yes, hate is a wasted energy, it only hurts you no one else. if anything hey want to get that kind of reaction out of you because they know it destroys normal people from the inside out. I have to be very careful though feeling any compassion for him. I choose indifference that way it doesn't affect me either way. I don't hate, I don't love I just don't care anymore. I understand what your saying just for me to remain empathetic to people who I now understand don't deserve my sympathy or empathy will keep me from changing who I am and I feel I wlll keep giving of myself where I should be running away. I cared way to much for people who didn't deserve to even be in my life. I wont do it anymore. I cant. I didn't honestly understand there are just bad people in this world. not everyone is capable of being a decent human being and I have to be constantly aware of that fact. I was so naïve.

I agree with you 1000 percent....

I know exactly what you are saying. There is person inside of all that evilness....I have seen both sides of my ex...Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde...it was the good man that I loved adored...that Is the man I miss....that my daughters miss....

the other side, the bad man that I despised....the mean, evil, unpredictable, lying, cheating, self centered asshole....I could have killed that man without any remorse or regret....serious...

I feel sad for what the future holds for my Ex as well...HOW terrible to live within such an empty existence....

BUT he knows NO difference.....THAT IS HIS LIFE and HE thinks he is ALL that....Ignorance truly is BLISS ;)

We can NOT change them...WE can NOT SAVE them....all we can do is have compassion for them and KEEP OUR DISTANCE ( NO CONTACT) in order to keep ourselves ( and children) safe...Mind, Body, Spirit, Soul and Heart...

Humble Compassion, Empathy, unconditional love, self sacraficing........it is what we do best....it is the Beauty of who we all are....xo

What if I cant keep no contact? With children involved it is impossible. Have I reached a point where anger doesnt motivate me and I can co-exist with the S? I dont know if I am allowing him back in just by being cordial and doing what is in the best interest of the kids or I am being sucked in again?

That is a difficult question, WithC. I left my P husband 12 years ago. I maintained minimal contact even though our children were grown. I included him in holiday celebrations with the kids. I should say kid. The daughter who lived nearby wanted him there. The other one did not speak to him for 7 years, but she lived in another state. If she was visiting, her father was not invited.

Within about 2 years, I was through most of the grieving and my feelings softened toward the P into a sort of compassion and forgiveness. Eventually, the older daughter moved out of state, and I continued to meet the P occasionally for lunch. During these lunches, I would find myself pretending along with him that he was a normal person. You could say it was a kindness towards him, but I sensed I was on dangerous ground. Even a slippery slope. This may fall into the category of condoning, even supporting.

And, of course, I did fall prey to a second P. I'm thinking I got too lazy, let my integrity slip a little bit, and got a refresher course.

You may have to see him, but keep your distance in every way, including in your heart and mind.

I don't feel compassion, sympathy or anything but anger and hurt right now. I know what he has done to me has given me the option to see that this is a pattern with me. That I am attracting these men to me for some reason. Probably because of hurt and inability to distinguish being real and feigned love. I look at this as a time to fix me. To give me hope again, and learn to finally truly love myself, because apparently, even though I thought I did, I did not. I am too weak to believe, accept and love others. More than not, it only hurts me in the end. I end up hurt and alone. I am still angry, and hope some day I can feel forgiveness. I know that he's sick. I know that he has no control over who he is, and he is what he is because of abuse and ill will from another. He was broken because of someone else. But that doesn't make it ok. It doesn't make our pain go away.

MIzd - what you are feeling is normal. All of this is a process. And all very confusing.

Right, I don't feel any compassion or forgiveness for the one I left a month ago. I hate him and wish him all the worst. It would make me happy to read that he has been arrested for the murder of his first wife, whom I believe he poisoned to death. Nothing could make my day any better. Like WithC said, forgiveness is a process.

Wow - Kris, really? How did they conclude she died? What makes you think he poisoned her?

She was only 45. She allegedly died of liver disease. I have some medical background and I know that liver disease a slow, progressive killer, but this woman worked full-time up to weeks before her death. D had her cremated and arranged for no funeral service. Her parents held a service at their home which D did not attend. Some of this information I got from D's second wife.

When I was getting to know D, he gave me conflicting stories about the last years with his wife. I now know he love-bombing multiple women simultaneously, so it's wonder he couldn't keep his stories straight. At times, he told me had been divorced twice, but he was divorced only from his second wife as the first one died. He told me, at various times, that he and the first wife were going to get a divorce, but then she got sick. He once told she was having an affair. D could never tolerate that. Another time, he told me that they had not had sex for four years by the time of her death. Later, when we were a couple, D denied having ever said any of these things.

He also told me that his first wife had accused him of murdering his second wife. So did I, which became one of the things he told others to prove what a monster I am. Lol!

