Do histrionics ever realize consequences before its to late?

Thank you Bam for your supportive and encouraging words.. I really thought a couple of weeks ago that I was moving forward, but I guess the fact that the step kids (who initially were horrified and very upset at the way he left - i.e. without telling them properly) now have accepted his situation really upset me. That it has not affected their love and need to be in touch with him really threw me for 6. You are right - the step kids will have their own issues to grapple with regarding their father. (I am sure they have heard stories from their biological mother about him over the years which have been far from complimentary )

I have also read your other recent posts, and can totally relate to the frustration and anger and need to expose your ex to the world for what he is. How I have been there too... How many sleepless nights I have had simply burning up with rage and wanting to KILL him. I bailed him out financially a year ago from my inheritance I got when my mother died when he had lost his job. He still owes me a significant amount of money - however, my paying off his bank loan did not give rise to any guilt on his part to want to end his relationship. He was always so slick at keeping his life in different compartments and I really don't think he let feelings or emotions cross over to any of them - he simply assumed a different stance/persona when appropriate.

The advice from everyone on this forum is right - go no contact. The most effective behaviour towards your ex is to be indifferent and show no concern. If he is like my husband, he could never stand it when he got ignored - let alone dumped.

HPDs are charmers, they excel at getting people on-side. Their primary concern is their own happiness and well being, and they will do what it takes to ensure that they have endless supplies of admiration and positive reinforcement. If it were not for a casual remark made by an old (male) acquaintance of my husband about him potentially having a personality disorder, and something my sister said about his narcissism, I would never have realised what his issues were, and would probably still be devaluing myself as not good enough and that's why he started yet another affair.

My HPD husband is the most selfish person - he always engineers things to suit himself. He cannot deal with the mundane or the monotonous. When things get too boring for him he creates a drama. He has no introspection and can only see things in black or white terms. I cannot count the number of times when he was late (in fact he was NEVER punctual), used to go for 'a quick drink after work' and then get home in the very small hours of the morning without so much as a telephone call to let us know he was ok, and the LIES LIES LIES and more LIES and #######4 he told everyone. He also had a large number of women 'friends' he kept and regularly met them for drinks, lunch etc. Some of these women friends were actually ex-lovers, although why they wanted to remain friends with him is a source of much puzzlement to me....

Understanding the disorder is a huge step to realising why, what we victims need to do now is to use this knowledge and make sure we don't make the same mistakes again (note I am assuming that there will be a healthy relationship for me in the future .

Someone on this forum said that to deal with an HPD effectively is to only react to what they do and not to what they say - how very very true that piece of advice is.

sadmadandhurt wrote:
How long does it take? (Husband left first week in November, so I guess still early days for me) .

Sending you a big hug sadmadandhurt....

And as for how long it takes...

I've been gone a year and some things are healed, while I think some things will always stay the same. I am no longer interested in what he is doing day to day, don't care about the apparent injustice of him flourishing after all this, and don't have any curiousity when he tries to contact me. However, he can still trigger a guilt response in me; sometimes it's not even anything he does that is directed at me, but just inadvertently hearing news of him I revert to the old feelings he used to elicit: guilt, inadequacy. That's been attributed to PTSD or just my personality, but either way, I think I will always struggle with it. I'm looking to put some more geographic distance in between us and keep encouraging my friends to NOT report on his current activities.

Anyway. It WILL get better. It already is.

