hey brav i feel your pain . it will fade away with time m sure .stay strong bro. shit happens .forgive her and forget her be better human being .thats the only right thing you should do. yes its gonna be difficult but not impossible.

Hey Sandstorm,

Thank you so much for your encouraging words Bro. Its been a big challenge to my mental resilience. I do have thought about forgiving her in future, but for now , I can only acknowledge that I will forgive her for one day for gaslighting me.

I am waiting for that day. For now, I will try to hang in there.

Thanks
Brav3

Hi Inky,

I have decided to fully cut off with this common friend completely as she isn’t a trustworthy person.

I can’t change job as I am in contract with my company until the end of this year. I have finished all my paid leaves to cope up with early stages of breakup. So yeah, basically, I have no choice but to endure this.

I would really like to do that ceremony. Can you please describe how did you do a ceremony to burn those words.

Thank Brav3

So I look inside and reflected little bit about why things are soooo painful still? Why I am still some days get stuck in raw emotions?

I’d like to write about it. Here’s what I found.

During my past relationship, there was gaslighting (manipulation) in two ways.

First, she acted soooooooooo good and right and made me believe that she was perfect for me, that she was the best fit/match for me. I do not know how much was this part intentional.

Second, she made me feel that there was something wrong with me, that I am making things up or I shouldn’t not believe what I was seeing, and causing doubts on myself and then making me feel that I was causing problems in the relationships. I know, pretty F##ked up but its true. I surely, think that there were some intentions there to hide things from me.

This both together has formed some traumatic memories ( images, words, scenes) which still continues to make me feel that I am solely responsible for the relationship to break, that I had the best match for me and I squandered it. So, whenever these traumatic memories play in my mind, I feel this immense emotional pain and it really burns inside.

Dear Anita,

I think you missed my last post.

Why I am feeling this so much pain, even after 4 months. It was gas lighting.

Brav3

Dear Anita ,

I feel like if I go in detail again, it feels like I am dwelling on it again. Everyday ( in mornings or nights) I get memories ( images, words or scenes) along with emotions about her behavior during mid to end of relationship, where she would do something so not right ( for a person in committed relationship)

For example she would flirt with other guys, sometimes in front of me, sometimes on phone. And I would feel really awful, with my gut feelings screaming – there’s something not right. Then if I question her about this she would say by I am being insecure or relationship is about Trusting your partner and let them be free. She gas lighted/ convinced me so badly that at times when I see her doing it, I wouldn’t say anything because then I am a jealous or insecure Bf damaging my relationship by being irrational.

Sometimes flirting would be to get favors from people, like discount in stores, better deals at car hiring shops, or flirting with people in higher positions at work to get raise or better work oppertunity etc.

Sometimes she would say to that she is being friendly and that’s all.

Why I didn’t see this? Few reasons
1. I was alone with no friends.
2. Desperate to have relationship as I thought that would make me complete or happy.

First she bombarded me with love and affection so strong, put me on pedestal and created a reliance/dependency where I was thinking she was my best friend/ my lover/ my everything. And then she slowly started changing her behavior little by little making me convince that I am being crazy here.

Anita, she would say things like ” you are being so sensitive”, ” you misunderstood me completely”, “you are being insecure over nothing”, ” I mentioned that to you, you forgot again”. I was feeling that I am losing my mind, that how am I forgetting things, or become so sensitive. That’s how I started doubting everything I see or my gut feelings. I started fighting with myself.

At the end of relationship, she was absolutely non empathetic towards me with no sad emotions. Like I was nothing to her.

When I put all pieces together, I clearly see that I was psychologically abused, everything that didn’t make sense at that time, started to make sense now. However, the trauma continue to exist where I get this flashes of memories where I see myself as this desperate guy who badly wants to do everything right to make his partner happy but somehow continue to does everything wrong and damage his relationship. These flashers makes me feel those lost ,confused, desperate feelings again and again, reliving that painful events. And Then the feeling of disempowered that she did this to me and get away with, I can’t expose her ( people won’t believe me) or prove anything and even if I did there’s no law against it.

In world, she is a charming caring person and she didn’t want me anymore, NOTHING wrong with that. That’s what people do they break up. There’s no abuse. What I know now, I just have to learn from it. I feel sorry for this other guy that she is seeing now. He doesn’t know what he got himself into.