One of the things that's currently eating me up is that he is now with someone else, someone he got together with as he was preparing to move out of mine after 3 years of verbal and emotional abuse (particularly when drunk or in one of his depressions). He only met her in October and started a Facebook friendship, showing himself as the kind, gentle man he was to me when I first met him. She fell head over heels for him, although he told everyone else he was just lodging there and nothing was going on. He apparently behaved perfectly with her, buying her presents and showing affection in public and having regualr sex, none of which he did with me. He only had one blip and she asked him to leave just before Easter. Foolishly I said he could stay with me until he found somewhere else to go. I know, inside I thought maybe this would be his chance for change. However, over that week he got drunk almost every night, refused to eat, blamed me for his breakup with her, rang all his friends in front of me to say how heartbroken he was over her. When he discovered (through reading my Facebook messages) that she had contacted me and I had responded and we had been communicating, he went ballistic and left for his mother's (alwasy the refuge - that's where he'd lived before moving up to stay with me and where he'd gone after his divorce) which was followed by the most horrific abusive texts over a period of a couple of days and threats on Facebook, which I managed to get blocked. He called me an "ugly fat c**t", that not even Viagra could work on me. He threatened to kill my cats, that is if me and the cats didn't die screaming in pain first. And lots of other awful awful things. All through this, his other ex was horrified as I forwarded the texts to her so she could see and we could both stand together strong. He's told her a bunch of lies about me previously, including that I locked him in the house and wouldn't let him out and that I'd carried out domestic abuse.

On returning from his mother's as he had to go back to work after Easter, he claimed he was sleeping in a tent on a campsite, making lots of his FB friends feel sorry for him. It appeared he only did that for one night as his ex-ex took him back into hers. He has then being telling everyone how happy he is and how he's found the love of his life, which, even though I don't want him back, it cuts me up to think he could be supposedly in love with someone else so soon after our split and also after all he's put me through, which she knows about. She has defriended me on Facebook, I'd already defriended him. I only found out they were back together last week, though i did suspect this. Then, over the weekend, they went away together and got handfasted (as pagans that's a wedding for us) and they've been telling people how happy they are together for always.

So my subject question is - can he be so different with her than with me? Can he change or will he eventually let the mask down and reveal himself once again for what he is and behave with her as he did with me? Or, was it something wrong with me that made him behave this way and, as she is a different personality, he won't behave that way with her? Can a narcissistic leopard every change their spots? I think because I'm feeling so bad about myself that I feel I'm on some level to blame for the way he has behaved and now he's with her the whole situation is completely different.

Thank you to all you lovely women for sharing your stories, by the way. They've helped me so much.

Love Linnda