Sadmadandhurt & Caro - This just absolutely sux. I had a really bad night last night, I think on an intellectual level I was beginning to accept, process and try to understand him/our relationship. I have discovered that my intellectual side usually protects/buffers me from an emotional level of processing but yesterday i finally sat still for a while and it really started to hit me on a deeply emotional level - beyond the anger and frustration. I am usually such a strong and independent person and I 'seem' to bounce back from things fairly well, however, I am now starting to REALLY feel the hurt and betrayal and how deep it all is/was and it is heart renching. It has bought to the surface so much about myself. When I was 19 (Im 37 now) I met the love of my life. We parted when i was 22 (due mainly to my emotional baggage, immaturity and my need for him to validate me as worthy of him). We kept in contact and remained close for some time after and I always thought he would be the one I came back to when i had 'worked on myself' and could be proud of myself. After several years I finally decided to reinitiate contact to discover that at 24 he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, tried a range of medications and had committed suicide. I have always held such guilt over this as I really believed that I could have helped him and wished so deeply that i had been there for him. This whole relationship with my HPD has resurfaced all of these old haunts and so much more. I am really hurting and know that I have to begin turning the focus away from this f**ked up man and towards myself and my own future. It's such a complex and entangled web of emotions that you are left with, isnt it? You think you are dealing ok then another aspect, another memory, another piece of knowledge comes to light and a different emotion comes raging to the surface. This morning (I'm in Australia so our times zones are different-assuming your NOT in Aus) I met with another of his 'other' women and she has been so badly hurt by him, she was another of his victims which he pounced on while she was dealing with an emotional marriage breakup (her husband had lied and cheated), he came along making promises (like he has to them all) of never being able to do that to a woman, etc etc. She also told me that he (my HPD) had physically abused her. The hurt he has left behind him tears at me and infuriates me and altho just 24 hours ago i was feeling pity towrds him and even contemplating whether I could possibly help him, i now feel such hate and anger towards him. As i have said previously, my emotional repercussions fluctuate and alternate. What hurts at the moment is that these women AND MYSELF do not/have not/did not deserve this #######4. I finally made an apointment with a counsellour who deals with PDs and I am off to see her shortly (today). I'm so torn in wanting to just turn away completely and start healing (how????) and wanting to save this current other woman who he is currently scamming and taking huge financial advantage of. Well, more later....thankgod for this site and you two in particular. Thankyou.
PS - Caro - I loved (and noted) your closing comment on Insincerity - understood, agree and will do!!

Don't think of revenge or keep investigating his life if you actually want to move on. One kind of defeats the other.

Thanks Caro81VA and Bam for your support and hugs - they mean a LOT. Things are getting easier, and I can feel the gradual detatchment from caring about what he is doing or feeling happening. His physical distance from me and my boys also helps, as 90% of communication is done via e-mail where you have time to think about how you are going to say things (and edit furiously if appropriate!) .

I wish you well Bam with your counsellor - not always easty to find the right kind of support.. I too have been through periods of counselling (after our 2nd breakup in 1999) and before then as well. My HPD husband lasted for one session of couples counselling, and he blatantly lied throughout that session. I can honestly say that out of the 3 counsellors I had during my therapy periods, none of them I felt made me explore myself enough or help me to see things (of course it would have been so much more effective if I had fathomed out a personality disorder at the time). However the therapy did help me to deal guilt that I was feeling then on behalf of my children for having kicked their father out.

Bam - I am not sure that it is healthy for you to continue to worry about what your ex did (or does) with the other women you have since found out about. You know he is the one with the problems, and you will never be able to protect all of the women he is yet to meet from him. Going over and over what happened will eat you alive - don't get angry with him on behalf of these other women - you need all your energy to enable you to heal and to learn and hopefully being able to spot a disordered mind next time around before you enter into any kind of relationship . Try to stay away from him - and don't get enjoined in any kind of communication. You need to focus on YOU.

Take Care.

Bam -- congratulations on setting up an appt with a counsellor. Let us know how it goes - and remember, the first one may not necessarily be a good fit. If not, don't be afraid to try again. I've pasted below some info on finding a good therapist. It's supposed to be related to PTSD... but that's probably not too far off the mark anyway.

http://www.sidran.org/sub.cfm?contentID=62&sectionid=4


As for saving the other woman. I have been hoping someone else would chime in on that subject, but I'll give you the best advice I can, and you can consider what you want to do. I think the desire to 'save' other people is related to the desire to 'fix' them - and is one of the characteristics that we HPD victims have in common. I think you will be a lot better served by working on what's behind that desire (look up codependency) and by extension, working on your own issues. Contacting the girl and trying to tell her about your ex is going to make you look jealous, is going to break no contact and put your ex into a rage, and is going to serve really no useful purpose at all. You can't tell people about this stuff - you can't save or fix them - the best you could do for her, perhaps, is if she does separate from him, you might be a source of emotional support. But even then.... eck. i don't know if you need to be aware of his doings sufficiently to know when they've broken up.

