“I think people like to “bury their betrayals” – the very concept of betrayal is painful.”

That’s because trust is so central to our lives. I doubt most people consciously think about trust and what it means.

Reflections on trust:

– When I dropped the dime on LO #2, I didn’t tell her that I didn’t love her anymore, I told her I didn’t trust her anymore.

– When we were getting started, I told LO #4, “Heaven help the man you ever really trust.”

– When my wife and I were contemplating divorce for reasons that had nothing to do with infidelity, I told her that I didn’t want to spend the last third of my life with someone that I couldn’t trust.

– I only allowed two women to be in the position to betray me and my knowledge, neither one did. If they did, they were smart enough not to tell me and good enough to pull it off without me catching wind of it.

– You can be attacked by someone that you don’t trust but you can never be betrayed by someone that you don’t trust.

– “Love is an ever-expanding sense of trust in another, along with admiration and respect for their talents, character, attributes and qualities.” – Shari Schreiber (https://sharischreiber.com/course/at-any-cost-saving-your-life-after-loving-a-borderline/)

– “When trust has been breached, so has respect–and second chances can be very few and far between.” – Shari Schreiber (https://sharischreiber.com/whos-doing-your-dirty-work/)

This spoke so much to me. Here’s to leaving those unarrived texts unanswered.

LO is a senior coworker. He is really into fostering of talent specially women in Tech. He hired me and for 2 years he love-bombed me… not in a manipulative way. He praised me to skies to everyone & to me. Consistently. Told me basically he was a fan. Kept pulling me into every project/team he had.

After a couple of years my LE started. It was one-sided. He only saw me as a talent. I slowly became limerent for him… feeling we had a special connection. We did not. It was my own mind playing tricks. He is an attractive, well-loved fella. But no doubt my own ego & self-esteem issues played a role.

He has now moved on to other new talent he is fascinated by. Effusive praise. Pulling them into his special projects. He still likes me & respects my opinions but has cooled down a bit.

He is my mentor too. It is such a tough thing… keeping a friendly, professional mask on. I am no longer his new shiny penny, and that hurts so much. Should not. But it does. Physically hurts.

The betrayal I feel is all my fault. He promised nothing. He is who he is.

Sammy,
My heart goes out to you. It must have been such a tough experience. Hope you are better now.
“He was just being his usual polite, friendly, noncommittal self”

This really resonated with me for my own case.

@Elle. Sorry you’re not feeling great about yourself at the moment. An unhappy experience in love can certainly shatter our confidence and leave us questioning our worth. I know it’s a cliche, but if there was ever a good time not to take what someone (i.e. your LO) says or does personally … now might be that time.

Don’t take this man’s choice of partner as a reflection on your character or value. As others have said, it’s about him and where he’s at in life, and not about you. You might have been a great match for him, a good stepmother to his children, etc, but you can’t force him to choose you over someone else. Desire isn’t logical.

On the other hand, if his current lady friend is “bad news” with a capital B, eventually he’ll come to see that from spending time with her. People can’t hide their negative traits forever. I think the truth eventually comes to light. Difficult people are difficult people and usually remain difficult people their whole lives.

I think it’s helpful also to not get into the habit of comparing ourselves to other people, because there are always going to be people better-off and worse-off than ourselves. Your LO, for example, could be with a girlfriend who’s amazing. Now that would be a pretty challenging set-up to cope with too, hey? But I know how hard it is to be the one left holding “the losing hand of cards”, as it were.

Sending you warm wishes, honey.

“The therapist’s theory, based on what I’d told her, was that LO #2 didn’t feel she was worthy of someone who loved her and treated her well.”

In one of our last conversations, before I tried NC, LO said “I hate myself; you know that.”
Yes, I did and had for a long time. He felt that he was paying for things he’d done in his youth.
We did have a connection but he didn’t want real. The online world of our social media group was where he thrived and felt successful. He won’t give that up for anyone. Took me too long to realize he wanted a message board pseudo girlfriend who would prop him up and stay out of his way.
Lonely people fall into these online communities and…stay. Much easier than real life effort and disappointment.
You turn off the computer, the Skype chat and you have…nothing.
It’s as real as Limerence, so an illusion of caring and community.

Scharnhorst,
” I flat out LO #2 asked if I had been playing a game I couldn’t win. She replied, “Pretty much.”
That is exactly my point. The game is not based on objective criteria or boxes one has to check off … because the boxes you are internal with the other person, and one person checks off those boxes more than someone else does.

Because I’m wired to think that what little I can’t fix I can work around, it was necessary to convince myself that I’d done all I could and didn’t miss anything. I left no stone unturned and I looked under every leaf. I flat out LO #2 asked if I had been playing a game I couldn’t win. She replied, “Pretty much.”

But, I had to still convince myself of that. There are some things you just don’t want to believe despite the overwhelming evidence in front of you. I didn’t just work with one therapist to figure this out, I worked with two, and talked to a few more. I wanted to see if they they came to the same conclusion and they did. It still hurt but the doubt was gone.

I watched LO #4 go through a similar process with her ex. My bet is if he hadn’t been so open about cheating on her and eventually allegedly assaulted her, he could have kept her on the string indefinitely.

Nobody likes being had but being made to look stupid on top of it makes it even worse.

You are thinking about it too logically, and none of this is logical, as all of us on the site can attest. We can’t figure out we want the LO so badly even though we know they are objectively a bad choice. Picking a partner isn’t like picking a health plan or a college. It can make no sense to the outside world and, depending on the person, can be a very subjective choice.

Nah…

It makes no sense but says way more about him than it does about you. Rod Serling once said that he had no responsibility for “the pathology of idiots.” I like Rod Serling. It’s a good thought.

LO #2 told me that I beat out my successor in every category. She knew she was trading down and what she was walking away from. I didn’t have to convince her I was the better option, she knew that I was the better option and walked anyway. I told the story to a woman friend and she called LO #2 an idiot. In “Letters From The Earth,” Twain says, “It is like valuing a watch that must go wrong, above a watch that can’t.” I like Mark Twain, too.

I asked the therapist why someone would do that? The therapist’s theory, based on what I’d told her, was that LO #2 didn’t feel she was worthy of someone who loved her and treated her well. The therapist’s theory was that LO #2 raised to believe that she deserved someone who cheated on her and treated her like crap. LO #2 told me she was afraid that one day I’d wake up and not want to be with her.

The therapist said that since she knew what she was doing, nothing I could have said or done would have changed it. The therapist said why LO #2 was the way she was didn’t matter. She was the way she was.