[MadLuv]

Wow Nas. That is something. You know during my marriage my XH would
Forget that I was the one that told him something and would share it with me as news. I always thought that was odd, but to take a traumatic event of your and make it his? Seem like he is looking for sympathy and he must have at some point been deeply touched  by what you told him and he knew that would garner some. How terrible and just another sad sad thing to happen. I’m
So sorry.

[KayDee]

Ditto from me. I was actually going to comment on Standing Strong's thread, in response to what he wrote about his W repeating back what he has told her, as if it was hers to impart and news to him. My H did this all the time with his own particular slant on the information. He also also get the same symptoms as me when I got ill. I mean, instantly, as soon as I mentioned it. And not just contagious things. I never felt I could have my own sickness. I used to joke that he would get my menstruation pains at some point - I don't know what to make of any of this. I used to think that he hated not being the 'patient' (or maybe hated having to be the carer?) but I also wonder if it is part and parcel of identity issues and not seeing oneself as separate from their significant other. So sorry Nas that this has come to light. It's possible he has actually internalized this as his own experience.

[marvin4242]

Ever since the discovery of OW, I’ve lived with the unacknowledged but just under the surface terror that he would tell her or others my story and paint a giant bull’s eye on my most vulnerable spots (a fear I'm sure some of you are familiar with). It never crossed my mind he would instead erase me completely but steal the deepest parts of me, parts that I opened up and shared with him, fool that I am. I wonder if I’ll ever forgive myself fully for trusting.

Wow that is, well, let's just say there are no words. Can't imagine what this must be like. Doesn't it just underscore even more how much this had nothing to do with you and everything to do with him? The levels of WTF disorder is off the scales.

As for trusting can you elaborate? How is it ever our fault for trusting, for being open and caring and empathetic human beings, for experiencing what in my opinion is the entire point of life? We all have our own histories and pain, trust that has been betrayed. But for me that says everything about the person who betrays the trust and very little about the person who trusted. I imagine most of us didn't simply meet our significant others and within 5 minutes shared our life stories. We built up trust and confidence over time, and that trust was earned. So how are any of us (or you) to blame?

[UrsaMajor]

Ever since the discovery of OW, I’ve lived with the unacknowledged but just under the surface terror that he would tell her or others my story and paint a giant bull’s eye on my most vulnerable spots (a fear I'm sure some of you are familiar with). It never crossed my mind he would instead erase me completely but steal the deepest parts of me, parts that I opened up and shared with him, fool that I am. I wonder if I’ll ever forgive myself fully for trusting.

Wow that is, well, let's just say there are no words. Can't imagine what this must be like. Doesn't it just underscore even more how much this had nothing to do with you and everything to do with him? The levels of WTF disorder is off the scales.

Seriously.... People are constantly saying how screwed up the memory of the MLC'er is and how they rewrite history....  Revision, misappropriation, projection... it is all there.... and your x is a champ at it..... Does bring up the question "How does this benefit him?" A larger pity party perhaps? Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme and, from my perspective, diminishes the impact on you personally not in the least. The people who he is telling this stuff too will either be those that you have no need to debate with, explain, or justify yourself to or they will be those that just nod and say "Yeah, right"  because they know he is FOS

As for trusting can you elaborate? How is it ever our fault for trusting, for being open and caring and empathetic human beings, for experiencing what in my opinion is the entire point of life? We all have our own histories and pain, trust that has been betrayed. But for me that says everything about the person who betrays the trust and very little about the person who trusted. I imagine most of us didn't simply meet our significant others and within 5 minutes shared our life stories. We built up trust and confidence over time, and that trust was earned. So how are any of us (or you) to blame?

[Nas]

As for trusting can you elaborate?

I’ll try. My first thought is it’s his fault he betrayed me, but it’s my fault I shortchanged myself in the first place. There’s a much longer and deeper story of the how and why I came to choose him as the person I would build a life with, but I was not under the delusion I was in a fairytale marriage with Prince Charming. I saw clearly (but overlooked) his anger issues, his self-centeredness, his seeming inability to empathize with others’, his dismissiveness, his often acid tongued criticism, and I accepted that relationship as what I deserved. I was a caring, supportive partner but I didn’t even allow myself the prospect of having a caring, supportive partner – that’s on me.

This is all hard to admit. I arrogantly thought I was much healthier and self-aware than I was, and I kept trying to make myself and my needs matter to him, as if I had that power. Somehow, sharing these parts of myself with him was delusional of me, almost like a flipped upside down and backwards, “if I tell you the things that scare me the most to say, it means I can trust you.” I mean, obviously that’s ass backwards. That’s the opposite of how it works/ed with every other person in my life and in every other intimate relationship I had prior to him, but I don’t know, I guess partly it was the subconscious ticking of an invisible life clock and I wanted that belonging so much I was willing to delude myself. And I loved him and wanted a life with him, I don’t want it to seem like he was a means to an end. I wanted to feel “home” and I wanted it with him and only him – again, the reason for that is a longer psychological deep dive.
So that’s a rambling partial attempt at elaborating, but there you have it.

