I spoke with the mutual friend who cut off my ex today and she told me the whole scoop of why she did it. Long story short my ex was a shit roommate (incredibly true) and also really self centred and never grateful, which is also true lol. And my friend thought that once I broke up with my ex they would change, but they remained exactly the same and eventually she got tired of being used with no reciprocity. So that makes a lot of sense and validates a lot of what I was experiencing, and she even said she was surprised I lasted as long as I did and that she nearly spoke to me about how badly I was being treated but she didn’t do it in the end. She also told me various lovely things about how much she and her family love me and were so happy when I stayed over and liked me more than my ex, lol you can imagine my joy upon hearing that.

For some context while doing emdr a month ago about an unrelated memory I started down the path of a kind of ‘am I a good person?’ type of thought and I figured it was just a distraction but my therapist said to follow it. Prior to that I felt like I could logically know that I wasn’t a bad person but, to actually feel it and believe it, felt like there was a huge impassable wall in the way. But after the emdr, suddenly there was one foothold in the wall. I had been mulling over that one for the weeks since and I had made good progress on being nicer to myself because of it which is awesome.

Anyway, back to the relationship stuff, after my friend told me all those lovely things I realised there was another wall-like belief which was that no one could possibly enjoy spending time with me. This is entirely due to my autism and how it makes me feel like I’m so bad at everything socially that there’s no way anyone could like me. But, as what she said sank in, I felt the wall dissipate and for the first time in my entire life, I believed I was a likeable person. So deeply strange to feel it after so much time thinking it logically but not actually integrating it in my body.