#hyperpersonal

Online Romance Scams And Victimhood – SCARS|RSN™ Study

SCARS|RSN™ Study: Online Romance Scams And Victimhood A Major New Academic Study Into Romance Scams Has Just Been Published

A Study By: Tom Sorell and Monica Whitty, published 21 January 2019

Note: This is a serious attempt to comprehend the complete romance scam experience and is not intended to deliver simple answers. Studies such as this do help develop scam countermeasures, as well as…

This is med withdrawal rage, and tomorrow morning I’ll probably be back to my self-blaming routine. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t true. A withdrawal rage episode is just the only time I’ll ever have the emotional energy to actually stand up for myself, to myself. So here it is. I loved her. I only ever loved her. I was good.

When it was all over, somehow all the conflict we ever had got pinned on me. She gets to go away thinking everything was all my fault and I just took advantage of her naivete like a mastermind with a plan to cage her forever from the very beginning and she had no autonomy, anything bad she may have done to me was only a product of my engineering. She gets to go believe that and blame me (but not /resent/ me, oh no never!), when all I ever tried to do was give her love and keep her from killing herself, even during the times when SHE deemed ME too toxic to keep around… I’m so angry

And she put it all out there in the world for everyone else to believe too, in a long text post on tumblr

What do I do. I feel like I’m going to burst if I don’t do something

I only ever tried to be good and supportive and accepting, while she constantly judged me.

I get blamed for making her need me, when she was the one who clung desperately to me from the beginning and I was always trying to get some space to breathe, some time alone

I almost never invited her over, because I was always just trying to recover from our previous time together. She always invited herself, and would get angry and silently “break up” with me whenever I needed space. She was ALWAYS threatening to leave and never feel anything for me or think about me ever again. She says I put her on a shelf and forgot about her all the time. No, I just needed space sometimes. She was the one who admitted to never thinking about me while abandoning me for three months,TWICE (the second time immediately following the death of my grandmother, the absolute darkest time of my entire life), for not fitting into the little box she kept me in.

I never tried to cut anyone out of her life. She was always the one doing that to me.

Apparently I had the power because I’m older, and because I seem to have held people captive with my love before, but I wasn’t doing that. I hypothesized, conceded that’s what it was because I want to believe bad things about myself, and I want to believe that my means of relating to people hasn’t improved at all since last I was a “captor,” but it’s just not true. I conceded to a narrative that stars a version of me that no longer exists. And honestly maybe never existed. Maybe people just love me because I accept them. Maybe I’m not manipulating everyone all the time. I don’t really feel like I am. Maybe I have convinced myself that I trick people into loving me just because I don’t really believe it could happen naturally. I really really only ever try to help anyone. I give up so much of the precious little energy I have to help other drowning people stay afloat. I’m not a captor. I’m not a villain. I just give love to people who need love, and those people are always so desperate for the acceptance that I offer that it looks like I’m tricking them. Trapping them. I’m not bad. The only thing I ever want and try to provide for the people I love is to feel good and happy and know how beautiful they are. I want it so much that I will give and give until there’s nothing left for myself. I love the people I love so much more than I love myself. I’m not bad. I’m not a captor.

But I didn’t want to blame her so I blamed myself, because it has to be /some/one’s fault, right?

And I know I wasn’t blameless, but I’m sooo angry that she gets to leave with “I forgive you for caging me”

And she gets to make other people believe that, that I trapped her and tricked her into loving me. That my love was toxic.

She somehow got out of this being completely innocent, as if she didn’t torture me for our entire relationship. As if she didn’t constantly try to isolate me, suck up all the time I so desperately needed to recharge and take care of myself, make me feel disgusting for even considering hanging out with other people, make me feel disgusting for every choice I ever made, constantly criticize me. Constantly disrespect me

As if she didn’t constantly actively consciously try to end the healthiest romantic relationship I’ve ever had

To get even more of me to herself

I’m so angry I don’t know if I’ve ever been this angry my heart literally feels hot

I don’t know

I don’t know

I want her to know what she did to me.

What does this look like

Am I being crazy

Am I wrong

Am I skewing the truth

I’m so angry

I wasn’t angry at all until just a few minutes ago

I just have been passively blaming myself, accepting the fault I place on myself alone

But then I realized that was based on nothing that actually happened

There were so many examples to support the previous narrative, the one that didn’t star me as the villain. But we both happily accepted this one instead, the one for which there are literally no supporting examples other than the fact that we loved each other. We accepted this narrative because I want to believe I’m bad and she wants to believe she’s a victim. Because our relationship can never “end” without the reason being that /I’m/ toxic. The same fucking cycle we always follow, in perpetuity.

I did not engineer this. Just because I /MIGHT/ have been an engineer before and the situation looked similar, I accepted that I was just doing it again.

But I wasn’t in power. I felt completely powerless literally all the time

I barely even talked ever, in person. I preferred to talk over text because in person I was always just being trampled over verbally. In text I at least got to finish what I was trying to say. Even though it often felt like I was being ignored. Even though she admitted that she always felt like she was just monologuing to a non-person…

I felt like I was constantly on the verge of setting her off. I felt like her sanity was my responsibility. She thinks that it was because I asked for it, so that she’d be dependent on me, but I didn’t. All I did was be accepting and understanding. All I did was love her, through all the bullshit she dragged me through. But that was wrong somehow? That was manipulative somehow?

I just accepted her, I didn’t trap her.

I was ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS saying I can’t be her only friend. I was always encouraging her to make new friends, to open up to people. I never felt jealousy. I never tried to prevent her from getting close to people. I encouraged it. Meanwhile she judged me constantly and made me feel stupid and gross just for being myself, tried to squash my comfort with and all my hopes and feelings for the literal only other person present in my tiny, shrinking life.

Someone who actually loves me

Unconditionally

She deliberately caused so much tumult between you and me, and I only EVER offered support in her efforts to have other people in her life.

She would try to skip plans with other people to hang out with me instead, but I would make her go. But if I so much as mentioned the possibility of one of YOUR friends coming over to hang out with YOU (because SHE WAS MY ONLY FRIEND), I was accused of not valuing her at all and threatened with a breakup. Who the fuck was caged here.

Which one of us was isolated and helpless.

I gave up so so so much, just to help her, just to try and make her see that she was worth loving. She admitted to hating me for all but the last week of our “friendship.” I can honestly say that I never felt anything but love for her. I offered total, unconditional acceptance and love, what the fuck kind of cage is that?

IT’S NOT.