Dear Paradoxy,

Didn’t realize it could be that easily misunderstood.

Yes, I think it can, unless you are a professional musician…

Lol I didn’t dedicate the song, the girl just inspired the main melody. Thats it. How the hell do I dedicate a song to a girl that I barely know?

Imagination is a powerful force… But I get it, you are approaching it more like a professional musician, in which case anything can serve as an inspiration and you don’t need be emotionally attached in order to make music.

B might not have believed him but she wouldn’t have had the motivation to start another fight regarding it and ruin my peace.

B always has a motivation. She also managed to confuse the Caribbean and the Indian girl with the same names, and then accuse you of never loving her, because you were supposedly intrigued by the smiling girl, whom she wrongly thought was Indian, who is your preferred type of girl. Exhausting.

But I hope you have learned by now – knowing that she is a narcissist – that it is her goal to ruin your peace, and that you shouldn’t react to provocations, i.e. false accusations. So now, if she manages to provoke you, it’s on you, because you know her modus operandi.

I am glad that you haven’t talked to her in the last week or so, and that last time you spoke, you were cold to her (We haven’t talked in a while now and the last time I talked to her, I was cold to her.)

We already made it clear that B is the real abuser but that doesn’t excuse the guy for the things he did. My anger for him is not larger than B, but that doesn’t make me not angry. I still have anger, it is just not that big compared to the anger I have for B.

I am glad that you realize that B is the real abuser – the one who has been emotionally abusing you for the most part of your approx. 1.5 year-long relationship. And who keeps abusing you even after the breakup. She has been persecuting you for the last 3 months, coming up with new accusations and “proofs” that you’ve never loved her. The latest attack took place 2-3 weeks ago. What she is doing is psychological abuse.

Anyway, since you don’t want to block her phone as of yet, I think you’d need to block her in your head – sort of not get too upset because you know how she operates and that her style is false, malicious accusations. So maybe you can look at it like malware coming into your mailbox/phone, and you isolate it mentally (maybe you don’t need to delete it, in case it might serve as a proof of her abuse), and then you don’t look at it and try not to think about it anymore.

Firstly, what do u mean he couldn’t lie? He couldn’t lie to a girl he barely knew?

Some people cannot lie, specially if under psychological pressure. She was interrogating him, and he admitted. Narcissists can easily lie, but for most of the people, lying doesn’t come naturally. Besides, he didn’t know she was so malicious and what telling her the truth would entail. He didn’t follow his own advice (to ignore her).

I was angry at him whenever I found out the foolishness he did, but I have forgiven him for his actions but dont expect me to trust him again. That is all I am saying.

Fair enough. You don’t need to trust him again, especially while he is taking her side.

Her reasoning is that it was her trauma and I had no right to share it because it happened to her, not me.

And what about your trauma? Your relationship with her was full of trauma, almost from the moment you met. Because the “honeymoon phase” lasted only a week or so, and soon thereafter started the drama of her not being sure whether she loves you or her ex, then going back to her ex, then returning to you, then you finding out that she is secretly living with her ex, and she telling you that it’s none of your business and why you are upset. All that spiced up with her wearing revealing outfits and posting it on social media in spite of you asking her not to. And sexting with random guys whenever you two broke up.

That was all before January 2024. And then comes the bombshell news in January, when she told you that she prostituted herself 3 times within one single week that you were broken up. She expected you to be full of understanding and behave as if nothing happened. She was offended when this was hard for you to stomach and you didn’t want to have sex with her. She was also accusing you and your parents for making her feel so “unloved” that she was so broken and “forced” to prostitute herself.

So that was the trauma that you were facing in January 2024: a lying and cheating girlfriend switching gears and introducing the next level of betrayal. And then when you are taken aback and shocked, she is blaming you for making a big deal out of it. She is also blaming you for making her do it.

What were you supposed to do? Suffer in silence? You too were exposed to trauma, and you needed someone to confide in. You had the right to talk to someone, because it was too much of a shock for you and a burden. And you confided in your best friend.

I am indulging in my music production, reading a lot about communication skills and stuff. Apparently I could have Asperger’s syndrome?

What symptoms would that be, if I may ask?

Instead of blurting out my anger to certain people, I write it down and then read over it and make changes to it so that I am better at expressing myself and then I decide whether or not I should express myself to anyone because I have also realized that nobody gives a damn anyway so I should just release my anger in the form of writing instead of trying to make people understand.

Okay, so you’re writing down what bothers you about certain people? And sometimes you express it (after curating it and making it more polite/non-confrontational, I guess?), and sometimes you don’t express it?

I have also realized that nobody gives a damn anyway so I should just release my anger in the form of writing instead of trying to make people understand.

