To make amends?

If you look up in the dictionary what the definition is of 'make amends' you will find some form of explanation that it is to compensate for an injury, insult or loss. You will hear of addicts who enter into 12 step programs that are taking the step of making amends. This is usually somewhere towards the bottom half of the list (when looking it up i found it to be steps 8 and 9, so pretty far into the process) which would mean the person had done a LOT of self searching, admitting and hard looking in the mirror.

This week I received an email that said:

"Ask yourself who is truly being cordial and who is being snide and insulting when we are together.  We are both hurting.  You are hurting. It is apparent.  You wouldnt have such a chip on your shoulder if your werent.  I am sorry for the betrayal and letting the marriage fail...  I miss seeing our children everyday.  I miss coming home everyday.  I know what I did wrong and I am SORRY!!! You need to hear that...  I AM SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I actually said that it was good that you were running.  Remember that,...  I complimented you, not insulted.  I do not treat you poorly during any group activities.  I am professional and respectful. You always have a snide comment or smirk on your face and mumble when I am present...  Always.  I just ignore it...  It hurts but i try to ignore it.  I will always be a presence in their lives' even though you are trying to cut me out altogether."

This email was in response to my request that he have no further interaction with me at public settings where we were solely around each other for the childrens' activities. He had joined us for a track meet of my oldest daughter's and been typical Narc and I was done with it. So in an email that he had started i made a simple request and the above was what I got.

The next day as I was out on my daily run/walk, I was on mile 1 and got a call from the ex. I rarely answer it but it was Friday and i thought he was possibly calling to cancel his visitation for the day so I answered. I then got an earful about how he had written that because he was making amends and was part of SLA now. I had to really search the interwebz to find out just what SLA was, as Sick Loser and Abuser probably wasn't the diagnoses he was trying to pawn off the last 11 years of hell on. I found a site about Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous later that evening. I completely rolled my eyes, btdt and this isn't the first time he's blamed his crappy affairs and behavior on sexual addiction and the man does not have a sexual addiction, trust me it's a perversion and does not qualify under any of the symptoms of addiction. During the call I was pretty sure that's what he was referring to, some form of sexual addiction as like i said . . . this isn't my first rodeo in the cycle of abuse or 'the dance' as I use to call it with this man. He was par for the course and right on track with what he'd always pulled in the past. Only difference was that I had changed this time and didn't buy a single word.

And so I listened as he told me he had to make amends as part of the healing process and that he was so sorry for all that he'd done and I asked point blank how he could be sorry when he still denied having male sex, sucking on a stranger's penis thus putting me and our nursing son at risk and telling everyone I had been the cheater. He hung up on me.

This of course only annoyed me, amends my rear! Amends are not for the person who is the addict. I use to, once upon a time beg and plead and yearn for an apology from this man. I wanted him to understand and feel the pain, the trauma, the complete broken heart of what he had done and for him to apologize and mean it with every breath of his soul. That was before I really knew what I was dealing with.

Two problems here. One, he has no empathy or emotional capacity to FEEL the pain of others and what it must feel like to be hurt, broken hearted, abused and used. He is devoid of typical emotion and so, it will never happen. Apologies have always looked on the surface as if they are meaningful, but years of hearing "I just said what i was suppose to" or "I told/did what you wanted me to" and then him turning around and doing the same thing, over and over and over again showed how devoid this man is of really grasping the simple human emotion of feeling pain for others. Problem two - making amends hurts the person as it can bring back painful memories especially when you know the person is not sincere or capable of feeling what they did/are doing to hurt you. I believe it is a selfish way of making yourself feel better, in these types of situations. Making amends does not ever make the person you hurt feel better. I have spoken to many people who have been hurt at various points in their life, I have yet to hear a single person say, "Why yes the person making amends helped me feel better". No, the only way to feel better and to heal is to surrender and give it up to your higher power/belief system and learn to move on from it. The offender cannot ever make it better, heal the past or truly make amends for their wrongs. There is no amount of compensation in physical, financial or emotional form that could EVER make up for the pain that he has put me and my children through, so really what is the point of amends again? Oh yeah, that. The person making amends, is yet again using you to fill their emotional cup, pat themselves on the back and feel as if they have righted the wrongs of their past with simple, meaningless (in some cases i know it is heartfelt, but im talking about specifically BPD N's) apology and walking away thinking, "I can check that step off the list, next".

The old me would have finished my walk feeling excited. Feeling that i had gotten what I needed, that he was seeing the light and there was hope for the future and I probably would have thought maybe even hope for us. Not this time, not this girl, not ever again. I called him back and told him that if he was going to make amends that meant listening to what I had to say in response and hearing it out, not interrupting and really facing the music. And then I told him symptoms, reasons, and various examples of his BPD covert Narcissism. After hitting a few very important bullet points on things only he and I know about him, he listened and I spoke for 7.3 minutes and explained to him why he wouldn't get help, why he would never change, why he was still miserable with his new toy of a lover, why he had done this to every single ex (named the key ones off) and how I was the one who knew him better than the rest of the world. I told him this was nothing new, that in 2005, 2007, and 2004 he'd played the 'sexual addiction' card then and it had never worked before, but the difference was this time I didn't care (and yes in a sense I was wasting my breath, but this was not about helping him this was about my empowerment of making it clear this was DONE). This time I was not going to waste my life trying to save him, to help him and put up with a single day more of his abuse, his psychosis and his poison. That today, my life was wonderful, full, happy and healthy and that he was no longer my husband and had never been my best friend or my protector. That it was over, never again to be repeated and to stop barking up my tree trying to rope me back into the dance of abuse because THIS time i had a years worth of research, education and therapy to back up what he REALLY was and what I had REALLY survived. This dance was done, over, fini. Never again to be repeated and he had 3 choices: Keep living his sick life pretending to everyone who he was, but know that I would always see him for who he was and do everything with in my control and power to protect our children from him and that I was healthy and strong enough to do so. Walk away and leave us to live our peaceful, healthy and happy life. OR get back into the PhD who specialized in BPD that he'd left and do the true work of getting help and prove to himself and his children that he really was done with denying his psychosis and actively following psychiatric help to live a healthier life where he is working at breaking from BPD.

Pretty sure the first option is what he will choose, I'm ok with it. I got this, amends not needed.