Suggest Treatment For Paranoid Behavior Due To A Broken Relationship

Question: I have been having a very hard time feeling safe in my home after a recent DV situation with my (NOW, EX) fiancee.
When we were still together, he cheated on me repeatedly. Numerous times I tried to talk with him about it -- offering solutions like an open relationship (I actually wanted to end our relationship, but thought if he could openly have someone else in his life it would be easier to break it off, as I'd tried to just ask him to move out and he would refuse. It's like he didn't want me, but he didn't want to leave me, either. He'd say he loved me, but then he'd call me stupid or crazy, or make fun of how I spoke (sometimes I can sound like a nerd or someone's mother).
He has/had a tendency to become loud and explosive. When asked about other women, he'd deny deny deny.
So I started recording activities -- some video, some audio. He was very quick to spot my cameras, less quick to discover how I was audio recording. I have some videos that show him taking obvious steps to limit evidence -- an example or two of what I mean: I was with him for over four years. He cleaned office buildings at night when staff were not present. I went with him many nights to help him. He was a creature of habit. Always parked first stall, all the way up, rear of vehicle facing building, nose facing parking lot. On a night I stayed home, a hidden cam planted across the lot netted him parking at an angle, using almost three stalls, nose to building entrance, passenger door almost parallel to building and out of camera's view. Parking at that angle also blocked the building entrance from view. That evening, he also decided to carry his vacuum in at head and shoulder level, jacket piled on top, hose and one jacket sleeve in one hand, vac and other jacket sleeve in other. Even while unlocking the facility, he kept the vacuum raised with the other hand. Upon entering, he pulled the lobby blinds down. I'd never seen him do any of these things in all the times I've gone with him.
I secured an audio recording of him on another night sitting in his vehicle, drumming on the steering wheel for a moment, then saying "I love you." in a bit of a shy voice. Then some rustling sounds, a possible female whisper then more rustling, then the recording ended. When I played that recording, I asked him if what I thought he said was what he said and he confirmed it was. I asked him why he was saying that in his car after work. He said I was crazy, that it had to've been when he was leaving to go to work from home. I explained that there is a large difference in background noises between our front yard in a residential area with tweens and teens running up and down the street or riding skateboards, or walking running squawking or chatting at 6 pm in the summer on a street that seldom has through traffic of any kind and is removed from a main road by no less than four blocks (so very little automotive travel sounds are heard here), and the heavy trafficked busy intersection of two main roads in an expansive grouping of primarily medical office clusters located two blocks from where his cleaning contract was located near our local hospital. He got mad and said I must've been with him that night, then. I explained that was not the case and the recording was time and date stamped with internet time and other metadata. He said I was crazy and that I must've miss- marked it. I tried to explain internet time and date stamping. I tried to explain metadata. He got so horrible about it, I just dropped it.
Another night, I had hidden another cam. Again, he knew about it some how. When he arrived, soon after the video footage that evening was filled with someone slinking between the building and the decorative foliage (rhododendrons and some sort of taller evergreen bushes), repeatedly aiming a flashlight or laser keychain pointer across the driveway in the general vicinity of where I'd placed the cam. They played flashlight with my hidden cam for a good hour before finally stopping. Then, soon after, XXXXXXX opened the blinds in one of the rooms in the office building. The recorded image was confusing, as it seemed doubled and blurred and like there was some sort of constant circular movement -- big smudges moving and pulsing in the images. Only in that portion of the frames, though.
Another recording I secured was an audio recording of XXXXXXX coming back over to a friend's house to pick up his phone as he'd apparently left it in the couch cushions of their living room for a few hours. Heard talking are the occupant of the apartment and her adult son who was visiting. After a time, the mom is heard asking her son who's at her door. There's a pause and then the son informs her it's XXXXXXX She sighs and grumbles about people just showing up when she's wanting to go to sleep. Then XXXXXXX comes in, makes small talk, there's some rustling noises, then the phone sounds closer to the conversation. The mom states she's going to bed. Her son and XXXXXXX say good night to her, then there is some mumbling and more rustling...then a thank you is said and XXXXXXX heads out the door with his phone. A few days later, I played the recording for XXXXXXX He said it was a lie. Nothing like that happened. He refused to discuss it. It was a lie.
I have one video recording that clearly shows someone is moving my little hidden cam from behind. That was recorded when I was with XXXXXXX AT his contract, helping him clean. For months, I was bothered by that video because I could hear someone stumble or something (they made a huffing kind of noise usually made when people are about to fall), but XXXXXXX insisted no one was allowed to be in the building, so that couldn't be a real sound. He also said the camera moving could've been a breeze or it just falling over. A breeze...in a closed office building...moving a small camera with a flat bottom carefully anchored on a flat surface nowhere that could really be subject to a 'breeze'...moving said camera side to side, up and down, then carefully closing the door to the room the cam was in so no more footage could be collected. Eventually, I had a hint of an 'ah ha' moment. Doing research on line, I found a piece of software that would convert that video to individual photos for closer inspection. If someone is so pompous and superioristic enough to antagonize a woman who's already dealing with some major stress and just wants to verify of quash her concern, then they're bound to've dropped the ball at some point. People who think they're smarter than you usually have misjudged your level of intelligence -- in situations such as this sort of thing. My suspicion seemed validated by two images out of many. They were blurry, but clear enough to show an individual with dark hair in an orange sweatshirt and jeans standing just outside the doorway of the room I'd set the cam up in . They stood just outside the doorway watching me set up my little camera. The cam just happened to be on while I set it up, so in all the shuffling and resituating and bracing it was filming what was behind me.
I had heard various noises on way too many nights to ignore it. There had been way too many times where XXXXXXX would mysteriously 'disappear' and stay gone for half an hour to an hour or so. Numerous times, my purse would've been gone through while I cleaned Dan's contract. Numerous times, XXXXXXX seemed to just change his opinion of me with no logical reasoning behind it. He'd be fine, then it was as if someone had just filled his head with stuff about their observations about me or 'people like me'.
I have video footage of someone entering my bedroom window with Dan's help on a night that I am in the house right downstairs cooking dinner for XXXXXXX Because the footage is dark, specifics of appearance can't be detailed, but it's clear enough. Another video I have shows nothing suspect...just me checking the clothes in my dryer in the garage. I bend forward, nothing off...raise back up, folding, back down, nothing off...back up, folding, back down...THEN IT clicks. My parrot's spare cage blanket/cover is shown in a clump over my left shoulder. Backing up the video, it shows just before my second lean into the dryer that for some reason that cover was suspended from clean dress clothes in dry cleaner bags on a ceiling hook. It had been tossed into the garage by me...who witnessed it hit the floor PAST the area it was now suspended from in the video and then in a ball several feet from that a few frames later.


