Is Sam Vaknin talking about M? YES!! This is M right down to his toenails. This is the crap he gives me when he’s feeling sorry for himself. Nothing else matters when he is in this mood – he’s a “wounded animal, striking out any way it can to defend itself.”
Lots of interesting and educational stuff to watch on his YouTube Channel.
Several weeks ago M said that a good meal for those nights that I work late would be sandwiches. He said that I should buy deli meat, as he feels it has fewer additives than the pre-packaged sandwich meats and I could buy a small amount, just enough for three or four sandwiches and that would be perfect.
Okie-dokie. On Monday I bought some ham from the deli. It was $9.00 per pound, so I bought half a pound, enough for four sandwiches. I was out for about three hours running errands, which made M angry as he feels I should run all of my errands on the days that I work so that I’m not making an extra trip into town – reasonable on the surface with current gas prices, right?*
Well, on Monday he did not want dinner. He did not want dinner on Tuesday, either. He said that he was “preparing for the Starvation Days ahead” and did not need to eat. “People can go for 40 days with no food. No need to cook for me.”
Whatever.
On Wednesday I asked him if he would like a ham sandwich for dinner. “There is no ham,” he replied. “I ate it.”
Great. There goes my dinner! “Did that ham really cost $9.00 per pound?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s why I only bought a little. Just enough for a few sandwiches,” I replied.
“Can we really afford to eat meat that’s that expensive? I refuse!** We can’t afford to eat that way!” And he was off. But not for long. Being hungry, I offered to cook up a veggie stir-fry. “You don’t have to cook for me,” he says in a whiny voice.
“I’m not – I’m hungry. You’re free to join me if you care to,” and I went into the kitchen. By the time the food was cooked it was so late and I was so angry that I could hardly choke down half a cup. I offered him what was left on my plate, which he accepted (as usual) and he went on with the Silent Treatment for the rest of the evening.
If he’s not ignoring me he’s making snide remarks under his breath or “forgetting” things I say the minute the words are out of my mouth.
I have to keep documenting this shit because he has me so well conditioned that after a day or two the incidents become fuzzy and unreal and I doubt they even happened at all. It’s all part of his game and I have to keep reminding myself of that.
* The Real Reason is that he wants to be sure I don’t have any unsupervised time outside of work hours. He should be worried.
** Didn’t stop him from eating.it.all. Asshole.
The first time I heard this song on the radio it struck a chord in my gut. Really, why? What is the point? I just don’t get it. I don’t have it in me to treat others with the hatred that I face every day – it just doesn’t compute with me, and I want to believe the best of others but, like so many women, I have been lied to and fooled into falling for these assholes that seem to live to beat others down.
Today I’m getting the Silent Treatment. I figure there will be plenty of “Oh, woe is me! I am such an evil person! I can’t even express my honest opinion without you going off or freaking out so I guess I’ll just sit over here and type away on my computer* until I’m tired and then go to bed. Without dinner, since you don’t want to do any little thing for me after I’ve worked hard all day**. Sigh. Poor me,” but I don’t care.
I spent half the day running errands, you know, the usual, changing the oil in my car, buying cat litter and rum, looking at rental ads in the local paper. The ordinary things that make up a day off.
UPDATE: Oh, he’s in fine form tonight! After a rum & pepsi (and plenty of Silent Treatment and turned back from M) I made hamburgers for dinner. I did not finish mine, but left a portion on my plate. M usually asks if he can finish any food that I have left (“wasting” food is a Big Issue for him) but tonight he left the room without so much as a Thank You for the meal. I fed the leftovers to the dog. A little while later he said something about “good food” going to the dog and I replied that he left the room, so he must not have wanted it. Rather than toss it out I fed it to the dog. Win-win, right? Got a little mini-blow-up with him saying (volume rising as the sentences went on) “I thought it would be rude to ask for your food. Since everything I do is rude, I’m trying not to do anything. Giving food to the dog that I would have eaten is rude,” blah, blah. I’m afraid I tuned out. Whatever. Poor him. So mis-understood. Boo-hoo.
* Is he organizing his new life? Talking to a new or former lover? He sure is closing tabs and hiding his e-mail screen, typing furiously. Maybe he’s chatting? Who the fuck cares?
