Is it normal for AP to lose self identity after DA breakup?

Hi flic,

So glad that you're on your reclaiming self-confidence journey. You'd be amazed how much mojo there is within you to muster, whether or not there is a man in your life.

I'm really glad that you ex realized what he lost and is reaching out to you.

I don't know him or you personally, so it is difficult for me to help you in determining if it's a good idea to get back together with him. You are the person who knows him inside out, maybe you know him better than he knows himself!

This is a decision that you know best, so trust yourself.

Sharing from what I went through personally, there are people who CAN change and people who CANNOT, especially those with personality disorders.

They need to pass the sniff tests for me - i.e. no craziness, no abusive behaviors, no cruelty, no narcissism, no inability to empathize and put oneself in other's shoes.

This is because of my own horrible journey with a NPD, and also encountering other NPDs and Cluster Bs, seeing how they affected those in their lives.

I got hoovered a lot, kept returning to the NPD partner, because he always regretted his raging, lashing out, etc afterwards, and as I had deep empathy for his hurt inner child, I kept taking him back, and the crazy cycle started all over again till I hit bottom and learnt my lesson.

DA behavior, in contrast, is a cakewalk.

So I hope that your guy is a DA and not anything more.

However, I still highly recommend that you make yourself stronger by doing the Mind Hacking, which is completely separate from deciding whether to go back to your ex.

It's a tonic for your soul, like going to the gym but for your inner self, whatever happens outside of yourself.

Learn the methods to become absolutely confident, to partner yourself so you never feel alone ever again, because you are your own best friend, life coach and loving partner. So no matter what befalls you, you know exactly what to do to pick yourself up and never fall to pieces or "hit bottom".

With this inner confidence, you can take charge of your life, take risks, with zero chance of becoming a passive casualty when things go wrong because you are equipped to face challenges.

Good luck with your journey, and choose well!

juniper @curious Such great responses.. I thank you for being objective sounding boards on this - my friends and family are too invested, and I was seeing a therapist but I didn't find it was helping at all. It helps to know i can vent here, and that my confused thinking makes sense to some degree

I'm trying to just sit in the confusion and trust that as you said juniper , there will be clarity that comes from it.

I have definitely stopped painting him as the villain in this - I really do acknowledge that he himself has attachment wounds that haven't healed, and he got very scared over there in thinking i was going to abandon him (with good reason as I felt so isolated and out of my depth there, i really found it hard to commit). I think the remorse he is feeling now, for his actions, is part of his growth. Though it's a good point you raise @curious and one i did have - his remorse is more about the things he did wrong, than having empathy for the fact I've had to come home with my life completely disrupted and start again from scratch. I wonder if my extreme empathy for him is just perpetuating the same pattern - for example there's irony in the fact that i am still paying for the internet over there (he then pays me back) but i can't get broadband connected here because i don't want to have monthly bills until i have a job. But our conversation the other night was very much about a) his loneliness and pain and b) how much we miss each other. We didn't discuss the absolute mess my own life is in, and how hard that is for me (because I didn't want to scare him with it). Still, i do not see him as evil for missing this, just not emotionally capable of seeing it.

But without him as the villain, i find it so hard to accept that the relationship still might be untenable. Logically, I KNOW i need to heal, and get back to a place of independence and strength. Logically I KNOW unless he also grew, the same thing would probably happen - now or down the track. Logically I KNOW the hope for reconciliation is so so slim, and probably non-existent for now. But, and maybe this is because i AM in contact with him, since our conversation I've been entertaining fantasies of living there, I've been dreaming about him, I nearly even started looking up jobs there so I could plan a way to not be so dependent on him. I can't stop obsessing. I watched some of the Alan Robarge videos suggested on another post on these boards, and it highlighted how much this mental loop is part of the AP mind when the trauma is triggered.

Maybe I do need to cut contact. But I really, really don't want to. I know it's the attachment, but I just can't let go of it, even if i know it's unhealthy for me. I think we're going to chat again in a couple of days. So maybe I need to hold back a bit when we do, be open absolutely, but just hear where he is at. And if Friday was just an emotional relapse for him in which he was able to get emotional support from me because of his loneliness, maybe then i can tell him i need some space. Should i go as far as to ask him where his head is at, whether there is any hope for reconciliation in his mind? I fear that might scare him off completely.

He said he wants us to be friends, which shocked me because he usually cuts people, especially exes, from his life completely. I actually think he sits lightly on the DA spectrum, and I sit lightly on AP (usually) but this situation - moving overseas, never having lived together before, the isolation and lack of purpose i felt and my subsequent neediness coupled with his need for independence which i could honour here but found hard over there, has exacerbated both our tendencies. Which is the bit that makes me so sad - i really feel like we were building a solid foundation here that respected each others' boundaries and needs, and it just couldn't sustain in that very specific situation.

You're so spot-on juniper with what you said here:
It's not in his best interest to "have" you emotionally without being able to tolerate your closeness physically, if that's what's happened.
It's not in your best interest to "have" him at the expense of your own recovery from your deep AP issues either.
The only chance you two would have of "having" each other in a healthy sense is if real change happens individually, on both sides, and the quick fix of contact might truly impede that.

I actually read that and my initial response was quite childish - "I DON'T WANT TO CUT CONTACT!" Which is really part of the problem - I'm so attached to him even though i recognise it might be bad for me. I just don't know if i can put my life back together when there's this tiny bit of me holding out hope that we can make it work. But equally I don't know how to let go of that. Can i do the two things at the same time? Feels like cognitive dissonance!