Yes, some people don’t give a damn if they hurt you. They don’t care about your feelings. Such is B, but also your father. You have been trying to make both of them understand, but to no avail. So indeed, there is no point in trying to explain things to either of them. To other people, it might make sense, because not everyone is lacking empathy and understanding.

I AM ANGRY. I just can’t express my anger. Cause the anger towards B comes out in the form of verbal abuse and then I become the abuser, and when it is to my parents, it comes out as disrespect. So all I can do is just bottle up my anger. It is so annoying when you find yourself shaking with anger in the middle of a church sermon cause of the memories of everything that has happened.

Yes, you can’t express your anger to those who deserve your anger most. Because B will simply turn it against you and accuse you of being the abuser. And your parents will accuse you of being disrespectful, right?

But you know, you don’t even need to show your raw anger to anybody. A good way to look at anger is that it is a signal. It shows us that our boundaries are being violated, that we are being violated. It shows us that we need to change something in our relationship with the person – so not to be violated any more.

Which means that we should act on our anger, but not by showing it directly, showing the raw emotion (which would only cause us more problems). Rather, we should use it to change something in our relationship with the abusive person, in order to protect ourselves from their abuse.

With B, who is a narcissist, you have been realizing lately that being nice and understanding and tolerating her bad behavior will only cause more abuse. Example: she is making you walk her to the ATM at night, not with the intention to give you back your money, but to try to seduce you, emotionally blackmail you and even convince you to buy her expensive gifts. Your being kind and polite only causes more humiliation. More exploitation. And you are not getting what you want: your money.

That’s why you needed to change something in your approach – to become cold and reserved, and to not agree to her ATM games. For example, to make sure she knows whether she has the money before you accompany her to the ATM. That’s a boundary. You are not allowing her to make a fool out of you again. So you transform your anger into an action to protect yourself, i.e. into setting boundaries.

This way your anger will be less intense, because we get very angry when we feel helpless to change the abusive situation. For example, if she keeps dragging you to the ATM and leaving you empty handed. Making a fool out of you. That’s super upsetting. But if you don’t allow it any more, you’ve taken back some of your power. You said No to some of her abuse. And you don’t feel so helpless anymore.

With your father, who is also abusive and similarly like B doesn’t respect your feelings at all, it’s trickier to set boundaries, because you depend on him financially. But you can still set some boundaries, e.g. regarding him meddling into whom you talk to.

If he is forcing you to talk to this girl, you can say that right now you need to focus on your studies and you don’t have time for this girl, specially since she is moody and doesn’t know what she wants and you don’t have time or patience for that.

So you can use his macho style of “I am a busy man, I don’t have time for stupid emotions” to trick him to let you off the hook.

His priority is for you to finish college, right? And with as good grades as possible. So use that as an excuse why you can’t be spending too much time on girls now. That, plus the macho explanation about emotions, I think should be enough to at least make him less pushy about this girl.

Also, you can set a boundary on him calling every day and giving you 1-hr long litanies. You can tell a white lie about your changed schedule or something, which allows you to talk to him only 3 times a week, and for a shorter period of time. You can say that now, at the 3rd year of college, there is so much practical work and you are spending a lot of time at the clinic, or any kind of white lie that will avert him from insisting on those daily calls.

With a narcissist, or a toxic person in general, we just have to lie to protect ourselves. And so you may try that.

He is going to abuse his parental authority on me and I just want peace rn, not unnecessary drama. How do u expect me to go against his authority as a parent???

Like I’ve explained above. Use white lies and also use his own macho approach, i.e. his own priorities and values – to get him off the hook.

Yea I am directing that anger into running now since I dont have a real punching bag.

Good, it’s good that you are aware of your anger and are venting it via jogging. In addition to that, like I said, the goal would be to transform your anger into boundaries, so you can protect yourself from further abuse. So setting boundaries with B and with your father (no matter how small those achievements are, in the case of your father) is the way to go.

 I am not actually trying to make excuses, I am just trying to factor in every possible outcome cause we can never be 100% sure that our assumptions are correct. So when I consider all the possibilities, I end up being more lenient and forgiving.

When you consider that a proven and repeated liar is telling the truth this time, that’s when you end up being a fool who forgives her again and again. While she gets a free pass to keep hurting you again and again.

A narcissist is a “repeat offender”, and you shouldn’t tolerate people doing hurtful things to you again and again, even if they come up with the most believable excuses.

And I am going to Florida in August and knowing him, he is going to force me into an uncomfortable position to talk to the girl in person.

Is he considering her as your potential future wife? Is that why he is insisting on this friendship?

And if so, what are your thoughts on that? On marrying her?