** He’s outside in the sunshine putting paint on a boat. He got up late and is not moving very quickly. Let him try scooping ice cream for sweaty tourists for 7 straight hours while standing on a concrete floor! Asshole.
A bit behind schedule, but M blew up last night. What was it this time? He claims he asked me a simple question about tuning the cello (it’s a long story.) He said that he feels intimidated by the instrument and has handed her off to me in the past for tuning. Fine and dandy. His question* was whether or not it could be tuned lower or the strings changed to make the sound deeper as that is the sound he loves the most.
Seems pretty simple, right? I looked online to see what the next string down would be (sorry if this seems unrelated, but it will make sense in a minute) and how much it would cost, and what others might have done, you know, a bit of “independent research**” before discussing options. While I did this he was madly typing on his computer and claims he did not hear any of my comments to him about strings and tuning.***
A few minutes later he was playing along with YouTube videos and having a great time. He asked what the order was for tuning and I reached down to demonstrate, which was the wrong thing to do. He had no intention of re-tuning the instrument, or of stopping his playing. He just wanted a “one sentence explanation” of the procedure. Of course, after our discussion of just a few minutes earlier (which he had heard and participated in, despite his denials) I had a very different impression of what he wanted and he was off!
He thrust the cello at me (which he denied ten minutes later) and stomped from the room (again, he denies that he was stomping) to gather up some paperwork and bring back to his desk to sort. So here I am left with the cello in my hands, not knowing what he wants, but knowing very clearly that he’s pissed off and I’m about to get reamed.
After much snapping on his part (again denied minutes later) I finally managed to answer his original question, which was, “What is the order of turning these knobs to change the pitch of the strings?” At no time did he actually say that, but he insists that he did, and his insistence got more and more vehement as the lecture went on. That’s right – I was treated to a 1.5 hour lecture on how I never answer his questions, how I always answer some other question that I decide in my fantasy mind to answer.
He insists that I am stubborn and evasive and not “normal,” so he has to correct me and it wears him down. The fact that he has to drag something so stupid out to such lengths goes to show how abusive he is.
It can’t be a tactic that he uses to beat me down – he’s not that kind of person, he says.
It’s not a verbal trap, creating another excuse to yell at me – that’s my paranoia talking, he says.
It’s not a set up that leads to one more chance for him to go on and on and lecture me about the way I try to manipulate him and destroy our relationship – that was some other guy and he is tired of paying the price for all the men I should be over by now.
He claims that he has been trying very hard to “keep his mouth shut” because he never knows what might “set me off.” Whatever.
The truth is that he says hurtful things in order to get a reaction out of me and “open a dialogue” so that he can let me know (yet again) how deficient I am, so he can force me to accept the blame for his own lack of control.
His condescending tone and little barbs make me hate him.
More of the same this morning after a nearly sleepless night (he snored all night, but claims that he didn’t sleep a bit. Wish I had recorded that!) He wants me to “accept the blame” for being difficult, evasive and manipulative. He wants me to acknowledge that I have a temper that is set off by he doesn’t even know what and he is the innocent victim, just doing what he can to support me and keep the house in good order so that I can sit down and relax when I get home from work (WTF?!?)
When I state in plain English something like, “when you snap at me it hurts my feelings and causes me to freeze up and I can’t go on with the conversation,” he claims not to know what I’m talking about. When pressed, he will tell me that I MAKE him snap at me when I don’t answer his questions. I FORCE him to raise his voice to make his opinion understood. My feelings are brushed aside and it’s all about him once more. As always. He says that I should get a grip and be able to defend myself. I don’t want to be at war.
I left for work in tears, no tea, no breakfast, exhausted by the effort to try to make sense of this crazy person in my life. The fact is, it makes no sense at all. There is no purpose for his bullshit but to make me miserable. It is deliberate, I’m convinced of it, and he has no desire to change a thing. Really, why should he change? There are a million other women out there who would appreciate his love and support, who would value him as I do not. Good luck, Pal!
This is so sad and pointless.