This part was all important to share with you because I am having such a hard time feeling safe, and I know she's been in my home numerous times...and at his contract numerous times. It's like they used me for foreplay or something.

I have other recordings I wont bore you with all of them, but I really did wonder if I was crazy.
When I first started seeing XXXXXXX I knew he was not much of a gentleman, but he seemed to have a good heart even if it was buried a bit deeper than normal. I blamed some of his snarls on his having recently experienced the death of his roommate of 15 years from an apparent heart attack. He seemed shy and awkward and gruff and a bit shady, but he also seemed gullible and boyish and lost a little. So I took him in. I still love him. But I also hate him -- or what he's done to me. I told him I could deal with just about anything, but please don't make me out to be a fool. I gave him so much of my time. I gave him my last years of not looking old. I stayed dedicated. I tolerated a lot. I supported him emotionally a lot. I did the things a good woman does for someone she loves. I was labeled autistic when I was little, so I am not always very observant when I should be, maybe. And I guess it's been fun for him and her to do what they've done. When he first was arrested after the last incident where he hurt me, he made his charges worse because he had refused to unlock the building and let me out when I repeatedly asked him to let me out because I could tell things were escalating and I wanted to get out and get some place safe till he calmed down. So they got him for a felony -- illegal imprisonment, I think they called it. Out of desperation, I finally started to climb out of the staff breakroom window and that's when he pulled me away from it by my neck and started hitting me and shoving me and choking me. There's a criminal no contact order in place. A few weeks back, I went downstairs and found a keychain bauble on the floor right in front of the front door. That bauble had been attached to my set of keys that came up missing from the front yard when I had set my things down and run back inside to grab something I'd forgotten. Coming back to the yard, my keys were missing. XXXXXXX seemed to not know what happened to them, either. I had had my suspicions, then. XXXXXXX strangely decided to pay for replacement keys for my car. That was out of character for him, so I knew my suspicions were right -- that she'd taken my keys to further harass me. If XXXXXXX thought I'd lost something because of carelessness, and had just mislaid an item, he would've just humiliated me and poked fun at me and would NOT have done anything to help me at all.
So, this bauble from my missing key ring showed up in my house at the front door. That same day, some hours later, XXXXXXX sent me a text about how much he loved me. I didn't report the text to the police because I didn't want to upset anyone and I didn't want to appear weak or cause any issues. When he later ran into me leaving a friends house and he told me I should just not show up for court and that they'd have to drop all charges then, I recorded that conversation and gave a copy to the police. The victims advocate called me to let me know that when XXXXXXX was back in jail due to violation of the order and witness tampering that he was saying some pretty ugly things on his phone calls. She asked me if I had a safety plan. To comfort me, she said he'd probably be in jail for a month or so at least because this time they'd set his bail at $50K.

