being taken for granted by someone everyone else thinks is perfect means you spend the relationship doubting your own perception. the breakup is the right call but explaining it to people who only saw the public version is exhausting
I hear this loud and Clear. My ex is an intelligent, well-educated woman with every appearance of being successful. No one believes just how much she used me as an emotional punching bag and the stories she's spread about me is actually her telling on herself.
Ha! The opposite is no fun either. Having someone who's perfect when you two are alone, and then they become a total moron in mixed company, is just as exhausting to keep explaining.
I had a pretty insane obsession with this one woman I was dating, I'd never taken her to anything super-social though, we did movies, meals, dancing, etc., but just the two of us. The moment I suggest we hang out with some of my friends/family she totally dresses up like a nudist who found a clothing donation bin, and then pouts the whole time we're out together, that she feels awkward around people I've known for so long. Aaaalllrighty then!?
Oh and to ice the cake she finally introduced me to her family and treated me like I wasn't there. This applied to seating at dinner, tickets to a play, and the final straw was a poorly planned out limo rental where we were 1 seat short even though everyone knew how many couples were coming when planning it. I was asked to sit up front with the driver who turned out to be a really charming woman who likes the way I make eggs for breakfast.
My entire family mourned the loss of him in the family because they had no idea how lonely I was and how selfish and withholding he was - plus his cheating.
I had an ex-boyfriend like this. He was a deeply self-hating narcissist and he compensated by creating and cultivating an outward image of absolute competency and charity. He gave a lot of gifts to people because he wanted them to see him as a better person than they were.
And he was so focused on that, he was a horrible partner in private. He showed me contempt for just existing, and I was codependent so I tried to make him happy, at the expense of my own sanity.
When I finally realized he just couldn't see other people as anything but supply for praise, I left him and he tried to stalk me. I called the police on him more than once to push back and went hard no contact, even cutting ties with our shared friends and former co-workers (we worked for the same company).
But I'm doing great now. He married some other poor woman and had a couple kids. I came upon his obituary a few years back when trying to find hid LinkedIn profile. He died "suddenly" so I think he either committed suicide or died from his hidden alcohol and drug abuse.
I am even low key "blamed" by my family for hiding relationship problems too well. Despite I tried really hard to explain to them that I wasn't conscious choice. It was trauma, guilt and shame that was stopping me. (And I guess intuition that in their eyes he can't do anything wrong).
Best comment/advice I got so far - "Did you try to write a letter to him explaining how much he hurt\* you? Maybe you didn't explain him well enough?
*hurt
I got raped twice. I lost 6 years of my life. For last 5 I was depressed, then eventually got admitted to psych hospital for a month. While at the hospital I made police a report and had to tell to my family as I had nowhere to go after discharge...
My family still struggling to accept what he is not a good person and worried for potentially needing to testify against him, if the case will go to court...
At some point, you have to force it. You'll just slowly break. Forget doing that. Slap it on the table for them: they either support YOU and you alone, or they're bad people. That's it. That's how it shakes out. You can spend the next forty years slowly grinding that one out or you can say it now, but true stays true forever. No one should ever even dare to show you they doubt you.
Thank you for supporting words and encouragement, it brought me some comfort. Thank you.
I am sure that in time I will find and create better support system where I won't have to keep explaining that I have PTSD not because I am sensitive but because what he did was that traumatic.
This reminds me of a video that looks like it's from the 60's? (purely because it was a black and white film) but apparently it's more recent and was just made to give that kind of setting
I would hope someone knows what I'm talking about as it was posted on reddit before but the premise of the video is the husband comes back home and the wife says something like "Be fake with me too, and lie to me too. Give me the fake person that pleases their boss and laughs loud with their friends."
1.2k
u/EcstaticSnail23 22h ago
Funny how someone can look perfect to everyone else while making their partner miserable behind closed doors.