The energy of this new year feels really mental or, rather, thoughtful to me. Contemplative. I think it may be the lingering effects of the Cancer full moon. Reflecting on the past, especially related to family and relationships, is part of Cancer’s emotional energy. And that is what I have been doing. I couldn’t sleep because of it. My mind keeps trying to figure everything out, make sense of things.

My mind intellectualizes things in order to try to mitigate uncomfortable feelings I was taught to suppress as a child. Apparently this is a typical strategy adults like me use because it helped us cope as children. Imagine not being able to express certain emotions, being punished for expressing them and being put into your room in isolation to face them alone. It forces a person into their head. This is especially true for intelligent people. I was considered near genius level as a child with an IQ of 148. I learned recently that therapy seldom works with people like me because we are well aware of our patterns and why we are the way we are. If the therapist notices someone intellectualizes then they can teach them how to get out of the head and into the body to feel the emotion. I think that is what I need.

Anyway, I wondered about some things, looked deeper and caught a belief that might be inhibiting me. I have a belief that my ex is good and has good intentions so he couldn’t have been trying to control and manipulate me all along. I wondered if perhaps I was wrong and then all sorts of memory flooded my mind to prove that perhaps I am wrong and my ex did always have malintent. 

I had to write it in my phone notes to get to sleep. This is what I recalled:

My ex took my vulnerability and used it against me. He did this from the very beginning.

For example, he told my sister (the meth addict) when he was trying to fix the relationship between her, her husband and my mom, step-dad and I (and rest of the family). In this particular instance he was talking about my relationship with her. He told her he thought I was jealous of her and competing with her for our mom’s love. He confessed this to me, almost as if he was gloating about it, saying he did this to get her into ARC (Scientology term – Affinity,  Reality, Communication) with him. This just means he wanted her to think he shared her reality with him (form of manipulation). What he did was upsetting to me and I told him so and forbad him interfering anymore. I told him he was intentionally “stirring the pot” and it was not helpful. He denied it. I had told him about my early childhood issues with my sister in confidence. It was me saying “I can see I was like this as a child” but it was never meant to be used in the way it was.

Another example, when we were dating I confided in him some of the fantasy thoughts I had when I was angry, specifically about my ex-MIL and my cousin’s ex-BF (from my 20’s). I can be quite nasty in my fantasies when mad. I have confronted this part of my self and have made peace with it. My ex would bring up these in our discussions all the time and towards the end in our arguments to point out to me how evil I was. He would use deflection (change the topic I brought up to discuss to avoid having to confront it) and throw in such info as I confided in him early on. It was diabolical and I would call him out on it and he would get angry, yelling and sometimes throwing things. He did not like to get caught. 

Throughout our marriage he shared personal and very private, often sexual, information about our relationship with family and friends. He would later tell me he did it, seeming to brag, explaining it away or justifying it. Often times I would intuitively recognize the person he told this info to would change energy-wise when around me. I perceived something was off and would ask him and then he would confess. I doubt I got all the info he told them but the impact was obvious. He swore to stop doing it but never stopped. I discovered it so frequently I stopped confiding anything in him because I never knew who he would tell. 

He did all these things from the very beginning and I ignored my intuition which told me he was doing it purposefully. So, so many times I confronted him and he talked his way out of it, making me feel like I must be imagining it all. So, I chose to believe he didn’t mean to and dismissed my own inner Knowing. Now, however, I believe he was doing all of it consciously with the intent to turn people against me, his family, friends and even my own family. This was to isolate me and build himself up so that I would be less likely to leave him. I was already one to isolate myself, hermit that I am, so it was easy for him to further that isolation. Seemingly without support and with the confusion his purposeful gaslighting and deflection caused me, I did exactly what he wanted – I stayed and allowed him to continue unchallenged. I second-guessed myself all the time. I believed he was good and had good intention because if I entertained the idea he was the opposite then it would mean I made a mistake of letting someone like that into my life. Plus, he was so spiritual, etc., bettering himself, loved and liked by so many people, etc. Everything in reality said the opposite of what my intuition was telling me. Yet I ignored it.

I do think, now upon reflection of all this, that he may be a narcissist. My therapist seems to think so, anyway. I am ashamed of myself. I should’ve known better.  It sucks to recognize it now, so many years later, but it explains why he became so nasty, aggressive and abusive when I started to question him and set boundaries. It explains so much. 

My guides once said of my ex (years before I met him), “He will save you from yourself”. I can see now what they meant. I entered the relationship with low self-worth, not really knowing mySelf, full of fear, seeking someone to make decisions for me because making them myself was too difficult and scary, feeling lost, etc. I didn’t value myself, second-guessed myself, and was a people pleaser, shifting and changing to suit everyone but myself. When I had the heart opening in 2015 I was shown the lie and still couldn’t confront it. I saw through his “love” but because of the trauma of the situation I was unable to really digest and integrate all the info that was coming to me. It was only recently that I started to see and listen to my what my physical body and intuition was telling me all along.