Regrets always stretch on into infinity
Dating during Covid is hard. We all know that. There are so many things that we miss out in our everyday lives, those things we took for granted before the pandemic.
I had a relationship that started and ended during Covid, and I didn’t realize until it was all over how many things I wish we could have done together.
One of those things was dancing.
The reason that dancing has stayed on my mind is how it all ended. Our relationship was long distance, and during our last month together it seemed like…
There are many different levels of lies. There are the bold-faced lies people tell you to your face, and then there are the behavioral lies they impose on you. Narcissists, in many ways, engage in all these different levels of lying in order to get you hooked to them.
Narcissist types have a different relationship to the truth than most of us. It’s not about what’s actually truthful. Lies, and hiding the truth, and actually central to the narcissist identity:
The current theory is that all of the narcissist’s behaviors are unconsciously motivated and driven by a wound that fills…
A collection of comments from the internet
To try and understand more about personality disorders and love, I scoured the internet for comments from people talking about relationships. The comments were pulled from YouTube, Quora, and Reddit. Usernames are provided above each comment.
This is not intended to disparage people with personality disorders. Instead, this is a compendium of people’s experiences with people, and will hopefully give insight to those looking for someone with a shared experience.
From daze507:
I don’t think they can love in adult sense of love. They are infatuated and they think they have finally found…
What lies under the surface isn’t always apparent
After the breakup, I was swallowed by guilt. To be honest, though, that’s just the way I’m wired. I always make it my fault before the other person’s, and look closely at the things that I did that might have contributed to the end of the relationship.
A month later, though, everything shifted. I found out about the lies she told me, and how I was misled about certain things from her past.
Once I started learning about personality disorders, a lot of things started to make sense. I’m not going to…
I thought I was with the sweetest girl I’d ever met
A week after our breakup, I broke into tears. In my mind, I had just lost the sweetest person I’d ever had the chance to date. I know it’s crazy, but it felt like I’d just lost my one opportunity to be with someone fun, wholesome, and altogether lovely.
I wanted to get back together with her. The way it all went down made me feel like I had disappointed her, and if only I could show her how much I cared for and appreciated her, we could reconcile…
The ache comes when I wake up, starting in my stomach and then spreading to my mind. The thoughts start coming. An image here, a memory there, a fantasy of how it could have gone. Soon enough I’m caught up in ruminating about it, and then I’m lost again.
Every morning I have to remind myself that she lied to me, and that she’s not worth thinking about anymore. Yet there’s a disconnect between my rational intellect and my primal emotions. Even as I realize the situation is over, the pangs of missing her continue.
At first I felt bad…
We ruminate more when relationships don’t make sense to us
She lied to me and left me in the dust, yet I still can’t stop thinking about her.
So what’s wrong with me? Why do I want someone who doesn’t want me? As I dive deeper into this question, I realize that I’m still thinking about it because the relationship, while it was happening, seemed great, even when there was something sinister happening beneath it all.
Apparently a lot of people miss their narcissistic ex-partners, but many of their stories involve very overt acts of manipulation, gaslighting, and devaluing. …
Explosions never come without collateral damage. The same goes for relationship explosions, where suddenly a stranger comes into your life and gives you all the love, affection, and attention that you’ve always been missing.
Before you know it, you’re spending every minute with them. They think you’re so attractive, wonderful, and interesting, and they want to have lots of sex and be with you as much as possible.
The phenomenon of love bombing has been well documented in psychological literature, and is apparently common enough that people have formed support groups for this narcissistic-adjacent behavior.
As for why love bombing…
You have to stop telling yourself it was your fault
It can feel like you’re drowning in an endless ocean, as if the moment you come up for air you are plunged beneath the waves again, tumbling endlessly through the slog of water and ice-cold, stabbing pain.
I didn’t realize what was happening to me, but it made more sense when I looked back and examined the relationship. Even though the relationship was short-lived, it still has a hold on me, partly because of the intense passion that I experienced during the early days of the partnership.
They call it…
I didn’t realize who they really were until it was too late
At first I thought it was all my fault. How could I have messed up my relationship with this awesome, loving person?
I mean, she had doted on me constantly, always wanted me to come spend time with her, and was into me completely right from the beginning. I thought I had lost someone who was sweet, guileless, and charming. It wasn’t until later I realized that the wool had been put over my eyes, and I had been emotionally manipulated into feeding her ego love fantasies.
We…
