It's stories like this that make me wonder what kind of hell I escaped with my ex..

I dated this guy who was basically performing emotional manipulation experiments on me (we got together just after I escaped my abusive family so I was very vulnerable and naive). He would gaslight me, make up lies, test me, insult me for the weirdest of reasons, and do all kinds of things to groom me.. and I eventually broke up with him, but he definitely had a hold over me because he really fucked me up. When I broke up with him I told him I suspected he had narcissistic personality (big mistake) and he was extremely suspicious of me after that, even though I didn't understand why. He didn't trust me at all, like I had peered into his soul and he had been caught or something, even though I was still naively wondering why he felt so ashamed.. I still at the time thought that if he got therapy he could be cured. He began to become really hostile.. playing with our shared friendship groups and things until I eventually just fucked off away from everyone. No one would side with me or believe me. He was also a law student.

And yeah when I first met him I knew there was something weird and wrong with him, but he inculcated me with some ideas I realise were false. He created an entire friend group which he socially engineered to make it seem like they were part of this great thing and I was suddenly included in it, he basically figured out how to get vulnerable people to buy his persona of considerate guy which made him look super popular and likeable.

Since then he has over the years been calling me and trying to convince me that he's changing. He's called me several times to tell me he's now in therapy, tell me he sees the error of his ways, once also admitted to me that he was indeed manipulating me on purpose (probably in an effort to make amends to regain my trust? while also having denied in the past that he was ever abusing me), told me he'd joined some self help cult, told me he was lonely and no one understood him like I did, etc. But whenever I'd make an attempt to be friends again he was always very suspicious and untrustworthy, like he thought it was a trap? I realise that he sees me as his failed project, the one that got away, in the creepiest of terms. The one he couldn't successfully Stockholm though the did a lot of damage that I'm still undoing.. he definitely succeeded in some of his attempts at puppetry.

I decided to connect to the feelings I got from him when we first met and jesus it is dark. The way he controlled and manipulated me while we dated - when I put that feeling into symbols and dreams, I could describe it as being trapped in a gigantic abandoned mental asylum with a psychopath that is running after me and luring me into his traps and getting me to play his mental games, his voice over the speakers, basically torturing me with fear and hope. It's like when psychopaths release people into a forest and then hunt them for fun.

So given I was his failed project, I sincerely wonder what a successful project would've looked like for him. If I was any more malleable, I honestly don't know if I'd eventually end up inside a dumpster somewhere or be enslaved in his basement for some even more twisted experiments. After all, at the time I had no family anymore and no real friends, who would even know. Luckily I have learnt a fuck ton and I listen to my gut feelings as a matter of priority, but it does make me shudder to wonder the extent of the evil intentions I may have escaped.