D was terrified that a ghost lived in the big old house he had shared with his first wife and still lives in. I am a "sensitive" and I assured him that no ghost lives in that house. But he remained convinced.

D was a librarian and had access to information about poisons and their ease of detection.

He told me he didn't know where his minor children were at the time of his wife's death. They had disappeared in those finally weeks--he assumed to friends' houses. How does a parent lose track of his kids when the other parent is dying? I think he sent them to friends' houses.

D once beat me nearly to death with several oak chairs, one of which he splintered over my body while I lay on the kitchen floor. I have photos of my body which was horribly bruised from head to toe. First, he disconnected the Internet and pulled the main breaker so I was in the darkness in his remote house in the country. Later, he did this again and I called 911 before he hit me. He straightened up as soon as I told him the cops were on the way. If the chairs had hit me in the head, I'd be dead. I know he is capable of murder.

I also know he never would have allowed his wife of 25 years to leave him and take the kids and the farm. Or go be with another man ever. D is pathologically possessive.

D's cruelty towards me was so sadistic, his misogyny so extreme, that within months of beginning a relationship with him, I intuited that he had killed his wife. I even told a friend.

So this is just my conjecture. I could say it is my belief. Of course, every time, I was madly in love, I would deny, deny, deny to myself that this could be true.

I forgot 3 things:

After I had lived in the farmhouse with D, I asked him what he had done with his wife's clothing and things. He said had no idea. NO IDEA! Come on.

Six months after his wife's death, he was already sleeping with the college girlfriend he had dumped for his wife. He married her within a year of his wife's death. These 2 women hated each other's guts. It smacks of revenge to me. And revenge is D's M.O. that bitch was going to leave him!--I'll show you, bitch.

Long before we lived, together, D sent me the lyrics to a song and told me it was the song he had listened to all day the day his wife had died. I don't remember the song, but I remember being very puzzled. It was something about it being time to live for oneself and leave the past in the past. Already? That day?

I got something wrong. He told me that his SECOND wife had accused him of murdering his FIRST wife.

I forgot to say that, at times, I confronted D that he had murdered his first wife and he did not respond, just stared at me with no emotion.

Also, when we were getting to know each other online, I asked him many times times how his first wife had died, and he would only say it was a long illness. He didn't tell me for about 6 or 8 months that it was liver disease. I thought that was strange as ALL of the widowed men with whom I had communicated always told me within a few conversations how their wives had died and some of the story. D never talked about it at all unless I asked.

One more thing: When D first started living with me, he seemed to come part a bit. I think some of his defenses were coming down. He had nightmares almost every night for several week. They were always the same. He had been accused of and convicted of some horrible crime and he was going to be executed. In the dreams he never knew what he had done.

I don't think I hate mine. Even with him mind torturing me at the moment. Plus some scary behavior. I feel sorry for him still. He is lost. Whether he knows what he does or not, he is completely void and has no sense of reality. He believes he is the victim. That I'm the bad guy. The women in between should feel lucky he's so great and enjoy his being nice while he's there. I should excuse this and get over it. He was single for 6 weeks because of me! I should've stopped it. It's my fault anyway. My last email from him: Take a look in the mirror" "How can you do this to me". Yep, clueless and mind numbing. He grew up this way and it's who he is, how he lives/survives. I stayed so long because I knew that and I felt sorry for him. Never being held, watching his dad date behind his sick mother's back. Sad stuff. I was not put on this earth to take care of him. I tried and I failed as every woman will for the rest of his lonely, dirty life.

Mandy, Make sure that YOU don't take care of him for the rest of his lonely, dirty life.

It is sad in a sense because Mandy is right - they were messed up by someone who was supposed to take care of them. Chances are good had they had a normal upbringing or semi normal upbringing, or even just regular dysfunctional upbringing lol he wouldn't be a narcissist. He is a victim in a sense, but not by the hands of those who truly do love him. He's not a victim to those he seeks out to fill his void, he's the victim of the abuser, the parent, the one who was supposed to take care of them.

I've been trying to look at it this way. They are broken. Broken in so many ways that they have no clue to. I know how much I hurt, and I cannot imagine that if he made me feel the way he feels all the time, what it must be like to live that life. I'm not sure I would have the strength to get up every day and face the world. I feel thankful that the abuse I survived, although made me make bad choices like ending up with an N, I have the ability to fix it, change it, grow, learn and become what I want, and still have the ability to love and care about others.

It does not make me want to go back to them. Lets just make that clear. However, it makes me feel less like a victim, and makes me feel sorry for him, which makes me feel less angry - because honestly I don't like to be angry. I am still on some level at the behaviors of others - like his family and on some level him, but it's getting easier to feel sympathy for the sad and pathetic lives they are leading.