OMOTF
 Your method might not have been mine, but I think that although we all process and explain the behavior in our own individual ways, through our own preferred analytical schemata, we observe remarkably similar behavior in our partners and we all end up with remarkably similar conclusions. 
  I had a similar experience to yours, in that once I had a way to understand my ex's behavior (narcissism, autogynephlia), I started to tot it up mentally.  "Oh, here is that move again," I'd think.  "And here is what it indicates."  Then I'd ask myself if I thought it was "real," as in permanent, or simply a temporary aberration.  I didn't want to believe that he could "really" be what he apparently was, if his behavior and statements were "really real." It was during this phase that I was most open to his manipulations, because I didn't want to believe that what I was seeing was an accurate representation.  I was desperate to be convinced--and to convince myself--that we were still a "we," that he was not what he was showing me time and time again he was, was not "really" capable of doing what time and time again he did.  That what he was doing was so surreal (acting out bizarre sexualized fantasies), that autogynephilia itself is so hard for a person with normal sexual wiring to wrap one's head around (for an autogynephile the object of sexual desire is not another person, but a fantasy person residing inside the self), made it all the more confounding.
    Over time, though, I totted up quite a few instances of the same behavior, all indicating the same thing, until I could no longer deny that what I was seeing was indeed "real."  I had to admit certain truths about my then-husband that I did not want to accept could be true, because to accept them meant he was not the person I thought he was and that I needed him to be in order to maintain my belief that our marriage had a ghost of a chance and I could stay with him. 
   I didn't want to leave.  I didn't want to have to leave.  But eventually I couldn't deny the truth any more, and once I reached that point, and realized that he was never going to change, had never been what I'd thought, and didn't want to change--indeed demanded I change to accommodate his new persona, I couldn't live with myself if I stayed.
   Sometimes I think that "acceptance" is the cessation of denial.  The end of denial is also the end of one kind of hurt--the active hurt one feels as a result of a partner's cruelty.  The end of denial, however, is the beginning of grief.  That we persevere through both the hurt and the grief--because what other choice do we have? (Samuel Beckett: "I can't go on. I'll go on.")--builds a strength and confidence that helps us as we rebuild our lives. Or so I believe (because I have experienced it) and trust. 
 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (September 26, 2019 5:41 am)