Dear Seaturtle:

I want to look at the exchange you had with N again, this morning, and see what I didn’t see before (there is always more to see if one keeps that 3rd eye open). You stated (to me) the purpose of the exchange as this: “Realizing I will need my passport soon I started to feel more urgency to get my things from N“.

Seaturtle (S): “Hi. how are you”                N: “Phenomenal”       S: “Couldn’t think of a more cryptic message? (I was attempting to keep things light if he would let it but he didn’t“- if your purpose in texting him was indeed just this, to get your passport and snow gear back, it’d make sense that you were not interested in how he’s feeling beyond the  superficial (“keeping things light”), starting a conversational with the customary how are you?

N: “What do you want”         S: “I want to know if you have any desire to talk”- this could be understood as you wanting him to talk, inviting him to talk about his feelings regarding the relationship and breakup.

N: “words can’t describe how you’ve made me feel and I have no desire to waste any more energy with you”- and, he talked about his feelings in a sentence.

S: “I tried my best to communicate cause I wanted it to work so bad but I just felt like we were not going to understand each other and I had to leave the loop we would be in. I’m really sorry for any pain I caused you“- you didn’t talk with him about his feelings, about him.. but about you. You didn’t invite him to elaborate on his 1-sentence answer above. And “I’m really sorry for any pain I caused you” is a blanket apology, not specifying what pain you caused him, if any, and not inviting him to clarify the nature of his pain.

N: “you have no clue what love is”.                    S: “yea I realize that”         N: (Thumbs up emoji)- this is very significant: you acknowledged to him that you have no clue what love is. And he agreed.

S: “But how would you know what it is better than me”-  you say, paraphrased: I have no clue what love is, but neither do you.  (You are not saying: I do have a clue about what love is).

N: “please just leave me alone”. S: “Ok, I’m sorry to bother you. I know I left stuff at your house..”- finally, you stated the purpose of contacting him. N: “I don’t know where any of your stuff is but it’s not here.”

.. S: “Why’d you even unblock me if it wasn’t so I could get my things back”- angry that he wouldn’t return your belongings.

in a note to me, you wrote about the exchange: “I am feeling anxious about my passport and confused about the many things I had at his house stored in the garage and closet”- seems like your main concern was your belongings.

“Also him telling me I don’t know what love is, hurts because it makes me feel like he thinks he was doing everything he could”- it’s not the thought that you don’t know what love is that hurts you, but that he thinks he knows what love is…(?)

To look further into what love is, in your mind and heart.. and what it is in his, I went back to the beginning of your thread, reading only your posts. The sheer number and length as well as the massive amount of insight you shared about in 30 pages is just too much to read through. This morning, I was able to read and take notes on less than 2 pages of your 30-page thread,  your posts Oct 6-16, 2023 only, keeping my 3rd eye open:

First, it is clear to me that you are capable of feeling empathy for others, and you do. If you are a narcissist, you are an empathetic one. Thing is, a personality disorder (I was diagnosed with one: Borderline Personality Disorder, BPD, and I no longer fit the diagnosis), is a spectrum thing: not all BPD people are the same person, and not all NPD people are the same person. If you look at the DSM-5 criteria for each one of the personality disorders, it says that a person has to fit .. let’s say 5 of the 8 criteria listed, so to fit a diagnosis. And so, within a personality disorder, people are different. Plus,  everything human is on a spectrum. So, many people fitting the NPD diagnosis feel empathy for others.. only that they often don’t. Or their empathy is limited to certain circumstances and is absent in other circumstances to an alarming extent.

Also, no one is born with a personality disorder. Symptoms start in childhood, due to ongoing trauma, and symptoms are added by early adulthood. The diagnoses are categories of personality disorders set by the DSM staff for the purpose of designing therapies to fit each category. It is not true that there is no healing from a personality disorder, and I am proof. Lots of people heal to one extent or another, this is why therapies for personality disorders exit and keep being developed.

I am saying all this not because I think that you fit the NPD (I really don’t know), or any personality disorder, but just in case you do- just in case you get diagnosed as such by a professional sometimes in the future- I want you to be open to the possibility, for therapeutic purposes.

And now, to quotes: “I am not confident that if we met in a group setting with 3+ girls and 3+ guys that we would choose each other. By this I mean I am not sure he sees what makes me special as opposed to another girl who’s pretty, good awareness, and fun… I want him to tell me he loves things about me that make me ME… I want to be a part of the fashion world in some way, where I make clothes or simply can afford to wear my style downtown, I want to be around people or at least not far from a big city, I am also an actress and I want to go to auditions in the city and one day be apart of a big film or tv series” (Oct 6, 2023)-

-your desire to be positively/ admiringly seen as an individual apart from others in a romantic relationship and otherwise is intense.

