Dear Anita,

In response to the first portion of your reply on December 9, 2023 at 7:22 am. The second half was very helpful to my trip home.

“When we people are confronted with behaviors that embarrass us, behaviors that are negative, we tend to explain why we behaved that way, explanations that shed positive light on us, and that’s fair for as long as the explanations are true and as long as we express regret for those behaviors. What N did was not to explain himself but to TOTALLY DENY what he did, aka GASLIGHTING.”

I need more confidence in my instincts because wow was I manipulated, this is very validating, that there is a difference between explaining and denying. There were many times when he would accuse my intentions behind an action and I would try to explain to him my true thinking, but he would call my explanations excuses. I would then reply, “no I just want you to understand me and why I do things” then he would say I had double standards because he was not allowed to explain (which was really denying) and I was allowed to explain (true explanations of why). I still apologized after though, that my actions affetced him negatively, but wanted him to understand me, a process I wish he did, but really he would excuse his actions and never/can’t currently remember a time of him apologizing.

It is sad. I wish I could fix him, help him to learn to take responsibility and see others pain. See the weight of words, and emotional instincts so that he could one day experience a soulmate, and in that understand my breaking up with him. I know these are just wishes, before I tried to make them come true and now I know I cannot. Every time I made a wish upon a star, candle, or blowing an eyelash away, “I wish that N can be my soulmate” in different words each time.

“- a mask that’s covering his eyes, so he can’t see you. You can’t remove his mask. He has to acknowledge first that he has a mask on, and then intend to remove it.. and then do the hard work that it’d take to remove it.”

This is a feeling I want to express, maybe in a painting…poem or song. The feeling of loving someone with a mask on and trying so desperately to take it off so he would see me. The feeling of feeling frozen when I suddenly see the mask, not knowing how to speak it’s language. Feeling relieved it is gone, confused how I didn’t see it for so long, sad that I am not sad.. I want to be sad, instead I feel ‘nothing with a dose of loneliness’, a good title haha.

In response to a few points I haven’t addressed yet from your reply December 8, 2023 at 10:58 am.

– very well expressed.. wow! (1) Your past gloriously positive expressions about N (“He is supportive… He is truly a stand up man, he is so kind and deeply cares for those around him… my partner is a stand up man, no question“, etc.), were your subconscious efforts to present him in such a way that readers will discourage you from breaking up with him.

-What is interesting about this is that although this must’ve played into efforts to discourage readers from suggesting a breakup, I was also wanting that response from people still. when you mentioned breaking up for the first time, I remember feeling relief. I was looking for validation that it was the correct thing to do. Also I am a firm believer that you cannot get good counseling if you do not express the truth, and the truth as I knew it at the time was him being innocent. He correctly portrayed his innocence, very well and I believed it. I also believed the people around us, friends and family, that saw the side of him that I portrayed to you in the beginning, who would say how perfectly balanced we were.

“…because you were not ready for a breakup, and you didn’t want the readers to suggest a breakup.”

This, I think is the truest reason as to why I presented him so positively only. What is so complex though, is like I said above I did consciously want someone to see the situation and validate my instincts to leave, but I didn’t know how to express it beyond; not having a shared sense of humor or deeply spiritual conversations. I wonder if these were a moment I would meet that inauthentic mask on N, because when I would try to guide our conversation to a more spiritual place, often his responses would be about something I was not necessarily talking about. Whereas when I talk to others they can follow me there, like M or even other acquaintances. I would instead feel sort of frozen with N as he redirected me and I was pulled out of my meditative conversational state.

“- it will help to reevaluate him as he truly is because if you understand that he has no empathy for you, you are not likely to have so much empathy for him. It is harmful for a victim to have empathy for a perpetrator: it’d be like a deer having empathy for a hungry mountain lion (and because of that empathy, presenting itself as food for the mountain lion).”

I have thought alot about hatch in this breakup and definitely do not want to have empathy for her mountain lion (let’s say shark). It is hurtful when someone defends a shark in your life, because it invalidates you and I don’t want to do this to myself. So I am open to evaluating my shark now. This creature has always been an interesting but very frightening creature for me. I once did not participate in a family vacation activity where they swam in the ocean in the dark to see manta-rays, out of my fear of sharks. I was the only one to not go, even my dads girlfriends two children at 7 and 9 years old! They eat Seaturtles, part of my evidence into believing I am a reincarnated seaturtle. I do not believe this so strongly, it is more of a little feeling that could be true, but who knows what really is true when these matters come to the surface. Anyways, is there anything specifically you think I should evaluate about N? I wonder, does evaluate mean to try to look behind his mask? Or evaluate him with the mask on.

“- it was a mistake to leave that poem for him because the love you expressed in that poem, the love for him, can only encourage him to contact you for another manipulative round, as he’d see it as his success in the art of manipulation.”

Do you think he knows he was manipulating?

– a gaslighter does not have love and respect for their victim, the gaslightee.

-when I would sense this lack of love or respect, I would bring it up to him and he would act as though I offended him. “How could you not feel loved after..” listing things like coming to see my family, being there when I cry etc. I would then get confused and think I was just ungrateful. I would mention the respect, and he would say “you think I would stay with someone I didn’t respect?” I would then think I was just projecting my what my father thought of me onto N.

Seaturtle