[Treasur]

So it sounds as if you are struggling to forgive yourself, or that younger version of you, for wanting what you wanted and accepting what you accepted? That makes sense I think to quite a few of us....well, it doesn’t but you know what I mean......bc when we know better, we do better right? It’s like casting good seed on poor ground....it doesn’t change the goodness of the seed or how normal it is to want to sow. At times talk on this forum turns to forgiveness.....perhaps forgiving our younger selves and our old floppy boundaries is the real issue? And did that younger you do anything so very terrible really.....if the soil had been better, the seeds would have grown after all and the story would have been one of courage and triumph.

But we were never responsible for the poor soil.
Only for not realising how poor the soil was or that it was beyond our ability to fertilise it enough perhaps lol. Or that there were dragons underneath 
Imho people who are capable of very big deceit and betrayal deceive and betray. (Either bc it always was their nature or becomes their nature). Which tbh means that we should be less surprised by evidence that they continue to do so, right? It says something about our natures (in a good way imho) that we can still find it rather shocking. Bc it is not our nature, bc it is not how we rebuilt ourselves, bc we become almost allergic to it having experienced the destruction of it.

I suspect that these folks are wired towards a weird kind of codependency much deeper and more twisted than most of us can comprehend, that there is not much there there when it comes to a sense of self that is genuinely unfathomable for those of us who are a bit more integrated and self-conscious.

I can understand if it felt like a kind of violation. I can understand your immediate reaction. I can understand why you chose not to get into a ‘no, that was MY awful experience’ conversation. I suspect you may be musing on withdrawing at speed from whoever shared this information with you bc that’s a bit weird and unhelpful too imho....if nothing else, it shows that they don’t know you (or him) at all.
And I am sorry most of all that you have those tender painful spots in your own life history.
But I would remind you....which I suspect you already know now that your amygdala has probably settled down  ....that nothing he says changes the the reality and truth of your own life story, of your own challenges and triumphs. Not for good or ill. It literally changes nothing for you or about you. It’s not very different than those stories of people claiming to have serious illnesses to set up funding pages, is it? Weird, a bit repulsive, kind of disgusting.....and it says nothing at all about all of the people who genuinely suffer with that illness or the tremendous kindness or compassion shown by the people who were conned.
Poorly wired humans seem to have a tremendous capacity for turning human treasures into s&it writ large. (Perhaps that is the reality of how karma actually works, idk)
Which is why it matters so much that the rest of us can see the difference between the two......
And that we can tuck our good seeds in our pocket, tap them now and then for reassurance that they are still in our pockets and move forward to sow them in better soil.....
And perhaps be kind towards that younger us who scattered some of our seed unknowingly in poor soil.
And remember that it was only some, not all, of our seeds.
.

[MadLuv]

You’re words were golden Treasur

[Nas]

I suspect you may be musing on withdrawing at speed from whoever shared this information with you bc that’s a bit weird and unhelpful too imho....if nothing else, it shows that they don’t know you (or him) at all.

I definitely could’ve done without hearing about any of this, for sure. And if it was someone looking for gossip, I certainly wouldn’t have been polite about telling them where to go. But this was actually my brother-in-law, who I always had a soft spot for and who after this conversation, even with my own mess of feelings swirling around, my heart broke for a little bit.

Having actually lived the events that he was talking about, carrying them alone my whole life, knowing that I will probably carry them alone for the remaining time I’m on this planet, I can understand his urgency to offload it, to put it out where someone else could see and hear him and not leave him all alone with it. Carrying it alone sucks. One of the most painful parts of the end of my marriage and all that happened was the bursting of the bubble I was in where I thought I was no longer alone with these things, that someone heard me, saw me and stayed.

And it made sense that he’d think that these might be things my former husband would’ve told me back when I was his, quote unquote, *partner, *the person who was closest to him, *the one he would confide in and show his true self to.
I sort of felt for him for having to even grapple with these stories about the childhood he also lived really made him question his own memories and experience. So I’ve set my boundary, and no ill will towards him, he’s just a fellow human trying to deal with the fallout and doing his best.

*yeah right

🎶 https://youtu.be/JzZ-Mgi1My4

(Edit: wrong link)

[Treasur]

Well, we all know that WTF feeling that causes such self-doubt about your own recollections.
It was kind of you, Nas, to make space to see that in your BiL.

[FaithWalker]

How awful, Nas.  I would rightfully be upset as well if word such as that got back to me.  The wtf factor of it all is sometimes just unfathomable.