SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Your willingness to take him back after the first ghosting (ghosting is IMO outrageously discourteous and cruel) is where you might want to dig a little more

Completely agree with this. The personality disordered are extremely skilled with assessing and testing their victims and this is exactly the kind of thing they do to determine the extent to which you're hooked and will put up with bad behavior.

I also think my con man was BPD and I forgot until this thread that he also ghosted on me 3 weeks into dating! My IC at the time was trying to push me to open up and be more vulnerable when dating, so she encouraged me to reach out and apologize for not being more proactive in contacting HIM (even though he had clearly stood me up). I was reluctant but hey, she was the professional and what did I have to lose? He was thrilled when I basically called him up and said I was sorry for ghosting him after he ghosted me. I think I moved to the top of his victim lineup with that move.

There are a couple of books on this topic, "How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved" is a good one, but nothing really "stuck" until I read/listened/watched Brene Brown and worked on self-acceptance, boundaries and letting go of shame. There was always a part of me that thought I'd end up with a disordered man because what healthy man would want me, and while I thought that, I was right.

This story is so painful and poignant as a New Beginning thread.

I see I'm not the only person who has found new insights about a similar "relationship" we thought we had, in our post-divorce lives.

Your description of this man fits 3 very similar men that were attracted to me when I was age 32-42 (Back-to-back-to-back, OUCH! The latter 2 pursued me; I'd been the pursuer in my 1st post-divorce love affair that went nowhere after 4 years.)

I ended up angry that I'd invested 10-plus precious years of my adult single life having to learn the fine points about such personalities, AFTER my divorce from a 12 year marriage in my 20's. My 30's were burned up in repeated attempts to "start over" .. over and over again...

During that era, I read dozens of books on psychology and relationships, but not many of them helped, much. Throughout that decade of prime-time career growth and romantic misadventure, my father (who my mom had left at age 50) did his best to offer me some attempts at insight into the male brain. (In a time before the internet.)

My father would often tell me that most guys he'd known in his time, were more or less predatory about women. I took that with a grain of salt, because I didn't know if his experiences translated to what is termed the General Population, so I wasn't sure if his opinions were valid for MY enlightened generation (ha!), or they were just my cynical, older divorced dad speaking. KWIM?

But, bottom line: I gathered that there exist men who count on women to give them the kind of encompassing love they hope to receive (but with no obligation to reciprocate), while at the same time/later on, they report they were just looking to "get some." Sure happened in my life....

And just to ice the cake, at age 46, I finally married for the 2nd time, 4 years after what started out as my super slow, friends-first rebound relationship I'd entered reluctantly right after Ghost Guy "ghosted" me. After 4 years, just dating weekends and spending quality time together but not living together, I felt a need to make a decision about him, one way or the other. (That should have been my clue!)

But instead, our counselors, families, friends, co-workers - on both sides - assured us that we were a "match." Maybe we didn't have the intensity of the earlier passionate relationships, but we were getting a lot of assurances that we could "go the distance."

Fast-forward only 4 more years, to age 51, and the gut-wrenching discovery that my husband, "Mr. Steady," had deliberately withheld the truth about his entire prior sexual history, one of using female prostitutes! Apparently, after the honeymoon, his old lifestyle was calling his name; it was a part of his life he had never shared with me, even though I had shared my history with him.

That was the worst blow of my life, after all the other painful endings and abandonment. It is why I have found this website so helpful in the last few years.

kpstartingover shared something I also experienced, hope you don't run into this: counselors can totally miss a lot of these kinds of sinister moves by very disordered people, thus setting us up for further pain. That was our pre-marital counseling experience!

So, fraeuken, may you feel encouraged during this difficult time by receiving the empathy from everybody who has posted on your thread. Please forgive my lengthy post that I thought might be relevant. It's just that what you are going through is so spooky-similar to my experiences, and I have always wished someone had shared with me about this crazy stuff. You will do better than I did, because you are getting better feedback than I did, from so many kind SI posters.

Google, "The Pity Play".

Highly manipulative people use this to hook people like us. They play on our sympathy, empathy, kindness and generosity to excuse/give a reason for their atrocious behavior.

Hello there, checking in. I have now become the resident expert on all kinds of personality disorders after reading everything and anything to understand the motivation for the ghosting behavior other than “he is a douchebag”.

And then, today, I saw he had cashed a check I sent to settle a debt I really didn’t have to him but then again, he had specifically mentioned that purchase the afternoon before the disappearing act, so I thought I will be bigger than that and settle. Not only did he race to deposit the check, he added a smiley face with a curl on top, for his signature curls on the front of the check.

My vote is douchebag. Who does that?

[This message edited by fraeuken at 5:23 PM, October 18th (Wednesday)]

Ooooh nooo. You should not have sent the douchebag a check.

FTG

Give us his address. I'm sure one of us lives close enough to deposit something on his front porch.

<just kidding, of course, but it is fun to daydream>

If you didn't live as far as freakin California, I wouldn't be kidding. I'd be more than happy to leave a deposit on his porch.

And yes, count my vote in the douchebag category. Personality disorder is way too kind.

so I thought I will be bigger than that and settle.

You did the right thing. That ensures he has no ties to you.

Whatta azz.....smiley face?

Onward and upward! Getting him out of the way, just clears your space for positivity!

(((fraeuken)))

I am so sorry he did this to you. He sounds like a conman for sure and I am so glad you were able to finally see it for yourself even before you knew the whole story. That says a lot about respecting yourself.

I will never understand how people can do this to other people. I mean I know they have a screw loose somewhere, but how can they not see they need help. Why would you intentionally hurt other people for no reason? This guy is not young, so he has been doing this probably all his life and will continue until they put him in the grave. I would hate to know I was going to die and all I left behind were people I hurt.

Did you happen to listen to the podcast called "Dirty John" a few weeks ago about a 50something woman who was conned on OLD by a man living double (many, really) lives? It's scary as hell. There is some violence so be warned of that but it's extrememly well done. The article is also online if you don't want to listen to a podcast.

There are plenty of men out there like this, and there are also plenty of women who will give them 8th, 9th, 10th chances and put their own well-being and their family's in danger.

It might be worth a listen as they explore his psychology and how he was able to get away with so many lies for decades.

Hi I know this is a very old post and op might not even be around SI anymore, but I wanted to comment because I can relate and wanted to share some feelings I have about this. First, I've been ghosted too. Although never by a LTR. Mostly relatively short relationships, mostly when I was younger, like teens or early 20s, at a time that i wasn't seeking a LTR. I never even said I love you to either of those 2 ghosters. I was aggravated solely on principle of being disrespected. Neither ghoster ever tried to contact me again. Clearly they were disinterested in me. Howeber, one ghosted bf occurred about 3 years ago though (I was 27, he was 24--so no longer "juveniles", but 2 adults with degrees working full-time grown up jobs). Again, short relationship of 1-2mos. I wrote about this before. He