the last hurdle

[jamesG.1]

so. I'm just one month away from being free of my business partner and his gaslighting chaos. One month before I get my finances back under my own control, one month.

but he's gonna deal me one more joker before he goes, having ruined my credit rating and my cashflow comprehensively before the end. I have no alternative but to have a fight I've been trying to avoid and enter a whirlwind of triggers.

just outrageous. What the * is wrong with these people? I've been awash with them my whole life.

into the last valley goes the one

[Blueberry]

Good luck with this one, James! You have weathered so much in the past 6 months or so, I have faith in you you'll manage this too. But it would've been so much easier if your bus. partner had not felt the urge to make things difficult. I really don't know what's wrong with people.

[Hope67]

Hi James,
I just wanted to wish you the best with this - I know you've got a lot on your plate to deal with, and wishing you strength to cope with it.
Hope 

[radical]

James G,
I feel for you.  This is so unfair.  Why can't it just end?

I've been awash with them my whole life too.  Maybe society is awash, but doesn't recognise the problem and assigns the effects to other causes,  ( too often victim-blaming.) Those of us who have had more than our share of them have taken a lot of the responsibility away from others who might have had to deal...... The more we can recognise and keep away, the closer society gets to needing to find humane collective solutions.

There is an end coming, JamesG.  Hold on tight to that.  I often think of the line from the poem about maturity
Something about being able to keep your head when others around you have lost it and are blaming you.


Please be extra kind to yourself

[Rainagain]

Sounds like Kipling's if poem radical.

Its a good one, I hold to the line 'if you can encounter triumph and disaster and treat those imposters the same', means a lot to me.

James, there are ways to mend a credit rating, if you can get rid of this business partner you can fix it and sail on.

Best wishes.

[jamesG.1]

thanks all.

I'll get there. I can smell the sea, I'm just weeks away now. Head down, engines on boost.

persistance

[jamesG.1]

it's (almost) interesting this. I've seen it in all four of my protagonists.

Essentially, they use your easy going tendencies to dig in with their eccentric behaviour and they make it last years, gaslighting you everytime you raise any defence and making it more emotionally expensive for you to defend yourself than to give in. Gradually, you shed every last bit of your self until finally, usually because they get caught out elsewhere, the whole construct starts to collapse.

Then, as the end rolls up, they have to start facing the reality of who they are and how they behave and they start to scramble to regain your goodwill having spent years flattening it. Right now there's this mix of condescension and self pity oozing out of him, one minute using my PTSD to claim he's been heroically carrying me, then the next asking for understanding for his clear emotional incompetence trademark selfishness.

To give you an idea of the guy... He is always late, always. One time I was working away, just after the death of my mother and having left my alcoholic ex and I was with friends in the US. While there I was still working flat out, because he was late, but I was fully on time myself. Then I get a Urinary Tract Infection and take an hour out to see the doctor.

He went to the client and told them that's why we were late. Yup, he used my UTI. He told the client I had a UTI to evade taking responsibility for being late.

There have been hundreds of things like that.

All the people around me were like this, pathologically unable to take any personal responsibility for their own mistakes and failings and utterly judgemental towards me and anyone else that got in their way. It just astonishes me how that kind of narcissistic persona functions. But they've collectively put me through * and I'm done with it.

[radical]

Good description.  It's exactly that way at the end.  I've seen a few such endings.  The most bitter thing is their gift for coming out smelling of roses somehow.  Many of them will.

The most important thing is you.  No matter how ground down, betrayed, and disparaged you have been, please keep remembering your value, how much you matter, how much you deserve the sea, and every other good thing.

Here's to the ocean!

[jamesG.1]

aye the end game seems to follow a distinct pattern. They flatten you by attrition and then when you finally look like escaping they offer either their victimhood and beg for understanding or, if that fails to deliver, they throw everything they can at you as you walk.

I've been on tender hooks all day because there was a hugely significant meeting at the major client as the hand over to my new team member starts, but frustratingly he was there too. I'm being knowingly paranoid but I can guess that I'm going to have been given a bad press for basically having been ill with C-PTSD. The great irony is that I've performed perfectly well with it considering what has been going on. He hasn't. Being greedy and overestimating his self-worth has done him a lot of harm, but at least he gets paid for his crisis, I lost money with mine, tens of thousands in fact.

The frustrating thing is how the sensitive are so easy to pile on the offloaded angst, we show our feelings and that seems to be an open invitation to pile on more of the same. This is the thing that makes me want to be reclusive, to avoid interpersonal relationships ever again because I've seen nothing but selfishness and indifference throughout a time when I was pouring out help and support for people who took everything I had to give and when that ran out, they held me down and pulled my teeth out. I just expect the same... sigh.

I dunno, this is the last big separation. 3 down, just this one to go. After that, I may feel very very different. I hope so. I'm a social giving person under all this, it's not natural for me to be so introverted and alone. Once the dust clears I guess I'll know.

[Rainagain]

I've experienced people with a particularly nasty character flaw and I'm wondering if your business partner is one of those.

Some people have an issue with others in that they want to get some sort of revenge for some past injustice done by someone else. Or they feel the world hasn't recognised their genius. They are friendly and accommodating but when they get connected to someone genuinely friendly they begin to feel superior and end up causing harm to others. Its like they cannot relate as an equal, they are either unsure and almost subservient switching to arrogant. Its very odd.

Wondered if that rings any kind of bell.

[jamesG.1]

very much so.

If you are benign, you are weak. Simple as that

and if you are weak, you are not trying hard enough and you have to be pressured.

[Rainagain]

I think its what bullies become when adult, weak people who will dominate others if they get a chance, but in a slippery way.

Hope you get rid of this pest soon.

[jamesG.1]

well now I've had a very curved ball thrown me with the new person. That's gonna ruin my cashflow sadly.

benefits for me, only way.

[Rainagain]

Is this a parting gift from your business partner?

Keep going James, you can get past this.

[jamesG.1]

no, I think this is a new problem person making themselves heard. She seems determined to cut me out. Territorial stuff.

I'm thinking that I'm just going to be better off dropping the whole thing and going the benefits route, it's just going to make me ill. That way I can go for a proper rest and write and write and write.

I need to keep people distant for a bit and lick my wounds.