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The impact of being involved with a lunatic for two years


Lady D

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Hi everyone, I'm doing well now and out of it for six months, but the whole thing is still haunting me ( sorry it's so long, hope you get to the end! )

this is the first time I've shared all of this, don't be too brutal please!

I guess I wanted to post my story for some validation, I am still asking sometimes, was it my fault, was it me?

 

So, I met this guy at work who I noticed would always appear wherever I was ( I now know he was sizing me up ), he was in a position of seniority and I reported to him as somebody who was a boss but not my direct boss. He appeared at my bus stop one day and gave me a big hug and began to flirt with me over the phone, making a beeline to where I was sitting in the office. I was very lonely at the time with low self-esteem, I took it with a pinch of salt at first. He then began to say he could get me a job working within his team

Anyway I stayed where I was and the first screaming red flag I saw was that intermittently he would act angry with me for no reason as well as sweet alternately and one day rang up yelling that he'd been away on holiday, screaming, I wanted to take you with me and you didn't even want to come! He had never asked me or told me he was going! I found out later that he had asked his sons in Australia to join him in UK and they didn't wish to come, I can only imagine he projected it on me

He then panicked and shouted that he wanted me to come to his office as soon as possible, in confusion and freaked out I agreed to. He then sent an email copying others in saying thank you for attending to discuss your interest in working for my team

 

When I went, he acted aloof, indifferent and arrogant acting as if he didn't want me there, then later said " you didn't stay long! I thought you were into me! "

 

Crazily, I agreed to meet this man outside of the workplace and he said I hope you have your own place, I was scared but invited him round. Originally we had planned to go to the West End however he said he would much rather come to my place as it would be more intimate and cosy and I almost said no but then he pulled away from me and I said yes. Even the times he came round were very strange. He would bring loads of food for me in boxes, sit with me and order me to eat it, he wouldn't eat with me and said, no need to speak, just eat, then he would want to get physical and go home

Retrospectively I cannot believe I lied to myself and believed he made the food, it's my belief that a woman in his life made it for him and he brought it to me

 

I can see now he was totally dehumanising me really, we went out on a couple of proper dates and he was groping all the time, in one of them a woman called him on his work mobile and he lied while we were having dinner to this woman and said " I am out at a religious conference " in front of me

I think I was so scared all along that I went into complete denial

 

So that was the crazy beginning and it got worse until I began to lose my mind

I didn't want to have sex with him unless he stayed the night with me as he always rushed straight off after we did physical stuff and I found it pretty demeaning

Anyway he had enough of me not going the whole way with him and turned totally cold towards me, blaming it upon him being ill

He had invited me to a course and when I went there, told me he was very ill indeed with prostate problems and I sympathised with him but he was incredibly furious and nasty

I had said the week before, " are you sure you're not a womaniser " ( he had insisted to me he wasn't ) but my gut told me otherwise and he had started bringing me food all the time, I questioned why he was bringing me the food as he now seemed to hate me and was leaving the food for me to collect in the fridge rather than bothering to see me in person to give it

He was furious and livid about this and no matter how many times I explained or said how sorry I was he continued to act worse and worse, being even more cruel so ended up in floods of tears, I wasn't used to this, it would have been the human thing to at least listen and not drive the knife in more and more

He began to ring me up about work cases and get abruptly off the phone, not being personal at all, which I found really hurtful and at the same time, the confusing thing was he would send messages saying he had left me food in the fridge

 

He said he was going on leave one day and said his brother had passed away and brought me some food before he went. Because I had been so freaked out and traumatised by our last call, I couldn't pick up the phone to ring him. I saw him only very briefly in the office when he told me, he insisted on covering it all up and I had to hide it from all colleagues. The following day he had already gone and I sent lots of messages saying how sorry I was about his brother passing away and felt guilty I had been unable to pick up the phone to ring him and he blanked them all and blanked me for two weeks

 

I actually had to have a drink before calling him it frightened me so much because he would be so hostile and cold on the phone

 