He got out the other day.
I remember wondering what on earth was wrong with a woman who would tolerate being dehumanized and beaten on and belittled by a man, but who would come uncorked if that same abuser cheated on her. I always thought that was nuts.

Now, I think I understand it a bit. It's one thing to make excuses for your fella for abusing you. Part of you can still lie to yourself then...he still loves you...he's just under a lot of stress....he didn't mean it when he....(enter violent action here)...it's just stress or depression or anxiety...or....

But you can't quite do the same when they systematically try to make you think you're crazy, use you in their little creepy lovers game -- repeatedly mess with your very base senses, frolick in your bed while you prepare dinner like a good woman does.
When you're called names and mentally and physically hurt repeatedly, and you're denied sleep because he wants to keep yelling at you all night, and your freedom and safety is threatened and then you're accused of being the abuser because you state a boundary and that's not allowed because then you're a controlling c*nt because you asked them to stop yelling because you don't wan't the neighbors to complain because you don't want yourself and your son evicted.
So....I don't feel safe. Just as soon as I start to feel safe, I stop feeling safe. Even if he doesn't show up here, she still can. The pulley from my power steering pump came loose from the pump over night last week. I had heard a noise like stressing metal (like someone leaning on an open car door heavily) early in the morning while it was still dark out. I didn't go outside to check. Now I can't drive my car until I replace the now broken pulley (it's a serpentine belt system). The car issue could be coincidence, but it fits with how she operates. I have a video she made of her and XXXXXXX in my room. There are no faces showing, and it's double exposed footage with light streams and odd things. Iphones have software that does that. How did I end up with that 38 second video of her gyrating on my bed? It appeared in my google photos album on line.
I have no one. This has all been so INSANE that it's hard to explain it. I don't know why people like to torture people that have done nothing to them. I don't know if the police can do anything about her. XXXXXXX has protected her by denying she exists, so I cannot even get a no contact order against her to try to prevent her from anything. I have enough documentation that I can prove she exists, but it's so hard and I really feel my mind start to get lost and then I start thinking really unhealthy things and I get panicky and feel a major sense of total hopelessness.
There are several times in my life that I experienced things that were so bad that no one could possibly have believed me. A couple of times, I tried to tell someone, but it's like someone or something inside knew more than I did and so I'd lose access to the data mid-sentence. Something like that. One time, I tried a group therapy and the therapist pulled me aside and said my experiences were a bit much and that the other people in the group might feel traumatized by hearing my past. That it was kind of an odd abuse by proxy for me to share in group. I can get lost sometimes, so I asked the therapist if it was my delivery, cuz that would've made me feel terrible. She said no, just the details. She suggested one on one somewhere. I don't have monies for that, though.
I really feel lost. I went to a 'special school' as a child. It was experimental -- a model that has been duplicated since, so they must've done something right. Staff to student ratio was 1:1.
I took advanced classes, graduated HS at 16 having completed more credits than were required. I completed algebra 1, algebra 2, and trigonometry in one school year because I wanted to be done with all of the math requisites so I could take more art classes my last year. I don't have a low IQ. I know people are unique, I am capable of empathy -- possibly too much, I'm beginning to think.
I've always tried not to bother people, but yet I've always seemed to be a bother.
Good people sometimes do bad things, and 'bad' people sometimes do good things. Some people cannot feel, some people can but choose not to feel. Some people run when they're scared, some people sink their feet into the mud a little deeper, and some people just CANNOT do anything when scared, and then some people fight back.
I know I'm missing something--some awareness, or something. I just don't happen to know what that is.
I have blathered and blathered, here, and still don't know if I 've provided enough information for you to be able to understand what I'm blathering about.
I guess that's where some folks would just delete what they've written, click the little x on the upper right hand of this webpage. Writing it all down might've been cathartic enough for some, even. But I can't write it all down, because there is too much to write down and it's circling my mind, and each idea related to an experience brings about an opposing idea and a middle ground idea and many suppositions associated with those varying ideas.
Maybe this is what a person in crisis is like. I hate the word 'crisis', though. That word is for drama queens. Nothing wrong with being passionate, but drama queens...well...don't they get tired?
I'm sorry to've been so long winded. I think, if you have nothing really pressing to contend with already, if you could just let me know if you understand what I've relayed here, and given some details I've shared about, although in a limited capacity, does my conclusion he was cheating seem logical?