caro

Hey Caro - the counselling session didnt go so well, I didnt really get the feeling/vibe that she had much experience with PDs (even tho i asked and she 'implied' that she did). Anyway, the day after I saw a psych lecturer at the uni I go to and her speciality is PDs so we spoke for awhile. It's so hard, isnt it? You have moments when you feel like 'yep, intellectually, i get all this $#%^ and I get that i need to move forward' but the temptation is still there. I know that its because they (the HPDs) are so good at making you feel like you are their 'one' and the sex is(WAS) great. Actually, the more I read about HPDs, the more the sex lost it's allure. Anyway, I decided to kind of confront my ex. I didnt actually tell him he has HPD but I described many of the traits and each time he avoided/got defensive/or gaves responses which had nothing to do with the flippin topic I pointed this out.I told him it didnt matter how he tried to spin it that I knew about the other women and could recognise his particular tactics a mile away blah blah blah. Anyway, it was a long conversation and for the last 15mins or so mins he couldnt even look me in the eye. I told him if he wanted to actually start to look at his behaviours and his life that I would be there as a friend to him.
9am the next morning i get a text telling me to have a good day. Two hours later I get a text saying something along the lines of 'this kills me deeply but i am never going to have you in my life as a partner and you seem to spend time with me just to keep me quiet. With deep sorrow i will say goodbye and good luck to you for your future. I will keep you very close to my heart and dream of the time we had together'. What a gutless wonder!! I held myself back from replying and 7 hours later i get 'No reply. So this is what you really wanted all along'. No reply from me and 2 hours later i get 'What, you to good to reply or too busy doing other things with other people". No reply from me, 2 hours later i get a text saying he has some movies i myt like. No reply again from me, next day(today) i get 'do i take the lack of reply you dont want the movies and i take that i was correct in saying this was what you wanted all along'. No reply, 3 hours later 'you can be proud of yourself, you are the only one to ever hurt me. The very first text took a long time to write. I dont hate you but you have made me feel nothing. Whats left of what i had as a heart you keep with the love that i had'. No response, then a few hours ago the last text, accusing ME of sleeping with someone else and saying that if i dont respond he will take that as me saying he's right. Bloody hell - he sent the text telling me goodbye - what the??!!

Yep - classic HPD behaviour ... Stay strong Bam and don't let him break down your resolve. This is classic manipulation.

Funny how HPD's always seem to see themselves as the victim isn't it

Good luck with finding an effective therapist - let us know how it goes.


Sending you STRENGTH ..

sadmadandhurt

Thanks Sadmadandhurt. Must admit the temptation to text back and go ballistic is huge!! However, I just keep coming back to the same 'really, whats the point?' as I am now well versed in his tatics, responses, manipulative little games and I know he is incapable of ever really understanding anything above his shallow little 'all about me' world. FRUSTRATING!!! I think part of letting go that makes it so hard is accepting that you have to walk away unresolved, with never being able to have the f#$ked up HPD empathise or understand or accept any responsiblity - oh, sometimes they may appear to or declare that they sincerely do but it's just so superficial and that superficialness is reflected in something they do or say 5 minutes later! Its just soooo frustrating for me not to be able to 'break through' to a person (him). Arrrggghhhh!

Bam wrote: Hey Caro - the counselling session didnt go so well, I didnt really get the feeling/vibe that she had much experience with PDs (even tho i asked and she 'implied' that she did).

That's ok. Sometimes it takes a couple tries to find the right one. Don't give up.

Bam wrote:You have moments when you feel like 'yep, intellectually, i get all this $#%^ and I get that i need to move forward' but the temptation is still there. I know that its because they (the HPDs) are so good at making you feel like you are their 'one' and the sex is(WAS) great.

Well, and the connection is deeper than that. But recognizing it on at least an intellectual level is a good first step.

Bam wrote:Anyway, I decided to kind of confront my ex. I didnt actually tell him he has HPD but I described many of the traits and each time he avoided/got defensive/or gaves responses which had nothing to do with the flippin topic I pointed this out.I told him it didnt matter how he tried to spin it that I knew about the other women and could recognise his particular tactics a mile away blah blah blah. Anyway, it was a long conversation and for the last 15mins or so mins he couldnt even look me in the eye.

Ok, so you've tried that and it didn't work. It's over and behind you now.

Bam wrote:I told him if he wanted to actually start to look at his behaviours and his life that I would be there as a friend to him.

Not good - don't leave doors open like that - eventually he will use this as a way to get back in touch with you.

Bam wrote: No response, then a few hours ago the last text, accusing ME of sleeping with someone else and saying that if i dont respond he will take that as me saying he's right. Bloody hell - he sent the text telling me goodbye - what the??!!

No contact is for YOU, and to make it work, you need to NOT READ THE TEXTS. If you can't resist reading them, or if just receiving them upsets you, then you need to change your number. It's a very minor change to protect your emotional health. This is important beacuse if you aren't reading the texts then you won't see the nasty manipulative bits like the above quote. And if you don't see them, then they can't hurt you. So... ask yourself why you are still reading them. Are you trying to take care of him (in case of emergency, etc)? Are you curious? Or is it because you still have an emotional connection to him?

You're doing great, hang in there -- caro