I've been wondering whether my recent ex was a N or had N traits, perhaps people here could help me. My ex finished with me a few months ago and the whole thing left me in turmoil which I'm still trying to work out. I could never figure out my ex, sometimes it would feel so great with him and then on other occasions it was like he was Jekyll and Hyde. My ex's personality wasn't like anyone's I have ever come across. He was 'strange' for want of a better word to describe him. I'll try to describe him here but his personality is hard to put into words.
Well there was one side of him that could be so sweet and romantic: he'd buy me gifts, wine and dine me, remember birthdays and valentines, he even kept a CD that I gave him many years ago before we became romantically involved and played it to me when we met up again after getting in touch again after many years. My ex was also always generous about picking up the tab whenever we went out even when he split up with me. Surely a N wouldn't do such things? He could also be quite funny and charming.
But there was also a part of him sometimes that left me feeling ill and gave me that rug pulled from underneath my feet feeling. He was hypersensitive and could get strangely riled about petty things and be very emotionally aggressive, not letting arguments go despite my pleading with him. Sometimes it really didn't feel obvious why he'd got so mad about something, I just couldn't work it out. He could be quite relentless and sometimes scary in getting his point across. Then from being very aggressive he could suddenly revert and be sweet again as if nothing had happened. He never apologised for the times that he would blow up nor did I get the feeling that he felt anything was wrong. Instead he would always blame me and say that I was the argumentative one, and a few times he would say that he was the mirror that I was seeing myself in. I confess that I can have an argumenative streak and I admit that to people, however I also do reach a limit where I will back down if I feel things are getting out of hand, but he could be unceasing and of course never at fault. He said that he used to be argumentative and combative when he was much younger and more immature, but apparently he has now grown out of that!
I never felt I could get close to him or really connect with him. I could never really feel like I could pin down what his 'true' personality was. It was difficult trying to get a sense of who this person was sometimes, because it often felt he was all over the place, and his personality and the things that he said seemed odd at times. He didn't say mean things as a rule, though he has been mean and cold on occasions, however he often said and did things that felt surreal and not grounded. For example once at a student fashion show that he was filming (he is a video producer plus writes comedy), he said he'd got up on the catwalk and danced frantically with all eyes on him and he talked about it as if he were really proud of it. Another time he took off his shoes and socks and started walking barefooted around busy main streets, and he talked about that as if he were proud of that too. He was drunk on none of these occasions. It was almost as if he didn't occupy the same planet as the rest of us. He seemed kind of Walter Mitterish. But at times though I was able to get some clarity from him.
In the past during conversation he'd often go off on tangents into totally unrelated areas, incessantly made silly jokes, or irrelevant and irreverent remarks, which often broke one's line of thought. It made me feel invalidated, like my thoughts and ideas weren't worth anything and weren't interesting to him. Sometimes it felt hard just even having a normal conversation with him. He did improve over the years though.
He also didn't always seem to engage one in conversation. He would talk a lot about things and projects that were going on his life, and over the phone it sometimes felt like he was giving a report, rather than it feeling like he was relating personal news, I don't know if anyone knows what I mean. He didn't ask me often about my life or what I was doing or engage me that often about my personal world, though occasionally he would. I found I was never able to explore more than surface feelings with him quite a lot of the time, simply because when I did try to go a little deeper it was almost like he didn't get it, or wasn't able to follow the topic through, or sometimes I just got the impression that he wasn't all that interested. As a result, I'd often felt like I couldn't give expression to my thoughts, ideas, or feelings because I always felt that it would more often than not just hit a brick wall. Yet at times every now and then, he could show some deep personal insights. He was a confusing guy. It was a rollercoaster with him, it could be exhilarating and exciting, but also deeply frustrating, painful, and very lonely.
Perhaps I should be thankful and relieved that's its over, but I guess I'm left with some emotional baggage that's needing closure. I feel like I need to understand him and to understand what happened before I can move on, does that sound stupid? I just wasn't ever able to figure him out, was he in fact N?
...there's so much more, but I've rambled on far enough now, I'm ever so sorry. And if you've read up to so far, thank you so much for your patience.