Oct 10-16, 2023: “my mom would pick me up and do whatever I wanted to prevent sadness… the pattern ends up me calling the shots a lot, our date nights depend on my mood, the music, most of the movies we watch, it’s all my comfortable preferences, when does this become selfish? I have wondered before if I am a narcissist and a taker in life… one day he will come out and say ‘we only ever do what you want and I’m sick of it.'”-

– I never thought much about your mother’s part in forming you during your formative years (aka childhood), I was remiss. Seems like she formed in you the expectation that love= someone doing whatever you wanted. Fast forward, N tried to fulfil your expectations in some ways, but failed to do so in all the ways you required (see below).

“I worry my partner doesn’t think of me, when he doesn’t put the toilet seat down, my head tells me he doesn’t think about me at all… If my boyfriend is showering by the time I come over I think, ‘wait why couldn’t he plan his shower so he would be out when I got here, he must not care very much about our time together.‘ I know it’s ridiculous right? All these are ways my mind just was exhausted living with him and I needed to get away from… him being late is a pattern in our relationship and it would bother anyone, but I do feel it bothers me more than most”-

– Part of you suspects that these expectations are ridiculous, but this part is not sure (hence the question, right?). Objectively, yes, it is ridiculous to think that N not always putting the toilet seat down means that he doesn’t think about you at all. But subjectively, this is how it feels to you. If N does not do ALL that you want, when you want it, it means to you, subjectively, that he doesn’t think about you/ doesn’t love you at all. No doubt that this would prevent you from feeling loved in any relationship, with any and every man.

“we smoked and (this is not the first time), I suddenly felt as though he was a stranger. He was getting into my bed and I felt uncomfortable sleeping with him. this happened after I said some things thinking they were funny (here the comedy aspect kicks in) and he didn’t react at all…  The whole thing is so sad to me, because it is not just marijuana that makes me feel this estranged way towards him… and I try to shed light on it by just being real, and asking like why is it awkward right now? And his response is always that he had no idea that it was. It just makes me feel so alone… it makes me wonder if it is just in my head? … I get this feeling of unfamiliarity often… completely sober as well. This feeling of disconnect that feels like an awkward unfamiliarity and I am the only one who notices it”-

– this is how I understand this: as a child (not only as a teenager, but before), you felt so ALONE, a stranger in your home, living with strangers, disconnected, a very distressing and reoccurring feeling. Your mother took that feeling away from you when she coddled and overprotected you (words you used someplace in your thread to describe her behavior toward you). She took that feeling away when she did whatever you wanted. Fast forward, you re-experienced the same childhood ALONE/ estranged feeling with N, and you needed him to take this feeling away from you by doing the same as your mother did: everything you want.

“(F) took normal teenage behavior as me not caring for him. What a lonely place to be, where you cannot receive or See the love, I want to avoid turning into my father in this way“- but you have turned into your father in this way. You took normal behaviors, like a guy not putting the toilet seat down,  as evidence of him not caring for you.

“about soulmates, I think this feeling of them turning on a light in a dark room so that I can see myself, is part of what I associate to someone being a soulmate of mine. That is why I mentioned my mom possibly being a soulmate because she does see me, and she reminds me of who I am when I need it”-

– You are someone ALONE (a dark room) who needs to be seen as worthy of connection/ worthy of not being alone (turning on a light). Problem is that you associate the light with everything you want being done by the one who supposedly loves you.. because that’s the kind of love you experienced as a child.

“I find myself wanting to criticize my partner for similar things my dad criticized me for, like ‘not seeing me.’ A mentality like, if I have to be hyper aware of what I am doing, like responding to messages, cleaning up after myself hyper-vigilantly, making sure YOU are seen, then why shouldn’t you have to be too.. Like he will leave a mess at my apartment, something I would be way too self conscious to do at his house and I have to actively stop myself from resenting that he feels the freedom to do those things and I cannot live with it. As if I wish he had the same anxieties as me… but I also don’t wish this upon anyone, so maybe I just wish he could at least empathize my internal torment“-

– Your internal torment is the ALONE, disconnected emotional experience of childhood. An experience you tried to change as a teenager, when living with your father, by hyper vigilantly fulfilling his unrealistic expectations from you. You tried to connect with him in this way, it was the expression of your love for him.. to do all that he wanted.

“(N) said he felt like he was always consoling me for something he did wrong…Yes he constantly thinks he has done something wrong, but I can totally see how he felt that way with how I would communicate him pressing a trigger. I would ask him why he kept hurting me”-

– You didn’t bring out the best in N in that he felt that he was always doing something wrong in the relationship with you (not always getting your jokes/ laughing when you do/ putting the toilet seat down/ telling you that you are pretty/ being on time/ talking to his roommate when you were in bed, etc.). He was in a difficult situation with you, wanting to please you on one hand (this is his brand of love: people pleasing, seems to me), passive-aggressively rebelling, on the other, responding to .. your unrealistic expectations in ways that were not emotionally honest. His weed use helped him to Teflon.. you and everything else in his life that was distressing. In short, he brought his baggage into the relationship, you brought yours, and the two of you, overall, did not bring out the best in each other.

If only the two of you- separately- could redefine LOVE: what is love?, as the song says…?

anita