Anita,

I spent the evening thinking about this and trying to find instances where this was true and I believe you to be right. While I believe he believes he is “being kind” in his everyday actions, I can now see and felt ways where this was not true.

I also thought so much about where you wrote, “Depending on what motivates him…” and I believe this to be the key to so much of this.  I am someone who knows the “darker” parts of him and therefore I did feel comfortable calling him out and speaking up when I felt something was not right.  For example, asking him what was happening in our friendship, or calling him out when he would label me a name (one time he “jokingly” called me a slut and I called him and told him to apologize…he was horrified that I did that) and I feel that even though I did not see his rudeness or avoidance as communication, I do “see” a lot of him.

He is a man with a lot of ego. 5 months before we began speaking he had a 13 year marriage end suddenly (she left him to be with someone else) and it really hurt him and I know that this had an impact on his sense of self. When we would first speak he would always want to talk about memories of being young and would ask me for compliments.  And as our sexual relationship grew, he was always asking me for sexual compliments.

When I think about him I see someone who presents who he believes his image to be.  He believes himself to be very funny, very sarcastic, a great lover, etc. And so he makes a great effort to present those things.  Because I don’t necessarily see him that way, I know that it had an impact on his ego and his need for me (motivation) diminished. While I didn’t ever criticize him I do feel that I was a bit more real with him than most people where.  When I think about how horrified he was when I stopped in that day to ask about dinner plans (when I did not realize he was avoiding me) and how horrified he was when I called him and asked him to apologize for calling me a slut, I can now see that he was so horrified because nobody ever speaks up to him. They give him a pass or just accept that “that’s him…”  He is not comfortable being around or interacting with someone who is willing to challenge him.  I don’t know what to make of that idea.

With this new person they dated 6 months prior and when they first met she told him she thought he was his soulmate (and who knows, perhaps they are). He said he was not in to her, that it just “wasn’t there” and that he wasn’t “in to her as a total package” but I know that they continued to be friends (they decided to stay friends) and that she really really really really liked him.  They had both been through divorces where their spouses cheated, both have a child and have similar lives.  She is very stable, a good job, nice family, etc. – very different from his ex-wife.   She is someone who seems VERY happy and cheerful ALL the time and someone who EVERYONE seemingly loves.  She’s quite popular and she seems SO kind to EVERYONE.

I mention this because I know that this is someone who can supply his ego with things I can not. Even though I am struggling with all that happened I do want him to have happiness in his life and I believe that this new person can provide him with that. I believe he struggles with depression/possibly a borderline personality disorder/possibly narcissism and I believe that having someone so happy in his life is what he needs and what makes him feel good.  He gets to be funnier than her (he thinks I’m funnier than him…in fact, he thought my voicemail message was so funny, he made it his and was always taking my jokes and sending them to his friends as his own), he gets to have a bit more ‘control’ because she likes him SO much and also she is SO beloved by everyone that he likes the idea of dating the “Most Liked” and “Most Popular” girl.  Everyone will like that they are together and his ego will like it as well.  She trusts him in ways that I knew not to and to her, he is perfect.  To me, he is not.  I know that deep down he knew this and I know that it hurt him.  He also knew that he was not the best lover I had ever had, although he was pretty darn good.  He always wanted to know where he fell in line with my other lovers.  To her, he is the best lover she’s ever had, he can wow and impress her in ways that he cannot with me.  Oh and this is silly but she likes everything on his social media, where I do not.  I like the things that I like, I don’t like them just because he posts them but I know in some ways, this bothered him.

I was thinking back to a moment a few weeks ago when he was telling me a story of a girl we went to high school with. They ran in to each other at a college homecoming game, said hello and then went their ways. That night the girl we went to high school with and another girl who was also at homecoming saw each other. The girl we went to high school with asked her if she and him were dating, she said no and the girl we went to high school with told her, “Good, because as nice as he can be, he can be just as mean.  Oh and he was pretty good in the sack.”

He told me this story and could not believe that she had said that he was mean.  He told me that he was so nice to her in high school, even going to see her in the hospital when she fell ill. I told him that just because he did that, it doesn’t obligate people to think differently of you, that how they perceive you is how they perceive you.  He did not understand this, or care for it.  Oh and no, it did not surprise me that she said he was mean, at all.

I say all of this to go back to your point about motivation and I understand it better now.  You’re right, there was no motivation for him to engage with me.  He claimed to want me to trust and reach out to him and at one point he even told me that he wanted me to reach out to him for comfort and I told him that comfort can be good but that it’s very important for me to learn to comfort myself.  It was after that things took a big turn.  When I think about the things that motivated him to interact with me – fond memories of our youth (that I did not share), his need for me to lean on him (that I did not entirely trust and ultimately came to decide was not best for me) and a need for his sexual ego to be boosted (I turn him on more than he turns me on) – you are right.  There was no motivation.  In some ways I think he wanted me to beg him to have sex with me.  When I went to his house that day he did mention that he thinks I showed up to have sex with him and he did not believe that if we went to lunch or dinner that we would not end up sleeping together.  To be clear, I went to his house that day to find out about dinner plans and I 100% felt that we would just be going to lunch or dinner – sleeping together did not matter to me.  It never ever mattered to me more than what I perceived to be friendship.

My motivation was to find a way to be friends because I believed that without romantic feelings, we could have. But I believe in some ways he WANTED me to have romantic feelings for him even though he didn’t have them for me. And he believed that I did, even though I would have to tell him all the time that I did not.

What do you make about all of this – am I getting the right idea about motivation?  Or am I missing the mark?