UPDATE: He just showed up at the shop with a sandwich from Subway. Asked for a knife to cut it in half to share with me. The gesture is a nice one, but here’s where the true point shows – in all the years he has known me I only order one kind of sandwhich at ANY sub place, and that is ham and cheese on wheat bread. Add tomatoes and lettuce, a bit of oil, and that is it. The sandwich he brought? Some sort of turkey breast (heated) with cheese, tomato, lettuce and bell peppers (which I NEVER eat.) No mayo, thank all that’s holy, but nothing like what he knows I would have ordered. Is this another message? Maybe he really does want me to spice up my palate? The sandwich is really for him (what about our money troubles?) and he was driving by and had a guilt attack? Is it poisoned? Were the situation reversed, I would have delivered exactly what he likes the most – a Club with everything, lots of mayo, not heated, not toasted. And he says I don’t know him. Asshole.
* As I remember it, but my memory can’t be trusted, according to M – I live in a fantasy of my own making where no one else is allowed. Yeah, WTF?!?
** One of M’s favorite terms. It means that whatever question I’ve asked is too simple for him to bother answering and that I need to have at least an elementary grasp of the subject before he will deign to speak about it. Let me do some “independent research” to back up my opinion about something he disagrees with and then it becomes “a weapon to beat [him] with” – his words about the whole Al Gore thing. Yet another Double Standard.
*** Whenever I’m at my computer, especially if I am working, he will talk to me, very quietly, asking questions or making comments about nothing that matters to me at the moment, just out of my range of hearing. He does it deliberately to make me turn around and ask him to repeat himself, which he hates to do. He then berates me for “being absent” and not paying attention to him.
Yesterday was more of the same – M was distracted when I showed up at the event, turning his back and talking with various people. We ate at the burger joint again and I made conversation with everyone at our table but M. Whatever.
One of the people there had a sewing machine that he’s been trying to sell to us for about four years. I had to work today, so M agreed to find him this afternoon and take a look at it to see if it will do the work we need it to do. Okey-dokie! He called me at work to ask a few questions about it and I told him it sounded like a Good Deal.
M did not give me a clue about his schedule for Sunday, so after a long, very busy day, I stopped at the grocery store, made a run by the local marina to see if he was there after helping a friend bring his boat in (he wasn’t there, so I assumed he did not need a ride back to his truck – no phone call to tell me either way.) and then home. After feeding the animals, I sat down at the computer to see if there were any notes that needed immediate attention. About 15 minutes later M walked in with the sewing machine.
I sat it on the kitchen counter, was immediately chastised for putting a “dirty” object there and he asked if I was going to take a look at it. I had no interest in dealing with it at that moment, but of course I said sure and set it up in the back room. He made some comments, asked a few questions, watched for a minute as I applied oil and went into the kitchen.
As I was threading it up, he asked what was for dinner. I told him fresh pasta with pesto, toast and salad, which started an argument in an instant. He was not in the mood for such simple fare. He had “worked*” all day and was hungry and tired and wanted Real Food. Couldn’t I sex it up a bit? Why do I insist on plain food? Don’t I realize that his tastes are more complex, and so on. I made an angry face and left the room. He muttered, “I have to walk on fucking glass around here…”
And then, “You know, the wives at the Event take excellent care of their men – cooking and serving food, bringing them whatever they need. I wonder what it would be like?” Yeah, my hackles rose.
He went on, “In all the time you’ve been here, cooking dinner is the only thing you have reliably taken on as your own – the other necessary chores will get done or not, but you always cook dinner. Why am I standing here in the kitchen doing this? Wasn’t my day as long and hard as yours? What are you pissed off about?”
“Just what were you saying with that crack about the wives at the Event?” I asked.
“Well, you know me, I state the parameters, both extremes of the situation.” WTF is that supposed to mean? More prattle about how he “has my back” now that I’m working, and how I don’t do anything around the house, blah, blah, blah.
The conversation was going nowhere, so I dropped it. Just too tired to continue such a hopeless exchange.
Later (and after I’d had an Adult Beverage,) he asked me how the sewing machine was. Would it do the work we needed? I said it would and asked how much it cost. I brought him some cash (half the price he stated) and said that we should invest equally in purchases such as this, since it would be for both of us. He refused the money, saying that it was a replacement for the commercial machine he bought me some years ago and then took back to use in a trade with the A** mentioned in another post. Huh? Fuck. Now it’s a Gift. Now it has Strings Attached. It’s a very nice machine, well suited to what I’ll be asking of it, but fuck, I don’t need yet another Gift to deal with.
This will end badly, you can be sure.