After two weeks he reappeared and the cruel behaviour went on without stopping no matter how nice I tried to be. He would bump into me deliberately at the bus stop or near the work place and deliberately blank me as if I didn't exist or if I did speak to him first, he'd be nasty and horrible. He started to tell me people didn't like me in the work place and in his church. I went to the same church as him and on Christmas eve he sent an awful text message to me with a picture of a Chinese stalker on it who was nuts, comparing me to a stalker

I gave him a calendar for Christmas and he was angry and said to others in the church " I don't want her to give me gifts " yet put the calendar up in his office and never even said thank you

Even weirder, while all this was going on, he'd send messages or phone nearly every day saying he'd left me food in the fridge. He said he made it all himself and it was very high quality, I don't believe him now. He'd be angry if I took it and angry if I didn't wish to take it anymore. He made snide hints I was only with him for what he could give, would stay stuff like look at everything I do for you and you do nothing for me. Anything I offered he would never take, I offered to make him dinner, I got him presents, he would just get angry

He would give me second hand things and small things all the time, one day I asked him why, it made no sense as he never treated me civilly like a human being, he said because I feel sorry for you

 

Anyway, two more years of this and then suddenly one day he said he wanted me to come on a cruise with him. Unfortunately and crazily I agreed to go. I had never been on a cruise before and also he seemed to have so much control over me, I dreaded him getting angry and at the time was downtrodden and didn't dare say no or stand up to him anymore, I paid for it

The good news is it finally did get too much for me working with him - the mind games happened daily such as one day when he began to communicate only with my colleague about one of my cases being really friendly with her and blanking me entirely or he'd ring up my colleague and she'd say it was him for me and then he'd just put down the phone. He flirted with other women in the office and in my team in front of me and praised other women saying they were great, both in front of me and also to me when they weren't around

Eventually I decided to get out and I am now doing a Masters, he wrote a reference for me and then took the credit for that too, saying I only got into Uni because of him

When I left he suddenly invited me out to dinner with one of his friends and it turned out they wanted to get me involved in a dodgy scam trying to rip someone vulnerable off and take their money, I never did it, he talked down to me in front of his friends and was generally really horrible

We went on the cruise and he was extremely arrogant and grandiose for the whole trip. Even worse, right at the beginning he told me he had terminal cancer so I felt terrified and anxious the whole time as my dad passed away from terminal cancer. He flirted with other women on the ship, tried to degrade me by saying he wanted to f*** me up the ass ( never let him, this is a guy who says loudly he is a humble servant of God ), he started to say I needed a mental health assessment, saying as soon as the cruise ended we'd go our separate ways ( yeah I had probably gone a bit mental by then ) and then when we arrived at the coach station walked off saying " nice knowing you, take care " as soon as the coach landed

I still don't know why he invited me, perhaps it was because I told him I was due to inherit some money at the time, I have no idea

On the cruise I also found out he was married, he had lied to me, in fact, he said he had five wives ! I don't know what that was about

 

It was then I decided, get rid

that was six months ago, I still feel like I'm not quite over it all yet

I actually had Stockholm syndrome I discovered afterwards, I began to treat him like a saviour and lied to myself he was really kind because he brought me food all the time

 

Any advice or validation appreciated, it's just struck me I was living in an alternate universe for a very long time

Thankfully friends and family have come back who I lost when I was with him as they couldn't deal with it and I'm doing very well on my course

Life is more peaceful these days

I haven't had contact with his friends or him for six months

Love, Lady D XXX

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Hopefully you have a therapist or some support groups to unpack, unravel and sort all this out. Block and delete him and All his people from All your social media and m messaging apps. Just shake your head and say "he was crazy. Done with all that." Then move forward one step at a time. Try not to dwell this much.

