands on, on this site regarding being the OW. Information is power, and you desperately need to get yours back… I started reading here 5 months ago, and despite countless advice from friends, family, etc,. *nothing* was sinking in until I came here. For some reason, Nat’s words penetrated my cloudy brain like a giant ray of light, and I believe, saved me from investing anymore time in this futile situation, or losing anymore of myself. I agree with the other poster, k, who said you need to find a place you can afford ASAP… that at least will be the first step in freeing yourself from him.
Please believe me when I say, you’re suspicions of him ‘lying to you too’, are correct. I caught mine in several lies towards the end, as I’m sure he had trouble keeping them all straight. You are 100% on point by saying, ‘if he’s lied to the wife to be with you’, then he is lying to you too. This is a man who’s proved he’s capable of lying and living a double life.
Sadly, poster k is also correct in saying he has no reason to leave, since you accepted him in this situation initially, and have been willing to accept the crumbs he has thrown your way ever since. If he has not left by now, 3 yrs later, despite knowing how much he ‘loves’ you, how much he wants to ‘be’ with you, blah blah blah (Yes, I’ve heard it all too.), then he ISN’T GOING TO. Believe me, if this guy *really* loved you, he would never want anything to hurt you, or to put you in any kind of situation that could even potentially hurt you, and he would be doing *whatever* it took to make sure he didn’t lose you! He is stringing you along, making you waste your life, while he has his cake and eats it too.
YOU DESERVE MORE, I promise you that. Please continue posting, reading, and let us know what happens.
I am wishing strength for you today, as I know what a hard road this is. I am living it. But trust me when I say, there IS a light at the end of this tunnel, and the reward you will get is YOUR safety, sanity, and peace of mind.
My heart goes out to you.
3 Years…thanks so much for the comments. I sure do appreciate them. I am sitting home alone again, he’s with his wife, but he did call me today.
You and k are right, he has no reason to leave as I guess I am fufilling his sexual fantiasies, maybe that is all I am to him. I have spent alot of time on this site and find the information and comments extremely helpful. It’s just getting up the courage to implement the no contact rule. I not ready for that yet.
I am beginning to think you are right, if he really loved me, wouldn’t he have left his wife by now, found some way for us to be together instead of his wife? Wouldn’t he have introduced me to his family and friends if he was so in love with me?
He continually tells me I am the only one for him, that he loves me with all his heart, but your probably right, if this was really true he would probably be with me and NOT with his wife right now.
We go back and forth breaking it off getting back together, but it never lasts more than a few days. I guess I am really afraid that I won’t find another person who can keep me in the lifestyle I have become accustomed to. Its so hard to know what to do. But I guess your are right, I seem to be living off the crumbs he throws me.
I never thought I’d be considered the other woman. Sometimes I think, how can I be doing this to another woman. I really would hate another woman doing this to me. So why am I in this position, I ask myself. His love, affections and gifts were all so overwhelming. Prince Charming swept me off my feet and I never stopped to think who I was hurting.
It now seems I am only hurting myself, but I guess it is like an addiction and it is hard to stop.
Thanks again for your concern.
This post is right on the money. Lived and learned. I hope all you ladies in the midst of this type of relationship will realize soon that you are on a road to nowhere and end it before you injure yourself.
“….you had him on temporary hire and your loan key has expired.” << I love that LOL!
What I would do if after a year, a man who treated me like gold then changed, is to get out. Leave. Obviously for whatever reason he has changed; he got what he wanted and now he is not sure. Well I would be sure and not waste a minute. I had a friend who was with a guy for years, she is beautiful and cool, they broke up for some years and he came back begging like crazy. He ended up breaking her heart again and married a much younger woman for children.
Women, we must look after ourselves. We are first, Love yourself first you are the most important person in your life and if a guy leaves you feeling odd after all the promises and not delivering then distance yourself. I may be a bit harsh but I want the best for myself and in knowing that I will have it and I will not tolerate less.
“it is impossible to maintain that feeling of newness that someone with the attention span of a gnat like this guy needs.”
This is my ex to a T. He acted so in love with me in the beginning, and quickly — too quickly — began talking marriage. I was the woman of his dreams…and then suddenly, I wasn’t. I went over and over everything I’d done, said, not done — trying desperately to figure out what I had done wrong. It HAD to be that I’d unwittingly done something really wrong! Why else would a guy act so in love with me, and then suddenly withdraw from me? Then he began picking fights with me over dumb things…the way I wore my hair, I put too much cheese on the pizza. Foolishly, I tried harder to please him. Of course trying to please him didn’t work, because the hair and the pizza were never really the problem! He’d simply lost interest and wanted out. I think he was trying to push me to break up with him. Then I’d be the bad guy for ending the relationship, not him. If I’d been wiser and had more self-esteem back then, I would have. As it was, he finally broke it off — because — get this — I had the nerve to go out for coffee with a girlfriend one Saturday morning. For years, I blamed myself — if I just hadn’t insisted in going out to the coffee shop with my friend! Later, I realized that he was just looking for an excuse, ANY excuse, no matter how ridiculous, to pick a fight and break it off.