* If you can call walking around talking to his fans “work.” I, on the other hand, was on my feet all day on a concrete floor trying my best to produce inventory for the store as we were behind due to circumstances beyond our control. My feet were just shy of numb and I was not in a good mood. No comparison, IMHO.
** It’s a very long story. A is a total scum bag, but he comes across as an upstanding person. Turns out he was selling everything he could in preparation for leaving his wife of nearly 20 years and three teen children for an exotic dancer he was having an affair with. He was selling off his wife’s things and telling her that the people he sold them to (including me) had not paid and so she had no money coming to her. Nice, huh? Plenty of quality people in this community. Not.
Feeling anxious today. There’s an Event that M and I attend every year in the next town over. I had to work, so we agreed to meet there after I got off and decide what to do about dinner and maybe sleep there. I told him that I would be closing shop at 5:00 if it was slow, 6:00 if it was busy. It has not been busy for the last three months, so I have predictably been leaving work at 5:00 pretty much since I started this job. He knows this.
So. I leave the shop at 5:15-ish, walk the dog (who has been in the car most of the day and is not happy about it) and hit the road. I arrived at the Event site at 5:35, where I saw M walking across the street with a couple that we both know, heading for the burger joint for dinner.
What? We had agreed to meet and discuss whether or not we wanted to eat a burger or go to the grocery store to get sandwich fixings, and we agreed that he would wait until I got there so we could make a decision together. He knows how much I love the burger joint and that I look forward to eating there every year, and now he’s going without me? What about our money concerns?
I caught up to them and he was shocked to see me – could not recover his wits – seemed totally taken aback. He tried to cover with, “I thought you wouldn’t be here for another hour at least.” No apology about leaving me out, no kiss, very strange reaction to me being where I said I would be within the window of time we discussed only hours before.
He was distracted throughout the meal and I got the feeling that he wasn’t happy that I was there. I ignored his discomfort and behaved the same way I always do around this group of people.
I left the burger joint to go back across the street, walk and feed the dog and unload the car, leaving him to pay the bill just to be a bitch. A group was planning to meet to play some music and both M and I were expected. After unloading some stuff, I see M heading for where the music is going to be played with his instrument. Didn’t even look around to see where I was or wait for me or anything.
Again I ignored his discomfort, got my fiddle and sat right next to him, just so he couldn’t pretend I wasn’t there. Asshole.
The whole evening went this way, and this morning, too, when I drove him to pick up his truck. Very curt thanks, wanting to be away from me, you know the feeling, am I right? Yeah.
Wonder when I’ll get my eviction notice?
Poor M. No chance for him to blow up at me with no witnesses around and I can tell it’s been a hard week for him 🙂
L spent two nights camped out in the yard and it didn’t suck as much as I thought it would. He and M spent the entire time trying to outdo each other being nice to me. Whatever. It was all a load of bullshit and I know it.
M made several comments like, “See – I’m not so bad, you could be with L!” Uh-huh. I could be alone and happy, too, asshole.
M continues to hide his e-mail activity whenever I walk into the room. I’ve been watching his FB, but he hasn’t posted anything to his wall. He hasn’t told me that he’s back on, and he’s very careful to turn off his computer before leaving the room if I’m in there working. I wonder if he has another victim on the hook already? In a way I hope he does – I’ll do my best to get the truth to her as I’m on my way out the door to a new life.
M has been quite distracted and I can’t help but feel he is planning something unpleasant. This time I’m ready – I have enough cash in the bank that if he makes his “24 hours to leave” scenerio real I can get myself moved somewhere local and never look back. Oh, sure, it will be rough for awhile, but I know I can make it work.
Life is good, but busy!
When I got home from work on Saturday M informed me that a boating friend wants to spend the week in his camper in our yard.
L is M to the fourth power. He hates women – thinks that they are expensive and not worth the aggravation. He is a narcissist, focused only on himself and his needs and the rest of the world can go fuck itself. He lives alone (no surprise there!) and has a very rigid daily schedule for everything, from eating to using the bathroom to what time he has to go to bed, no matter what might be going on around him.
He and M have made several trade “deals” and M has always come out on the losing end, but he still admires L for many things – his “simple” life in a very small house, his ability to take off on any whim to travel with his boat, his Spartan habits, his ability to cheat others while still remaining their friend, his guitar playing skills, and the list goes on.