Thank you for your more tactful approach.

I ignored things as best I could for as long as I could, and I do agree that some of what I found myself doing later did seem nuts. I felt nuts.

If I hadn't done those 'nutty' or 'paranoid' things, I wouldn't have seen what I did see, or hear what I did hear. I'd still be ...wondering...

But, possibly, I'd just be wondering about feeling creepy feelings I couldn't quite label. Maybe that would be better, but I don't know.

When I was younger, there were times when very bad things happened. Much of the time I kept it to myself. One day, I called a number listed on a child abuse awareness commercial (one of the first I'd ever seen). My mother caught me. It didn't go over well. The call had just started ringing, so I did not get any help from that call. Later, I was placed in foster care due to child neglect and abuse. Initially, my social worker didn't believe me. My call had come in on a Friday, late. When she saw me the following Monday, she believed me. My mother had always been one to prepare for company. Tidy the house, chill the relish trays. Apologies spoken for only having instant coffee to offer-- so the social worker had a different impression of my mother until that Monday. I was then placed immediately in foster care.

When I was a teen, at 16, following graduating from HS, I had a bit of a melt down as I was working full time and carrying 14 credits at the local community college. I ran away. When I returned, I very much needed to communicate about a specific chain of events that would be labeled under rape and kidnapping and attempted sex trafficking of a minor. It was not an isolated incident. It was a circumstance that lasted for a little over two months. It was surreal. I was not believed. My foster mother did not believe me.

I guess I have it in my mind that if ever I need to tell someone what I've experienced, I should have documentation. I even seemed to need this documentation for myself, because what I experienced was some how detached from me. I also have some recordings of his interactions with me, directly, where he's threatening some bizarre things and laughing because no one would ever believe it. Then I have recordings of more 'traditional chatter' where he's calling me a 'worthless snatch' and all that other lovely stuff.

So, perhaps there are some 'paranoid' aspects to my manner of handling the situations of late, but I think I approached things in a manner that was focused more on logic and concreteness of data. Video footage is indisputable. Not even I, who loved him so very much, love him, could deny video footage. I knew we needed to separate. He was so angry towards me so much of the time, and he hurt me very much. He also showed how little respect he had for me in those videos and audio recordings.
But I found out that nothing is so cut and dry, and a person cannot just turn off their feelings--were that the case I would've left him after the first clip. Of course, I did try, but he wouldn't leave -- claiming he loved me too much.
And it's hard to believe that I was viewed by him as such a piece of shit, of little consequence to his life...as something fun to make fun of-- more of just a means to store his belongings and avoid masturbation occasionally -- and full service meals and clean up.

When the last incident of physical violence happened, he grabbed me by my neck and pulled me from the window I was heading out (ground floor), choked me, shook me, tried to punch me in the face several times, pulled my hair out of my head.