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Thank you Wiseman2, that is pretty much what I'm doing and I am lucky enough to have a close friend and support group to unravel this with, not that I talk about it much nowadays as it's in the past and I want to move on

He is blocked, so are his mates

Yeah, he's crazy done with all that :)

Thanks I really appreciate the support

Lady D XX

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Hi Jibralta, yes easily manipulated as I was a fantasist who saw people through rose-coloured specs too long, was also used to crazy behaviour from growing up within my family, I do feel I have learnt from it though, I would never ever fall for someone like this again now

Just before it happened, I feel I had been weakened by meeting somebody the same as him but to a much lesser extent at a job before, I had met others too who were like watered-down versions of him

There have been many quotes about life throwing you the same lesson and it'll just keep socking you with it harder and harder till you learn from it and I feel that now I've learnt so something precious came out of it

I'm a different person now, thank you for your reply and support, much appreciated :)

Lady D XXX

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Maybe you will find this poem helpful:

 

Autobiography in Five Chapters

by Portia Nelson

 

Chapter 1:

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I don't see it.

I fall in.

It isn't my fault.

It takes a long time to figure out how to get out of the hole.

 

Chapter 2:

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I am in the same place.

But it isn't my fault.

It takes a long time to get out.

 

Chapter 3:

I walk down the same street with my eyes wide open.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it.

I fall in.

It's my fault.

I get out immediately.

 

Chapter 4:

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

 

Chapter 5:

I walk down a different street.

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Yikes, this read like a plot from Dateline, except you were the lucky one who escaped and lived to talk about it. Crazy doesn't even begin to describe this.

 

I really hope that you stay strong, keep him blocked forever and even if he gets around that at some point, that you simply hang up on him without speaking or listening to him. Also, 6 months is great progress, but working on yourself and clearing out what landed you in this takes longer than that. Please please keep working and stay strong.

 

One big word of caution is that these types of people never quite let go of someone they got away with using and abusing before. So it may be months or even several years before he tries again, but very likely that he'll try. Beware, it's not flattering, it's not about you, it's pathological behavior on his part and only way out permanently is to shut them down immediately each and every single time they ever manage to reach you. No talking, no listening, nothing. Just block them again from whatever number they called and keep on blocking forever. They will go away in the end, so long as they don't get anything from you but boundaries and zero chance at chatting you up. Hitting a proverbial brick wall.

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Hi Jibralta, I love that so much! I love the simplicity of it, perhaps I'll put that one up on my bedroom wall :)

 

Thank you Dancing Fool, I really do appreciate the support, yes, it was kind of like being put into a spin cycle in a tumble dryer emotionally ( or a very bad b-grade movie :), I didn't even realise until I was out how crazy it was, while it was happening I was just stuck in it trying to survive it

I was lucky I got out, still think he could have actually chucked me overboard of that cruise ship!

Yes, I can assure you that I will definitely stay strong, it took so much to recover and get out that I would never go back again

I am blessed to be in a support group and they'd kill me if I broke no contact lol plus the thought of speaking to him makes me shake actually

The peace in my life now, just seems astounding, I treasure it

Lady D XXX

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There is actually even more which I have not written about as I don't want to write anymore as it was so long but this guy also threatened to get his sons to beat me up, on the cruise, accusing me of intimidating him, I'm very thankful for all of your replies X

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Sharing this here and seeing your kind responses, has confirmed I can be kind to myself after this ordeal and forgive myself for getting involved in the first place, move on and let it go as that is all I really wish to do now, I guess that you have confirmed for me it was not OK or safe, when somebody acts that nuts you start to think, it must be me

Now I just wish to put the episode behind me, learn from it and move on into a brighter future with the support I thankfully have, very grateful :) X

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A prof back in uni was giving a lecture on pathological people and specifically abusive relationship dynamics. He showed a brief video of a lab rat in a maze and it was being shocked. After a few shocks, it jumped out of the maze and ran off. In a second experiment, the rat was being shocked, but also intermittently rewarded. It didn't jump out of the maze. Same rat, btw, so it knew it can jump out. That was a very powerful visual demonstration of the psychological conditioning that abusers engage their victims in and nobody is immune to that. The other rather chilling comment he made is that the abuser is much like the scientist with the clipboard dispassionately administering the zaps and rewards and noting down the rat's behavior on his clipboard. Total and complete emotional detachment and intentional actions.

