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agentsmith80
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Default Jan 24, 2020 at 02:23 PM
  #1
I'll try to summarize this as best I can...

I have known a man for nearly 10 yrs but we were distance acquaintances until about a year ago when we started a romantic relationship. Our relationship is long-distance but we were able to meetup one time during this relationship (and I had met him prior). Neither of us has any close friends or anything so we talked a lot to each other, sharing everything daily. We texted throughout the day, everyday, and talked on the phone nearly everyday.

One big problem kept coming up again and again, right from the start. This man is EXTREMELY sensitive to criticism, real or imagined. It started from the first week we began talking. He'd get very offended during some normal/everyday conversation (conversations I've had many times with other people and nobody has ever considered insulting) and he'd claim I was "ridiculing", "criticizing", "insulting", "berating", (etc) him. I was so dumbfounded that 1. he could misinterpret what I said to be insulting in any way. And 2. That he felt this extreme reaction of his was somehow appropriate and acceptable.

Now is a good time to mention that this man is a psychologist and teaches classes on healthy communication and the like.

In the beginning, I felt horrible. I really started to think I was some kind of terrible, judgmental person and somehow never noticed and nobody had ever told me. He would be upset for days over these events and sulk and barely talk to me. I would apologize profusely yet was terribly confused because these conversations where this was happening were conversations I'd had regularly with friends and acquaintances and there was never an issue.

I also need to mention that aside from these episodes, he was the kindest, most supporting, caring, and empathetic person I'd ever known. And I actually already knew that about him for many years prior to our romantic involvement. He is known as being a very gentle, kind soul. He's extremely empathetic and will often cry when he hears about something bad happening to me or others. He's incredibly supportive and encouraging and NEVER said anything negative about me, even during these strange episodes of his. He never insulted me, never criticized me. Even during these episodes where he was upset at these perceived criticisms, he'd still maintain that he thought I was "amazing" and was grateful to have me in his life. I've actually never in my life had someone so supportive and caring toward me, so consistently.

Gradually, these episodes started happening less frequently and he'd be able to go 4-6 weeks between episodes. But they were still taking a toll on me. I have a history of abuse and am the scapegoat in my dysfunctional family and being told I've done something wrong when I haven't is extremely triggering for me. So I would cry a lot and get extremely depressed every time this happened. I'd have nightmares. My anxiety was really bad.

He legitimately did not see his behavior as an issue. He believed these were normal reactions and that "everyone has disagreements". He would rarely apologized afterward and genuinely didn't seem aware that this was NOT normal. I started to point it out to him. I started sending him articles on defensiveness. I told him he gets very irrational when this happens and he doesn't even make sense. He contradicts himself, he minimizes, he projects... tons of toxic behaviors in these moments. He doesn't snap out of it in a few hours and come back and apologize. No, it drags out for days. The more I try to get him to be aware of how irrational he is acting, the more irrational he becomes. He would try to make me feel bad by claiming that what I said was so incredibly hurtful and insulting and he'd repeat these things over and over, like he wanted to rub it in.

In the beginning, it worked. I felt terrible. But when it kept happening again and again, I realized he has a serious issue and I can't even predict when he's going to react like this because it would be the most innocuous statements that would set him off. It started to really make me angry. He also says that other people are criticizing him "daily". So it's not just me that he has these beliefs about. I think it's basically anyone close to him. It's truly a delusional type thinking.

At first, my therapist was saying he had narcissistic traits. But I've actually studied personality disorders, particularly cluster B's for over a decade and even ran a support group for victims of narcissists and psychopaths for many years. My dad has cluster B disorders and the few men I've dated in the past had severe cluster B disorders. So I knew with relative certainty that this does not describe him mainly due to his extreme empathy.

I've read and re-read the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for NPD as well as every other PD again and again and again and he just doesn't fit. He just has this extreme hypersensitivity to perceived criticism. This is a trait of NPD, but is also a trait of several other PDs and disorders as well.

He's very successful, runs his own company, and is very functional other than this one toxic behavior. But it is so extreme that it's nearly impossible to have any kind of relationship with him.

It happened again 3 weeks ago and this time I was so pissed off (because the prior time he admitted that he realized he had this problem years ago but thought he had fixed it and said he wouldn't do it again). Again, it happened out of nowhere. It started with something really minimal that he said that upset me a bit. He said "nobody wants to let me do what I want to do" in regards to him wanting to just be alone because he was upset about something else, unrelated to us and I had said that I still wanted to talk to him. Up until that point, I had been very supportive as he was venting about what was going on. So his comment bothered me a little. He apologized as son as he said it, saying it was selfish. I said it was mean, when I was being nice to him. And that was it. That's what set off this incident. He claimed he couldn't conceive how his comment was mean (after just having apologized for saying it, so he was contradicting himself and getting irrational again). And it just snowballed from there but this time I was getting really angry because I was just so tired of this. So I told him he was acting irrational and crazy and each thing he says is more irrational than the last. Well, obviously, this was a critical statement and he can't handle any criticism so he stopped talking to me. That was 3 weeks ago and he won't even read my messages anymore. He's never done this before. We never ignored each other and never went more than maybe 12 hours without talking. I legitimately worried after a few days that he had died or something. So I sent a few msgs asking if he was ok. He wouldn't even check my msgs so I had to send him an email and he finally responded that he was just really sad. I haven't heard anything since and he still won't read my msgs.

My question is, has anyone seen anything like this? I know he had a REALLY screwed up childhood and his parents were very dysfunctional. I'm trying to figure out if there's any kind of disorder that could account for it? I cannot fit him into a PD. I have gone over the criteria repeatedly and he's just the opposite of a lot of it. I could see some aspects of Avoidant Personality Disorder but I'd find it hard to believe that he'd choose psychology as a career path if he had that. But that's probably the closest one I could classify him as. But he has no problem getting up and teaching in front of large groups of people. My therapist suggested Dependent PD but he's the polar opposite. He's extremely independent, runs a company, travels the world for work, alone most of the time. He holes himself up in his office alone for long hours. Doesn't have any friends. Doesn't do anything socially, aside from what he does for work.

I'm really hurt that he just basically abandoned me for calling him out on his behavior which had been a consistent problem from the beginning and refuses to talk to me or even read my messages when prior to this, we talked all day/everyday and he was extremely caring, kind, and supportive and thought the world of me.

Thanks for listening...
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Default Jan 24, 2020 at 08:33 PM
  #2
Welcome to pc (or to posting anyway, I just noticed you joined a few years ago ) I think it's possible that he might have traits of avoidant PD. I wonder if he may have chosen psychology as his career path both out of interest, a desire to help others, and to understand himself more.

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Default Jan 25, 2020 at 05:23 AM
  #3
Sometimes the people who are most defensive, critical and in denial are the ones who are "professionals" in psychology or who are immersed in the culture of psychology. I am reminded of the slang saying "crazy knows crazy". I am sure a lot of us have known people in a psychological profession who in their interpersonal lives seem completely intolerant of the very thing they are supposed to help others with in their professions. Is he a therapist or work in a therapy environment? He sounds like a very damaging person and it sounds like he wants to control the narrative always. Since you dont actually see him on a regular basis for dates and stuff is it really worth your time to go through this?

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