Needless to say, I don’t like to be around him for long. He has a tendency to “speak the truth” (much like M) and it is always insulting, but mostly he talks about himself and his medical issues. Over and over again. That and his lack of a sex life. What a piece of work.
Thankfully I will be working during the day and have decided that I will not be cooking for The Boys. They can shift for themselves.
Oh, M is back on FaceBook. Elena is not on his friend list, but the old lover (who [he] still cares for) is. Oh, what games we play! Should I sign up under my real name again?
Here we are at the 11th of the month and no blow-ups yet. We dance around each other being civil, mostly avoiding topics that are likely to make me see red. It’s day 26 of 27 in a row of me working two minimum wage* jobs. I am too tired to censor my words and he knows it.
Oh, sure, it’s not like I’m digging ditches in the hot sun, surrounded by voracious mosquitos, and it’s not even 8 hours a day most days, but both jobs involve smiling for the tourists, joking and giving directions and making people happy and it is exhausting. I hate to be in the public eye, I hate talking to strangers, I hate being always on point, serving and hoping for a dollar tip to increase my hourly wages. It’s humiliating when I consider that I am an educated specialist who is damned good at my Real Job, and here I am pandering to tourists who treat me like I’m a total moron.
Two jobs are enough by most people’s standards, but the Real Work has heated up and I often spend two or three hours in the morning doing that and another two or three hours in the evening as well. There’s little time for anything more than sleep.
M has (mostly) taken over the household chores. He is grumbling less and I have issues about the way he does my laundry, but overall he “has my back” as he promised.
We are much closer to the way we were in the beginning of our relationship, getting along, being supportive, being nice to each other. He’s getting ready to chastise me because he isn’t getting enough sex (I can see it coming) and that will be an interesting conversation. He will be looking for me to cave and promise to pay more attention to his needs. Instead, he will get an earful about how I am tired, physically** and mentally and am not in the mood for sex and he can just help himself if he’s that desperate – he’s the one who is so concerned about the state of our finances, after all, and sacrifices must be made.
This interlude can’t last…
* I know! First World Problem, right? I don’t mean to whinge, I need the money, but damn! How can people survive on so little?
** One job involves scooping ice cream. If our biggest cone costs $3.50, and the daily take is over $800, how many ice cream cones did I scoop? Yeah. A fuck of a lot. Tell me your arm wouldn’t hurt after seven hours of that!
Last night I organized my Tax folder. It needed to be done, so I didn’t really feel a lot of stress about it. As I was getting started, M walked into the room and said, “Obviously nothing that I have done has been successful, so this is just a lesson in futility and has no meaning. I don’t want to force you to do it, so just drop it if you want to. If you have any suggestions about how we should live our lives I’m all ears.”
Right. Whatever.
I wrote down the yearly totals on a notepad with plenty of space in between so that I can write in what bills I was paying each year, etc. Remembering where I was and what I was doing year by year has not been easy, but I’ve come to some very valuable conclusions: I made really good money when M and I lived apart. I had a lot of fun doing things that were important to me. I went places and had friends and fun, my creative juices were flowing and I was making all sorts of things. I never had thousands of dollars saved up against a Rainy Day, but I wasn’t stressed about it because my work was steady, rewarding and it paid well. I had no Great Crisis befall me, no disasters, no unexpected huge bills, injuries, or anything that couldn’t be handled as it came up.
I did not worry about next year because it seemed prudent to worry only about tomorrow or next week. Not borrowing trouble, ya know?
I was happy, even raising a teenaged son who was, quite frankly, a nightmare. I think it’s significant that I really want that life back.
I don’t think this little exercise is going the way M intended for it to go…
I finally made him admit that money is the only thing that makes him feel secure. He told the story again about how his grandparents lost a 160 acre farm because they couldn’t pay the property taxes and how that is his worst fear – having to leave his house and getting nothing out of it to live on. All these years I have been under the impression that they lost the farm when he was a child, that his whole extended family had been out on the street for a time and it was a huge emotional scar for him. Nope. Turns out his grandparents lost the farm during the Great Depression, more than 20 years before M was even born. He never saw the farm, his parents barely saw that farm. And he’s carrying this scar? How absurd is that? Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people lost everything during the depression. My family was no exception, but I’m not carrying any burden about it. Sure, you can draw parallels between then and now, but really?!?
This is all smoke and mirrors and stinking bullshit. What’s next?
I Won't Take It 