 

So no, don't beat yourself up. It's easy to look back and go, WOW that was crazy and when you condense it all like this, it's like a kick in the gut. However, while it's all happening to you, it's not so simple to see because it's more subtle, spaced out. Still the hard work now is to see all the signs that you missed so you never miss them again.

 

Keep in mind also that these types come in many shapes. Another one might approach you all with sugar and sweetness and long walks on the beach and flowers and gifts and so on. What's too good to be true....is.... Just another psycho in a different mask. A lot of these pathological people are leaders in the Church, pillars of the community, saving kittens and feeding hungry children. The trick is to learn to distinguish between who is being genuine and who is a pretender.

 

I'd not only work on learning hard boundaries with people, but also learning how to see who is and isn't being genuine with you.

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Hey thanks DancingFool, I think in the back of my mind I was always did suspect he was playing the mad scientist somehow with the intermittent gifts of food, doing an experiment

It is very disturbing and chilling, the truth is I did become like that rat which is why I'm very grateful that he was the one to eventually for whatever reason, let me loose, I may not have gone if he hadn't done it so brutally ( mocked me and likened me to a Prostitute in the bible before he walked off ) , I could still be stuck in that illusion

Also I've read about other experiments involving rats being rewarded like that and eventually they become so addicted to the reward, they will forego food and water and become obsessed with trying to get the reward ( when being intermittently reinforced ) - I'm glad I've broken that spell, I became so obsessed with trying to make him act normally, be normal, treat me humanly

It's amazing and I am proud that I am out

Funnily enough that's just what my friend said the other day, what looks too good to be true always is too good to be true and he treated me like a queen for a couple of weeks, for so long afterwards I'd try to make it work just to get that fake persona back again but it was futile, it was actually pretty terrifying to see the real pathological him, I can hardly bear to think of it, but I saw it when he stopped hiding it

Yes, he works in a caring profession, top of the game in it and says to all he is a godfearing Christian

I think I could spot them now, I really do, my radar is switched on so that I will never make that mistake again

I do have high hopes for the future, planning not to date until next year to toughen myself up and perfect the boundary setting and looking after myself better, this is my year Sabbatical :)

I recently stopped beating myself up, five months was enough and recently I said, no more, forget this, I just want to move on from it, my wish is to just move on into the future, I'm done with looking back now

Thanks so much, Lady D XXX

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A prof back in uni was giving a lecture on pathological people and specifically abusive relationship dynamics. He showed a brief video of a lab rat in a maze and it was being shocked. After a few shocks, it jumped out of the maze and ran off. In a second experiment, the rat was being shocked, but also intermittently rewarded. It didn't jump out of the maze.

 

That's really interesting and I wish more abused people on here would become aware of this experiment. It's such a great demonstration of the cycle of abuse. So many people say, "Our relationship is really awesome, but...." and then proceed to list atrocities. Somehow the rewards seem to cancel out the punishment for them. But you can't base a relationship on the law of averages.

 

A lot of these pathological people are leaders in the Church, pillars of the community, saving kittens and feeding hungry children.

 

Yup. Just look at John Wayne Gacy or Dennis Radar, for example.

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There are also a great many books written on this. 'The Mask Of Sanity', 'The Sociopath Next Door'. No one is immune and no one really knows in advance how this happens. If that were the case, we would have world peace, no cults, no abuse, etc. They are hard to spot because of their shallowness and chameleon-like ways.

 

And many others from this book thread: https://www.enotalone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=497212&page=2&p=6809686&viewfull=1#post6809686

that is pretty much what I'm doing and I am lucky enough to have a close friend and support group to unravel this with, not that I talk about it much nowadays as it's in the past and I want to move on

He is blocked, so are his mates

Yeah, he's crazy done with all that

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Hi Wiseman2, thanks very much for the thread and I've ordered a book from it that I'm just settling down to read with a coffee ( " why do I do that " )

The world is filled with these people, really, I think and the thing is, not many people get to really know them and see their true face, they are able to keep it all superficial

This one was a charmer of course, so many people liked him at work however I think the church did sense something off, definitely

Lady D XX

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