Dear Candice88,

He told me that he changed from reflecting on what I may have gone through, and never wanting to make someone feel that again.

Maybe I making bold assumptions here, but I don’t think he spontaneously started contemplating about you and your suffering, realizing how badly he treated you. To me it seems more likely that something triggered his change, e.g. that he went through a similar experience himself, of being mistreated and manipulated, and maybe that’s when he sought therapy? Has he been to therapy btw?

Yes, I had massive self esteem issues from him, a very successful, ambitious person who I was supposed to trust, telling me over and over how I should get “over it” and that I was embarrassing. I definitely absorbed that.

And it seems to me that your self-esteem issues didn’t start with him, but earlier, only perhaps they weren’t so strong? You might have been attracted to very self-confident, ambitious people because you yourself didn’t feel that way?

I may have a follow-up question (sorry for bombarding you): you say M is an addict, and he presented himself as a “whole and healed person”. Could it be that he is on cocaine or a similar drug, and also looks like an ambitious, self-confident person on the outside?