The relationships he had after me did not last long either. The truth is, he just has a short attention span. He loves the novelty of a new woman, and when the novelty wears off, he’s bored and ready to move on to the next girl. I wish I’d understood this when I was blaming myself for his change of heart. The relationship was not going to last, no matter what I did or didn’t do.
So true! I hope this will give me the courage to finally say no more and break it off with my a/c. I am stuck in the honeymoon phase of our relationship, but the truth is he has left a long time ago and it has just become an empty shell. He ain’t coming back, however much I want him to!
Where was this post when I was dating EU, Ass Clown, married guy! I guess the script never changes because I was nodding my head in agreement the more you I read.
We have to remember, for the first 3-6 months you are dating his “representative”. The front man image that is supposed to impress you and keep you interested. No one can keep up their best behavior forever. We must remember that until we see their flaws, we do not know them at all. Even though we feel very invested by 3-6 months, we must keep our eyes open and be willing to walk if the flaws are selfishness, lack of empathy, or dishonesty! These are core character flaws that become unbearable!
Wow. Absolutely. Are you sure you didn’t go through my last relationship with me? I mean…. this is SOOOO him!
And yes, I finally called it off after he went on a tirade because I caught him in a lie.
Whatever.
Oh my god! This happened to me! My ex was chasing me like mad, introduced me to the parents only after two months, said he loved me after one month. Wanted to move in together, but backed down, incisted to fly with me to meet my parents after three months, talked about marriage, wanted to see me every single day, said that I am the best thing that has ever happened to him. wanted to tell everyone on facebook that we were a couple..etc During this time I was healing over my previous break up so I was not 100% interested.
Was crying and devastated when I flew home to my homecountry for three months and begged me to move back. Wich I did.
BUT When I got emotionally invested in him and started to show my love and caring the chase stopped. Just like that.
Immediately he had a “female” friend that was much more interesting!
So like light switch he changed me to a married woman. Nearly destroyed her marriage, caused lot of pain and suffering to people, started to date other women behind my back/drinking etc.
He absolutely destroyed my soul and I had to grieve two failed relationships at the same time.
Its just not worth it. I am healing slowly, but I am scared of loving again for a while. My heart cannot take this pain over again.
If there could only be one article on this website, this one should be it. This condenses all the others into one simple to understand explanation of what these EUM/AC men are all about. Absolutely perfect!
I could not agree more.. I struggled with this for a long time after my break-up.. In fact, I used those two exact words.. “that guy” over and over again.. i could not get my head around who this person was, had become or who i was for not seeing this coming.. I finally realized.. “that guy” didn’t exist.. I was in love with “that guy” and wanted him to come back so so bad, but the more i wished and lingered on the past, the less progress I made moving forward. I finally buried him, whoever he was, and moved on and never looked back. It took about 4 months of bad decisions, alot of heartache, and lots of tears but finally realized one day that I was in control of this not him. That was 2 years ago and I’m still moving. I still see him, but politely say “hi” like i don’t know him and keep moving. He has tried to talk to me, but I dont’ care for him as a person, so i don’t let that happen. I am happier than I ever thought i could be and step 1 way back when, was realizing “that guy” never existed.. Good luck girls!!!
anoldblogger, I need to get to where you are. Hopefully I will.
That was every single guy I used to meet. I wasn’t even interested in them and unsure, I knew the peppered attention felt unrealistic, but at the same time my emotionally wounded self fed on those lies and craved any type of attention I could receive. The thing is we may turn around and say “why can’t he return back to that guy” ? – but the truth is, we were never truly in love with them in the first place, with him or ourselves and “that guy” was someone from the start that we knew was a temporary fix of losing ourselves.
what you said is EXACTLY me spot on. I’m realizing it and i really want to move forward and stop doing this to myself. How are things with you now?
Ya know, Natalie uses the term “manage you down.” It’s a very appropriate term for the situation. I hate it, because it implies that we can be manipulated. As Natalie has mentioned kinda in another post, we women like to please. Well, how come the guys don’t like to “please” the same way? How come we women are always the pleasers? we need to start taking the guy’s approach. Hard to do.
Yep, manage us down. Natalie picked a very appropriate term to use.
