You can’t make this stuff up….

E as I will refer to him, is the reason I found my way to “it’s all about him” and learned about the narcissist cycle. It’s where I joined an online recovery group and wrote my goodbye letter after 8 painful weeks of “de programming”. It seems he has not changed…but I have.

I'm glad to hear the blast from the past served as validation for your growth tnr9. I think there's something about this time of year that causes people to circle back, too... the nostalgia and the childhood wounding hit like a double whammy! My ex who I wrote on here about came knocking on the door (figuratively, although he said he'd been thinking about doing it literally as well) to see if I'd consider getting back together with him. It has been an interesting process to observe how much I've changed in that 9 months... part of me feels disgusted by the way he thought he could just walk back into my life after the trail of destruction he left when he walked out and not truly owning any of it. The other part just feels sad, because I did once love him, and still miss lots about the good parts of our relationship. And I'm sad for how unaware of his patterns he is. I'm pretty sure the reason he reached out is to mask the pain of losing yet another relationship and him not being able to be alone for even a minute, rather than him actually realising the impact of his actions on me. So I'm sad, but there's no part of me that wants to play with that fire again.

Interestingly, I had my chance to voice just a small part of how I felt about how he treated me. I just simply told him I deserved better than that and gently shut it all down. And I think it was good for me to say that out loud. Sigh.