Hey Lovehoney,
I’m just writing here because I feel numb and I’m shaking, and I don’t know whether that’s with anxiety, confusion or rage - maybe even all three.
So we’ll call my ex the classic “Dave”.
Dave and I were friends for some years, we both have health problems and we’d always supported one another through that. We met online, but we’ve met twice in person too and it was fine. There was one time that maybe should have been a red flag for me - when Dave acted a bit entitled to me - but I laughed it off. He seemed nice and harmless, how could it be a sign of anything bad?
I’m polyamorous, and a few years ago I met a man who wanted a relationship with me but didn’t want his wife to know - obviously not okay! I stuck to my guns and said that’s not okay with me, and he abused me and “hoovered” me because I wasn’t going to just roll over and accept it. There were kids involved too, so no way was I going to willingly ruin their life so I could have their father!
We “broke up” after he found someone else, and Dave had been a good friend to me through it all so I was surprised when Dave told me that he was “fond” of me that very evening - something I now see as jealousy. I’d never thought of Dave that way before, but he was such a good friend to me that if he could be patient with me whilst I got my bearings again then I would be open to giving “us” a go.
So, we did.
That relationship generally went better, not perfect, but better. There were some glaring red flags for me though, like Dave once wrote a blog post (he’s a blogger too) called “they say he has a harem”. I didn’t want to be “collected” and objectified like that, and I found it quite disrespectful to my worth. I’ve since learned that it was a reference to a joke his mother made once, but how was I to know? I’ve never met her.
Next, there was the time Dave tried to cheat on me. Yes Lovehoney, you read that correctly, my ex tried (and failed) to cheat on me - the other person didn’t show up. Dave expected me to forgive him though because it didn’t actually happen. I did, but I never will again: any history or act of cheating is an immediate dealbreaker for me from here on out.
Lastly, Dave nominated me for an award - because of my work - and I felt really icky about his possible reasons for doing it. I was grateful for the nomination but I didn’t want the award because I’m quite humble about my work - the gratitude, views, likes, backlinks and requests for collaboration that I get is my greatest reward.
But I felt like, as Dave’s submissive, I felt like this was more about him - I felt it was about him having bragging rights and showing me off, as my Daminant: “look how great my submissive is, look how great I am as a Dominant (for nominating her)”. Again, I didn’t want that; I didn’t want to feel objectified as a submissive because of my work, in my work where I’m the boss. Call me ungrateful maybe, but that’s the way I felt about it all.
So that brings us to the most recent incident. Around summertime we were messing around with ice creams and ice lollies. Dave sent me a video of him suggestively licking an ice cream, so I bought some ice lollies and returned fire (all is fair in love and war, right? 
). He responded with “could be better” - no emojis or anything, and that hurt because I felt like he was saying I could be better, or the video could be better, even though I’d put effort into it to please him and did something I wouldn’t normally do, also to please him. So I told him I needed some time alone because I was feeling hurt - I was feeling ill anyway (unbeknownst to me I was coming down with quite a stonker of a bug that day too!) and I ended up having to block him because he then started messaging hubby to ask how I was. I needed to send a clear signal that when I say “I need some time alone”, I really mean “I want to be left alone.”
Dave then wrote a post and said that what he said wasn’t what he meant to say, and that what he meant was that the situation would be better if we had shared the ice lolly. So I eventually forgave him and said we could try again, as long as we could agree to work on our communication. Dave was having none of that.
First of all, he told me that he loved me “more than he thought he did” (I’m humbled by that, it’s always nice to make a good impression on people, isn’t it?) and “hadn’t been sleeping right” because of what I’d said - about feeling objectified - then he told me that I should have asked for clarification instead of jumping to conclusions. I shot back at that that - I said that if he’d just included an emoji, such as a winky face, it would have changed everything and I wouldn’t have needed to ask for clarification. Really, it’s up to him to be clear about the intentions and meanings of his messages, although I can admit that it wouldn’t hurt me to to pause and ask for clarification the next time something catches me off-guard. It’s also very dangerous to use inside jokes around people who aren’t in on them, especially when it’s about them - that’s how feelings get hurt, whether intentionally or not.
I heard nothing from Dave for three days, so I reached out to him again last week to let him know that if I didn’t hear from him within a week then I would take it that he didn’t want to work on things and I would be moving on. When I went to check on him on Facebook the next day - because I was worried something might have happened to him - I was surprised to discover that he had blocked me, though not my husband. He even posted a passive-aggressive Facebook status about removing the “toxicity” from his life, even though I’ve been nothing but loving, patient and supportive towards him and only tried to communicate my problems with his actions towards me. I’ve never shouted at him, called him names, demeaned him or anything. I tried some gentle humour to try and break the tension between us but if that makes me “toxic” then I’m amongst the worst.
So I emailed Dave one last time and basically said “thankyou for blocking me instead of communicating with me like I asked, please never contact me again”. That was that, I moved on.
Today he messaged hubby, finally, one quite long message. I don’t know what was said and I’ve already said that I don’t particularly care, all I know is that the summary is he doesn’t want me back, I guess, because I’m “toxic”. I said in a comment quite recently about the break-up, and about the kinds of people who (label people and) don’t like boundaries. Either way, it seems my mother was exactly right when I told her about my situation on Tuesday - maybe Dave really is a narcissist.
Thankyou for always being there, Lovehoney. I love being here for you, it’s nice knowing there are some great people here who are here for me too 
) and when I read stuff I came to realise it’s a projection, then I started to think "well if I’ve called him a “narcissist” and my ex a “narcissist” (who also called me toxic first, and who also had narcisssistic traits, but who did teach me the importance of loving myself), maybe I am the narcissist? So then I realised that in both cases, my reaction was just a reaction to their abuse - it was reactive abuse - and I am gaslighting myself and prolonging their abuse of me by believing that I’m the “toxic” one. I did a cursory Buzzfeed test earlier (I know, highly scientific!) and I got 0% toxic, yet still somehow I questioned it 
men tend to be big gossipers for things more than women at times 