JJ2- we are not being manupilated, we allow ourselves to be manupilated. i want to believe that classic EUM’s and AC feels the same, when we expect love, care and respect. they are probably feeling, why on earth is this woman trying to get me to love, care and respect her, she wants to manage me( UP or DOWN whichever), they think, cant she see that i am incapable of being who she wants?
the only way and EUM and AC can be that way for a day longer, is to be with a woman that enables that kind of behaviour for a day longer. which is why i believe we have all found this site.
With the recent ex AC he spoke about marriage (albeit jokingly) on the first date, also one of the first things he said was he “needed a wife”, and then he raised the topic again in subsequent dates. He even had me bringing him real estate guides after the first date so he could see what was available in my area on the pretense of moving to my town. Well, what a FANTASY he pedalled !!!!! He was good, the first of his type that I have ever struck.
The REALITY of it all was that he was 7 years separated with NO intention of ever divorcing, and the thought of remarrying or moving in with someone or actually having a serious relationship that didn’t basically involve a series of booty calls was so foreign to this guy I may as well have been speaking Russian to him !
JJ2—.. you will get there but sometimes it takes rock bottom to finally reallize you are “tired” of feeling so down.. That’s exactly what it took for me. Like i said, after the break up I went thru 4 months of ups and downs, much more downs, as the ups were basically false hopes and thinking “this time would be different”.. The hook ups and feeling so high, until the next day or two when i realized nothing changed.. It was horrible and although i learned it the hard way, I have become such a stronger person.. I had hit such a rock bottom that i had to decide to make the change and I finally did.. It’s difficult and by no means easy, but you have control of this, not him.. I finally got angry and had enough strength to avoid the few and far between texts that came thru in the weeks/months to follow and of course, they stopped bc i did not respond.. I actually even got a “funny” email from him over a year later that i did not respond to.. My heart sank when I got it, but again, I would not open up that evil door and allow him back in, and allow myself to get wrapped up in it again.. It still effects me now and then, I won’t lie, but the feeling passes.. PASSES VERY QUICKLY!!!!
I cannot thank NML and this site enough.. it was my rock and support for my fk up’s and moral support after….
Good Luck!!!!
I feel like i should respond but at the same time I am speechless. Thank you for putting this into words so people (me) can read it. It brougth me to tears how completely dead-on this is.
Raegan,
It can be hard to see in black and white, but after the initial shock wears off, you will feel so relieved that you are not ‘crazy’ and that whatever you have been experiencing is real, and you can take back control. We are all in similar boats here and this is a supportive safe place. I don’t know what your situation is, but I wish you well and hope you find the answers you need to get back the peace in your life…
be well : )
i always wanted, “the guy he was” only because i though i had the powers to inspire him to go back to how things were,
with me it was always a situation of, i felt over the moon and had that huge blah, blah, blah feeling, i had it, and because i had it i assumed that he was having it in the same magnitude or even saw desplays of him feeling more thn i did, i then assumed that he would want to keep feeling that warm fuzzy feeling, of gugu gaga land forever and ever, and besides who wouldnt. my mistake was, my assuming things, if it was good for me , then it would be good for him, the talks of marriage, babies and all that were empty and just that, talks. to my Exes, babies and marriage would happen to the one, and it is only when it happens, it just means nothing to them when it is all talk. all talk but no actions meant just that, TALK, I took TALK as serious as ACTION, they on the other hang to ACTIONS seriously, not what they said, promised and all that.
Why doe’s it have to be that the guy changed.
Is it not possible that after the chase was over, the “new puppy” phase wore off he realized that the woman he had chased, woo-ed, invested his time in was really not the woman he thought she was, still loves her, still cares for her, just knows it’s not going to become what he had hoped for.
that’s valid, well and good JR . in my experience w/ eums personally they generally dont clue you right in that they are just deciding if they like you till after they sleep w/ u while they are hot and “wooing “they are usually faking a future to get you to be comfy enough to let your knickers or guard down too easily and by the time a woman has gone there she is pretty much thinking thats whats going on =a future. And even if she didnt before the act the hormones involved will most likely make her feel that after.. And in the cold phase or “new puppy worn off phase ” which sounds like relationship ADHD to me instead of explain…”hey this is not what I thought it was, I respectfully disengage from this relationship as not to hurt your feelings any further even though I have positive feelings toward you and am sorry things didnt work out between us they keep “managing down expectations to keep you strung along for a narcissistic lay or button to push if bored . Now this may not be how you are treating the forgotton puppies, but I have certainly been treated that way and am very grateful for this site. bottom line here would be better communication all around and on both sides perhaps? read excellent recent post on expectations
A valid point but how much can someone have invested at the honeymoon point if they’re already easing their way out and changing before a relationship has really got underway? Also while I appreciate that there is the honeymoon phase,should someone change so radically?