Something I did or said stopped him, and I got out that window. Walking in the 27 degree temperature at 3a, I was just going to go home. Even after he drove up next to me as I walked, and informed me I was a dead bitch, I still didn't think about involving the police. After about a mile or so in 27 degree air with no coat, it dawned on me that the business I had been helping him clean had video cameras. Once I realized that, then it seemed possible someone would believe me because the business we were cleaning was 'paranoid' enough to have video cameras running when the staff was home for the night.

It's a horrible feeling to need validation from something outside of yourself --even for yourself to believe what's been happening. To then try to tell someone else, when it's even then surreal to you is indescribable.

By the time I was three years old, I didn't want to be here, I think. I remember drowning in the lake (I had slipped off of a rock - moss is slippery). I was confused in the water, but remember actually feeling comforted or peaceful or something like that after a short time. Then my brother pulled me up and out. I was still here.
I wonder sometimes if the label of autism they gave me was correct, or if I was just in shock much of my childhood. Sometimes, I think I have more compassion and empathy than most people I know. I also think I understand why people do what they do more than many people. I just don't know why they would want to, or how they can do what they do and not feel remorse or guilt.
And, why can't a person just turn off and leave? Why do we stifle our own awareness to just live in a fantasy that's not even really so fantastic?? No amount of kindness or understanding or love will fix someone who cannot feel love, so why do we try to force feed such a diet to those who have little to no tolerance for it?

But...about the 'paranoid' thing, yes, I can see how it could appear that way --is somewhat that way, but perhaps you can see how it could be possibly an attempt by someone with a limited bag of tools to obtain solid and factual points of reference to better approach an issue that is best solved not with 'hunches'.

Businesses use them in empty buildings at night, with or without prior issues causing concern, and that is not paranoid. Individuals use them, after much incidence involving one's hackles being raised, and it's paranoid.


And about feeling safe in my home, now. I am concerned. He had warned me that everything would be calm, with no issues, but that he had friends...and that something could happen, any time.

Which would sound more paranoid:
I have seen a car drive slowly by my house, several times, back and forth, in the course of 15 minutes...

Or...

I have watched a video tape showing the same care driving slowly by my house, back and forth, in the course of 15 minutes?

Thank you for your reply. I am very grateful. I've been very isolated, and it is extremely helpful to me to have someone else's point of view.

I will attempt to summarize and paraphrase:

Normal people/typical, well adjusted people do not feel guilty removing support/affection/dedication/commitment from a situation that causes discomfort/an ill feeling of one-sidedness when interacting with other people. Typical, well adjusted people do not feel the drive to gather evidence in support of their choices/decisions, at least regarding significant relationships they decide to end.

So, forgive me, but -- how do they then interact with people considered 'mutual friends' with the other person?
Would I then refer myself back to my statement of paraphrase above? Does this approach work with ALL human relationships?

I do understand my drive to explain myself and my motives to others is probably more work than many invest. But I do feel a compulsion to act in that manner, anyways. Perhaps I picked up somewhere that I am not entitled to the same level of acceptance -- blind acceptance -- offered others by others.

I don't know if it is a matter of my viewing people as integrally dishonest and selfish, and because of this, I choose to relieve any fear of my intentions one might feel in advance to avoid that issue; It could be, though, that in coming prepared to explain myself and validate my reasonings with facts collected is a put off to others.

I've tried the blind acceptance, but perhaps the trust is to be tempered -- because I've lost much when I allowed someone into my life without concern of the possible ability of someone to manipulate circumstances to their advantage and the disadvantage of my life and my son's security and right to live a life not subjected to intense upheaval and loss.

THAT must be where I'm lacking. How do I learn it? I'm 48 for goodness sake. When I die, my son will need to know how to recognize the proper responses to warning signs. That weighs on me -- gives me pause.

There is sooooo much I am so very good at! But I stink at knowing what's safe and what is not....the subtle stuff...

How to be my personal physician on the website? I wasn't aware there was such an option. Your link doesn't seem to click for me.

Please let me know if I am at least partly right in my summarization, above. That would be very helpful. You've already been quite helpful, as it is. I thank you for that.