a lot of what you say resonates with me a lot.  It wasn't until I left him that I met someone who remembered us from way back when and he said he could see how much I needed affection and he could see my ex was not responding to me at all, but intent on putting on a good appearance.  I looked back through all my memories - he only ever put his arm round me in public.  I never saw it at the time.

Yes the real person was entirely different to the way I had imagined him and I went into a profound state of shock when I finally saw him.  He's not nice at all but all his friends think he is and I had believed it too.

I don't think it is shame that makes them hide though, I wish it was.  I think it is pleasure.  He derives pleasure from tricking people.  


 

"Don't burst my bubble" I mean he actually said that to me once - final resort when I persisted in wanting to talk about how I was feeling.

I have been thinking about the shame aspect - it seems to me it is us who end up feeling ashamed, it was for me, and I think really that is because of the way he manipulated me to feel and it was quite deliberate and what I saw was when he couldn't manipulate me any more he was disappointed and immediately looking for new prey, no sense of shame at all.

Last edited by Lynne (April 25, 2020 11:09 am)

Thank you all for your insightful responses. On some level my POS GID ex H and I were a perfect match because we wanted many of the same things but for VERY different reasons. He didn’t choose me because I was weak or easily victimized. He chose me to elevate himself. I brought all of my personal strengths to my marriage and made his life so much better. I adapted myself to lift him up. Isn’t that what a lifelong bond is supposed to be about?  The good things I saw him doing that I believed were also for US were actually not for us but for him. He had many qualities that made him look like a great husband. I was so love-bonded to him that my physiological response to him was that of feeling safe and secure. If he had been mean and cruel to my face it would have been easier to accept what I now know he did behind my back. That is where the dissonance is so drastic. I could not reconcile the two very different realities until I read about the behavior of Covert Narcissists. I don’t want to spend more of my precious time analyzing  HIM but somehow it has helped me to get some kind of resolution to my dissonance by thinking about him on that behavioral spectrum. It is also very validating to come here and say can you believe this?  How can this be?