The Bait and Switch in Journey Back to ME

It is hard for me to process the hurt that someone says I caused them when I know that what they did to me was worse.

I haven’t really been keeping up with him. For a while he was sending me messages every day, but remember his best friend who is madly in love with him and has been for years is in town. I woke up this morning to a text saying “You ever truly loved someone? Like every single part, portion and inch of your soul is for them?” This was crazy to me because during the month of no contact, I had almost sent him a similar message and stopped myself. He is not capable of meeting my emotional needs, so I withheld the message I was going to send. Then I received this message and immediately I see what he’s trying to do. He could never express his feelings about me TO me. He always talks to me about me by talking as if it’s not me. If that makes sense, and then when I try to cut the bullshit and talk about ME as it is about me, he would make comments about me INSERTING MYSELF into something he was trying to tell me.

So, my response was true, but very general. “Yes and no. The only reason I say no is because it’s always been to the full extent of the person I was in that moment. The capacity of the love I have to give continues to grow as I do. My heart never gives up, and there’s always more love to give. Even when I know I love someone or have loved someone, I can always love them more. Why do you ask?”

And then he responded with this “I was just thinking. I apologize if it was an inappropriate question. I was thinking about my prospective on love. The one person that I believe truly loved me and I felt they deserved my love broke my love tank. No big deal. Just had a moment. Again, I apologize.”

GAG! Queue the manipulation tactic. He’s talking about me. I know that he’s talking about me because we’ve had this very conversation several times. It’s something he always feels the need to tell me or remind me.

It’s like he doesn’t even remember that we were never dating. When he pursued me he and I both were in relationships. His girlfriend from Houston broke up with him over the phone. He gave me an ultimatum that required me to leave mine and he was able to pick up the pieces. However, FROM THE BEGINNING he put me on a pedestal as if I was this perfect person that could do no wrong. This never made me feel good because I felt like I was in a box. I wasn’t allowed to veer from his idea of me or it disappointed him. I wasn’t encouraged to be myself. I was encouraged to be the type of woman he wanted to marry. I accept full responsibility for my role in my own suffering, but every time I brought this up he always told me that it was an expectation that I placed on myself. However, he continued to manipulate and groom me, and if I did something he didn’t like I was scolded for it. If there was a movie I liked, a team I liked, a type of music I liked or something I enjoyed doing with my children or something my children did or ate that veered from what he wanted, we were judged and talked down to about it. I couldn’t escape his EXPECTATION, all the while, he would flip the script and try to tell me that it was my self esteem and me comparing myself and expectation I was setting for myself. It wasn’t. After being groomed for so long, his thoughts became my own. So hearing him give me this bullshit about his broken heart and his love tank was a bit triggering.

It’s triggering because he’s never articulated what it is that I did to hurt him, and there is absolutely NOTHING I could have done that amounted anywhere near the emotional and narcissistic abuse that me and my children endured. The only things I can think of are the times when I quit talking to him completely. I’ve blocked him, stopped talking to him, didn’t talk to him for 10 days and then there was another time I told him that I didn’t want to be friends (after he continued to blame my kids for getting slime on his daughters suitcase and her carpet and I offered to buy her a new suitcase and have his carpet cleaned but he declined.) I offered a solution and he would rather scold us over and over with his words than to let that shit go and let me fix the problem. “I already had it cleaned, and my housekeeper was able to clean her suitcase. It was special edition and couldn’t be replaced anyway”....he HOLDS the dumbest grudges about things. He pretends to be evolved and able to not let shit bother him, but that’s the furthest from the truth…not only does he let it bother him, but he doesn’t forgive or forget. Even after disappearing all of those times I’ve apologized and worked 1000 times harder to prove myself and make up for it. I’ve given him SO MUCH OF ME, but he holds the grudge that I disappeared.

WHY DID I DISAPPEAR?! Because of him and his constant need to scold me, being talked down to, his constant need to teach me a lesson, and his obsession with trying to be my motivational coach based on what he thought I needed to work on. If I spoke out about it, I had to hear about that too. Any time I spoke up or WAS myself, I was scolded for it. One time I made the mistake of saying “if it doesn’t spark joy for you to come and see me before work, you don’t have to come”…not only did he come but he scolded me in that parking lot for 30-45 minutes not allowing me to say anything back. I’ve sat through so many sessions of him talking down to me and about me (some were hours and hours long) and I sat there and took it like a good girl…he taught me that I needed to stop running away. However, I realize now that I was never “running away”, it was me removing myself from situations that no longer serve me. I was convinced that I needed to sit down and absorb all of his criticisms to the point that it chipped away at my self esteem. His thoughts about me became my own.

Thinking about it all now in hindsight is the exact reason I came to write this all down. He’s had an obsession with me from the beginning. Where things went wrong was that I didn’t believe him when he basically told me that he didn’t believe in love. He chose me. He handpicked me as the woman he would marry and manipulated me and everything around me to get his way. Once he had me, he tried to change me, and I went along with it because I’m open to criticism and receptive to my actual flaws and bettering myself. Then I became everything he wanted and was less and less of myself, and then he started to dislike me for the robot he urged me to become. I was checking all of the boxes and now wasn’t the bubbly, happy, ray of sunshine he met. Queue more criticisms....queue the tanking of my self esteem. He’s even used his child against me on several occasions which is why the Mother’s Day text was able to get to me the way that it did (and it got to some of you too). I don’t just call him a manipulator because “we didn’t work out”. In the beginning phases, I didn’t see it. Out of his mouth he was able to tell me about situations where he manipulated people. The lengths he’d gone to in the past to get what he wants. I just thought I was immune.

It’s mind boggling to me because during our last big fight that made me really cut him off he made a comment to me that I always “play dumb” when he says things to me (because I was asking for clarification about something), and within the week that we’ve been “talking” again, he’s sent me a plethora of question marks or asked me to clarify myself. this just goes to show you that it was the pot calling the kettle black the entire time. How he felt about himself was what he projected onto me.

Do I still have feelings for him? Yes. But as I’m able to accept his inabilities to meet my emotional and relational needs, I truly was focused on the sex and the sex ONLY. I was managing my expectations to only seek pleasure from him. The “king” of not having emotions and not giving a F*ck and not having expectations…sure does have a lot to say now that I’ve reopened that door and this is exactly what I was afraid of.

However, I am different this time. I am aware of the tactics being used against me. The first rule of dealing with narcissists is to not engage. So he gave me the bait, and I didn’t take it. If this was a few months ago, I would have plead my case, apologized, argued…the whole shebang. It would’ve gotten so bad. Now it’s fully clear to me that I cannot control anything about this person. He’s going to think what he wants regardless of whether or not it’s the truth. He’s not going to take accountability to the hurt he caused me because my needs are miniscule compared to his. It’s all about HIS needs and only his needs. HE ENJOYS PLAYING THE VICTIM!

Fuck him, and his “love tank” honestly.

The craziest part was if he had an ounce of empathy or any emotions outside of himself, we could work through this (minus the scoldings and his dismissiveness). If he was able to forgive and move on and accept responsibility, then this could work. It is NOT my job to teach him how to be loveable and kind or how to love properly. This is one emotional rollercoaster he’s going to have to take himself. His thoughts about me are not my truth. However, he still has a right to feel how he feels. That is HIS issue, not mine. My only job is to be able to LET THIS GO.

Last updated May 26, 2023