His intentions and trusting my judgment

I think what I'm struggling with right now is that with more clarity, I question whether he was actually doing all these subtle things to intentionally hurt me, control me, etc.  It's the difference between someone with strong narcissistic traits vs someone who is insecure, lacks self-awareness, and has refused to heal his unhealed trauma.  Although maybe those two things are one and the same.  

In my mind for the past year and a half, I had convinced myself he wasn't intentionally hurting me, that he just didn't know any better and didn't have enough self-awareness to do better.  I suppose to believe he was intentionally hurting me was a greater incongruence with the image I had created of him than to believe he was just inconsiderate and didn't know any better.

But then I ask myself why does it matter?  The end result is the same.  The damage to my nervous system and physical health, the chaos and confusion happened regardless of his intentions.  

I think I wrestle with this because it calls into question my judgment.  Although instead of worrying about his intentions which I will never know, maybe my focus needs to be on the patterns that allowed me to ignore the signs I should have paid attention to.

I think the extreme highs and lows, an overall inconsistency created two dynamics that convinced me things were better than they were.  Most obviously, the highs were full of detailed love notes, attention, concrete future planning, doing things that were more for me like the trip to the Galapagos, and confidence from him about us as a couple.  In hindsight, they sometimes were even over-the-top.  These highs gave me something to hold onto even during the lows.

Then in the lows, he needed constant reassurance.  This constant reassurance which I provided him served a purpose in convincing me of how solid of a relationship I imagined we had.  In my experience, the more I say something, the more I believe it even if it doesn't quite match with reality.  And that's not that I didn't ever believe the reassurances I gave him but because I repeated them so often there wasn't space for me to see when my reality was changing.

A shift happened though last year because I didn't really try to convince him to stay when he came back from his work trips questioning our relationship.  It was as if I was done reassuring him.  I wasn't ready to be the one to leave myself.  I wanted answers from him on what the hell had happened to make him suddenly want to leave.  I wanted closure.  But I was done doing the work to keep our relationship together.  I even said that out loud when he suggested couple's counseling.  I wasn't willing to go through couple's counseling again with the focus just on me and what I needed to change.  It was his turn if he wanted this relationship to survive.

I wonder if that shift happened even earlier, maybe after I saw the way he treated me on our Hawaii trip.  That trip was May of 2023.  I was pissed at how that trip went.  I remember sitting in the back restaurant at a table for two against the windows, sipping a latte, watching a rainbow appear above the ship's wake and noticing the seat across from me was empty.  That image has stuck with me as representative of that overall trip and maybe even what our relationship had become.

And if that shift did happen earlier, he likely sensed it.  Maybe that is why he left.  Maybe he realized I wasn't tolerating his BS anymore.  I hadn't considered that the end may have started with me and the fact that I was starting to listen to my good judgment again.