Love addiction is tough. You keep holding on long after the person is gone and you keep hoping they will change and they disappoint you time after time and put you last to life. When you try to free yourself the person says just the right things to make you stay. It’s abusive and there is a way out but the way out isn’t easy. You are so hard up to feel attention you accept any form of abuse along with the attention. In my case I was with someone who future fakes and continues to. I also am in a place of hyper vigilance I feel like I am exposed every time I react and I’m triggered by an event. Then I’m flooded with nightmares, PTSD and physical sensations of abandonment and then the morning comes and I’m supposed to just get up and live life that people know me as.
I find myself defensively saying no. The no not being heard. Then he floods me with text of images of us. The world sees something completely different on social media. They see him having a fun adventurous life, posting photos of himself
He keeps dangling the next opportunity to make things continue and then when I ignore it, he goes and takes a friend to these events
HE gaslights, he builds up opportunities for us to be together and close to the event things fall through. He tells me I have this all wrong. He says things will change when I am with him
He says
“I’ve lived my life a certain way and there’s a lot of things I love to do but it never meant that I wouldn’t sacrifice things once you and I are together. I’ve always known that I need to make major changes in my life once I’m with my soulmate and I’m ready to do that”
I am moving on with my previous life and it feels unnatural but I am. He won’t let go. And I can’t seem to quit arguing about why I am leaving. I know I must go. It’s a nightmare one cannot get detached from. When I try it only last a week and then I argue my truth more. I bear witness to social media and I am extremely triggered of what I see. He’s bared all these romantic feelings and then he is doing the very things he fantasizes us to have been at together. It tears me apart. He just celebrated the celebrity he works for being at a tiki event. He waved around the idea I could be with him and travel down the coast and go to a show and then to this event. This was at the top of August. While I felt I missed out, I know I want to hold integrity of being modest and not just going away. I have just went away several times to concerts and had to fly out west to even put time into the relationship.
He came here twice in four years and told me the last time he was here in 2021, after he proposed that he would like to break the engagement off and take a break. I should have left then. Please pray for me. I am in a place of my life where I don’t like what I mean, I don’t like how I am treated. I have had a total of two counselors to try to get through to the other side. It pulls on me. I need prayers please.
I gave the engagement ring and it’s been boxed away for over a year. It’s so deeply saddening. But if I don’t share my experience then no one would ever know.
I’ve worked the steps. While recovery tells me I have a choice, the grip of this is so strong. I have tried to pray and ask intercession of saints. You spend four years with this and you love someone, and CA has promises of new beginnings only to find that the person is mentally not capable is a lot.
I am attending meeting in just about a half an hour from now on romantic obsession. I am not in denial. But what I am trying to ask myself is this, how do I differentiate between letting go of someone who has my photos sprawled out in his condo while the world only sees 60 plus photos in a post of him raising his hand up to celebrate every time he has seen Oasis. He is displaying how excited he is they are touring again. Boy don’t get me started on that. I made the rose in the picture frame below. But I want to put a face to this person.
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