JR. No, it’s not that. He doesn’t love her and he doesn’t care for her. Full stop. He never had any “hope”. His only hope was to string someone along to his own ends. It may not be as calculating as that – to continue with the puppy analogy – he is like a puppy that got a new toy. He likes the toy, he plays with the toy, but then he wants to play with other toys too. It might be his favourite toy but he will only play with it when he feels like it. The toy has no feelings. If the toy disappears he will look for it, play with it again, then get bored and start looking for other toys. In no way, shape or form, is this ever going to be his ONLY toy.
Grace–
Exactly. And this is the relationship ADHD that dlite mentioned above.
Exactly: they may even develop attachment and/or love feelings for the toy, but that STILL won’t be the ONLY toy. At least not emotionally anyways. (They may be physically faithful, for the sake of kids or having peace in their marriage, but their minds will be elsewhere: emotional infidelity.)
Old habits die hard!
As a woman who has struggled with a lifetime of EUM and finally admitting that i was likely equally unavailable, I have come to understand that we get what we settle for and just because we are strong enough to live off crumbs, doesn’t mean it will ever fill us up. I agree with NML entire article…love the title and the graphics…brilliant
Hello everyone and thank you all! The managing down expectations is what I’m dealing w now after a year with this selfish,hurtful denial-encased (sometimes lying sometmes lying to himself)ac!!!! I’m getting serious about breaking it off after this site helped me discover & begin nc w the ac before him after 6months! He continues an unhealthy co dependent relationship w his ex he claims is just a friend ( she plays the part of the psycho jealous gf!)…and now he purposly excludes me from things,acts casual,keeps contact short & varied(blows hot &FRIGID,punishes me with silences/disappearing…so the evidence has added up! It pisses me off that these guys are such wimps they have to treat you horrifically in order for you to break up w them which is what they want!
This website, especially the NC mails have been a god send for me! This describes the guy I was seeing! It was only about three months and we were apart much of the time, but thankfully this guy had a bit of a conscience and started acting up at our first long separation, blowing hot before he went on vacation to Spain and then the first week he was there being sensitive and then ignoring me for 20 days only to not have any remorse! Thankfully I called him out on his bs and he eventually started revealing his sick views on relationships (wanting to be in an open relationship and not with me!) even more. Thank God I cut him off right away, even though he wanted me to remain in a bizarre non friends non dating relationship with him and to think in the beginning he pulled out all the stops, even introducing me to his friends on the second date. I have to remember the guy he was in the last email not the guy he was in the beginning.
Ah…the golden beginning. When he’s perfect, you’re perfect and both of you are swept up in the potential. He believes you are “the one” that will cause all his relationship problems to disappear – you will be no effort, no work, always stroke his ego the way he wants and just make his issues with commitment vanish. You believe that any signs of trouble aren’t real, you can fix or change anything about him you don’t like and that he will always make you feel this way. Then reality sets in. He starts to think you are just like all the rest of them and begins to try and erase all the early promises. Whether reality sets in for you is the question. Do you hold on to the fantasy, ignore the red flags and the broken boundaries or do you realize you are wasting your time on an assclown? If you are like me, you believe a little too long, hope a little too long. Pray that the guy from the golden beginning comes back. He won’t. He has already identified his next perfect girl, the one that lets him hit reset and start again. We are left to pick up the pieces of our self-esteem and self-worth and spend far too long trying to figure out what happened. He spends no time analyzing or obsessing. He just hits reset and starts again. The pattern is sick, unhealthy and destructive for both parties. The damage is real, even if it all begins well, full of hope, promise and illusions. Our only hope is to see things clearly, and learn to recognize that any guy who rushes in believing you are the one isn’t seeing you at all – he is seeing his hope for you. With assclowns, his hope dies quicker than yours does.
@ Naples Gal
Why on earth would you want to be with a married man in the first place? Most married men want to have their cake and eat it and i have never heard that one yet eventually leaves the home and wife, children etc for good, for his mistress. Why should he, he has the best of both worlds. I think it must be a complete waste of time to be hanging on to a dream that he will leave his wife for yourself.
The trouble starts right away by attaching yourself to a married man. Oh yes, i know the state of play – he comes along and tells you that you are the most wonderful, beautiful woman he has ever seen etc etc, but if women know this guy is married in the first place and he has not hidden that fact from them, that must surely be the biggest ‘red flag’ ever.
I dont wish to be cruel, but this man will only ever see you as something on th side, and in the meantime you are living in hope you will eventually get him all to yourself. The question you really need to ask yourself is ‘why do you want him all to yourself’? These type of men are usually the sort who will get someone else on the side even if he does ditch his wife for you.
I know it is probably painful to break up with him, as most of us on these sites are dealing with the pain of break ups in one way or another, but married men should be a no no in the first place, they must be selfish individuals, liars and worst of all cheats – and we all know about them!!
Give him the heave-o you are worth better.