That's the thing: I don't refuse to be near or acknowledge him. He refuses to be near or acknowledge me.
It's not that they're being unkind, but I can't take any more of sitting with our friends while he walks past the table, very deliberately stares at me, and then walks very sloooooowly to the back to sit by himself. So I just don't sit with them anymore, and they've started asking where I've been because they see me so seldom.
They also, ah, made themselves a Facebook group to which I wasn't invited. So that's kind of frustrating.
I dunno. I told a few of them that if it was him or me, I wanted them to pick him--because they were his friends longer and I remember what it was like when my ex grabbed all the friends I'd made in high school out from under me. These are the friends he's made in grad school and I refused to let the same thing happen to him. I wouldn't have told them that, though, if I'd realized that he was such a slimeball.
So essentially he's the possessive/jealous type, manipulative, vindictive, and honestly doesn't give a crap about you or your well being... This is actually sounding a little bit familiar to me.
If I can ask, and I'm sorry if this is a little prising, but if he's such a big douchebag, what made you fall in love with him in the first place?
Because he didn't act like this in the first place and every single damn person we knew mutually, friend or otherwise, vouched for his character; after we broke up folks kept asking "what could possibly make anyone break up with that guy? He's so great!" I got all this information first and second-hand. It was reliably unmanipulated. He has a fucking fantastic reputation with no stains on it whatsoever. He was charming, he was nice. He was nice to
everyone, to his friends, to his ex-girlfriends, to random people. I checked multiple times for unmeditated, spontaneous empathetic behavior. Indeed, he was so nice that he was unwilling to react against people who were fucking him over in getting his PhD. He laughed louder and was sweeter than anyone else.
This doesn't sound "a little bit familiar" to me. My first ex-boyfriend... would not have passed any of those tests. He didn't have people telling me what a wonderful person he was, he had people smoothing over his flaws but never doing this.
And if I told him no, or even seemed the least bit uncertain, he backed off rather than acting offended. He paid good attention to matters of consent. He paid good attention to a lot of things, and tried to get to know me, and did what he could to attend to my happiness. He worked on things even though I was wildly unreasonable. He was patient with my flaws and didn't set a gaping double standard.
And more than that, I
firmly believe that he never set out to hurt me. Control me? Yes. Out of selfishness, fail to do things that would have mitigated hurt? Absolutely. Get fed up and lash out? Certainly. He was scared... and that does not absolve him, not by any means, but it relegates him to the realm of the human.
But he
did not do this. Not
ever. And it's because he acted in good faith, from the good faith of a human being who had been damaged and struck down by life's travails and responded with evil, that I can forgive that evil. And it's because this cossetted, spoiled, whining failure of a man doesn't have what it takes to hear the whisper of any flaw, and instead chooses to punish the messenger into submission, that I declare him more evil than he who admitted his own violence and maleficence.
The difference is that the other one was an honest man.
@Vector: Wish I had sage advice to give, but let me just say this: you are a good person. You don't deserve that bullshit from anyone. To hell with him, and if your mutual "friends" are going to enable that bullshit, then to hell with them too. Life is too short to play other people's games.
Thank you.